Bible Lesson 64

GOOD NEWS-BAD NEWS
#3 IN A SERIES
Luke 6:46

Please take your copy of God’s Word, the Bible, and read Luke chapter six, verses 1-36 so that you will more fully understand what you will be reading in this Lesson.

We continue in this series on, Good News–Bad News, as we look to the Word of God and find our Savior Jesus Christ in the Gospel of Luke, and we want to focus our attention now on chapter 6 of Luke, where we find Jesus as He begins to draw the line in the sand, so to speak, as he allows His disciples (on a Sabbath) to pluck grain and eat it.

That brings us back to the Scripture text for this lesson which is Luke chapter six, and we find there that Jesus is drawing the line between what is proper and what is allowable on the Sabbath. The thing that closes the issue is in verse 8 of Luke chapter 6, where Jesus Christ informs the Pharisees and us today, that He is the ‘Lord of the Sabbath.’ Jesus Christ, the Son of God, God with us, begins His preaching by warning those who hear Him preach, of the dangers that exist in their false belief system.

Our last lesson dealt with false prophets and preachers and teachers and now today we are dealing with their teaching. Many of the Rabbi’s of that period had come to believe that they were capable of teaching God and had used their positions and the trust that the people gave them because of their position, to change, and misstate the Truths of God. Jesus would set out to change that, by challenging it and quoting the truths of scripture, so that those who had spiritual ears to hear the truth would be able to please God, as they lived according to His Word and His plan. Do we need a course correction in our time’ I say, without equivocation or reservation, the denominational, visible churches of our day are in desperate need of a radical change in its doctrine.

For the most part churches today, have some idea about the truth, but they have hidden the truth or left it out of their programs, in favor of things that appeal to everybody. We have become men-pleasers rather than God pleasers. The fact that I have just stated is validated by an article in one of the Southern Baptist papers that I received the other day. One of the front page articles was concerning ‘In evangelism, it’s both/ and not either/or’, which dealt with the fact that most of the evangelism that goes on today, which is not much at all, never get to the truth.

Rather than getting to the confrontation of sin in every person’s life, we have found it much nicer to simply spend some time sharing with the sinner, some aspects of the culture that they are interested in; and never getting to the core of the message. I suspect that many today do not even remember what the core of the Gospel (Good News) is. The Good News of the gospel is that because every person born to woman, except for the Incarnation, every person born is born with the nature of Adam, that corrupted and depraved and disobedient nature that would not obey God. Every person born is born depraved and that means that we can do anything that our minds can conceive.

Thankfully we don’t all sink to the deepest, darkest sins that we are capable of; but we have that capacity, given the right circumstances and opportunity. Romans 3:23 reminds us that we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. That’s the bad news! All of us are born in desperate need of a Savior; because we are born under the wrath of our Holy and Just God (Ephesians 2:3).

The Good News is that there are verses 4-6 in Ephesians chapter 2, and they remind us that God has made a way for us out of condemnation, because of His Grace and Faith that He includes in regeneration, we can be saved. Not just saved in our understanding of saved, but saved to the uttermost, by being reborn by God and coming out of salvation as a new creature, created ‘in Christ’ and indwelled by the Holy Spirit of God, to empower us to live in such a way as to glorify God (Ephesians 2:10; 2nd Corinthians 5:17).

It seems to me that our problem is that we have decided, maybe unknowingly, that we want to be sweeter, more loving, more compassionate, nicer, and easier to get along with than God is! That has become a big problem for us and we must get that straight before we can have a proper relationship with God or do any kind of effective evangelism.

Real evangelism has almost disappeared from the earth because evangelism in the time of Christ consisted of Christ speaking the truth to those who are to be evangelized. There must be a confrontation of sin before we can evangelize. That is where we have stumbled and as a result, we have littered the visible church with the ship-wrecks of millions of ‘professions of faith’.

We decided that since we did not know much about the Bible we could teach people a few key verses and then send them out to ‘save’ people and bring them into our congregations to make us look successful. For that to work, we had to do something about the way Jesus did evangelism. We did not like the fact that Jesus would speak words like ‘repent or perish’; and so we decide to start at the back and work forward.

