Did Jimmy Carter believe?

Here is continuation of yesterday's post: When you believe God put you into His Son, it’s the people in Christ that He chose to predestinate. Same way with Israel. These guys are born into Israel, and just because they were born into that elect--that chosen nation--didn’t mean their name was going to stay in the register.

They had to have a circumcision which was of the heart and spirit. They had to exercise faith; they had to have the heart faith reality, see, to keep their name in the register and if they didn’t have it, then their name didn’t stay there.

Revelation 22: [18] For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book:
[19] And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.

Notice that it doesn’t say, “take away his name out of the book of life.” It says He takes away his part. You see, folks, the judgment in this passage is that a place to write the fellow’s name was prepared, because there’s a place, as it were, for everybody’s name to be written.

Christ died for everybody. God desires all men to be saved and He’s tasted death for every man. There’s a place for everybody’s name to be written in the book.

Verse 17: [17] And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.

You know the invitation of the Bible is, “Come, come, come, come, come, come.” Whosoever will. Place for everybody’s name.

This guy in this passage here, the judgment on him is that the place was prepared back before the foundation of the world. Your name gets written in the place when you trust Christ.

The book of life is a book of all those people who possess everlasting life. It’s a book of the names of the elect, those who are destined to eternal bliss and blessing; those who are the possessors of everlasting life by faith in Christ Jesus. Your name gets put in there when you trust Him. And your name doesn’t get taken out of that book.

The passages that talk about blotting the name out either are clear statements that it can’t happen, or they’re talking about a different book--that book about the nation and those people can have their name taken out of that if they weren’t in the real thing.

*****

Jimmy Carter, in his 1996 book Living Faith, tells the reader that while he was raised from a baby in church, and was only three when he began memorizing Bible verses in Sunday School, “By the time I was 12 or 13 years old, my anxiety about (doubting Christ’s resurrection) became so intense that at the end of every prayer, until after I was an adult, before ‘Amen’ I added the words ‘And, God, please help me believe in the resurrection.’ ”

As Jordan often repeats, “You’ll never meet an honest person who spent 15 hours looking at the actual evidence of the resurrection of Jesus Christ not come to the conclusion: ‘He came out of the grave.’

“Now, you might not like what the resurrection means, but you can’t look at the evidence with an unprejudiced heart and mind and not recognize the historical reality that Jesus Christ rose from the dead.”

*****

Regarding my post from the other day, entitled "Songs change history," the all-time classic hymn, “Alas! And Did My Savior Bleed” was also written by Isaac Watts, considered one of the greatest hymn writers of all time.

A biographical passage on him: “A very unusual man, Watts served as minister of the English Congregational Church, preaching his first sermon at 24. History says that though he was a charming man, his stature was small and his physical appearance hard to believe. Only five feet in height, his face was sallow with a hooked nose, small beady eyes and a deathlike pallor. One lady, a Miss Elizabeth Singer, who had fallen in love with his poetry and thought she had met her soulmate at last, refused his hand in marriage when she finally saw him, with the remark, ‘I admired the jewel but not the casket!’ However, his hymns have been jewels admired by all generations of Christians.”

1. Alas! and did my Savior bleed
   And did my Sov’reign die?
   Would He devote that sacred head
   For such a worm as I?
2. Was it for crimes that I had done
   He groaned upon the tree?
   Amazing pity! grace unknown!
   And love beyond degree!
3. Well might the sun in darkness hide
   And shut his glories in,
   When Christ, the mighty Maker died,
   For man the creature’s sin.
4. Thus might I hide my blushing face
   While His dear cross appears,
   Dissolve my heart in thankfulness,
   And melt my eyes to tears.
5. But drops of grief can ne’er repay
   The debt of love I owe:
   Here, Lord, I give myself away,
   ’Tis all that I can do.
• Refrain (Hudson):
  At the cross, at the cross where I first saw the light,
  And the burden of my heart rolled away,
  It was there by faith I received my sight,
  And now I am happy all the day!

 Refrain (Campmeeting):

• I do believe, I do believe
  That Jesus died for me;
  And through His blood, His precious blood
  I am from sin set free.

Books and books

Psalm 69:28: [28] Let them be blotted out of the book of the living, and not be written with the righteous.

The book of the living there is not just a book of anybody living, but it’s the book of the righteous in Israel, says Richard Jordan.

You remember back in Exodus 32 when Moses comes down off the mount and finds the children of Israel at the golden calf?

In Exodus 32, he’s going to intercede for the nation because the judgment of God is ripe to destroy them:

[29] For Moses had said, Consecrate yourselves to day to the LORD, even every man upon his son, and upon his brother; that he may bestow upon you a blessing this day.
[30] And it came to pass on the morrow, that Moses said unto the people, Ye have sinned a great sin: and now I will go up unto the LORD; peradventure I shall make an atonement for your sin.
[31] And Moses returned unto the LORD, and said, Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold.
[32] Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin--; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written.
[33] And the LORD said unto Moses, Whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book.

