Tag: hell

THE INN KEEPER

By Rick Mathes

The journey was so painful on the back of that donkey but Mary took it well so as not to worry her loving and loyal husband Joseph. At times she wanted to scream and turn back or at least stop and rest for a season. But she pressed on to Bethlehem without any security of shelter or help for the child that was soon to join this holy family. The night air was chilly and her painful cry was mostly unnoticed when the water broke and the time edged ever so much nearer. They turned from street to street, house to house without any sign of vacancy. And there in the not too distant horizon was an Inn. At least there they would have a warm dry room and female neighbors to assist in the delivery of the soon to be Son of God.

But no, the Inn Keeper stepped out of the door and said, “There is no room at this Inn.” Joseph pleaded his cause that his wife was about to deliver a child and the time was drawing ever so much closer. The Inn Keeper insisted that he didn’t have any room for them but directed them to a cave that was shelter for many of the locals animals.

Oh, how I would love to meet this miserable soul in glory and ask him if he had any second thoughts about what he had done! Can you imagine how he must feel now, knowing that he turned away the Son of God, his very own Creator and Redeemer!

What could the Lord have said to him when this Inn Keeper stepped into glory? How did he respond? We may never know but I can hardly wait to ask him to step out of the shadows of the Word and make his afterthoughts known to us who are embarrassed for him. Always have room for the Lord in your Inn!

 

THE GATE

By Rick Mathes

John 10:9 ” I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.

A prisoner I picked up at a local prison made me stop the car in the parking lot while he got out and kissed the ground. In another case a prisoner to be soon released was postponed and he went berserk, climbed the gate and bled to death in the razor wire. See the convicted felon goes through the gate to serve his sentence and then out the same gate when he is released.

The prison gate is the front door to Satan’s mansion and the Lord’s gate leads to a turns-style on the narrow road to glory. In true life, the shepherd leans across the sheep-fold entrance and with his staff becomes the gate to keep the sheep in and the wolves out.

I thank God there is a gate. Can you remember when you were “just out there” like a dog returning to his vomit? It was a merry-go-round with no beginning and no end: round and round. Now I have a hope in sight and the Good Shepherd is at the door.

It’s our blessing that there is only one gate. Jesus teaches us that He is the only way. Even though Christians, Muslims and Jews worship the God of Abraham, that doesn’t mean you can get to heaven through them equally. God had a Son who is God who said that He is the way, the truth and the life. He said that no one comes to the Father but through Him. He said it, I believe it, and that settles it. Muslims and Jews who don’t confess Jesus as Lord are going to Hell according to the Word of God.

The gate is so wide open to everyone that it is almost busting off of its hinges. The Lord spread His arms out on that timber and said, “I love you this much.” So it is with the gate that is wide open to you right now. It’s a gate with strong hinges that the gates of hell cannot prevail against it. How reassuring is that?

You can search all the religions of the world that ever were and you will not find a leader who said he would die and then raise himself up to life in three days and do it!

This gate is the entryway of earth to heaven. There is only one and you only have one chance to go through it when your heart beats its last. I’m not a stupid person. I’m smart enough to know that if I step through this gate and there is no God, what have I lost? But if I don’t and He returns to face me, I have lost everything forever.

Step through the gate for an experience you won’t soon forget!

 

THE FIRST STEP

By Rick Mathes

John 11:39 (NASB77) ³⁹ Jesus said, “Remove the stone.”

When our Lord stood before the tomb of Lazarus, He commanded, “Move the stone!” He could have had that bolder crumble to dust with a word, blast off into outer space with a wave of His hand or produce legs and have it walk off into the wilderness but He didn’t. He told the onlookers that they needed to take the first step and then he would unleash His power and let it flow in life giving power only God the creator could accomplish. He chose us from eternity and will love us throughout the length of forever but we must put our foot forward like metal attracted to a magnet and take that first step.

Put one shaking foot out and do it: go forward in your weakness and sin. This trembling faith took Peter back to the boat in his limited understanding and slender hope of faith. It is a gift we cannot buy nor borrow. Our total essence and form is totally for His good pleasure, only. Our hands are empty as we humbly approach the throne of the King with the faith He gifted us with. We bring nothing but as a consequence of His blessings we step up in repentance, submission and obedience in the power of God the Holy Spirit.

We come to Him in prayer, broken by the confession of our sins. How hard is it to look Him in the eyes with all the love we have for Him and recite one by one the horrible sins we chose in spite of His life and sacrifice for us.

Even our praises fall short as time after time pride crawls up in our ego and we swell with self-pride. The very pit of our being is diseased, polluted, worn out and worthless.

