Author: Pastor David Page 52 of 57

“And the Father himself, which hath sent me, hath borne witness of me. Ye have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his shape.” (John 5:37)

Jesus was speaking to men here in John 5 that had no desire for the true things of God, even though they gave the outward pretense of religion and piety. He tells these men that they had “neither heard [the Father’s] voice at any time, nor seen [the Father’s] shape”. It’s certainly true that the natural man cannot hear God’s voice or see God’s shape, but for the born-again child of God, we can hear the gentle voice of the Lord guiding us in our lives and we can also see the imprints of God’s shape in the world all around us.

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“And when they had sung an hymn, they went out into the mount of Olives…Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here while I go and pray yonder.” (Matt. 26:30,36)

Just hours before his crucifixion for the salvation of God’s people, Jesus went into the garden of Gethsemane to pray unto the Father. Just like so many of the places and events surrounding the death of Jesus Christ, Gethsemane carries profound significance as well. Gethsemane means “oil press”, referring to the olive press that produced olive oil for the Jews, and this garden was located on the mount of Olives. Jesus was pressed and crushed under the weight of our sin to produce the “pure olive oil” that is signifying of our anointed and cleansed standing before God based on Christ’s work. Gethsemane once again points us to the work of Christ in the redemption of his people.

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“And I said unto them, Whosoever hath any gold, let them break it off. So they gave it me: then I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf.” (Exodus 32:24)

During Moses’ time on Mount Sinai receiving the law of God, the Israelites had enticed Aaron to make them a new god, to which he obliged (Exod. 32:1-6). After Moses returns down from the mount, he questions Aaron as to how this graven image came about, and he tries to convince Moses that he cast a bunch of gold in the fire and randomly out came this calf. Moses certainly knew better than that because that molten calf bore the distinguishing marks of intelligent design. When we consider the amazing craftsmanship and intracity of design of God’s creation, it’s just as ludicrous to believe that all that we see around us, especially our human bodies, were just formed and created by random chance, as it’s foolish to think that a molten calf just randomly come out of the fire. This world bears the marks of intelligent design and manifests the glory of its Creator.

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Philip is the only man in scripture who is specifically denoted by the Holy Spirit as an evangelist – “Philip the evangelist” (Acts 21:8). Paul tells the ordained minister Timothy to “do the work of an evangelist” (2 Tim. 4:5), and he also denotes “evangelists” as one of the four ministerial offices in the New Testament church (Eph. 4:11). Paul certainly did the work of an evangelist, but he held a different office of an apostle, so he never referred to himself by that title. Therefore, we should examine Philip’s life to see the qualifying marks of “an evangelist” and how Philip conducted himself that led the Holy Spirit to single him out solely for this title in scripture. Philip’s travels in Samaria, to the eunuch, and then from city to city have received much attention, but we also see from his later life that his evangelism was also concentrated locally as well, not just traveling from place to place perpetually.

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“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me… To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified.” (Isaiah 61:1-3)

God is in the business of fixing and overruling our sinful mistakes. This has been true since man’s fall in Adam created a ruinous heap of ashes, burnt and severed fellowship with God. However, God has promised to give us “beauty for [those] ashes”, to replace the ashy remnants of loss and ruin with a beautiful blessing of God. We will see the full beauty of God’s overruling blessing at Christ’s second coming, but God also blesses us here in time with blessings and beauty in spite of the sinful lives we lead.

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“I beseech you, brethren, (ye know the house of Stephanas, that it is the firstfruits of Achaia, and that they have addicted themselves to the ministry of the saints,)” (1 Corinthians 16:15)

As Paul begins his closing salutations to the Corinth church, he commends a very godly man, Stephanas, and his family for their service and ministry to saints. However, this was not a casual or part-time service to the saints of God, but they made such a habitual commitment of serving others that Paul denotes “they have addicted themselves to the ministry of the saints.” With such a profound description of their service to the church, we should consider how addicted are we to things of God and to serving others?

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“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9)

This verse is commonly presented by those of the “free-will” persuasion as an invitation by God to the dead alien sinner to confess his sins and be eternally cleansed from his sins and be saved to heaven. In their mind, this verse is an invitation to the world for anyone to confess their sins, and God is still faithful and just to save even the vilest of sinners once they have met this one condition of confession of sins. While it’s certainly true that God does save the vilest of sinners (even a Mary or Manasseh’s stains or sins more vile than they), that salvation is not based upon our confession of sins, but based solely upon the sovereign grace and blood of Jesus Christ, not by any condition we meet to supposedly ratify our eternal life.

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