Bible Lesson 67

WHAT MUST WE DO TO IMPROVE OUR CHRISTIAN WALK
Part 1
HEBREWS 6:1-8

n this lesson, we want to look at what God has said we should do to be mature Christians, as we live for Christ, and in Christ, to be light in a world of darkness. Somehow we have spawned the idea that ‘saying’ we are Christian, excuses sin in the lives of those who make that claim. Hear me well now, that is the devil’s lie! The organized church has led people to believe that you are saved the instant that you make a ‘Profession of Faith’ and that you have the rest of your life to show works meet for repentance. As a result of that kind of thinking and teaching, we have polluted the visible church with ‘pseudo-Christians’, people who talk the talk but who never intended to walk the walk. We have allowed people to become apathetic and lazy, and they have forgotten that the Bible that they have is supposed to be the rule and guide of their lives. People, as a rule, do not read and study the Word of God for themselves, what they are interested in, is the ‘appearance’ of being a Christian, so they go to church and pray and sing, but it is all hypocritical.

I believe that the problem is the result of our not even attempting to come to a correct knowledge of God and what His purposes are for this world. We seem to have bought into the world’s goal, and that is secularism or humanism. Without even realizing it, so many have believed Darwin’s theory of evolution, which says that only the fit, survive. This society has, without a doubt, placed man at the center of the universe, when it is God who is the center.

Word merchants, in sheep’s clothing, who call themselves men of God have nurtured the idea that man is not able to live the life that God has set down in His Word that we must live; and so we tend to believe that life is what it is and all we can do is just do the best that we can and God will accept that. That is untrue but that is for the most part what most people who say that they are Christians believe. That has led us to become a society without any absolutes. Perhaps I should define absolutes for you before we go any further.

To define absolute we will first define truth. What is Truth’ Whatever God has said is true; because He cannot lie (See Titus 1:2). Truth deals with reality, what is the essence of a matter. So, whatever God has said in His Word the Bible, is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth’.it is absolute, ‘perfect in quality or nature, complete’.

God’s truth cannot be limited by restriction or exceptions, it is not mixed, it is pure and unadulterated. That means that if we are Christians that our reality has to do with absolute truths, not as the humanist believe, that their reality is whatever fits the current situation.

Certainly, none of us should have missed seeing how the media uses that kind of truth. They seem to begin with a forgone conclusion about whatever situation they are dealing with and they create circumstances that they report as news, as they adulterate the reality of the problem or situation that they are reporting on. Take for instance the ongoing debate about abortion. Can any truly saved person believe that abortion is not condemned by the Bible’

The Bible is the Word of God, we know that it is absolute truth; but these people who for the most part are thorough secularist/humanist, are not bound by the same reality that Christians are bound by, they have their situational ethics and truths that are ever-changing to fit the present situation.

Their ploy is to blind us to the truth of God and to make us take the debate at a lower degree like it’s a woman’s right to decide what happens to her body. That is the kind of thinking and the kind of news that we are accustomed to getting from our media. Their reality is always evolving and changing, so what is right or correct today for them may be altogether different in a few days or weeks.

God’s reality, which is the reality that every truly saved person must deal with, is absolute and it never changes. God created this world and all that we know and much more than we know about, in the beginning; and He has an eternal plan which will come to pass, regardless of how many realities that the loss of the world conjure up.

The problem is not so much that the lost and sinners of the world have weird ideas and have false realities, as they do. The problem is that the truly saved Christians of the world never seem to stand and challenge their realities, with the truth of the Word of God.

There is a difference and it’s easily seen and understood if we would only become more familiar with The Word of God and the God of that Word. The secularist/humanist of the world have a false reality, they believe the material-energy humanistic concept, which by its nature has no ethics, no values, and no basis for law.

The Christian reality believes that there is an eternal living God who created and ordered the worlds and who watches over them on a moment to moment basis. The Christian view does have ethics and values and is the basis for our legal system, even though many chose to ignore reason and reality and deny that our legal system was based on the Word of God.

The difference in these two belief systems should be obvious to us all, but while their side (Humanist/ Secularist) is very vocal and active in pushing their agenda, and our legal system and our courts have made it a priority in the past few years to force this total humanistic way of thinking and acting, on our population as a whole.

The problem can be traced finally back to the church, and its leaders and laypeople, who have refused to speak up and out about what the Word of God has to say on subjects that involve the lives of God’s creatures. Take the abortion issue as an example. What does God say about human life’

The Bible does not specify abortion, but it teaches about human life and it takes away from individuals the right to interrupt any human life. God speaks in Psalms 139: 13-17, through the Psalmist King David, and says of the unborn, ‘For Thou hast possessed my rein: Thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise Thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are Thy works; and that my soul knows right well. My substance was not hidden from Thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest part of the earth.

Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being imperfect; and in Thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them. How precious also are Thy thoughts unto me, O God! How great is the sum of them!’

God even revealed to us that a woman, Eve, was the first one to be deceived, and in 1st Timothy 2: 14-15, that childbearing will save the woman. Does that mean that women must have children to be saved’ Does that mean that women are second class citizens’ Absolutely not’ what it is saying is that since the first transgression was by a woman, her progeny (female) can in some sense redeem the woman’s position by childbirth.

Women are saved by Grace the same way men are but just as men and their actions reflect on other men, the actions of mothers can enhance the position of women. Now, just in case some woman who reads this who has had an abortion at one time or another, let me say to you that having an abortion does not rise to the level of the unforgivable sin.

