Wednesday, September 20, 2017

A New Body - by Pastor John Fredericksen



A New Body 
Pastor John Fredericksen

The older we get, the more our bodies wear out and are filled with aches and pains. It reminds us of our heavenly home, and helps prepare us for the time when we step into eternity. In the fall of 2013, a dear saint in our assembly was having increasingly severe health problems. One day he stood and said to us all: “Enjoy your aches and pains now because one day soon we will be with the Savior in heaven. There we will be given new heavenly bodies. We will have no pain, no sorrow and no death. A glorious future awaits us. Rejoice in this.”

The above expectation is right on target. When John the Apostle explained the physical eternal state, he wrote, “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is” (I John 3:2). Gospel accounts of our resurrected Savior describe Him with a body similar in appearance to His previous state. We would surely expect that as God Himself, the Savior no longer experienced any pain. Revelation 21:4 confirms this when it refers to the eternal state of the kingdom saints. John wrote, “And God shall wipe away all tears…there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away.” The Apostle Paul explains there will be vast differences in our new eternal body. It will be a “celestial” body (I Cor. 15:38-40), meaning it will fitted by God to thrive in the atmosphere of the heavens. In contrast to our physical bodies that are weak, degenerating and eventually corrupt, our new bodies will be “raised in incorruption…glory…power…[and as] a spiritual body” (I Cor. 15:42-44). Paul continues his explanation by saying: “…flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God…behold I show you a mystery…we shall all be changed” (I Cor. 15:50-51). To summarize our change he says, “…as we have born the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly” (I Cor. 15:49).

Whenever you get weighed down with physical pain, remember, one day our Lord is going to give us new bodies without weakness or pain. Believe it, rejoice in it and look forward to it with thanksgiving. Keep looking up for His return in expectation and faithfulness until He comes.


    

The Kingdom of  God, The Kingdom of Heaven and The Body of Christ
19 Video’s
By Les Feldick
http://paulsgracemessage.blogspot.com/2017/07/blog-post.html


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Sunday, September 17, 2017

A Pauline Doxology! - by Pastor Ricky Kurth



   A Pauline Doxology!
   by Pastor Ricky Kurth


A doxology is an expression of praise to God that is sometimes sung as a short hymn. Perhaps the most famous doxology is the Latin hymn Gloria in excelsis Deo, which is Latin for “Glory to God in the highest” (Luke 2:14). When I was a boy, I sang this doxology as part of a Christmas music program at my public school. To help us remember how to pronounce the title, my music teacher said, “If someone were throwing egg shells at you, you would naturally cry out, ‘Egg Shells Cease!’” Now that’s the sign of a good teacher. She helped me remember how to pronounce a Latin phrase fifty years later!

After confessing to being the chief of sinners (I Tim. 1:15) and discussing the “mercy” and “longsuffering” that the Lord exhibited in saving him (v. 16), the Apostle Paul naturally broke out in a doxology all his own!
“Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen” (I Timothy 1:17).
In the context, “the King” here must be the “Him” of the previous verse, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is described as “eternal” (cf. Micah 5:2) and “immortal,” a word which means to be incapable of dying. Of course! “Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more!” (Rom. 6:9). The Lord wasn’t “invisible” when He was here on earth, but now in Heaven He is invisible in the same sense as God the Father, who said, “there shall no man see Me, and live” (Ex. 33:20). But that doesn’t mean our blessed Savior will be invisible to us when we get to Heaven, for in that day we will have “put on immortality” (I Cor. 15:53,54), and you will be able to gaze into the Savior’s face to your heart’s content. He is also “only wise” (cf. Jude 1:25), but not in the sense that the Father is not also “only wise” (Rom. 16:27), but only in the sense that He is the only wise God among the other “gods” mentioned in Scripture (I Cor. 8:5).

When Paul draws this doxology to a close by insisting that to Him “be honour and glory for ever and ever,” this brings us full circle back to the reason the apostle began praising God in the first place, for “worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive… honour, and glory” (Rev. 5:12). All of the Lord’s other attributes are wonderful, but this is the crown jewel of this and every other doxology.

If you are looking forward to joining the choir who are singing that doxology, don’t overlook that they are singing it to “a Lamb as it had been slain” (v. 6). This indicates that the Lord still bears the open wounds He invited Thomas to touch (John 20:27), wounds He will bear for all eternity so we never forget the price He paid for our redemption. It is wonderful to sing of gazing into the face of the Lord, but it takes our breath away to remember that His face will still be “marred more than any man” (Isa. 52:14). As Isaac Watts wrote, “Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.”

 
.A Special Announcement: Transformed by Grace, the new weekly television program produced by the Berean Bible Society, has begun broadcasting across the United States. Visit the Transformed by Grace page on our website to find your local station and time.


 
   How God Saves Men
Believing Christ DIED, that’s HISTORY.
Believing Christ DIED for YOU SINS and Rose again that’s SALVATION.
Read Romans 1:16, Romans 10:9-10 and 1. Corinthians 15:1-4

(A 10 Minute Video)
Jesus is JEHOVAH The One True GOD (Click Here)



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Thursday, September 14, 2017

Spiritual Aristocracy - Pastor Ricky Kurth



Spiritual Aristocracy
Pastor Ricky Kurth



Pastor Stam used to call the Bereans “the spiritual aristocracy of their day” because they “received the Word with all readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so” (Acts 17:10,11). Knowing that he was a wordsmith who chose his words carefully, I looked up “aristocracy,” and sure enough, one of the definitions is, “those who rise above the rest of the community in any important respect, as in wealth, knowledge, character, etc.”