It is at this point when our knees hit the ground and our heart beats with His once again. When we are laid flat out on him and our face is in the mud, blood and tears of those that went before us, we can’t fall any further. Now at our lowest we finally experience and understand His strength.

What a friend we have in Jesus as He puts His hand out, we lift up our heads and move out in the rest of the steps we need to take that we might fight the good fight, keep the faith and finish the race. Our first step is all He is waiting for so that He might walk the rest of the way with us.

The gates of hell cannot prevail against us, He will never give us more than we can handle, He will always provide us a way out, He will never leave nor forsake us, no one can take us out of His hands and where He is we soon will be. You can take these promises to the bank!

There will be only one set of footprints on the path to glory and they won’t be ours. They will be his because it was He who carried us because we had the holy boldness to take the first step. Take your first step right now and let Him lift you up and carry you the rest of the way. AMEN!

 

TEMPT OR TEST?

By Rick Mathes

Luke 4:2 (NASB77) ² for forty days, being tempted by the devil. And He ate nothing during those days; and when they had ended, He became hungry.

The barren desert of the deserted is the devil’s natural habitat. Dry, dusty, forlorn and desolate is the garden of Satan. It’s a place of howling tomb stones covering the suffocating caskets of those encased in a liquid inferno of hysteria, chaos and insanity personified in estreme.

Satan can’t make you forsake Christ but he can attack unexpectedly with the circumstances that weaken your resolve to faithfulness in our Lord. If you just blink and make sin an option, you will eventually exercise that option and cave in to the temptation of counterfeit pleasures.

He attacks you at your weakest point because he knows that that is the shortest distance to the grave because the wages of sin is death no matter how small the infraction. Just a drop of lethal poison in a cold glass of sparkling clear spring water will do and he knows what makes your knees buckle before his smoldering throne. No mercy!

Satan disguises himself in deceitful friendliness. He’s your best friend and favorite neighbor: your spouse and yes, even your pastor. This angel of light, Lucifer, fools even the most cautious because he is the father of lies and you believed him all your life until you met the Way, the Truth and the Life.

The devil’s favorite tactic is to quote Scripture falsely and out of context. He thinks you won’t know the difference because he knows the Word better than you do. His entry level to your fall is doubt which is the opposite of faith. With flagging faith your trust in Jesus fades and you see the power of our own means to mislead yourself and others.

It all stems from the spiritual pride of deceiving others into believing that you are a Christian in good standing when it is nothing more than the selfish ambition to be your own god. This is what caused Satan to fall from glory and it is the temptation he uses to cause you to fall into the undying caldron of boiling fire in hell.

It is my fervent belief that believers cannot be tempted. My logic is that darkness cannot enter light so if you are “born again” the Light of the Savior shines in you and the darkness of the devil cannot invade it. What you experience as a temptation is really a test from the Lord. He has let the devil have a go at you to show all the depth of your faith and love for Him.

So the next time a sin fleetingly breezes through your consciousness, stand against it, say “Depart from me Satan,” resist the sin and then say, “This one is for you Lord!” Pass the test and defeat the tempter.

 

 

 

TEMPT OR TEST?

By Rick Mathes

Luke 4:2 (NASB77) ² for forty days, being tempted by the devil. And He ate nothing during those days; and when they had ended, He became hungry.

The barren desert of the deserted is the devil’s natural habitat. Dry, dusty, forlorn and desolate is the garden of Satan. It’s a place of howling tomb stones covering the suffocating caskets of those encased in a liquid inferno of hysteria, chaos and insanity personified in estreme.

Satan can’t make you forsake Christ but he can attack unexpectedly with the circumstances that weaken your resolve to faithfulness in our Lord. If you just blink and make sin an option, you will eventually exercise that option and cave in to the temptation of counterfeit pleasures.

He attacks you at your weakest point because he knows that that is the shortest distance to the grave because the wages of sin is death no matter how small the infraction. Just a drop of lethal poison in a cold glass of sparkling clear spring water will do and he knows what makes your knees buckle before his smoldering throne. No mercy!

Satan disguises himself in deceitful friendliness. He’s your best friend and favorite neighbor: your spouse and yes, even your pastor. This angel of light, Lucifer, fools even the most cautious because he is the father of lies and you believed him all your life until you met the Way, the Truth and the Life.

The devil’s favorite tactic is to quote Scripture falsely and out of context. He thinks you won’t know the difference because he knows the Word better than you do. His entry level to your fall is doubt which is the opposite of faith. With flagging faith your trust in Jesus fades and you see the power of our own means to mislead yourself and others.

It all stems from the spiritual pride of deceiving others into believing that you are a Christian in good standing when it is nothing more than the selfish ambition to be your own god. This is what caused Satan to fall from glory and it is the temptation he uses to cause you to fall into the undying caldron of boiling fire in hell.

