“He that covers his sins shall not prosper; but whoso confesses and forsakes them shall have mercy.”
There is a warning and a promise in this powerful proverb. The warning is that we should be honest about our own sins, and when we are honest about our sins. we prosper in God’s mercy. The verse warns us that we can deceive ourselves about our own righteousness and goodness. Actually, behavior that we would loathe in other people does not seem so bad when applied to ourselves. As long as we hide ourselves from ourselves, we will not prosper in the good that this life offers. (Please do not see $ in this.) There are people who are always finding fault with other people. I have known people like this, and, to be honest, I fight this tendency in my life. (It might prosper you to pause here and make this confession.) Frankly, it is painful to really look at our own sins and faults, but we need to do it if we would prosper in the good things of this life. Instead of covering our sins, we need to honestly confess them. In fact, honest confession is where our soul’s prosperity begins. In Luke 18:10-14, Jesus shared a parable about two men who went to the temple to pray – a Pharisee and a publican. When the Pharisee prayed he reeled out all of what he thought of his virtues, as though he was doing God a favor by praying. When the publican prayed, he said: “God be merciful to me a sinner.” Jesus said that the Publican was justified before God, and the Pharisee was not. Be careful now: you will begin to think of other people as the Pharisees and you the Publican. Be careful because the Pharisee was poor in righteousness simply because he did not confess his sins. According to the proverb, confession of our sins alone is not sufficient. When we have confessed our sins, we need to forsake them. If there is one thing possibly more difficult than honest confession is actually forsaking those things that we confess. Let’s look at one particular “set of sins” that would be the hardest to forsake – sins of attitude. When we look honestly at ourselves, there will probably be some attitudes that we need to forsake. I can’t name your sins of attitude, but you can – if you will honestly confess. The benefit of confessing and forsaking our sins is God’s mercy. It is in finding God’s mercy that we come to peace with God, with ourselves and with other people. Honestly confess your sins and forsake them. You will find Jesus at the end of your honest confession, forgiving healing, and giving you His mercy. Bro. Joe
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“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.”
I thought of my own walk with Jesus as I read this, and I hope that you will do the same as we think together about hearing Jesus. Do we hear Jesus in our daily lives? Ask yourself as you face each day, do you think about what Jesus wants you to do on that day? Are the decisions about what you do with your time have anything to do with what Jesus might want? I’m not referring to being religious. I’m referring to being obedient in every day things. Jesus certainly wants our attention as we deal with people. For example, He might be saying to us that instead of arguing with that cantankerous cashier, we might smile and wish him or her well. Hearing and obeying Jesus is not, as they say, “rocket science.” He saved you and made you His witness, and He wants to use you in that way. Listen to that “still small voice” in your heart and mind and obey it. Do you hear the voice of Jesus? Do we live each day with the understanding that Jesus knows us? Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them.” Think about how wonderful it is that the God of the universe knows us. If some famous person knows us, we want other people to know it. I played high school baseball with a friend who played in the major leagues. I wanted people to know that he knew me. At the time, that seemed important. But what is even more important is that Jesus knows me. This is true for all of us who know Him as Savior. Jesus knows everything about us and loves us anyway. It should make a difference to us each day that we are aware that Jesus knows us and knows what we are doing. Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them and they follow me.” It should be important to us that we follow Jesus. We need to think about our lives: Do people know that we are followers of Jesus by the way we act and by the way we talk? I honestly try to remind myself of this as I encounter people. When people meet us, see how we act and hear how we talk, would they be surprised if they found out we were Christians? There have been times in my life when I had to do some tall repenting because I knew that I didn’t act like a follower of Jesus. If we call ourselves followers of Jesus, we need to act, as closely as we can, like Him. Listen for the voice of Jesus. Realize that you know that Jesus knows you. Realize everyday that you are His follower. Bro. Joe “Therefore as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, 7. Rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.”
