2020 - 4/28 #21 - 3 Lessons

Thank you for joining us today on Through the Word in 2020.

I’m Reid Ferguson and the passages we’re considering today are 1 Samuel 2-3; Mark 7:14-23 and 1 Corinthians 15:35-49

Each of the portions before us today are rich with lessons for the Believer. And we can barely scratch the surface of each.

In Mark we learn that it is not exposure to sinful things which makes one sinful - it is the sin which proceeds out of our own hearts which does so.

We are prone to make our purity one of dealing with our environment - rather than looking at our inward resonance with the sin in our environment, and seeking to deal with that inward concord. MY sin, is the problem, not other's.

Sin isn’t a substance that can rub off on us, but an inward defilement which only the blood of Christ can cleanse, and the Holy Spirit deliver us from the power of.

In 1st Samuel we learn that it is important to recognize the seasonality of the movements of God. When we try to require that every generation at all times has exactly the same experience of God - or that He necessarily works the same way at all times - we rob Him of His sovereignty, and of recognizing that ebbs and flows are part of His sovereign plan.

So it is attempts to re-create the 1st Century Church today are doomed to fail. We’re not the 1st Century Church, but the 21st Century Church. We must live Christ in our context.

Flattening out God's movements and our experiences is equivalent to saying we should either always be asleep or always awake - and that there is nothing to be had in having both sleeping hours and waking hours appointed by God.

There is spiritual infancy, adolescence, young adulthood, adulthood, middle age, and maturity. We ought never to try and stay at one level and make all of God's works identical at all times in either type or frequency.

Let God be God.

And then in 1 Corinthians we are reminded of the coming glory of the resurrection.

And the cornerstone of that glory is this: 1 Corinthians 15:49

1 Corinthians 15:49 ESV

Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.

If our concept of Heaven is just that it will be life as normal but without the scars of sin and fallenness here - then we are sadly mistaken. Heaven, is being with Christ. Seeing Him in His unveiled glory. And at last fully bearing His image.

And here is a necessary consideration for each of us: If we are not laboring to grow in that image now, then how can bearing that image then, be in the least pleasurable or desirable. For Heaven is, in its very essence, Christ in all His fulness.

And if I don’t want that now, I surely will not want it then either.

So here’s the question - am I seeking Him now? If not, the old adage remains quite true: If you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it.

As I’ve said before, and no doubt will repeat again - no one stumbles into Heaven by accident. The only ones who get there, are those intentionally on their way there. Their goal is to be with Him, and to be like Him.

How about you?

Let those things sink into your soul today Christian.

God bless.

And God willing, we’ll be back tomorrow.