You can earn 10,000 or more per week in the comfort of your own home by being on the internet 2 hours a day! Take these pills and you too can lose 80 lbs in 1 month without lifting a finger! Send us a gift and we will send you a blessed prayer cloth which will make you financially secure! So on and so on it goes. Believe us and by the way send us your money!
When it comes to promises given in a fallen world is healthy and desirable one should keep a tight hold on the credit card and checkbook. It may sound cliché but “if it sounds to good to be true it probably is” is the best response to much of what is touted as truth. Belief in things in no way changes your status. Unless we are speaking about the promises associated with the perfect life, innocent sufferings, death and resurrection of Jesus.
John 20:31 but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. ESV
Belief in Jesus does indeed change your status. Instead of being a condemned sinner suffering eternal death the believer inherits life eternal. Pr Tom Baker, Law and Gospel Broadcast, states that is one of the areas which differentiates Christianity from every other religion. In all other religions that have a personal god it all depends upon the person to get right and make up for wrongdoing. In Christianity we have God in the person of Jesus fulfilling what we could not do and paying for the wrong we have done.
2 Corinthians 5:16 From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. 18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. 20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. ESV
In this we see that the problem is our problem not God’s problem. In our inner brat we want to think we have an angry God to pacify with our corrected behaviour and sacrifices. We need to be reconciled to God not the other way round. This is such a radical departure from what many in Christendom, lamentably, hear in a given Sunday sermon. Away with this pointing men back at themselves for hope. Demand your pastor to proclaim you are a dead sinner and need Jesus or be lost for eternity. If your pastor reminds you of that constantly be sure to thank him for others will be asking him to move on to so called bigger and better things. Our hope comes from outside us which is where the only true peace and hope lies. The finished work of Jesus for sinners.
In the name of Jesus. Amen. †
2 comments:
"Demand your pastor to proclaim you are a dead sinner and need Jesus or be lost for eternity. If your pastor reminds you of that constantly be sure to thank him for others will be asking him to move on to so called bigger and better things."
So true! I am forgiven?! Yeah...so what?
Now gimme the list of things I need to do!
Get me started on the "religious" project!
The only project that matters was His. Finished on the cross and given to you in His Word and in your baptism!
Thank you, St. David!!
There are those who teach on works in terms of “faith” towards health, wealth and prosperity. I don’t view these as the essentials of Christian life and practice. In the last 100 years, prosperity teachings have referred to our ability to have wealth from God through our faith. Jesus never preached how to be earthly prosperity. The Apostles surely didn't.
God, who cares for sparrows, also cares about us. God cares about small, insignificant us. Like the birds of the air we should not be anxious for our food or the requirements of our bodies, for He will meet each and every necessity.
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