What we liked best was the part where we had been taught that God loves everybody and that Jesus loves everybody and that Jesus died on the cross for everybody, and that’s what we have been using as evangelization. The problem is, that is a lie. God loved everybody at a point in time, and so He sent His one and only Son Jesus Christ to die for those who would believe; and when Christ died on the cross He died for everyone who would one day believe and obey Him (Hebrews 5:8-9; John 3:16-21).

God the Father and Jesus The Son and the Holy Spirit all work in the Salvation process and the Bible tells us clearly and teaches in a context that Jesus and the Father love only those who are obedient to their commands, and the Holy Spirit applies Salvation only to those.

We are saved by the Grace of Jehovah alone, through Faith alone in Christ alone and Grace and Faith are both gifts of God and come to those who are regenerate (born again) in salvation. We did not like the results of telling the truth and slowly we became a people who will not accept the truth when we hear it from God.

The truth is, God does not shed His saving Grace and saving Faith on those that he knows are rebellious and will not come into the light of Christ and abide.

The reason that we are highlighting all of the wrongs that are going on in our churches today is that we must come to the point that we can remember that it is God that does the saving, and the only part we have in that, is that we faithfully speak the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, as God revealed it to us in His Word the Bible.

That is exactly what Jesus Christ is doing in Luke chapter 6, He is saying in effect to those who hear Him that they are on the wrong track, going the wrong way and that they must come back to the correct walk toward God. Again, I say, you and I and everyone born in the natural body, are born, under the wrath of God, undeserving of heaven, rebellious against God, and in desperate need of the redeeming blood of the God-Man Jesus Christ.

That’s bad news’. But that is not the end of the story, there is Good news and the Good News is that our Gracious, loving Father in Heaven has had ‘The’ way for us to be saved from hell for eternity, from before the foundation of the world.

God before anything that we know existed, determined to save a people, from every nation, tribe, tongue, and people, by presenting them with the Gospel, the good news of forgiveness of sin. That means that men and women will be chosen to salvation from every nation and tongue, without distinction but not without exception.

In other words, God chose people of all kinds from every nation and every tongue all over the world, to be the church, God’s gift to His Son Jesus Christ. That is what the Bible teaches and that is what we are all about here in the Church of the True Way, we want to know the Word of God for ourselves and then teach it and make it profitable for all who will listen.

The Pharisees and Scribes and the people of Israel, had forsaken the truth and they did not know the God that they said they served; and it is the same way with so many people in our day that call themselves Christians.

We have forgotten that our holy, loving Creator, chose to save a people, and only God knows who those people are, to be the bride of His one and only Son Jesus Christ. Those people come into the world by natural birth and are born under the wrath of God, deserving only death and hell for eternity, the same as everyone else.

God had chosen them individually before the foundation of the world, to be saved in time. When Christ went to the cross, He went there to die to remit the sins of those and no others. They were elected, but they were destined to be saved by the application of the blood of Jesus Christ. Some people who hear that want to get mad and insulted and claim that God is not fair if He did that.

Of course, any serious person who thinks about that knows that whatever God does is fair; and besides that, God did not put a mark on those that He chose. The only way they or anyone else can know that they were among the chosen, is to see them submit themselves completely to God and live just as Christ wants them to live (See Galatians 2:20).

Many of the people that will end up in hell for eternity will go there because they loved the old creature, the one with the nature of Adam, who loves the world and the things of the world. The only people who will end up in heaven out of the period of grace will be those who were willing to have God put that old creature to death and raise a new creature that can and will walk in the newness of life (Romans 6:3-14; Ephesians 2:10; 2nd Corinthians 5:17). It seems to me that, even in the impending gloom of death, people hate to give up that old creature that is depraved, unheeding, selfish, and willful, even for the pleasure of heaven that human minds can not conceive and that certainly I could never describe.

