JESUS IS GREAT IN PEACE

 

JESUS IS GREAT IN PEACE

I John 3:19-24

One of the real joys of salvation is the peace we find in Christ. It is a peace that supersede all circumstances of life. It is a peace that flows from deep within the soul. It is knowing that one’s heart is right with God, he is not ever left alone by God to fend for himself, and he is going to be in heaven someday. Soul peace is possible because of what we experience in life as we live in Christ.

In Christ, we have rest for our souls. 19-20 Without Christ, we stand condemned for our sins. In Christ, there is no condemnation. It is such a wonderful life to live, knowing that your sins are forgiven and that God has adopted you into His family as His very own child.

In Christ, we have confidence before God. 21 There is no words that can adequately describe what it’s like to look forward to standing before God with no fear or regrets. With Christ as our shield and mediator, we can approach God without fear of being turned away.

In Christ, we can be confident that God hears and answers our prayers, and it’s always for our good. 22

In Christ, we have eternal life flowing through us. 23

In Christ, we have the Holy Spirit actively working in us. 24 No one living in Christ is without the Holy Spirit. He is always at work in us to make us holy. He always works to glorify Christ in us. He always works to empower us to live godly lives. He works to guide us and teach us the things of God.

Is it any wonder that the child of God lives such a different life than he who does not know Christ? There is a constant peace that floods the soul as we constantly abide in Christ. When we lack peace, it’s because we are not living submissively and obediently to Christ as we should.

JESUS IS GREAT IN POWER

 

JESUS IS GREAT IN POWER

I John 3:4-18

Jesus is the human manifestation of God. He is the creative power of God of all that exists. He not only spoke all things into existence, He holds it all together simply by the power of His word. He is every watching over what He has created and keeps it going. His power is seen in our text today.

Jesus has the power to take away our sins. 4-5 In Him there is no sin, and when He died on the cross for our sins, He died so without any sin. He alone has the right, authority, and power to forgive sin and remove it from us.

ugh Jesus has the power to keep us from sinning. 6 No one living in Him keeps on sinning. He changes our very nature and desires. Our struggles with sin is not because of His lack of ability to help us, it’s because of our lack of letting Him help us.

Jesus has the power to make us righteous. 7 In I Cor. 1:30, we learn that Jesus is our wisdom, righteousness, and holiness from God. He alone can make us right with God. He alone is the door into heaven.

Jesus has the power to destroy Satan’s work. 8-10 Satan’s only passion is to destroy. He seeks to destroy every good work of God. His passion is to keep us sinning so that we remain alienated from God. His passion is to destroy relationships. He delights in disrupting our ability to love one another and treat each other with grace.

Jesus has the power to enable us to love. 11-18 What Satan tries so hard to do, Jesus enables us to do when we let Him have His way in us. Although the love of God is demanding and unlike any other form of love on earth (I Cor. 13:4-8a), we through Christ can live it. The love of Jesus is normal for the child of God. 11-15 It is a sacrificial love. 16 It is compassionate. 17 And it is an active love. 18

Living in Christ empowers us to live life on a much higher plane than that which is found in the world. We have the power within us to be better people. We have the power to tap into heaven’s resources as we deal with life. We have the power to live free from sin and its guilt and shame. It’s all about Jesus. Great is His power in us.

THE GREATNESS OF JESUS

 

THE GREATNESS OF JESUS

I John 3:1-3

Jesus is great in love. John gives us a glimpse into the great love of Jesus for us. We know just how great His love is for us because He willingly gave up His life for us at Calvary. John gives us some ways His love is played out in our lives.

Jesus’ love is like the love of a good father for his children. 1 God lavishes His children with love. He keeps pouring into our hearts His love. There is never a moment in which He stops loving us. He desires nothing but good for us and works in our lives to accomplish it. We may not always understand what He is doing, or why He allows what He does, but we do know it’s always for our good. He watches over us to keep us safe, and He supplies what we need for healthy souls in Him.