You see how excited Moses is? He’s saying, “If you’ll forgive their sin,” and then there’s that dash. He says, “Wait a minute, if you won’t forgive them, blot me out of thy book.”

Moses is saying, “Lord, if you won’t forgive them, and you won’t maintain your covenant with them, just blot me out too. Take me out of the register too. I don’t want to be part of the covenant if they’re not.”

In the passage, the Lord says to Moses, “Get out of the way, Mo, and I’ll wipe them out and I’ll raise up a nation to you, out of your seed.”

Moses says, “Wait a minute, Lord, you made a covenant with Abraham back there. And if you’re not going to keep that covenant, I can’t trust you to keep the covenant you made with me, so look, we’re just going to go back to where it all started, and if you’re not going to keep your word back there, then just strike me out of the whole deal too.”

Now, he’s talking about this national covenant relationship, so there’s that register. When you find that conditional element in the Old Testament, that’s the reference over and over again.

But there’s another book and you find it only in the New Testament and that’s what the New Testament calls “the book of life.” Now, you understand it’s not a book of people alive; it’s a book of ETERNAL life . . . 

To be continued and here is Jordan's CliffsNotes version of how the King James Bible came into being:

What was the first event that led to the discovery of America? In most old history books, the line goes, "In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue . . ." But it was a whole century before that a book by Marco Polo was published, one that Columbus himself referenced as a travel guide.

Polo and his brothers had gone to China and spent two decades as an emissary of the pope. They returned from that journey with stories of wealth, intellectual knowledge, on and on. The Chinese had the most advanced civilization in the history of mankind at that time.

Indeed, there was a time in the 1400s that the Chinese ruled the earth. Of course, we’re never told that because the populace has spent the last five centuries in isolation.

In 1421, the largest fleet that had ever sailed the seas left from China, commissioned by the emperor Zhu Di to take Confucian harmony to the world. Over a hundred large vessels--beautiful vessels made of teak wood harvested from Vietnam--sailed out.

A little over two years later, when the last of these vessels finally returned home, they had sailed more than 100,000 miles. They had mapped the North American coast, South American coast, Australia, New Zealand and Africa.

In the 1420s, there was a Venetian map that showed the island of the Caribbean in exactly the right position along with the coast of Florida. Columbus saw that map before he left. He even references it in his diaries.

Magellan, when he was going through the Straits of Magellan, talks about seeing a map of the passageway. Where did he get that? Well, in 1434, a Chinese fleet sailed into the Mediterranean to Italy and landed at Tuscany.

Pope Eugene IV met with Admiral Zheng He of the fleet at Florence and the Chinese admiral gave to the pope as a diplomatic gift (the Chinese always bring gifts and try to give more than they’re given so that the other always feels in their debt) great stores of knowledge.

They gave him information about geography. They gave him world maps that map the coast and the perimeters of all the continents. Antarctica, Australia, New Zealand, Greenland, North and South America, Africa.

The Chinese gave the pope information about navigation. They had developed the longitudinal navigation system. The markings on those ancient maps today turn out to be exactly precise in scientific calculation. They gave the pope information about astronomy, the stars, about math, art, printing.

At that time printing was a common everyday occurrence in China. They had information about architecture, about steel-manufacturing, about civil engineering, about military weaponry (a lot more than gunpowder), about surveying, genetics, etc., all given along with the silk and tea and all those other things Marco Polo brought back.

So, when that fleet left Europe and went back home, what they found was China in mass disarray. The emperor had died, and if you know anything about the history, he had this humongous palace that was struck by lightning and burned, and the people took that as a bad omen and that led to the fall of the emperor.

His son took over and his idea was the reason the gods were mad at them was because they’d reached out to Europe and what they needed to do was pull back and withdraw, and that’s where their isolationism came from.

Well, we all know the Europeans are great marketers. While the Chinese were withdrawing, the Europeans loved it and embraced it and they went for it. They embraced the knowledge, the ideas, the discoveries, the inventions. And you have a period of a century or more of unparalleled advancement. It’s called the Renaissance.

When the Renaissance is blazing forth in Europe, at the same time there’s a spiritual awakening called the Reformation going on right parallel with it.

With the Reformation they’re saying, "We don’t want to be here; we want to go over there." A guy by the name of Erasmus was a scholar of the (organized) Church. He had access over all these areas of places. He was a humanist in philosophy.

Now humanism at that time wasn’t the secular humanism of our day. Humanism began with the idea of, "What we need to do is get rid of the traditions and all of the trappings, and we need to go back to the original intent."

So, when you apply that to Scripture, what would you want to do? "Let’s don’t go by traditions and all this baggage; let’s go back and find out what the original language said."