In this text, Paul lays out for the Colossians, and for us, the reality of our relationship with Christ. First, we receive Christ. The Greek word here can also be translated “taken.” We have taken Christ into our lives by faith in Him. Jesus knocked and we opened the door to Him. (See Revelation 3:20) When we received Jesus into our lives He did not make us religious, but He made us His. The Christian experience is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Then we are to “walk in Him.” This means that this personal relationship with Christ should make a difference in our lives. Second, we are “rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith.” The Greek word for “rooted” means that we are firmly planted in Christ. We need to put our roots down deep in Christ. He has made this possible by giving us the Holy Spirit to lead and guide us into His truth. We need to put our roots down in the scriptures. A Christian who does not read and study scripture will not grow in Christ. (If you are a new Christian, you need to read and study the four gospels and get thoroughly acquainted with Jesus.) We need to put our roots down in prayer. Christians need to set aside a time to pray. We can pray any time during the day, but we need a time of concentrated prayer, where we not only speak to the Lord, but we let Him speak to our hearts. We need to put our roots down in Christ’s church. I don’t mean that we are tp just “go to church,” but we are to be the church in our daily lives. The relationship that we have with Christ is an eternal reality. When we accept Christ as our Savior, He becomes one with us, meaning that we have a personal relationship with Him. We can say with Paul: “I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day.” (2nd Timothy 1:12) The reality is that we have received Christ into our lives, we are rooted, firmly fixed, in Him; therefore, we live each day for Him. This doesn’t mean that we strut around being one with Jesus, but that we live lives that let His light shine. I repeat: Jesus does not make us religious; rather He lives within us to change and use us to shine for Him each day. Let’s let our lights shine for Jesus in this troubled world and let the world know that He is alive by the way we live. May others see Jesus in us in our daily lives! Bro. Joe “He also that received seed among the thorns is he that hears the word, and the care of this world, and deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful.”
I imagine that most of you reading this are familiar with the parable of the sower. It is a parable that Jesus gave to the crowd of people who came to the seaside to hear Him speak. The parable was about a farmer who went out to sow his seed. Some of the seed fell by the wayside, or the hard-packed dirt around the field, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seed fell on rocky ground where the seed could not take root in the shallow soil. Some fell in the thorns, where they were able to take root but were choked by the thorn bushes. Other seed fell of good ground, took root and brought forth a crop. Jesus referred to the seed as the word of God and the soils were like people who received the word. My focus for our purposes is on what happened to the seed in the thorny ground. In this case the word of God takes hold and takes root, but the thorns hinder its growth and keep it from bearing fruit. This happens all too often and we need to be careful that we do not get caught in the thorns. In this case, the person hears the word and becomes overly concerned about “the care of the world.” This is a common problem because we live in the world and the world is fraught with cares that can call our attention away from the Lord. This is illustrated in Luke 10:38-42 where Jesus visited with His good friend Lazarus and Lazarus’ two sisters, Mary and Martha. Martha was busy, no doubt preparing a great meal for Jesus – at least that’s my guess. Meanwhile, Mary was sitting at the feet of Jesus, learning from Him and worshiping Him. Martha told Mary that she should come and help her, but Jesus reprimanded Martha. He told her: “Martha, Martha, you are careful and troubled about many things, but Mary has chosen that good part which cannot be taken away from her.” In a sense, Martha couldn’t enjoy the visit of the Savior, because she was caught up in the cares of that moment. I think that this is what happens in people’s lives sometimes. They get so caught up with the temporal that they do not give adequate attention to the eternal. Don’t let the cares of this world rob of you of the joy that Jesus can bring into your life. Like Mary, sit as His feet, worship Him and learn from Him. Jesus also said that in the case of the people in thorny ground, they were choked by “the deceitfulness of riches.” Understand that you don’t have to try to get rich to be choked by the deceitfulness of riches. All you have to do is to live your life with the drive and determination to get money, to buy things, to dress well, to drive big cars, etc. There is nothing wrong with these things if they are not robbing us of our joy in Jesus and our worship of Him. “Riches” are deceitful because they promise fulfillment that they cannot deliver. I think that we can replace “riches” with “things.” What thing have you ever bought that brought real fulfillment to your life? When we base our lives on the abundance of things that we possess, we are choking out the word of God. I am not saying that possessions and bank accounts are unimportant. What I am saying is that they are not all-important. When we are possessed by our possessions, we are getting choked and robbing ourselves of a better relationship with God. For that matter, we are also robbing ourselves of a better relationship with our Christian friends. If you feel that you are not as close to God as you once were, you need to take stock of your life and see if you have landed among the thorns. There is always tension between living and making it in this world, and maintaining a viable Christian witness, but it is not impossible. Do not let yourself get caught up by the cares of life and the things that you possess. Take a lesson from Mary and sit at the feet of Jesus. Bro. Joe “That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive. 16. But speaking the truth in love may grow up into Him in all things, which is the head, even Christ.”
