Tag: Are You In Need of Cleansing?

Joel 2:12-14 ^ESV

¹² “Yet even now,” declares the LORD, “return to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; ¹³ and rend your hearts and not your garments.” Return to the LORD your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and He relents over disaster. ¹⁴ Who knows whether He will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind Him, a grain offering and a drink offering for the LORD your God?

The LORD is merciful; He is not willing for anyone to perish. He said that He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezekiel 33:11). But men love darkness more than they tolerate the light. As it was then, so it is now, men refuse to heed God’s warning.

They decline His invitation to repent and to seek Him. They reject the offer to draw near to Him so that He can and will draw near to them. They want another way. A way free from personal responsibility.

They despise the way of the cross. They loathe holiness and hate righteousness. It’s their way or no way, so they turn and go their own way, rejoicing in their own will and delighting in their own strength.

Therefore, there’s coming a trumpet call. A day of reckoning. A day of great darkness and gloom. A day of intense dread and terror when the Spirit of the LORD shall be taken up, and the dead in Christ shall rise, and we who are alive and remain shall be caught up to meet our LORD Jesus in the clouds, and there we will be with Him forevermore (1 Thessalonians 4:16).

For those of us who are being saved… it will be a day of great joy, and much rejoicing. But for those who refuse to heed the alarm—those who reject the trumpet call to repentance, and who remain in their sins… it is a day of dread, fear, and trembling — a day of thick darkness and great gloom.

For on that day, the LORD, the LORD Jesus Himself, will come and take His Bride away, and those who have refused His salvation will be left behind.

The door will be closed. And it will be locked. And no one else will be let in. The opportunity has passed. The chance of repentance is gone—it’s over. Your choice has been made. The lines have been drawn in the sand. And now, it’s over.

So, the LORD who said, “Come all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” will also say, “Depart from Me, I never knew you.”

And those who hear those harsh words of hopeless despair will go away into eternal punishment in the lake of fire that burns forever, and ever.

The opportunity is now. The time of repentance is now. Today is the day of salvation. The trumpet call has gone out, the alarm has been sounded. Are you ready? Are your family members ready? Co-workers? Friends? Neighbors? Today is the day of repentance, tomorrow is promised to no man.

Peace. Love. Go Forth and Hear The Trumpet Blast.

¹⁹ For seven days no leaven is to be found in your houses.

The Israelites were not to eat any leaven for seven days. They were not to look at it. No one was allowed to have it in their houses. It was to be removed from them entirely.

See, leaven is the same thing as yeast. No yeast was to be found in their houses; they had to get it out.

Yeast is that substance we put in the dough that causes it to ferment and rise, making the bread light, airy, and puffed up. Paul uses puffed up as a metaphor for pride, something that the LORD hates.

See, leaven represents the sin, the junk, the rubbish in our lives. Malice. Pride. Backbiting. Sexual impurity. Hypocrisy. False teachings. We are commanded to correct it and get rid of it, not overlook or tolerate it. This is a command from the LORD.

Peace. Love. Go Forth and Clear It Out. 

⁶ All we like sheep have gone astray;

We have turned, every one, to his own way… ~ Isaiah 53:6a ^NKJV

My daughter has a Siberian Husky, and she is what we call an escape artist. If she finds even the smallest opening, she squeezes through it and off she goes, exploring. Now, she loves her family and her home, but for some reason, she loves to stray. Just wander off and explore like nobody’s business. We’ve spent countless hours looking and searching the neighborhood and the woods for that dog.

Sometimes she’s gone for a few hours before we find her, at other times she is gone for up to two days. Then someone on social media will contact my daughter and let her know that they have her dog. And when we drive over to that person’s home to get Venus, she is overjoyed to see my daughter. She comes bounding over, tail wagging, and something like a big smile on her face, if that is possible. But the thing is, she has never found her way back home. We always have to go find her. Thank God it rarely happens, but when it does, we have to go searching to find her.