And so he was very interested in reconstructing the Greek Bible. And he produced the first printed Greek text, having access to all the information; every variant that you and I hear about today: "The better manuscripts say it ought to read this way."

Erasmus had access to that information; he just rejected it. Erasmus is said to have laid the egg that Luther hatched. Luther took that information--took it out of the realm of scholarship and translated Erasmus’ text.

This text became known as the Textus Receptus. The "Critical Text" is the text the scholars had developed. Luther took that Greek text and translated it into 30 different European languages. The idea was, "We want everybody to have the Bible for themselves."

Now, as the Reformation gets going, and Luther’s doing his thing—Luther, later on, got hooked up into politics; the Peasant Rebellion and all that stuff.

It shouldn’t be called the Protestant Reformation; call it the Protestant Revolt because they really weren’t trying to reform.

They were revolting against, but when they got into politics, it began to have some problems, and the spiritual life of the Reformation moved from the continent to England, but everything was moving toward England at the time.

You remember Ferdinand and Isabella? Spanish king and queen. You remember their Spanish Armada? They’re going to go up and squash England. England had (Sir Francis) Drake and that was their chance, and after that battle’s over with, England ruled the sea because they destroyed the Spanish Armada and now England becomes the focus. Ferdinand and Isabella were rabid Roman Catholics.

In England, you have all this Protestant fervor and a guy by the name of William Tyndale. One hundred and fifty years before that it was a guy name Wycliffe. The first Bible translated into the English language, Wycliffe did, but the first New Testament translated out of the Greek language was by William Tyndale. About 75 to 80 percent of your Bible right now is Tyndale’s translation. It was that powerful.

Tyndale was the guy who was in a debate with a papist and the papist said to him, "It would be better to be without God’s law than without the pope." Tyndale jumped up and said, "I defy the pope and all of his laws! Before long even the boy following the plow in the field we’ll know more of the Scripture than the pope in Rome." That’s why we call his Bible a "Ploughboy’s Bible."

He spent his life trying to put the Bible into the English language. He lost his life because of it. He finally had to leave England; Henry VIII didn’t like him and charged him with sedition, and he had to flee to the continent.

Henry Phillips, one of his good buddies, was paid by the papist to betray him into their hands, so they captured him and martyred him. He shed his life’s blood so you could have the Bible. He didn’t make any money off of it.

In fact, there’s a bunch of funny things that happened. At one point, he’d been revising and updating, and had a new edition to print, but didn’t have any money. What he did have was a set of a thousand of the old edition that he still had in the bookstore.

In England they had banned his translation, and they were trying to get rid of them, so this merchant went to one of the bishops in London and said, "I know where there are all these Tyndale translations. We could buy them."

So the guy gave the merchant the money and they burned them all and then the guy gave Tyndale the money and it was that money that financed the printing of the new edition!

After Tyndale died, there were a series of bibles. With your Bible, and the Protestant Reformation, when the Bible comes into English through the Protestant church, it starts out with Tyndale and there’s a series for almost a hundred years. There’s Tyndale’s, the Coverdale Bible, the Matthew Bible, the Great Bible, the Geneva Bible and the Bishop’s Bible.

By the time the KJV is translated, not one of the translators lost his life. The climate had changed that much. In fact, you remember Bloody Mary was in there and she was a rabid Roman Catholic?

After Henry VIII died, his son Edward took over and he was sort of a live-and-let-live guy, and after him was Bloody Mary. All the Protestants had to run to the continent. That’s when the Geneva Bible got done; it was done in Geneva where John Calvin, his son-in-law, helped head that up because they had to escape there to do it; it was an English Bible.

After she died, Queen Elizabeth came to the throne and she was as protestant as Mary was Catholic. So now all the Catholics have to run from England. And she gave free reign, as it were, to the study of the Scripture and the Protestants.

But all during this time you’ve got these people translating: "Let’s improve, let’s improve, let’s improve it." And the year before Mary died, she sent to parliament a bill and the title of it was three sentences long.

In essence, it called for one more English translation to be the standard. In other words, we’ve got all these translations; let’s do it one more time and get it finished. She died before that was passed, but after that James the VI of Scotland became James I of England, and when he came down to London to take over the throne, a thousand preachers sent him a petition and he met with them at Hampton Court.

One of the things that was decided there was that what Elizabeth had wanted to do, they would do, and he commissioned them to produce another version. And the genesis of that became the translating effort of the Authorized Version.

The KJB was the process; it wasn’t just a bunch of guys sitting down just doing it out of nowhere. There’s a hundred-year refining process and they finally got it finished. And it’s the ripe fruit of the Protestant Reformation. It is in every sense a Protestant bible.

Now, in that time Rome was silent. The pope woke up one day and realized that in a third of a century, two-thirds of Europe had become Protestant with the other third leaning that way. ‘What are we gonna do?!’ They called the Council of Trent in 1545 and denounced the Protestants, but it didn’t do much good. They kept going.