At some point in life one has to grow up. The same is true of Christians, because at some point we have to grow up in the faith. Paul wrote this about growing up in 1 Corinthians 13:11: “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man (adult), I put away childish things.” He wrote this in the great “love chapter” of the Bible. He grew up when loving God and others became one of his priorities in life. I don’t think that we can claim growth until we learn the importance of love in our lives. We are given no choice in the New Testament but to love people. This does not mean that we will love the way all people behave, nor, for that matter does it mean that we will always love the way we behave. Though it is scoffed at today, I think that “love the sinner and hate the sin” is a good philosophy to adopt in a grown up Christian’s life. This does not mean that we can demean and belittle people, but it does mean that we that we will lovingly disagree with people about various things. We Christians even lovingly, and sometimes not so lovingly, disagree among ourselves, but that doesn't mean that we do not love each other. When we grow up as Christians we become settled in our Christian beliefs and are not easily fooled by what Paul described in another place as “wolves.” There are always people who try to push off almost anything as Christian belief. When we mature in Christ, we realize that anything that detracts from the centrality of Christ in our lives, or against biblical morality, will be detrimental to our faith. We should grow up to the point that we can be no more, “tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine.” At some point, we just need to wise up. Here comes that word “love” again. Paul doesn’t leave room for us to be insulting and self-righteous with people, because he points out that we should “speak the truth in love.” This means that when we grow up in Christ we become more Christ like in our approach to people. Christ did not hesitate to speak negatively to people who really deserved it. The Pharisees come to mind. But Christ’s negative input was due to the love that He had for the Pharisees. He loved them enough to try to get them to see the error of their ways. “Speaking the truth in love,” is not always positive, but it is always grounded in serious loving concern for the people to whom we speak. Of course you know that prayer and Bible reading have a part in Christian growth. There is no way that one can grow up in Christ without prayer and Bible reading. These are two disciplines practiced by every great Christian who has lived over the last two-thousand years. They disagreed about a lot of things, but they certainly agreed on this. Another thing about our Christian growth that is an outgrowth of our prayer, Bible reading and love, is accepting all of the circumstances of life in a Christian spirit. I have heard it said that “time and circumstance happen to all people.” This is true, and we have to learn to “roll with the punches.” This is what Paul meant when he wrote that he had learned to be content in all things – whether good or bad. Like growing into adults in life, it is the same in our Christian lives. We have a lot of stops and starts, ups and downs, and we have to cope with them in faith. It is my prayer that you and I have learned it well. Bro. Joe “Incline my heart to thy testimonies, and not to covetousness. 37. Turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity; and quicken me in thy way. 38. Stablish thy word unto thy servant, who is devoted to thy fear.” “Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul; 12. Having your (conduct) honest among the Gentiles: that whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation.”
At the close of all four gospel accounts, Jesus gave a command that we witness to the world. You have probably read what we call “The Great Commission” from Matthew 28, which tells us to go into all of the world and make disciples. In John 20, Jesus breathed on His disciples and told them, “Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.” These are two examples of what I wrote above. It is clear that Jesus wants us to be witnesses to the world. That means to be witnesses where we are and to support others who go to other parts of the world. In Acts 1:8, Jesus told His disciples: “But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Spirit is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.” Over the last two thousand years we have devised all sorts of methods of missions and evangelism. Each denomination has its program of missions and evangelism. Some of these methods are better than others, but not a one of them is the best method. Peter gave us the best method. He did not write this to be a method of missions and evangelism, but it is nevertheless the best method that will be revealed as we take a closer look at what Peter wrote. The first thing that Peter wrote was that those to whom he wrote were “strangers and pilgrims.” Notice that he wrote: “As strangers and pilgrims.” He did not suggest that they act like strangers and pilgrims, but that they were strangers and pilgrims. I think that it is understood that as Christians we are to be in the world but not of the world. This does not mean that we are not to be, for example, good citizens. It means that our lives are not to reflect the world’s negative values but the values of Christ. We cannot become totally immersed in the world and be good witnesses of Jesus Christ. Paul wrote in Romans 12:2a : “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind…” If we want to be good witnesses for Jesus, we will be in the world but not of the world. We can do this by “abstaining from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul.” The second thing that Peter wrote was that our conduct be “honest among the Gentiles.” The reference to “Gentiles” here is a reference to the pagans that surrounded early churches. Of course we should be honest in the sense that we do not cheat and steal, but we should also be honest in the sense that we live the gospel that we say we believe. We have all heard the accusation: “What you do speaks so loudly that I can’t hear what you say.” As the old saying goes, “We need to walk the walk if we are going to talk the talk.” None of us will “walk the walk” perfectly, but we do need to walk it by how we live. One good example is that we need to be careful how we treat the people who serve us. Waiters and waitresses say that the most difficult people to wait on, and the poorest tippers, are the people who come to eat after church on Sunday. Space does not allow me to go on with a lot of other illustrations that I could give of how we need to improve our witness, but suffice it to say that we need to be careful how we live before the world. Living the Christian life genuinely is the best method of missions and evangelism. This doesn’t mean that we are excused from verbal witness. What it means is that people will not listen to our verbal witness if it is not backed up with a sincere and genuine Christian life. Don’t we agree? Bro. Joe “Then came Peter to (Jesus) and said, Lord how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Till seven times? 22. Jesus said unto him, I say not unto thee, until seventy times: but, until seventy times seven.”