You know, that is exactly how we are. The Scripture said, “We all like sheep have gone astray.” We are all prone to wander off the path following some dream, some excitement, some fantasy. Never meaning to stray, but straying we do, nonetheless. It’s not that we stop loving God. It’s not that we stop wanting to be in His Presence, but that we have this pull, a call of the wild, if you will. And if we are not careful, we will find ourselves on an unfamiliar path that leads us away from our Savior, and not toward Him, and we get lost and are unable to find our way back home to Him.

That’s why Jesus came, 2,000 years ago, to seek and to save that which was lost. He came to be bruised, for our iniquities, to have the chastisement of our peace placed upon Him, and to receive the stripes by which we are healed. With His own blood, He has given us a new and improved covenant. A covenant of love and peace and righteousness. He has given us the ability to live righteous and holy lives so that we need not stray ever again. For when we are tempted to stray from our God and our Savior, we echo the words of the Apostle Peter to remind ourselves, “Where would we go? For You alone, oh LORD Jesus, You alone have the words of life.”

There is nowhere we can go, and no one that we can run to, but Jesus, and Jesus alone, for it is He who has the words of life and Him alone.

Father, strengthen us and encourage our hearts today. Help us to remember and understand that it is Your Son, our LORD Jesus, who has the words of life. For in Him and in Him alone is the life and the light of men. Help us to run to that light and to remain in that light, in Jesus’ Name I pray, amen.

Matthew 21:14-17 ESV

[14]  And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them. [15] But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant, [16] and they said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” And Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read, “‘Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise’?” [17] And leaving them, he went out of the city to Bethany and lodged there.

Matthew records that when the Chief Priests and the Scribes saw Him healing the people and the children declaring Him the Son of David, they were enraged. Why? They knew what those things meant. The Pharisees were those who studied the Law. They were supposed to know it the best. The Scribes were those who copied the Scriptures. They were the ones who were supposed to know the Law, the prophets, the histories. These are two groups of people who understood exactly what was happening and they despised every second of it. Why?

Jesus wasn’t who they wanted to be the Messiah. The Son of David. He wasn’t a great notable figure. He was born to just a regular mother. His father? A regular man. A carpenter. He wasn’t about starting a revolution. He wasn’t trying to overthrow Caesar. He wasn’t working towards establishing Israel to its former glory. He was simply a carpenter who had began preaching, healing, and casting out demons. Now, even the children saw who Jesus was and they couldn’t take it anymore.

This was not the Messiah they wanted. This was not the Messiah they were waiting for. See, they had a lot of head knowledge but they lacked one thing. The Fear of the LORD. Jesus checked all the boxes. Fulfilled all the prophecies, but because He wasn’t what they wanted or thought He needed to be in that moment, they refused to accept Him. They put their own ideas, biases, desires, feelings, etc. above the Scriptures. And in doing so, above God Himself.

Today, is not much different. There’s a lot of people who know the Scriptures, but because they have no fear of the LORD, they have no understanding of the Scriptures. They have no wisdom. They reject Jesus, just as the Pharisees and the Scribes did. This isn’t just the world, either. It’s not just atheists either. It’s pastors, bishops, deacons, worship leaders, church goers, etc. Jesus is being rejected by all who refuse to humble themselves before Him.

The Pharisees and Scribes missed the Messiah’s first coming. Instead of bowing down at His feet and worshipping Him, they crucified Him. They had Him beaten and scourged. They mocked and taunted Him as He hung on the cross in agony until He died. Jesus is coming back, but this time it’s not to die. This time it’s not to suffer.

When He returns it’s to gather His Bride from one end of the earth to the other. Then He will pour out His wrath on all who rejected Him.

Peace. Love. Go Forth and Don’t Miss His Second Coming.

¹⁵ See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no “root of bitterness” springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled; ~ Hebrews 12:15

I’ve recently been watching shorts of a guy who cooks hotdogs on a griddle to sell them. He has great customer service and seems to genuinely enjoy what he does. What struck me as crazy was his comment section. People were commenting how he thinks he’s a chef cause he flips some hotdogs. They mocked his tossing of the jalapeño in the air with his tongs turn catching it in the other hand with the plate.

See, the enemy will do whatever and use whoever it takes in order to try to bring you down. He uses miserable, empty people in hopes spreading their venom and taking the joy away from you. But don’t let him. Don’t let the enemy steal your joy.