There was a fellow who was a soldier in Ferdinand Isabella’s army. A great warrior when they were trying to push the Muslims out of Spain. He was wounded and couldn’t be a soldier anymore, so he turned to spiritual pursuits. His name was Ignatius Loyola.

Loyola went to the pope and said, "I know what we need to do to stop the Protestants. We need to establish an order whose function is to stop Protestantism." And Loyola founded the Jesuits. The stated charter of the Jesuits is to destroy Protestantism.

Songs change history

Sometimes it’s the seemingly small stuff that can make the biggest difference. I've been down after my brother really hurt my feelings on Christmas Day but then tonight, celebrating his son’s 25^th birthday with the whole family, everything turned around.

Best of all, my nephew, who is earning his doctorate in nuclear engineering and has studied and worked now even in Japan and Livermore National Laboratory in California, took a peek at my laptop and fixed several big issues, the biggest one being my camera. I can’t tell you how many Zoom meetings, for one instance, I’ve attended with the embarrassment of not having a working camera.

This past week I’ve been saddled with yet another cold. I was barely recovered from the last one that had me walking around for two weeks with a plugged-up ear and heavily impaired tastebuds. This current one is full of congestion and coughing, waking me up in the middle of the night with coughing fits, etc.

As an aside, we could all kill my brother to this day for telling me to drain case after case of Hakriton cough syrup bottles after my dad died. My father knew it was liquid gold with its codeine base and that’s why, as a doctor with a pharmaceutical license, he stored so much of it in our basement before it was taken off the market.

I remember it was like that scene from my favorite movie, African Queen, when Humphrey Bogart awoke on the boat to witness Katharine Hepburn draining all his bottles of gin into the river. Well, thank goodness for Robitussin DM!

*****

Just today, wanting to look up something after my memory was jogged during my church’s morning service online, I picked up my 1982 book on hymns, 101 Hymn Stories, and found this to make my heart grateful:

“The singing of hymns as we know it today was practically non-existent in England and the United States from the beginning of the 16^th century Protestant Reformation until the dawn of the 18^th century. During this time congregational singing consisted almost entirely of versified settings of the Psalms. The psalter used exclusively during this entire period was the Sternhold-Hopkins Psalter, published in 1562. This is a portion of Psalm One from that psalter:

The man is blest that hath not lent To wicked men his ear, Nor led his life as sinners do, Nor sat in scorner’s chair.

He shall be like a tree that is Planted the rivers nigh, Which in due season bringeth forth Its fruit abundantly.

Whose leaf shall never fade nor fail, But flourishing shall stand. E’en so all things shall prosper well That this man takes in hand.

"Though the Sternhold-Hopkins Psalter was known for its faithfulness to the original Hebrew, the crude, unpoetic character of its texts became increasingly offensive to many congregations.

. . . Isaac Watts, was born on July 17, 1674, in Southampton, England. Watts, the author of such great hymns as 'Am I a Soldier of the Cross' and 'When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,' was the son of an educated deacon in a dissenting Congregational church. At the time of Isaac’s birth, his father was in prison for his non-conformist beliefs.

"Young Watts showed an unusual aptitude for study and learned Latin at the age of five, Greek at nine, French at eleven and Hebrew at thirteen. He began to write verses of good quality when he was very young.

"Watts is frequently referred to as the father of English hymnody. One of his early concerns was the deplorable state to which congregational singing had degenerated in most English-speaking churches. The singing consisted of slow, ponderous Psalms in which each line was first read by an appointed deacon and was followed by the droning of the congregation. The texts of these psalm-hymns were often crude and inelegant. Typical doggerel of the time was this:

Ye monsters of the bubbling deep, your Master’s praises spout; Up from the sands ye coddlings peep, and wag your tails about.

"Watts once wrote, 'The singing of God’s praise is the part of worship most closely related to heaven; but its performance among us is the worst on earth.'

"One Sunday after returning from a typically poor service, Watts continued to rail against the congregational singing. His father exclaimed, 'Why don’t you give us something better, young man!' Before the evening service began, young Isaac had written his first hymn, which was received with great enthusiasm by the people.

"For a period of two years Watts wrote a new hymn every Sunday. He went on to write new metrical versions of the Psalms with a desire to 'Christianize the Psalms with the New Testament message and style.'

"Watts not only rewrote the Psalms in this way, but he also wrote a number of hymns based solely on personal feelings. These hymns were known as hymns of human composure. Such hymns were controversial during his lifetime. 'When I Survey the Wondrous Cross' is an example of this type of hymn. In all, Watts composed more than 600 hymns."

1 When I survey the wondrous cross
on which the Prince of glory died,
my richest gain I count but loss,
and pour contempt on all my pride.

2 Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast
save in the death of Christ, my God!
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them through his blood.