Jesus’ love is a revealing love. 2 God makes it clear that we are not finished products. All of us are in the process of growing in Christ. He is our source of wisdom, righteousness, and holiness. We will never in the flesh reach the finish line of who we could be in Christ. We the help of the Holy Spirit, we make progress, but sometimes our growth is very slow. We struggle in this life, but we know that when we persevere and keep our eyes focused on Christ, we shall be with Him in person someday. The Apostle Paul in Philippians 3 gives us a great perspective on how we ought to live. We should never make earthly gains, power, or popularity our goals in life. Jesus is our goal, and we should always pursue Him with all we have for as long as we live.

Jesus’ love is a purifying love. 3 When Jesus dwells in us, everything changes. We no longer are driven to sin. We seek to live lives free from sin. We become aware of sin in us and seek reconciliation with God when we do. We are aware of when we are facing temptations to sin and seek to avoid them. We make conscious decisions to say no to sin. We hold ourselves accountable for what we see and dwell on. We stay close to Christ so that we live in purity and not sin.

To love and be loved by Jesus changes everything. His love is great and must captivate our hearts and minds. We must never let anything crowed out His love in us. We must let Him love us all the way to heaven. Jesus loves us not just because the Bible tells us so, He loves us we experience it as we let Him have His way with us.

GET SMART 3

 

GET SMART 3

James 1:6-8

What happens when a person fails to grow into maturity where wisdom thrives? What happens when a person ignores the need to grow in Christ? I believe a large portion of the church is there. When Jesus is not Lord of one’s life, struggles become stronger than faith, understanding is shallow, discipline is in short supply, burdens become almost too many and heavy to bear, attitudes are bad, etc.

A lack of wisdom causes a disconnect between the heart and mind. What one believes is true with the mind does not take root in the heart. He fails to apply what he believes to be true to life. His living does not match up to what he says. If the heart is not committed to applying to life what he professes to be true, no real connection with God is made.

A lack of wisdom deprives a person of an anchor to hold him steady in the storms of life. Instead of having a Solid Rock upon which to stand, he gets caught up in life’s circumstances and overwhelmed by them. He is prone to waver in his convictions and is easily led astray by popular opinions. He lacks the foundation upon which to be holy and live a life pleasing to God.

A lack of wisdom alienates a person from God. He fails to be able to live under the blessings of God. He is exposed to all kinds of evil and often succumbs to them. He fails to enjoy the abundant life God gives His children in Christ.

A lack of wisdom causes a person to rely on his own righteousness instead of Christ’s. He sees himself as good enough on his own to make it into heaven instead of as a needy soul before Christ. He fails to grasp the seriousness of sinning against God. He tends to be relegated to a God of love without justice or holiness. God’s commands are deemed to be merely suggestions instead of eternal commands.

A lack of wisdom should concern us greatly. It is seen in far too many professing believers, and it is seen in most churches. Solomon recognized his lack of wisdom and his need for it. He asked God for it, and God graciously blessed him with it. Do you need wisdom? Do you need more of Jesus in your life? Ask the Lord today for them and He will graciously supply.

GET SMART 2

 

GET SMART 2

James 1:5 If you need wisdom—if you want to know what God wants you to do—ask him, and he will gladly tell you. He will not resent your asking. NLT

There is a difference between being smart and being wise. Wisdom is using your smarts wisely. There are many smart people in the world today who are not wise in their thinking and living. Book smarts does not guarantee wise living. In order to become wise, we need to know where wisdom comes from.

In order to be truly wise, one must first of all know Jesus as one’s Savior of life. He is the source of all wisdom that comes from God. The more surrendered you are to Christ, the wiser you become.

Wisdom comes from having a humble heart. It is understanding that I cannot do life without Christ. It flows from a constant need for Christ to overshadow and influence all of our living. It is understanding that who and what we are is because of Christ in us. It is knowing that we are dependent on Christ for whatever we accomplish in life.

Wisdom comes from a generous God. He is the source of all wisdom. Proverbs reminds us that wisdom characterized all that God created, and a careful look at life testifies to the wisdom of God at work. James tells us that all we have to do is ask God for wisdom and He will gladly give it to us. It is what Solomon asked for when he began to rule over Israel. He was given more wisdom than any other human being has ever had because he sought the Lord with the right motives and understanding that without God’s help he would not be able to rule his people.