It is my fervent belief that believers cannot be tempted. My logic is that darkness cannot enter light so if you are “born again” the Light of the Savior shines in you and the darkness of the devil cannot invade it. What you experience as a temptation is really a test from the Lord. He has let the devil have a go at you to show all the depth of your faith and love for Him.

So the next time a sin fleetingly breezes through your consciousness, stand against it, say “Depart from me Satan,” resist the sin and then say, “This one is for you Lord!” Pass the test and defeat the tempter.

 

 

TEACHER

By Rick Mathes

John 13:13  “You call Me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am.

No one can rob the bank between your ears. Jesus said that we perish for lack of knowledge. So it behooves us to choose our teacher very carefully. We all must learn from someone. We need to learn from a Paul and pass it on to a Timothy. What could be more appropriate but to go to the Teacher of Paul, the one He called Master Even today, I strongly encourage you to follow the Pastor that follows the Master. Better yet, get into the Word and the Holy Spirit will guide to truth in His bloody footprints.

Most likely you are a seeking sinner that is towing around an evil nature. Your sinful gain has been found to be cold and lifeless. You have become a dead man walking around, looking for a place to be buried: no tears left. Even what you do understand in the Word has become dry bones and lifeless. At this point your best “plan A” is to sit at the feet of the feet of the Teacher and use our ears and mouth proportionately.

Why is He our Master, you are asking? He saves the lost! You have quite a dichotomy of confusion to deal with if you are not lost and not a Christian. You are going to Hell is Jesus is not your Lord (Master) and you are not His servant (slave).

Jesus ascended alive into the heavens while 500 witnesses watched His feet leave the ground and fade into the highest glory. He finally became the King of Israel in their sight and His Church’s Bridegroom. As this transaction of atonement unfolded, you are His and t he rest of your life is none of your business. He has become your hand and you have become His glove; God with skin on.

We are now as believers satisfied with our destiny knowing He loves us and our life is to serve His purposes here now and in the New Jerusalem later. One day, if you are His, you and I will be walking those golden streets of glory together. No pain, no wars, no sorrow and no sin.

You can rest assured that He is coming again. This is the glorious hope we believers press on for. No matter how your life has been in the past, you are writing the Epistle according to you right now. How you die will illustrate how you lived. So I encourage you to put a bow on your life and confess Him as your Lord to all who will listen.

TAKE HEART

By Rick Mathes

John 16:33 (NASB77) ³³  “These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.”

While you are asleep tonight, Satan will be doing push-ups! His every moment of diabolical passion is to steal your joy and assurance of salvation no matter what it takes or no matter what he has to do. He is a master of lying by omission; that is putting enough truth into a lie to make it believable and then persuade you to act on it. Or put another way, to leave out some truth to give you a distorted understanding that suits his purposes to destroy your relationship with Jesus.

What is a person who loves the Lord to do? Look up! The glass is half full and it overflows from above and a stooping God that blesses us with His graces. Any other direction of your view will only give you a variety of reflections all of which will defeat the evil one as long s you keep your focus on Jesus and His elect.

Look downward and you will be encouraged that the dead in Christ will rise first into the heavens to be met by our Lord and ushered into their everlasting eternity of joy and the ecstasy of seeing Him as He really is.

Take a glance around you but be sure to look closer to what is not so obvious. It has been my experience that the silent warriors have first claim to be invited to the front altar of that Holy Mansion in heaven. They are the ones you would never expect to be there in fact you never even noticed them go about the Father’s business. They quietly obeyed Him in prayer, financial support and service so quietly, no one even noticed.

Then take a look within you and take a real look at jhow far you have come from what you have been. The light in you is displacing the darkness very noticeably and in a public way. Others puzzle around what has happened to the old you. The Son is rising on your spitural horizon so looking ahead is so much more pleasant than you ever thought possible.

You have a very real and living hop of eternity in the heavenlies with all the eternal friends you made in this brief earth experience. Oh, how much we love Him. Take heart!

SURVIVING HATE

By Rick Mathes

John 15:18 (NASB77) ¹⁸  ” If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you.

The Word of God says that if we love the world, the love of the Father is not in us. So isn’t it ironic that the world we are so tempted to love hates us in direct proportion to our love of the Lord. The more we grow to love Him the more those who are not His hate us and I am extremely grateful for that. I don’t want to be one of them, do you?

Not in any particular order but the world, without Godly restraints, is destroying everyone physically with not only bad diets and dangerous foods and eating habits but with alcohol and a banquet of drugs that make you feel good while they are killing you. Isn’t that just like Satan?

