Hello friends,
We keep getting those timely rains. There hasn’t been much watering of the lawn this summer, but plenty of mowing. There are blessings all around and we don’t have to look far to see them.
Sometimes I read articles from other sources that I feel are worth sharing. One of those came to me from Pastor J.D. Greear. He tells of efforts in the past to remove certain sections of the Bible.
He writes, “If someone did this today, they would probably cut out Jesus’ teachings on the sanctity of sex and marriage. They would keep the miracles and cut out large parts of the Sermon on the mount.
Our culture says it is fine to worship Jesus—just edit Him to fit their preferences so you can still bow where you need to bow.
For followers of Jesus, that is not an option. Jesus is Lord. If He is not Lord of all, then He is not Lord at all. People treat the Bible like a cafeteria, where you pick the food options that you like and ignore the rest.
People think you can do that with Jesus. You can accept the parts of Him you want and postpone the others until later. I once heard a college student explain that she had accepted Jesus as Savior now and planned to accept Him as Lord later.
You cannot divide Jesus! He is either Lord, or He is not. If God is the only God, and He is the only one who can save and the only revealer of mysteries, then we as Christians must make this clear to others. To not do so is not just cowardly, it is cruel.
Because Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego stood in faithfulness to God when everyone else bowed to a false god, even though they got thrown into a fiery furnace for it an entire empire got to see the reality of the God of Israel on display.
“Therefore God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on the earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:9-11).
The eternal future of coming generations depends on our ability to stand firm in the present.”
For Him,
Pastor Jerry
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