I thought of all this when I recently came across Proverbs 25:2 again in my daily Bible reading:

“It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.”

It was truly the glory of God that He could conceal the Mystery from the devil. After all, it was said of the Antichrist, “thou art wiser than Daniel; there is no secret that they can hide from thee” (Ezek. 28:3), an arrogance he will learn from his master. Since that was Satan’s boast as well, imagine how humiliated he was when Paul went forth heralding “the mystery of the gospel” (Ephesians 6:19), the secret of the gospel, and he learned that the Cross he thought spelled his greatest victory was actually the thing God would use to rescue sinners from his clutches!

Then, as the apostle began to unfold “the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles” (Col. 1:27), how Satan must have gasped as God’s secret plan to reclaim the rule of the heavens from the “spiritual wickedness in high places” (Ephesians 6:12) caused him to realize that there was a secret that had been hidden from him, one that spelled his complete defeat! No wonder Paul concludes his greatest chapter on the mystery by saying of the Father who concealed this matter, “unto Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 3:21).

But while it is the glory of God that He could conceal such a great thing, “the honour of kings is to search out a matter.” You may not be a kingpin in the world, but you prove yourself to be part of the spiritual aristocracy of your day when you search out the depths of the mystery that God concealed from Satan so effectively since before the world began. What an honor it is to plumb the depths of this great truth, and to “be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height” of that which “passeth knowledge” (Ephesians 3:18,19), “that ye might be filled with all the fullness o
f God.”
 
.A Special Announcement: Transformed by Grace, the new weekly television program produced by the Berean Bible Society, has begun broadcasting across the United States. Visit the Transformed by Grace page on our website to find your local station and time.



 



How God Saves Men
Believing Christ DIED, that’s HISTORY.
Believing Christ DIED for YOU SINS and Rose again that’s SALVATION.
Read Romans 1:16, Romans 10:9-10 and 1. Corinthians 15:1-4


(A 10 Minute Video)
Jesus is JEHOVAH The One True GOD (Click Here)



  Posted By Cecil and Connie Spivey
https://www.facebook.com/cecil.spivey

   

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Sunday, September 10, 2017

Good Works - by Pastor Cornelius R. Stam



 Good Works  
 by Pastor Cornelius R. Stam

  Millions of people are striving to make themselves acceptable to God by good works. Such people can never be sure of salvation, for the simple reason that they can never be sure whether they have done enough good works or whether they have done them in the right way. Some suppose that heaven can be won if our good works outweigh our evil works, but this does not make sense either, for good works are what all of us ought to do and even one evil deed would prevent a just and holy God from justifying us or admitting us into His presence.

Let’s not put the cart before the horse. God does expect good works from His children but not as payment for salvation, for eternal life and glory could not possibly be bought at any price. “Christ Jesus came into the world,” says the Apostle Paul, “to save sinners” (1 Tim. 1:15). Then, having saved them by grace, He expects them to do good works out of gratitude.

It is interesting to compare Tit. 3:5 with Tit. 3:8:

Tit. 3:5:”NOT BY WORKS of righteousness which we have done, but ACCORDING TO HIS MERCY HE SAVED US.”
Tit. 3:8:” …these things I will that thou affirm constantly, THAT THEY WHICH HAVE BELIEVED IN GOD MIGHT BE CAREFUL TO MAINTAIN GOOD WORKS.
…”Faith is the root; good works the fruit. Thus we read in Eph. 2:8-10:
“For by grace are ye saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God: NOT OF WORKS, lest any man should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus UNTO GOOD WORKS, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.”
 



(A 10 Minute Video)




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Saturday, September 9, 2017

Christian Conduct - by Pastor Cornelius R. Stam

  
 Christian Conduct  
 by Pastor Cornelius R. Stam


A man’s conduct, in Scripture, is called his “walk”! The Bible has much to say about how we walk, morally and spiritually. Many “walk after their own lusts” (II Pet. 3:3) and “walk in darkness” (John 12:35). Some even “walk in craftiness” (II Cor. 4:2) trying to lead others astray. Indeed, even Christian believers are sometimes careless about their “walk” and so cause others to stumble.

Every true child of God should be very careful about his walk, or conduct. In Eph. 2:8-10 we read that while believers are not saved by good works, they are saved “unto good works.” God’s grace is the root of our salvation, and good works are the fruit.

Sincere believers in Christ are counted as one with Him, and it is expected of us that “as Christ was raised up from the dead” after having died for our sins, “even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4).

Christians are exhorted in the Bible to “walk worthy of the Lord, unto all pleasing” (Col. 1:10), to “walk in the spirit” that they might not “fulfill the lust of the flesh” (Gal. 5:16). They are exhorted to “walk worthy of [their] calling” (Eph. 4:1), to “walk in the light” (I John 1:7) and to “walk as children of the light” (Eph. 5:8). They are exhorted to “walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise” (Eph. 5:15), to “walk honestly” (Rom. 13:13), to “walk in love” (Eph. 5:2) and to “walk by faith, not by sight” (II Cor. 5:7).

Much more is said about the believer’s walk in the Bible, but never are we told that it is our “walk,” or conduct, that makes us acceptable for salvation. Our failing, stumbling ways could never earn salvation for us. On the contrary we are exhorted to walk pleasing to the Lord out of sheer gratitude to Him.




 Transformed By Grace  -
Kevin Sadler


Transformed By Grace #1 - Unity in Christ
Transformed By Grace #2 - One Body in Christ
Transformed By Grace #3 - The Apostle of Grace
Transformed By Grace #4 - The Gifts of Christ


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