THE MESSAGE (PART 2)

THE MESSAGE   (PART 2)

                “These things I have spoken to you that you may be kept from stumbling.” (Falling away)            

                ‘But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper shall not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you. And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment; concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me; and concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father and you no longer behold Me; and concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged. I have many more things to say to you but you cannot bear them now. But when He, the Holy Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you.” John 16:1, 7-14

                There are a number of vitally important points that Jesus gave to His disciples before He returned to heaven. Of course there are no idle words in anything Jesus said for upon His words rest the Kingdom and the entire universe. But the points that He made here are connected to part one of THE MESSAGE and so I would like to elaborate on them a little.

POINT 1                HIS WORDS ARE VITAL TO KEEP US FROM STUMBLING OR FALLING AWAY

                Jesus tells His disciples that He is going to say some things to them that will keep them (and us) from stumbling or falling away. And since Paul warns us of a great falling away to come in the last days,   (2 Thess. 2:3, 4) we need to benefit from what Jesus has said concerning His Holy Spirit.

POINT 2                THE HOLY SPIRIT IS THE VERY PRESENCE OF JESUS IN OUR LIVES

                It was to be to our advantage that Jesus was leaving and going back to heaven… but why? The answer to this question is quite elementary really. As a man, born into the human race for our sakes, He was limited to His one body and to all He could talk to on a one on one basis. But being glorified and having returned to heaven, He could send His very presence to us via His Holy Spirit and His Holy Spirit would be just as consciously with us as if He were standing physically in our midst.

                It is easy for us to picture this today as it has to do with things like television. It would be pointless for a weatherman to run all over town telling people that it was going to rain, when He can go to the television station, step in front of the cameras and tell millions of people at the same time.

                But there is a vast difference even then, because the Holy Spirit is interactive. He not only brings God’s Word to us, but He also takes our words back to God and He sweetens them with the incense of His grace and His will for us. The Holy Spirit is consciously present with us and Jesus is consciously aware of us because of the Holy Spirit’s presence in us. We can have an ongoing intimate relationship with Jesus through His Holy Spirit

                The point is that the Holy Spirit brings the very presence of Jesus to us and He speaks to us in words that we can learn to recognize and to hear. His voice however is heard in our spirit and not in our physical ear (for the most part) and so we must have our spiritual ears open and not blocked by a whole lot of the world’s noise. And rather than being hard to hear, He is speaking to us all of the time. In fact some people, in order to not hear His voice, have to maintain a certain level of noise or music or TV or something going all the time to drown out the voice of the One who is dealing with their heart issues.

POINT 3                THE HOLY SPIRIT COVICTS US OF SIN

                But why would people want to block the voice of the Holy Spirit? It is because He convicts the world of sin. We love our sins and we don’t want to be bothered about them so we crank up the radio or the TV and keep interference noise going so that we can maintain some sort of noise induced peace of mind. We don’t like silence because God’s voice is right there and we don’t want to hear what He has to say. So, for the one who is trying so desperately to hear from God I have good news. He is much easier to hear than He is to turn off… but if we keep turning Him off, we will eventually become deaf to His voice and you don’t ever want to be in that position.

POINT 4                THE HOLY SPIRIT CONVICTS US OF RIGHTEOUSNESS

                Righteousness is right standing with God. Righteousness is being right and being right means that we must believe truth and truth is found in the Word of God. Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life and if we are squared with Jesus then we are right with all of creation for everything in god’s creation is built upon truth. Scientists are in search of truth and they have discovered much truth about how things work. This truth can become blocked however if they set conditions upon what they find. For instance if they start with the premise that there is no God, then their truth will be skewed and biased and they will be stuck with faulty theories like evolution to try and work around. Today hundreds of scientists are forced to push the evolutionary lie or lose their funding, even though they know that evolution is a faulty and a failed system.

                Even religious people end up believing lies when they place false premises on what they will believe. For instance, if they start with a premise that there are no such things as miracles, then their interpretation of the Bible will be blighted and biased, and void of faith and hope and even love. God tells us the absolute truth about a good many subjects in the Bible and we can only be squared with God when we are squared with His Truth.  So the Holy Spirit convicts us of righteousness and truth.

                There are entire denominations that have built their doctrine first and then used the Bible selectively to support what they believe. They simply ignore those parts of the Bible that don’t support what they believe. If for instance, they don’t believe in the baptism of the Holy Spirit, they will purposely ignore 1 Corinthians chapter 14, but then they will compensate for it by picking some other doctrine and riding that horse to death. We need toe Whole Bible for doctrine and not just the portions of it that we like.

                Righteousness and holiness are very closely related and sanctification is a matter of aligning our lives with truth and righteousness and holiness and learning how to live lives through the power of God’s indwelling spirit in us and all of this Jesus calls “Overcoming” and God’s true people are those who are overcoming by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of our testimony. Rev. 12:11,

                To me it is very telling that many preachers today, while claiming to speak from the Holy Spirit, nevertheless avoid the subjects of sin and righteousness, nor do they any longer boldly denounce those things that God says constitute sin. They don’t like to even call things sin any more. Many are drifting towards Gnosticism where you can do whatever you want to in the body and it doesn’t matter, because it is only the spirit that is saved. This is where false grace is headed. But the Bible clearly tells us that we will be judged according to the things done in the body. Rom. 6:12, 13, Rev 20:12, 13

POINT  5               HE CONVICTS THE WORLD CONCERNING JUDGMENT

                Along with all of the other subjects that are being neglected today, the word “Judgement” is being avoided at all costs and we are being promised that God is good all the time and all the time God is good and that is true, but we need to define goodness as God defines it and not as we have created it to be. Goodness by God’s definition means that judgment and mercy go hand in hand. Justice and mercy are the foundations of His government.