Many of these have never had sin in their lives confronted, never heard that they are still under the wrath of God and it all goes back to the soft and compromised gospel that they have had preached to them for many years. If you are reading this dear brother or sister, stop and think about the truths of the inerrant Word of God, the Bible. Think about your life and ask yourself, if you can remember a time that your life was turned upside down, and you were radically changed and you knew that Almighty God had done a work in your life. If God has quickened you and re-birthed you and recreated you into a new creature, you cannot ‘..not know it!!

Remember this, God has only one way of Salvation and that is by faith in His Son Jesus Christ. If you are saved, you had nothing to do with it, you had no part in it other than that by reading the Word of God you put yourself in God’s way. The faith that brought you into contact with God was not your faith’.it along with God’s grace and because of God’s grace, was a gift from God (Ephesians 2:8-9).

Saved people will never come into condemnation; because Jesus Christ suffered that condemnation for them as He hung on the Cross. When God called them out of the World, they were sinners like everyone else. They were dead in trespass and sin, separated from God, sinners, and unresponsive to God; however when god called them they responded and came willingly and fully to submit and commit their lives to God through Christ. God did not send His one and only Son Jesus Christ to die for people to continue to live their way and to follow in some precious sin, no indeed, true Christians live in newness of life (Romans 6:4).

The visible church is in the devil’s web and it is obvious to anyone who has half a wit and one eye, that congregations are practicing some sort of Kabuki dance, and they dare not stop dancing because they would have to think about what they believe and practice. Now, I don’t say that with any relish, it is a terrible thing to have to say; but to say otherwise would make me a liar.

Do I mean that everyone in every congregation is unsaved’ No, but the vast majority are lost as a ball in high weeds. Check them by the Word of God and then make your decision. We join churches without many questions, no confrontation, and no background checks at all. In fact, in a conversation I had a few years ago with Peter Marshall Jr. (The son of the one time U.S. Senate chaplain), Peter Jr. told me that his mother had taken him to a church one time and he had felt the need to go forward to join the church, and on the way home Peter began to weep and when his mother asked him what was the matter, he said ‘Mother, it was easier for me to join the church than it was for me to join the scouts’.

That my friend is a sad commentary on the state of our churches. Do you think that could be the reason that we don’t know much about our pew mates and our pastors normally know less about their congregations than we do’

The visible church of our day is undisciplined and unresponsive in most cases to the Holy Spirit. When was the last time that you saw anybody go forward in a church service and shake the preacher’s hand and be accepted for membership’ When was the last time that you heard of a church calling some brother or sister’s hand about some public sin’ It just does not happen as a rule.

Brothers do not rebuke sinning brothers and the elders do not rebuke those who are erring, many times because they cannot throw the first stone. The Church is supposed to be the place where truly saved people meet with the purpose of worshiping God and instructing one another in the Word. We have changed that to what often happens today, church is a place where we come together to be lectured to and we do not know enough about the Word of God to even know what is right and wrong.

Churches today are mostly just social events where we come to hear our pastor assure us that we are all alright, that what we need to do is to come to church regularly, and then all too often the pastor does the job of the Priest in that he forgives all sin, as he tells the congregation that we are all sinners and he is the worst one in the bunch. If that is true then what is the point in going to church, sinners can stay at home and skip all of the handshaking and noise that goes on in the name of worship.

For those of you who have been convinced that we are all sinners who sin all the time every day, I have news for you. God calls those who are truly saved ‘Saints’; and the reason that He calls us to salvation is ‘To be Saints’ (Romans 1:7)! It is time that the visible church stopped playing at church and began to follow Jesus as He demonstrated true Christianity for us in His life here on the earth.

Christ came to the earth with a mission from the Father, that included death, burial and resurrection, and ascension back into heaven to be our Prophet, Priest, and King; however, His mission included giving us a more focused view of what God wanted from His creatures. We seem to have forgotten that we cannot compartmentalize our lives and live one way here and another way there; do this one time and that another depending on what we want for the outcome. God wants the outcome to be that our lives are consistent, transparent, and committed to Him through Christ.