3 See, from his head, his hands, his feet,
sorrow and love flow mingled down.
Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
or thorns compose so rich a crown?

4 Were the whole realm of nature mine,
that were a present far too small.
Love so amazing, so divine,
demands my soul, my life, my all.

Here are the lyrics to “Am I a Soldier of the Cross”:

1. Am I a soldier of the cross,
   A follow’r of the Lamb?
   And shall I fear to own His cause,
   Or blush to speak His name?
2. Must I be carried to the skies
   On flow’ry beds of ease,
   While others fought to win the prize,
   And sailed through bloody seas?
3. Are there no foes for me to face?
   Must I not stem the flood?
   Is this vile world a friend to grace,
   To help me on to God?
4. Sure I must fight if I would reign;
   Increase my courage, Lord;
   I’ll bear the toil, endure the pain,
   Supported by Thy Word.
5. Thy saints in all this glorious war
   Shall conquer, though they die;
   They see the triumph from afar,
   By faith’s discerning eye.
6. When that illustrious day shall rise,
   And all Thy armies shine
   In robes of vict’ry through the skies,
   The glory shall be Thine.

Taking the position now

(sorry for delay and will have new article tomorrow for certain)

Romans 8:21: [21] Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

“Paul’s saying, ‘Listen, you need to realize something; you live in a creation that’s decaying and dying and waiting for that time over there.

“One day we’re going to be manifested before the universe as joint heirs with the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s our privilege and position.

“We can now enjoy this prospect of future manifestation and adoption out there. We can live now as those that are alive from the dead. We can take that position now that we’ll have in the ages to come and live it right this minute as though it were a present-day reality because it is a reality positionally.

“We can experientially, day by day, live our lives in line with the position that God has given us in Christ. We have a hope just like creation does and we’re saved by that hope. That’s not talking about being saved from hell but being saved from despair over the infirmities of this present time. The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us out there.

“As you pray there’s that active ministry of God the Holy Spirit both to will and to do in your life; to be operative in your life. And to adjust your prayer life to make it match what God the Father is doing in your life.

Philippians 4:6-7: [6] Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.
[7] And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

“People ask what is legitimate subject for prayer today? Folks, there’s not anything that’s on your heart that God doesn’t want you to come to Him with it. Because if it’s on your heart He already knows about it, and if it’s a problem to you and it’s bothering you, if you’re thinking about it, He wants you to talk to Him about it.

“What He’s after is the communion between you and Him; the openness, the intercourse back and forth. Because then when you, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God, that’s how you pray, folks.”

*****

Throughout Christ’s earthly life, His top “value” was to relinquish anything and everything calculated to stand in the way of accomplishing the will of His Father.

Christ valued and cherished His Father’s plan so much He couldn’t fathom ever being separate from it. He says in John 6:38, “For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.”

In John 5:30, Christ states, “I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me.”

Paul makes it clear that God’s will is for “all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”

The reality is Christ came for the express purpose of NOT doing His own will. When He prayed in the garden, “Not my will but thine be done,” that “sound bite” represented the whole tenor of His administration—THAT’S what He trusted!

Christ says in John 8:26, “I have many things to say and to judge of you: but he that sent me is true; and I speak to the world those things which I have heard of him.”

He goes on in chapter 15:15, “Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.”

Christ confirms in John 8:29, “And he that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him.”

From John 17, we know that the disciples were sent out with the same commission Christ received from the Father: To go live exactly the way He lived.

*****

“We who are Americans are extremely fortunate to have a heritage. But it’s all over with, folks, I’m sorry. When the toothpaste is out of the tube, it’s gone. The foundations that built that are not in our country anymore.”

“Saved or lost, religion is the most dangerous battle you’ll ever face. This is where the real big game is. People like to argue about politics and all the rest of the stuff, but this is the BIG stuff.

“You can worry about the politics and what they’re doing in Washington and the economy and all these other things, but the real battle today in the Dispensation of Grace is in the area of spiritual issues. 

“Religion is simply a way for man to put confidence in himself, in his own flesh.

“Paul says in Philippians 3 he counted his religious self-righteousness as dung. He’s saying, ‘I thoroughly understand what it is to have confidence in your flesh—I had religious flesh.’ And he said, ‘What I found is it’s worthless!’

*****

“Notice Paul calls Satan the ‘god of the world.’ He didn’t say the king of the world, the political leader of the world, the economic force of the world.

“Satan has a religion and he seeks to propagate it. And the great battle today is not fighting the social battles and the cultural wars; it’s fighting the religious front. Until you understand that, you’re not going to be in the real battle.

“I’m not saying the other battles aren’t important; I’m saying the real battle, when you want to get down to what the core source of the real issues are, it’s the issue about a person’s relationship with his Creator or lack thereof. Religion is designed to substitute confidence in your flesh for trust in Christ.