What you should do is to deal with the fact about what you did, which was to allow someone to murder your child, and then ask God to save you and repent of all of your sins, and you will never have to listen to criticism about that old creature that you were before God shed His Grace on you and saved you for eternity. In true salvation you become a new creature, the moment that you are saved; because God indwells you with His Holy Spirit, and the old things are passed away, behold all things become new (2nd Corinthians 5:17).

Understand me now, salvation is a supernatural work of God and only God can save anyone. Salvation does not come with joining some church or turning over a new leaf, it only comes in God’s time and by His power, and it always results in newness of life (Romans 6:4). I want to stress and emphasize what I mean by supernatural, and what that means is, that it is a work of the Almighty God who alone can change a sinner into a saint. Don’t be fooled by someone who wants you to repeat a prayer after them and then they will tell you that you are saved.

If God does a work in you, you ‘will’ pray and you won’t need instructions. I am afraid that the visible church has come to the point that it is afraid to trust God in salvation because their membership might not grow as fast as they would like if they wait upon God to save and then include that one who is really saved in the churches’ fellowship. God is gracious and because of His grace and nothing else, will anyone ever be saved.

God calls us by His Grace and then gives us the gift of grace and faith in true salvation and only by God’s Grace alone, by faith alone in His Son Jesus Christ and His substitution of Himself for us on the cross of Calvary, will anyone ever be truly saved (Ephesians 2:8-10). As I said before, the visible church has created a false way to salvation that entails some kind of nebulous profession of faith and our joining some organized church group. Then that church and its leaders pronounce us saved, but as I said before that is false salvation and it will only send you to hell. You must know, that you know, that you know, that God has done a work of recreation in your life and then your life will reflect that supernatural rebirth.

Can there be anyone who has ears to hear and eyes to see that can look around them at the visible church and not know that something is missing’ That something that is missing is the Holy Spirit and His power to guide those who are saved into all righteousness.

I am not saying that every church-member that we see is a lost person; but what I am saying that in all probability, most of them are lost and do not realize it. This all came about over the last decades because the church became enamored with the ‘felt needs’ of its congregation. The church stopped being the church and began to want to preach a social gospel that made everyone present feel good about themselves. The true gospel will only make those who are truly saved feel good about themselves. When the true gospel is preached in the power and anointing of the Holy Spirit, it will break the hearts of those who are not saved, and most of the time, those sinners will be offended by that gospel (See 1st Corinthians 1:17-18; Galatians 5:11; 1st Peter 2:6-8).

If we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit that we have not been exposed too often to sins that have a face. What I mean by that is that we don’t mind preaching against sin, but we do not like to name specific sins that congregations are likely to be committing. Many preachers today do not preach against homosexuality, adultery, fornication, pornography, loose living, or divorce; but prefer to preach against sin in general, which never confronts anyone’s sin. Biblical preaching must do two things, to qualify as preaching.

It must instruct those who are saved and confront the sins of those who are unsaved. Preaching requires men who have backbones of steel and an unwavering trust in God and His Word the Bible.

Anemic preaching has spawned this do nothing visible church that exists in so many places today. Christians are to be doers, not simply hearers of fairy tales. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, tells us in Matthew chapter 7 and verse 21, that ‘Not every one that saith to Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven’.

We have sought to believe that it does not matter what we do, whether we sin or attempt to obey God, but that dog will not hunt. The Bible is clear as we say in the above scripture and again as we look to Romans 2:5-10, where God speaks to us through the writer and says, ‘But, after the hardness and impenitent heart, treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God.

Who will render to every man according to his deeds (Judgment not salvation): To them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life: But unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation, and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil; of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile; but glory, honor, and peace to every man that worketh good; to the Jew first and also to the Gentile;’

Always remember, the Faith that saves is a Faith that behaves!

Christ went to the cross and died, to redeem us ‘from’ sin, not ‘in’ our sin. God gave us the Bible that men who would study it and align themselves according to it would be fit for heaven; but it seems that for decades now, we have been changing the Bible to make it acceptable to sinners.

Remember, the rich young ruler, who came to Jesus and wanted to know what he must do to inherit eternal life, Jesus told him, in the end, to sell all that he had and give it to the poor, and come and follow Jesus. The rich young ruler thought about that and became very sorrowful because he loved his riches more than Jesus.

Jesus did not ‘sweeten up’ the deal for this rich young man, nor did he send one of the disciples to plead with him’.he simply let him go to hell (Luke18:18-25; Luke 14:26-35). Jesus Christ shed His blood and died on that cross under the weight of the sins of those who would believe, He died and was buried and three days later, He arose and ascended back into heaven and was seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will never hang on that cross again or change anything in the Word of God. He has done all that was required to quench the wrath of God against the sins of the elect. Now the ball is in the court of lost men, and women. We must care enough about our eternal lives to storm heaven with our request and prayers and anguish, asking God to save us.

Our Scripture text for this lesson (Hebrews 6:1-8) exhorts us to go past the basic principles of salvation to a full and mature understanding of the entire Bible. That’s what we will attempt to prove to you in this series so read and study all of the scriptures that I give in this lesson.

This is the first installment of a series of lessons on what Christians are to do to prove their salvation. Be sure to stay tuned for the next lessons will be posted on the web-site every two weeks, give or take a day or so. Think about these things and evaluate your own life according to the scriptures. Don’t take your salvation for granted, make sure that the Holy Spirit is in you and that you are that new creature that comes with salvation (2nd Corinthians 5:17).

Until next time,

may God bless and keep you

This is Bro. Bob