Wisdom comes from a bountiful supply. Because all wisdom flows from God, there is an ample supply for everyone who is willing to let Jesus be their Lord have some. If a person lacks wisdom, it’s because he lacks Christ in his life. Jesus is our wisdom from God. Wise is he who is filled with the righteousness and holiness of Christ. Wise is he who will not settle for anything less than letting Jesus be Lord of his life.

If you lack wisdom, all you have to do is ask God for it. He will not resent your asking. In fact, God longs for all of His children to be wise, able to discern right from wrong and live rightly before Him.

GET SMART

 

GET SMART

James 1:5 If you need wisdom—if you want to know what God wants you to do—ask him, and he will gladly tell you. He will not resent your asking. NLT

Perhaps you are old enough to remember that old TV show starring Don Adams, Get Smart. Maxwell Smart was a goofy special agent who always managed to get the bad guy with the aid of his woman partner. While the show has long been buried in the archives of TV shows, the title of the show grabs our attention.

The first few chapters of Proverbs give us a good idea of what wisdom is, why it’s important, and where we can get it. I Cor. 1:30 tells us that Jesus is our wisdom from God. So, in order to become wise, we must first know Christ as our Savior. The more influence we allow Jesus to have in our lives, the wiser we become.

Wisdom begins when we acknowledge our sins before God. A fool denies he has a sin problem. He refuses to admit that he struggles with sin. He lives with no sense of his accountability to God for how he lives. He refuses to agree with God what God declares what sin is. Wisdom is then accepting responsibility for our sins. It is turning to Christ for the forgiveness of our sins.

Wisdom influences how we think and act. It overshadows all of our living. It keeps us alert to our times of being tempted to sin and causes us to think twice before we act. It causes us to want to please God. It causes us to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. Wisdom enables us look at life through the lens of God’s righteousness instead of self-righteousness. Wisdom holds us steady through the maze of life. It enables us to see life from an eternal perspective instead of a worldly one.

For the child of God, wisdom comes naturally. We may not be as wise starting out in our faith walk as we should be, but we do become wiser as we learn to let control of our living and let Jesus be the Lord of it. Victory in Jesus comes when we become wise in Christ. It’s a process that we will never perfectly master in this life, but we do make progress as we go along. Let Jesus be Lord of all of your life and you will indeed become wise.

JESUS IS COMING SOON

 

JESUS IS COMING SOON

Luke 21:29--38

We don’t know when, but we know for a fact that Jesus is coming back to take the church out of the world. There are a lot of opinions as to how it will all play out, but one thing is for sure, Jesus is going to keep His word and come back. I personally believe it’s going to be sooner than later. Things are happening all over the world that seems to point to it Christ’s soon coming. In light of today’s Scripture, we need to take it seriously.

We must be alert for the Kingdom of God is near. 29-31 There is a spirit of anticipation in the church today. People are talking about it throughout the church. The message is too strong and loud to miss. We are looking forward to Jesus coming and taking us out of this world’s mess. Stay alert; the King is coming! Stay ready lest His coming catches you by surprise.

Be assured. Jesus assured His disciples that His words will never pass away. 32-33 Jesus is the way, truth, and life. It is impossible for Jesus to lie. He has given us His word.

Be careful. Your hearts may be weighed down. 34-35 There are two options available to us. We can look at what the world is like and the direction it is going and become very depressed. Or, we can look at things and get excited because of what is in store for us. Don’t let your heart be weighed down by life; look up for your redemption is drawing close.

Be watchful. 36 Keep your eyes open. Don’t be lulled to sleep by your daily living. Don’t be like those who are skeptical about His coming because it hasn’t happened yet. Be informed and watchful.

Be prayerful. 37-38 Stay in close fellowship with the Lord. Pray for the lost. Pray for boldness to reach out to the lost while there still is time.

Jesus is coming. It will not be when we expect it. It will happen like a flash of lighting. It behooves us to always live in readiness so that when it happens, we will be amongst those who are taken hone with Jesus when He comes.