“When Paul says ‘have no confidence in the flesh,’ your flesh is a way the Bible, especially with the Apostle Paul, describes you, yourself and your self-life independent of God.

“Romans 7:18 says, ‘For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing.’

“Our resources are not God’s resources; our identity is not the identity and purpose He gives us. Paul’s talking about trusting and valuing and treasuring who he is in himself and his ability to perform; he’s talking about pride and self-satisfaction in yourself.

“Proverbs says, ‘Every man does that which is right in his own eyes.’ Can you relate to that? We do what WE think is right. It says, ‘There’s a way that seemeth right to a man; the end thereof is death.’

“Man says, ‘Makes no difference, I’m doin’ what’s right in my mind…’ and there’s a pride in that! There’s a self-satisfaction in that and that’s what religion is all about!

*****

“Paul says in Philippians 3:7, ‘But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ.’ All these things in verses 4-6 he says were valuable to him.

“Gain is the idea of wealth, treasure. Notice he says, ‘I wasted it and profited in the Jews’ religion above many mine equals in my own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of traditions of my fathers.’

“You see he profited? Paul’s saying, ‘Those things that brought profit to me in my thinking. Those things I treasured and adored and thought were the most wonderful, solid, enriching things in my life.’

“What were they? There are a number of things but they divide into two categories. He’s going to list some ethnic and racial things—some pride of race and pride of place kinds of things. And then he’s going to list some religious things. Distinctions. Some performance things.

*****

“Can I tell you those are the two things most people . . . those are the two things your flesh wants to glory in. It wants to glory in your race, which is another way of saying the place that you have, and then it wants to glory in religion—the performance; the achievements that it can make.

“And flesh has a tendency toward good and evil. By the way, with the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, both were bad. Your flesh has a tendency toward the lascivious, the earthy; the lust and the pull to be run by the desires that drag you downward into the earth.

“But you also have a bent toward aestheticism, toward the human good; toward the ability to pride yourself and satisfy yourself in doing what’s right.

“It’s to do good and feel good about doing it. Your flesh is such a deceiver. ‘The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.’

 

"And the moment you think you’ve done something good, and the moment you sit in relaxation and your satisfaction about what you’ve performed, ‘Let him who thinketh he stand take heed lest he fall.’ ”

When pressure's on, Jew will say, 'Yes, that's my Messiah!'

(new article tomorrow and here's a sermon outtake from 2012:)

Hebrews 13: 10-13 says, “We have an altar, whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle.

[11] For the bodies of those beasts, whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin, are burned without the camp.
[12] Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate.
[13] Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach.”

The whole issue in the Book of Hebrews is to explain and motivate Israel. The Believers in Israel are not to go back to the Mosaic system of the old covenant, but are to go on outside. Leave the temple, leave Judaism, go on to Christ and the new covenant, which Christ is going to inaugurate when He returns, explains Richard Jordan.

They are warned strongly and severely in Hebrews: "Don’t go back to the old covenant," and they’re motivated by all that Jesus Christ does, and is, to go on to the new covenant.

They’re to leave the shadow and go on to the reality--the new and living way, the perfection that’s in Christ: "Put your eyes upon the Lord Jesus Christ; He’s the one with the more excellent glory, the higher alternative than angels, Moses, Joshua and Aaron, because He’s got a better sacrifice."

You know why they’re going to need that? In that tribulation, that temple’s going to be rebuilt. All of the Old Testament sacrifices, the Mosaic Law system, are going to be reestablished in the tribulation.

I’ve told you about the brother, an orthodox Jew down in Selma, Alabama, that I used to visit with. Old Henry was a Jew who was caught up in Germany in WW II. He hid from the Nazis, hiding in ditches and in culverts under the roads.

He hid in Belgium for three years while the Nazi occupation was going on, and a Belgium couple hid him in their attic day and night. He had to hide in fields and in culverts.

He finally got out of there and into the U.S., and he was the only orthodox Jew in the whole area, and I got to be good friends with him.

I’d take my Hebrew Bible over to his place and he’d get out his Hebrew Bible and they were the same ones. His Hebrew Bible was just like a King James Bible, just a different language.

Henry taught me an awful lot about it. He loved to study the Old Testament, and I sat there one day in his living room and talked to him about the Lord and he said, "Let’s don’t talk about that Jesus." He didn’t want to hear about the Lord.

And I said, "Henry, I want to describe somebody to you. There’s a guy one day going to take over in Jerusalem," and I described the rebuilding of the temple, the reinstitution of the animal sacrifices of the Mosaic system. I said, "They’re going to take the Book of Leviticus and reinstitute the priesthood and the sacrifices."

I said, "Henry, I want to ask you, as a 20^th Century, enlightened, sensitive, modern American--if they start those animal sacrifices over there next week, would you get on an airplane and go over there and offer an animal sacrifice?"