                God loves us infinitely, but He hates sin infinitely as well. Our purpose for coming to Jesus Christ is so that He can forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. The chaff has to go. It must be threshed from us and burned up in the fire. We are being called out of sin, out of Babylon, out of Satan’s kingdom and out of all of his junk. GRACE DOES NOT EXCUSE SIN; IT GIVES US POWER OVER IT AND OVER ALL THE WORKS OF THE ENEMY!

                This is salvation, that we are saved and delivered from sin, to serve the living God.

                “For this is the love of God that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome, for whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world- our faith. We know that no one who is born of God sins; but He who was born of God keeps him and the evil one does not touch him.” 1 John 5:3, 4, 18

                “Zion heard this and was glad, and the daughters of Judah have rejoiced because of Thy judgments O Lord. For Thou art the Lord Most High over all the earth; Thou art exalted far above all gods. Hate evil, you who love the Lord, who preserves the souls of His godly ones; He delivers them from the hand of the wicked.  Light is sown like seed for the righteous, and gladness of the upright in heart. Be glad in the Lord you righteous ones; and give thanks to His holy Name.” Psalms 97:8-12

POINT 6                                HE WILL DISCLOSE TO US WHAT IS TO COME

                The testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy. Rev. 19:10. We read this in the book of Revelation and we read what Jesus said through John, that the Holy Spirit of Christ will disclose what is to come and yet a vast majority of churches and preachers today avoid the subject of prophecy like the plague.

                Prophecy, rightly taught will bring great understanding to the flow of God’s purposes in the world. Most people expect you to get out a chart and a graph, or to predict some future event, but true Bible prophecy is to understand the unfolding of God’s plans and purpose… where we came from and where we are headed. Prophecy is to unfold the mysteries that lie capsuled in God’s Word, from the Feast days to the promises to the mysteries of Christ in us the hope of glory. It involves unwrapping the mysteries of the Melchizedek priesthood as well as understanding the flow of law and grace and how they work together, rather than in opposition to each other.

                There are a thousand subject in the Bible that are better understood if we put them in the context of God’s overall plan of redemption from the fall of Adam and Eve and their loss of jurisdiction over the planet, to Christ’s buying our authority back by His death and resurrection and how it is that we are learning to live by His Spirit rather than by our fallen flesh until the day that He gives us resurrection bodies and sets us free from this prison planet that we have locked ourselves into.

POINT 7                EVERYTHING THAT THE FATHER HAS GIVEN HIM, HE HAS GIVEN TO US

                Jesus has held nothing back in giving us all things. He gave of His life to the uttermost so that we can become joint heirs of His throne. This goes far beyond anything that the mere human mind could have conceived. All other gods demand … Jesus gave. All other gods demand that we come to them… Jesus came to us. Other gods demand and force and threaten… Jesus invites. Other gods entice people with the pleasures of the flesh… Jesus invites us to live by His Spirit. He does this because flesh is doomed to death, but His Spirit overcomes death and gives us eternal life.

                There is a place of justice created for Satan and His fallen angels. Hell was prepared for Satan and His angels. It was never designed for humans. Heaven was designed for us… and the only way we can fall into the flames of God’s justice is if we side with Satan. In choosing Satan’s kingdom, we chose his destiny … but if we choose Jesus Christ we will share His destiny as well. Sort of a no brainer isn’t it?

                We need to start getting the Word out in its entirety so that people can make an informed choice. By softening the message, we are weakening the power of the Gospel to rescue the lost. The world despises us today, not because we are preaching the truth, but because we are NOT preaching the truth and living the truth. We can be ignored because our lives do not line up with our message and our message does not line up with the Word.

                As an example: We believe in healing, but we are sick because we ignore God’s principles of healthy living. We like to preach against smoking and drinking, but we don’t like to talk about gluttony. I give this as an example of how we ignore the parts of God’s Word that we don’t want to hear. If, for instance, we preach divine healing, then we should be examples of divine health…but we are not. But this problem goes all across the board. We believe the Bible but we don’t actually live the Bible.

                Jesus came to set us free and if we will listen attentively to His Holy Spirit and if we will live Spirit inspired and controlled lives rather than flesh controlled lives, He will walk us out of sickness and into divine health in every area of our lives.

                “Why do you spend money for what is not bead, and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me and eat what is good and delight yourself in abundance. Incline your ear and come to Me. Listen that you may live; And I will make an everlasting covenant with you, according to the faithful mercies shown to David. Seek the Lord while He may be found; Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the Lord, and He will have compassion on Him and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.” Isa. 55:2, 3, 6-7.

                Jesus told us that the Holy Spirit would keep us from falling, if we will listen to Him and live our lives by Him, but today large portions of Christianity are abandoning what the Holy Spirit teaches, for He convicts us concerning sin and righteousness and judgment and it is a message that we are becoming unable to hear. It is time to open our hearts and to allow the Holy Spirit to do a complete work in us.