We as church-members have become like Martha, the sister of Lazarus who, when the opportunity to worship and learn more about the Savior, chose rather be cumbered (distracted) with many services. Martha wanted to ‘do’ things for Jesus, while her sister Mary wanted to ‘know’ more about Jesus and live closer to Him (Luke 10:38-42).

The true Christian always wants to draw closer to Jesus whenever the occasion presents itself, and if we would do that, then when we left our places of worship we would do the things that Christ would have us to do. We would live lives that reflected His love, minister to the sick and those in trouble, take care of widows and orphans, and carry the good news of the gospel to everyone we meet (Matthew 28:19-20; 1st John 2:15-17; 1st John 3:24; James 1:27; Matthew 25:36; 1st John 3:1-3).

Let me remind you that the True Church, which is made up of all of the truly saved is the Bride of Christ. When Jesus comes back to judge the quick and the dead He will not call for the rolls of the various visible churches, He has His roll. That is not to demean or belittle the visible churches; but to remind them that only those who are saved by the blood of Jesus Christ, born again by the regenerating power of God, recreated as God’s children, and obedient to God’s commands, will ever enter those Gates of Pearl.

That’s what makes the job of church leaders so important because if we do not follow the Word and Will of God and point people to the Truth that sets men free, we will answer for the souls of those that we have confused. It’s not hard to know what God wants; we simply have to follow His Plan which is laid out in the Bible. The Visible Church was, in the beginning, a useful tool of the Master; but over the ages, men have begun to want to adjust and tinker with and shade the truth to make it more acceptable to the lost. That has resulted in the visible church of our day, is a mixed multitude. We do not necessarily need to run away from the visible church; but if we join one of them, we first must make sure of our salvation, and then strive to make sure that the teachings of that church line up with God’s Word.

Don’t tell me that many church-members are standing on the Word of God because it is so obvious that they are not. We have slowly but surely been brought by a trick of Satan to the place where we talk a good game but we do not know the rules. Not that life is a game or Salvation is a game; because there is a Judgment day coming when every idle word and thought will be brought to light as we stand before God to answer to what we did with the blood of Jesus Christ.

So many in our time have trampled that precious soul-saving blood underfoot as we have carelessly and unashamedly, changed the commands of God to suggestions and recommendations. Judgment will not include murder, adultery, divorce, and idol worship, it will be so thorough that it will include idle words that we speak (Matthew 12:33-37).

We have become so careless about the Word of God and the God of the Word that one of the foremost mantras in the politics of our day is that we must be tolerant of all other religions. I don’t know what Bible that comes from; but my Bible says that Jehovah would not tolerate any other religion. I believe that is still the Truth that sets men free. Does that mean that we physically forbid others to worship idols’ No! It does mean however that we witness to them and never take up any of their pagan ways.

My Bible says that Jesus Christ is The Way, The Truth, and The Life; and No man can come to the Father except through Him (John 14:6). My Bible also says that no man can come to Jesus unless the Father draws him and Jesus will raise them on the last day (John 6:44). My Bible says, that there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12). My Bible says that we are all born under the wrath of God (Ephesians 2:1-3). My Bible gives the remedy for being dead in trespass and sin and condemnation, it is ‘Faith in Jesus Christ’ (John 3:16-21). *Note. Faith is a life-changing belief that surrenders completely to Christ in Salvation; it is not simply a profession of faith.

My bible says that in Salvation the person being saved is reborn, recreated by God ‘In Christ’. My Bible says, that the person who is truly saved and reborn will always be a new creature, with the old things passed away and all things being new (2nd Corinthians 5:17). My Bible also says that the new life that the Christians take up at salvation is one that is in the image of Jesus Christ (Romans 8: 29). My Bible goes on to say that those who are saved are led by the Holy Spirit and anyone who is not being led by the Holy Spirit does not belong to Jesus Christ (Romans 8:8-9,13-14).

I ask you to examine your life deeply, to make sure that you fit the Words of the Bible. Ask yourself tough questions and do not fudge on the answers. It will mean the difference between heaven or hell for eternity.