And he sat there for a minute, and he thought, and he looked at me and said, "Yes." You could have knocked me right off the seat when he said that! I never would have thought anybody would have went and done something like that. Not an enlightened, 20^th Century American! Educated man.

That’s what they’re going to face in that tribulation. They’re going to have that system reestablished and you know what’s going to happen? Those Jews are going to start going back over there and reestablishing . . .

I asked him, "Who is that man that’s doing all that, Henry?" He said, "That’s my Messiah." I said, "No, Henry, that’s the phony one!" I was describing to him, not Jesus Christ, but the Antichrist, and what’s going to happen.

These Jews, they’re going to have it, they’re going to see it, and it’s going to be going again. They'll broadcast, "C’mon guys, our religion, our temple is reestablished and the sacrifice," and the pressure’s going to be on those Jews in the tribulation to go back to that.

'Ain't much an old country boy can't hack'

Micah lived in a small country town just outside of Jerusalem about 700 years before the time of Christ. He lived in the same time period as Isaiah and Hosea and was actually a good friend of Isaiah’s. 

Micah lived close to the big city, but he was an old country boy. His nature—just his mannerism as you read his book—he’s blunt. He’s direct. He’s terse. He’s a plain-speaking kind of a guy. He’s a no-nonsense, straight-arrow kind of a person and when you read his book, you read that, says Richard Jordan.

There’s not a lot of flowery prose, not a lot of diversion. It’s, ‘Let’s get right to the point; here’s the issue,’ and bang, bang, bang, there it is. 

Micah, you learn as you read his book, had one great passion; he was a lover of the common man. As I said, I think about him as a country boy. He didn’t like high falutin kind of elitism. He loved the common people of Israel. 

He hated religious corruption. He hated the political corruption that engulfed his nation. He hated people taking advantage of other people and, as you read through, there’s a scathing denunciation of the political, economic and religious corruption that gripped the nation Israel at the time.

Micah lived in a world of tremendous danger, filled with huge international problems. Sometimes we think of ourselves as the only people who ever lived on the stage of international history. It wasn’t true.

Israel at that time lived in a world of tremendous international tension. They actually lived in the midst of three warring nations—Assyria to the east of them, Egypt to the south of them and the Philistines to the west of them. 

And Israel had entered into an unholy alliance, as it were, with the Assyrians. Israel had become really a facile state paying tribute to Assyria in order to be protected from the Philistines and the Egyptians, and there’s tremendous political tension between the nations in that territory. 

As to the tremendous religious corruption inside of the nation, Micah chides the priests taking bribes. In chapter 3:11 is a classic verse: "The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money: yet will they lean upon the LORD, and say, Is not the LORD among us? none evil can come upon us." 

He’s saying, "The political leaders, why they’ve just got their hands out for graft. The priests, the prophets are willing to say anything anybody wants them to say if they give them the money for it."

Money had corrupted them, but they were all the time saying, "God’s with us; we’re God’s people.” And, oh, how Micah went after that and denounced those things. 

The world he lived in was a world of moral chaos, which always follows the kind of things we just described—people ripping off the poor, the leaders taking the bribes, cheating. The merchants, the leaders and the priests; even people’s own family members couldn’t be trusted to tell the truth and do what’s right. 

Micah warns them about the judgment of God that’s going to come upon the nation and he doesn’t pull any punches. Right in the middle of all this, though, because the book is really sort of negative, is a delightful passage that is, when you study Old Testament theology and doctrine, Micah 6, especially in verse 8, is held up as the height of scriptural ethic; it’s sort of the heart of the divine ethic of the scripture.

Micah 6: [8] He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

It’s a fascinating study in the will and the desire of God expressed in human terms in the nation Israel; the heart of what God was looking for when He created man to be His image, His representative. 

At the beginning of chapter 6, Micah pleads with Israel, “Hear ye now what the LORD saith; Arise, contend thou before the mountains, and let the hills hear thy voice.
[2] Hear ye, O mountains, the LORD's controversy, and ye strong foundations of the earth: for the LORD hath a controversy with his people, and he will plead with Israel.
[3] O my people, what have I done unto thee? and wherein have I wearied thee? testify against me.”

The Lord talks about the earth, and the mountains, and you know there’s that sonic resonance in creation where everything has the ability to have a sound to it. But when He talks about that, He’s talking more in metaphorical terms . . . it’s like my dad used to say about talking to himself: "I like to have an intelligent conversation every now and then."

When God talks to mountains and the earth what He’s doing is—"I have a purpose for the earth. I have a purpose for creation and that purpose finds its channel of expression in the nation Israel." 

God’s purpose for creation—God’s purpose for man in creation was to rule over creation; subdue it and have dominion over it. His purpose for man . . . the seed of the woman became the seed of Abraham which became the nation Israel and God’s purpose for man is vested in the nation Israel as His representative of mankind in the earth. 

