EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/2/2025 9:05 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “The Christian’s Incompatibility
with Sin”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
1 John 3:4-10
Message of the verses: “4 Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness;
and sin is lawlessness. 5 You know that He appeared in order to take away sins;
and in Him there is no sin. 6 No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins
has seen Him or knows Him. 7 Little children, make sure no one deceives you;
the one who practices
righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous; 8 the one who practices sin is of the
devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for
this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. 9 No one who is born of God practices sin, because
His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. 10 By
this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who
does not practice
righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother.”
In my last SD I wrote some things that came from the
2nd and 3rd chapters of Revelation, which I stated were a
preview of what the church age would be as we moved from the times of the
Apostles all the way to the end of the church age, which I stated that I
believed was the time that we are living in now, which is the Laodicean church
age which began, if I am correct in the early to mid 1900’s. I also mentioned that the seven types of the
churches are seen throughout the church age, but in each time period of the
church there will be a main type of church.
John
MacArthur writes that “In recent decades, however, that has begun to change.” What has changed in my opinion is we moved
from the good church area, the Philadelphian church age to the Laodicean church
age. MacArthur goes on. “More and more so-called evangelicals have
downplayed the significance of biblical doctrine—even such crucial doctrines as
the person of Christ and justification by faith alone. Incredibly, some have even asserted that the
lost can be saved apart from any knowledge of the gospel at all, arguing that
if pagan people merely live up to whatever standards of religion, morality, and
ethics they have, God will accept them… Since they claim there are scarcely any
doctrinal necessities, there can hardly be any behavioral ones.”
Let
me just state that the Bible teaches that there are two and only two kinds of
people on planet earth, the lost and the saved.
Once a person becomes a true believer in Jesus Christ then they are that
way forever. Let me also say that most,
if not all people are “religious” and so if these “religious” people find
something that seems to fit into how they want to live they will follow it,
even or since it is the wrong thing to believe in and they will end up in the
place the Bible calls hell. I know that
this is true because the first almost 27 years of my life I lived life that was
totally opposed to what the Bible teaches, but in a moment of time on the 26th
of January 1974 after listening to a series of sermons on the end times, the
Spirit of God gave me an effectual call that I could not say no to and my new
life in Christ began. I immediately had
the desire to tell others what happened to me, I immediately had a desire to
read and study the Word of God, and to pray, pray for my wife who soon after me
became a born-again believer. I spent
four years studying on my own, listening to many tapes by Pastors that I
respected, even beginning a Bible Study using tapes by Hal Lindsey. I had a group of believers that I had
fellowship with, but the time came when it was time to join a Bible believing
church, which I did in the spring of 1978 and stayed there for 32 years until
they brought a Pastor who was, let me put it this way, was very weak and so my
wife and I left to join the church that we now still belong to. I never get tired of telling that story for
in it is the most important thing that ever happened to me, to my wife, and
then to our two children and eventually to all of our seven grand-children. To pass that on to my family knowing that one
day we will all be together in heaven is
the greatest thing ever to happen to me.
“The
apostle John would have been appalled by such contemporary evangelical
equivocation. He wrote clearly and
unmistakably that saving faith involves accepting certain essential doctrines—such
as the Trinity and the substituionary work of Christ on the cross—and results
in certain essential actions—including repentance from sin, obedience to the
Word, a desire to walk as Christ walked (live righteously), love for the brethren,
and a hatred for the evils of the world and the flesh. John and all the writers of the New Testament
taught that unless a person believes and practices such truths, he or she is no
saved, no matter what he or she might claim.
Bad theology damns, and bad behavior reveals bad theology. Yet, in spite of the unmistakable clarity
with which this is presented in both this epistle (No one who is born of God
practices sin [3:9a] and the rest of the New Testament, a significant cross
section of contemporary Christendom remains unpersuaded and confused concerning
the truth.”
Lord
willing we will look at some examples as we begin the next SD.
1/2/2025 9:34 PM
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