Some of my great moments of truth come to me in the morning when I am shaving and looking at myself in the mirror. When one comes face-to-face with oneself, he just has to face the truth. This happened this morning as I was shaving, for I said to myself: “Get over it.” God did not reveal to me what I specifically needed to get over, but He knows what is in my heart, mind and soul. This put me in a theologically-philosophical frame of mind (That’s deep. lol), and I felt a blog coming on. Whatever, or whoever, it is that is stuck in our sub-conscious, or conscious minds, we need to get over it. That is basically what Jesus was telling Peter in Matthew 18:22. Peter thought that forgiving seven times was a gracious plenty, but Jesus told him differently. (Don’t start doing multiplication here, for what Jesus meant was that we are to just keep on forgiving – period.) Why do we need to “get over it”? First, if something is eating away at us, it is not hurting the person who caused the “eating,” it is hurting us. We need to get the grudge out of our systems. Years ago, I read about a fish that is called the “hog fish” – at least I think that is what it was called. (It might have been "hag fish," but I digress.) This fish attaches itself to a larger fish and begins to eat the fish from the inside. That is sort of like what happens when we fail to forgive and move on with our lives. We will not move on, or grow in Christ, until we just get over whatever it was that has eaten at us. We will just be eaten away a bit at a time. Second, we need to think about the times when we have hurt other people. I don’t think that it ever occurs to us that we might be the cause of someone’s grudge. There are people out there who need to forgive us for the wrong that we did them. When we look at it this way, it should make it easier for us to forgive those who have hurt us. Perhaps we need to forgive ourselves for wrongs that we have done others. Third, we need to forgive others because we have been forgiven by Jesus. Ephesians 3:31-32 gives us this advice: “Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven you.” The fact that we have been forgiven so much by Jesus should be an incentive for us to forgive others. Fourth, we need to forgive others because God expects it of us. In the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:12), Jesus said that we should pray to be forgiven our “debts, even as we forgive our debtors.” In verses 14-15 Jesus went on to say: “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” Now this should really give us even greater incentive to forgive others. This doesn’t mean that you will be eternally lost, but it does mean that your Christian growth will be at a standstill until you find it in your heart to forgive others. Let me put it this way: God is serious about this matter of forgiveness. We seem to think that our failure to forgive is not very important, but according to Jesus it is very important. No one knows better than you what you need to “get over.” Today would be a good day to settle that matter. Jesus is waiting, ready and able to forgive you. Bro. Joe “That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive. 16. But speaking the truth in love may grow up into Him in all things, which is the head, even Christ.”