And so the controversy he’s having is, ‘Here’s my controversy about everything in creation and it all focuses on Israel."

So he gathers all of creation. I mean, the rocks would know what they were created for if they had brains, or a mind, or a will . . . He’s putting a personification to them in the sense He knows the purpose, and Israel knows the purpose for them; in fact, the heathen were told about it. 

You won’t remember all those events, but Israel would. And what God’s saying is, rather than being grateful for all He’d done for them, they’d taken advantage of Him. They turned their back on Him and walked in their own way; walked in their own wisdom. 

They turned away from His Word which He gave them and chose their own words and the words of other gods. 

And God’s saying to them, "Did I insult you?! What did I do to make you hate me?! What did I do to make you turn away from me?! All I’ve ever done for you is good things. I redeemed you, I brought you out of Egypt, delivered you from satanic captivity, got you across the Red Sea. I blessed you, gave you my Word, gave you leaders . . .

"My grace is abundantly provided for you. You’ve seen my righteousness in action. You’ve seen how that when the enemy came in—when Balak hired Balaam to curse you, what did I do? I said, no you can’t curse them, you can only bless them. You’ve literally seen my righteousness working for you in every case. So what’s the problem? Why’ve you turned your back on me?"

Grieve not His tender compassion

(new article tomorrow)

Because the Holy Spirit is a person He has a personality and there's the ability to have emotions.

"He does the things that PEOPLE do. He intercedes, He gives testimony, He bears witness, He teaches and He’s a person outside of the Father and the Son. He’s a person but He’s also a distinct member of the godhead.

I Corinthians 2: [9] But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.

[10] But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.

“The Spirit of God has knowledge, the ability to search knowledge, the ability to teach and reveal knowledge. By the way, He can SPEAK when He reveals the knowledge. Revelation 2 talks about the words that the Spirit spoke unto them. Galatians 4:6 says, ‘And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.’

“It’s that spirit of sonship, but He SPEAKS. In Romans 8 we read that He makes ‘intercession for the saints.’ In verse 34, you see the Lord Jesus Christ at the right hand of God making intercession. The same characteristics that are identified as true of Jesus are identified as true of the Holy Spirit.

“Romans 15:30 says, ‘Now I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake, and for the love of the Spirit, that ye strive together with me in your prayers to God for me.’

“Notice there are some things the Spirit loves; He has the capacity to love things. That’s why He can be grieved."

Ephesians 4:30: [30] And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.

In his sermon on this verse given in 1859 at the Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens, Charles Spurgeon said, "There may be the bitterness of myrrh, but there is all the sweetness of frankincense in this sweet term 'to grieve.' I am certain, my hearers, I do not flatter you when I declare, that I am sure that the most of you would grieve, if you thought you were grieving anyone else.

"You, perhaps, would not care much if you had made any one angry without a cause; but to grieve him, even though it were without a cause and without intention, would nevertheless cause you distress of heart, and you would not rest until this grief had subsided, till you had made some explanation or apology, and had done your best to allay the smart and take away the grief.

"When we see anger in another, we at once begin to feel hostility. Anger begets anger; but grief begets pity, and pity is next akin to love; and we love those whom we have caused to grieve . . .

"Is it not, I say a tender and touching thing, that the Holy Spirit should direct his servant Paul to say to us 'grieve not the Holy Spirit,' do not excite his loving anger, do not vex him, do not cause him to mourn? He is a dove; do not cause him to mourn, because you have treated him harshly and ungratefully.

"The few words I have to say UPON THE LOVE OF THE SPIRIT will all be pressing forward to my great mark, stirring you up not to grieve the Spirit; for when we are persuaded that another loves us, we find at once a very potent reason why we should not grieve him . . .

"Furthermore, my brethren, forget not how much we owe to the Spirit's consolation, how much has he manifested his love to you in cherishing you in all your sicknesses, assisting you in all your labors; and comforting you in all your distresses.

"He has been a blessed comforter to me I can testify; when every other comfort failed, when the promise itself seemed empty, when the ministry was void of power, it is then the Holy Spirit has proved a rich comfort unto my soul, and filled my poor heart with peace and joy in believing.

"How many times would your heart have broken if the Spirit had not bound it up?! How often has he who is your teacher become also your physician, has closed the wounds of your poor bleeding spirit, and has bound up those wounds with the court plaister of the promise, and so has stanched the bleeding, and has given you back your spiritual health once more? . . . 

"Nay, not only doth he help our infirmities, but when we know not what to pray for as we ought he teacheth us how to pray, and when 'we ourselves groan within ourselves,' then the Spirit himself maketh intersession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered . . .

"To help our infirmities is a mighty instance of love. When God overcomes infirmity altogether, or removes it, there is something very noble, and grand, and sublime in the deed; when he permits the infirmity to remain and yet works with the infirmity, this is tender compassion indeed."