One he’s weakened you physically, he will go for your mind and plant doubt and fear or anxiety there which are the keys to hell. The keys to heaven are faith and trust. Even in the midst of a prayer the evil one will slip in a sick thought and the last place the world wants your mind to focus is on the Word of God. That book becomes the devil’s public enemy number one!

The world will do all it can to affect your carnal interests with success and approval but effect your every effort with worldly, material desires, goals and achievements. All this is temporal or world views are narrowed through the prism of hell. Bad becomes good and good bad. Defecating on the Cross becomes fashionable.

Divorce, week-end marriages, recreational sex, and even bestiality become the in-things with homosexuality in the lead; anything goes if the adults are consensual and no one gets hurt. It’s all relative with no moral absolutes except those that are relative to the social context.

Get a handle on this. Religion is making God in man’s image and likeness. It is a matter of bringing God down to our standards of depravity. You can call it legalizing sin. God is dead and mankind rules!

So if there is only one God it doesn’t matter what religion you have or rules you follow, if He is the God of love, He will never send anyone to a hell. Just love everyone and you will go to heaven? Hogwash!

STRONG KINGDOMS

By Rick Mathes

Ephesians 2:2 (NASB77) ²  in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.

Satan offered Jesus the kingdoms of this world if only He would worship him. Jesus, of course, refused but sometimes we don’t. He couldn’t offer them if he didn’t have them to offer. So the world system is not at all compatible with the heavenly system. But Satan at least temporarily has a grip on his sinful world that is destined to end in fire according to Peter.

Jesus knew all of this when He took His first step out of His carpentry shop to deliver us from evil. The current world-view or much of this worild is shaped by the devil’s various religions. You have to search very carefully for true Christianity. Satan is allergic to Christians and upon any contact he breaks out in flames!

Jesus stands with us and by us as we press on regardless of the quantity tht number themselves with us. He keeps us in the circle of His protection. It’s a nasty planet for we Christians to live in but it is only for a season and one day it willall be made anew. WE just need to stand firm and let the Holy Spirit have its way in our life.

Knowing that Satan only has his power because Christ is temporarily permitting it is a real comfort. In the Lord’s time, whenall that are His have confessed Him as Lord, thenand not a moment sooner will the trumpet sound and the sky explode in His glory.

The lust of the flesh is the “fresh meat” bate the devil uses to lure its prey into the trap. It all beginswith your eyes being captured on something sinful but oh so enticing until you taste of it and then you become hooked for more.

These sins of your mind, heart and even your soul confirm you are a child of evil. You can only break the iron bars of hell with a belief in Jesus as your Savior and Lord. With no Savior, you will have no promise, no hope and sadly no God. You will suffer the flames of Satan’s kingsoms forever and you will remember again and again, “I told you so!”

STREET SMART

By Rick Mathes

1 John 2:15-17 (NASB77) ¹⁵ Do not love the world, nor the things in the world.

If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. ¹⁶ For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh

and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life,

is not from the Father, but is from the world. ¹⁷ And the world is passing away, and also its lusts;

but the one who does the will of God abides forever.

Fools go to fools and ask foolish questions of fools who give foolish answers for the fools to pass on to other fools. This is how the kingdom of Satan is preserved. You see it everywhere. Losers hang out with losers and continue the descent of spiraling loses. The rolling stone does truly gather the moss of earth’s excrement.

Much of this in enticed by Satan’s deceptions and temptations. The unaware and ignorant masses follow the hand that feeds them, the “feel good” goodies. One of my false shepherds from the abyss we called the “Candy Man” had all a blackened heart could desire: nails in the coffin of flames.

Satan has the same MO (method of operation) he has always had from the beginning. He was most successful with Adam and Eve, he failed miserably with Jesus in the desert and he had me fooled and in his clutches for 25 years.

The first thing he does is to capture the focus of your eyes on the sin he knows you are most likely to weaken to. The he gives you just enough taste to create an insatiable appetite for more. Then he finishes you off with being so ashamed that you did the deed that you are too prideful to make it known much less to repent of it.

The eyes are the “window to the soul”. The look isn’t the sin the lingering is. As you fix your gaze, you deepen your addictive sensitivities and your knees buckle to face Christ.

Was Jesus able to sin? Yes! But in the Spirit, He was able to not sin as you are when you are “born again” and baptized in the Trinity of God.

When you are “street smart” you have an uncanny ability to sense and see the trouble brewing and headed your way. Capture that “Kodak moment” and see the punch coming, then counter-punch with the Sword: the Word of God. “It is written, it is written, it is written!”

It’s your perseverance in being adept at knowing Satan’s turf that will alert you to the survival skills you need to survive the temptations of the evil one. Just consider the whole issue a testing from the Lord and press on in the most dreadful of situations.

When you walk by, Satan better tremble because your  “Home Boy” is the King of the hood!