At some point in life one has to grow up. The same is true of Christians: At some point we have to grow up in the faith. Paul wrote this about growing up in 1 Corinthians 13:11: “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man (adult), I put away childish things.” He wrote this in the great “love chapter”of the Bible. He grew up when loving God and others became one of his priorities in life. I don’t think that we can claim growth until we learn the importance of love in our lives. We are given no choice in the New Testament but to love people. This does not mean that we will love the way all people behave, nor, for that matter does it mean that we will always love the way we behave. Though it is scoffed at today, I think that “love the sinner and hate the sin” is a good philosophy to adopt in a grown up Christian’s life. This does not mean that we can demean and belittle people, but it does mean that we that we can lovingly disagree with people about various things. Paul also wrote to the Ephesians about growing up. He wrote this in the context of using our God-given gifts in growing up in Christ. When we grow up as Christians we become settled in our Christian beliefs and are not easily fooled by what Paul described in another place as “wolves.” There are always those people out there who try to push off almost anything as Christian belief. When we mature in Christ, we realize that anything that detracts from the centrality of Christ in our lives will be detrimental to our faith. We should grow up to the point that we can be no more, “tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine.” At some point, we just need to wise up. Here comes that word “love”again. Paul doesn’t leave room for us to be insulting and self-righteous with people, because he points out that we should “speak the truth in love.” This means that when we grow up in Christ we become more Christ like in our approach to people. This is one reason that I have stopped arguing with people about my faith (and my politics). When we start to argue, love goes out the window and being like Christ takes a back seat to proving our point. Obviously, there are times when I would really like to argue, but I know that it always ends disastrously. I think that quitting arguing has been part of my growing up in Christ, and it has come late in my Christian life. Love is important in Christian growth, but it is not the only element involved. Of course you know that prayer and Bible reading have a part in Christian growth. There is no way that one can grow up in Christ without prayer and Bible reading. These are two disciplines practiced by every great Christian who has lived over the last two-thousand years. They disagreed about a lot of things, but they certainly agreed on this. I think that another thing that ties into our Christian growth and is an outgrowth of our prayer, Bible reading and love, is accepting all of the circumstances of life in a Christian spirit. I must confess that I have been put to the test over the last year and a half because of cancer and surgery, but I think that I grew up in the midst of it. I have heard it said that “time and circumstance happen to all people.” This is true, and we have to learn to “roll with the punches.” This is what Paul meant when he wrote that he had learned to be content in all things –whether good or bad. Like growing into adults in life, it is the same in our Christian lives. We have a lot of stops and starts, ups and downs, and we have to cope with them in faith. It is my prayer that you have learned that and that I have learned it well too. Bro. Joe “A time to keep silence and a time to speak….”
Ecclesiastes is an unusual book and some things in it are hard to understand. Our text verse in chapter 3 is not difficult to understand: There is a time to close our mouths and a time to open them. if you are like me, there are times that you speak out of turn and say to yourself later, “Why did I say that?” I want to feed off of the wisdom of this short verse in this article and point out some times that it would be good to keep silent. It is good to be silent when we don’t really have anything to say. Sometimes we talk just to hear ourselves talk, or we want to throw in our two cents worth to add to the conversation. We need to learn that if we don’t have anything to say that will be helpful to the conversation it would be better if we just kept our mouths shut. As I type this, I am saying to myself "physician heal thyself.” A good lesson to learn is that if we do not talk out of turn, we will never have any reason to regret what we say. It’s good to be silent when we don’t have anything constructive to say. What I mean by this is if what we have to say does not offer encouragement to the person with whom we are talking, it is better just to be quiet. Sometimes discouraging words will come up in our mouths before we get our minds in gear. One of my daily prayers is that I will be an encouragement to somebody on that day. Most often that encouragement, or discouragement, will come from what we say. I do not mean to imply here that we always have to say positive things to encourage people, but I think that the positive things that we say to other people should be predominant. Some of the best advice that I have gotten from people has been about something negative, but the people who said the negative things said it in a way that was constructive. We will never grow if all we ever hear are things that appeal to our egos. I think that this is what Paul meant in Colossians 4:6: “Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer every man.” A good rule of thumb is that if what you have to say, negative or positive, will really help a person, say it, if not seal your lips. It’s good to be silent when we have not heard the whole story. Proverbs 18:13 reminds us: “He that answers a matter before he hears it, it is folly and shame to him.” This is how gossip gets started. It is really best to not speak about anything before we know what the real story is. One story that I have shared over the years about this is about Senator Inouye of Hawaii. When he was sworn in as senator, the editor of a newspaper made a big deal out of the fact that Senator Inouye took his oath of office with his left hand raised instead of his right hand. Imagine how he felt when he was told that Senator Inouye could not raise his right hand because he lost his right arm in the Second World War. A good thing to do when we hear something about somebody is to just not say anything to anybody about it. I certainly have not written this to be judgmental toward people, for I have to watch my words just like everybody else. I know that we would all be better off in our families, communities and churches if we would all follow this sound biblical advice. Bro. Joe |
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