And don’t let the enemy use you to destroy other people’s joy the way someone has destroyed yours. Bringing someone else down won’t lift you up. A root of bitterness will try to entice you to bring everyone else around you down so that you won’t be alone in your bitterness. Why? Because misery loves company. It’s a lie from the enemy trying to convince you that it will make you feel better to bring someone down. The only way to no longer be broken is by allowing the LORD to heal you and uproot that root of bitterness from within you.

Peace. Love. Go Forth and Let God Uproot.

¹³ Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. ¹⁴ For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. ~ Matthew 7:13-14

One of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite stories, Alice In Wonderland, is the scene between Alice and the Cheshire Cat. It goes as follows:

Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
The Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
Alice: I don’t much care where.
The Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn’t much matter which way you go.
Alice: …So long as I get somewhere.
The Cheshire Cat: Oh, you’re sure to do that, if only you walk long enough.

Some may see this as just bad advice, but I don’t really think it was. Their conversation doesn’t end there. He goes on to suggest to either go visit the Mad Hatter or the March Hare. When Alice is lost and in tears, the Cheshire Cat doesn’t just appear to her but comforts her. He then warns her of the Queen of Hearts’ temper, then shows her a secret passageway to the queen’s castle.

See, Lewis Carroll’s whole point of the very first conversation between the Cheshire Cat and Alice was that if you don’t have a true destination in mind, then the road you take doesn’t matter. If you don’t know where you want to go, how you live your life really doesn’t matter. You have to have a destination in mind. See, Lewis Carroll was a devout Christian. He was a deacon in the Church of England. His father was a highly-respected conservative Anglican church figure who heavily influenced him, especially as a child.

Everything Lewis Carroll wrote was directly influenced by his Christian faith in Jesus Christ. He knew and fully believed that there are two roads set before each of us. One that leads to life and one that leads to death. One that many are on and one that few even find, let alone walk. And if we don’t care about the destination, then the path we choose doesn’t matter.

Peace. Love. Go Forth and Care About Your Destination.

⁶ including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, ⁷ To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints ~ Romans 1:6-7

We are all called to a universal calling, that is, a calling to belong to Jesus Christ. And in the same way, we are all called to be saints. In other words, we are all called to A Life of Excellence.

There is no excuse for us to be mean or abrasive with each other. We are called to live holy lives. Because we are all loved by God— For God so loved the world that He gave us Jesus. It was He who died on the cross to provide us with salvation so that we would not have to spend eternity in the Lake of Fire, which burns forever and ever, and the smoke of the torment of those who go there will ascend forever.

It is this calling that I would like to speak to you about this morning—a call to keep yourself holy and free from sin. Don’t believe the lie that you cannot live a holy life.

We are a chosen generation. A royal priesthood. A holy nation. A peculiar people. We are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus.

Peace. Love. Go Forth and Live Chosen.

Psalms 23:4a

⁴ … your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

David describes the LORD as his shepherd. He even goes as far as to say that the LORD’S rod and staff comfort him. What’s so interesting about that? The rod was used for correction. David, in Psalms 21, writes that Jesus would break or rule the nations with a rod of iron. Solomon, David’s son, in Proverbs 26:3, wrote that the rod is for the back of the fool. So, how could David find comfort in the LORD’s rod?

The fool says in his heart, there is no God. See, the fool doesn’t say with his mouth that there is no God, but with his actions. David prayed, “search me, oh LORD,” “create in me a clean heart and renew a right spirit within me.” David found comfort in the correction of the LORD, not because He enjoyed punishment or discipline, but because as long as God was correcting him, he knew the LORD loved him.

It’s when the LORD says enough is enough and stops correcting, when He says okay, have it your way, that’s what David feared. That’s what David found terrifying and distressing because when the LORD turns you over to a reprobate mind. When He turns you over to your own desires and wickedness, that’s when He stops calling you to Himself.

The LORD assures us that He will discipline those whom He loves. He will correct you as a father corrects His child. This is what David found comfort in, the love of God. The relationship between God and His people. A love that corrected and disciplined, not out of wrath, but to teach and transform. To bring us back to Him.

Peace. Love. Go Forth and Take Comfort In Discipline.