GUARDING THE FAITH.

1 Timothy 6:20 & 21 "Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to your care. Turn away from godless chatter and the opposing ideas of what is falsely called knowledge, which some have professed and in so doing have wandered from the faith. Grace be with you."

In this text Paul is telling Timothy to guard and keep what had been entrusted to him. The apostle is referring to the essence of the gospel, and the heart of all that is distinctive in the Christian religion. It has been summarised like this: "We believe in the inspiration, inerrancy and authority of Scripture; in God as Creator, as one God yet three persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; in Jesus Christ, conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, one person yet both human and divine; in the fall of man into sin, and of salvation from sin by God through the atonement of his Son and by his Spirit; in death, the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, in the resurrection, the final judgment, in everlasting joy in heaven and everlasting misery in hell."
These Christian beliefs were coming under attack even in the apostle's day. There were false teachers and Paul disdains their "godless chatter and the opposing ideas of what is falsely called knowledge" (v.20). There were some people who once had shown an interest in the gospel but who had come under the influence of these men "and in so doing [they] have wandered from the faith" (v.21). That is the solemn note on which this letter actually ends. Yesterday's blessings on the Ephesian church are a day late for today. "Timothy, we are under assault. Don't presume on anything that has happened in the past to keep you in the present. 'Guard what has been entrusted to your care'" (v.20).
Guard them! But them alone! The truths that have been entrusted to you in the Scriptures. Don't run ahead of God, probing, inquiring, speculating where God has not revealed. There are certain areas concerning God's ways which are, and forever must be, mysterious. "Timothy, learn to control your curiosity and don't get dragged into unprofitable debates about 'myths and endless genealogies. These promote controversies rather than God's work' (I Tim. 1:4)." But keep up with God. Don't put on the so-called 'contemporary' mask and discard what God has said. Don't neglect anything God has revealed. "Guard what has been entrusted to your care."
It challenges every Christian with the duty of never letting go of what God has given us. We think of someone drawing up a will and appointing an executor to ensure that all the terms of the will are faithfully implemented. How important is that? Justice demands it. Or think of a trust being established with millions set aside to further certain specific aims of the benefactor. How important is it that those causes which he has left his fortune to support are actually being helped and not totally different causes? It is all important, and those who are appointed as trustees have to ensure that that end is being fulfilled. Or consider that contract which you have signed with a builder in which he has promised to build you a house of certain specifications for a certain price. How important is it that he keep to the terms of a contract? It is crucial. If such things are a matter of simple honesty in the world, how much more important it is to guard that which the living God has entrusted to our care!
Of course we are to do more than guard the divine revelation. We are to go into all the world and make disciples of all nations. Then the Lord Jesus told us that we should be "teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you" (Matt. 28:20). So we are to declare what has been entrusted to our care. Also we are to teach one another and our children what God has given to us. The divine revelation is like fertiliser, it is most useful when it is spread abroad. There was an oft-quoted remark of Spurgeon's made at the Annual Meetings of the British and Foreign Bible Society on May 5th, 1875. He was talking about a certain mentality that looked on Scripture as something one had to defend. He imagined a number of people hurrying together and discussing how best to defend a caged lion from a group of men who were armed with sticks and were intent upon attacking it. Spurgeon says, "Many suggestions are made and much advice is offered. This weapon is recommended, and the other. Pardon me if I offer a quiet suggestion. Open the door and let the lion out; he will take care of himself. Why, they are gone! He no sooner goes forth in his strength than his assailants flee. The way to meet infidelity is to spread the Bible. The answer to every objection against the Bible is the Bible" ("Speeches at Home and Abroad," 'The Bible,' reprinted Pilgrim Publications, 1974 p.17). That is a famous statement, and we agree with it. We are not interested in setting up a National Society for the Protection of the Bible! Live the Bible. Learn the Bible. Love the Bible. Preach the Bible. That is our priority in the defence of Biblical truth. But we recognise also that we live in an age of high-velocity rifles and ruthless poachers so that there have to be game-wardens whose task is even to defend lions. Do not forget to guard the Bible's truths from its attackers.




1. Why Must We Guard What has been Entrusted to Our Care?

i] The very men of the Bible itself do so. Think of the prophets. They are implementing the teaching of the five books of Moses. They are applying its truths to the people of God who are being charmed into Baal worship and are being seduced by the gods of the surrounding nations. The covenant people have broken their trust, and God raises up a Hosea and an Amos and an Isaiah to defend the truth and call the nation back to the old paths.
Consider the Lord Jesus himself. What was he doing in the Sermon on the Mount? He says, "You have heard this - it is all right to swear by these objects ... it is all right to love your neighbours and hate your enemies ... it is all right to insist on an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth ... it is all right to have a divorce as long as you give your wife a certificate of divorce." What was happening? They were turning away from what God had given to them. So Jesus speaks, "But I say unto you ... I say unto you ... I say unto you," and he corrects them and he summons the people back to the truths he is guarding.
Consider the apostles of Christ. Peter at Pentecost guarded what David had written in the psalms, and what Joel had written in his prophecy. He would not let the people forget those truths. "This is that," he said to them. This event is the fulfilment of that prophecy. He is applying the word of God to the events of crucifixion, and resurrection and the outpouring of the Spirit which they had been witnessing.
Or take the epistles of the New Testament. Paul is guarding the historicity of Adam and the fall of man, the fact that woman was created after man and for him, that God is the Sovereign Potter and man is the clay, that God's purpose had ever been to incorporate the Gentiles into the Covenant of Grace, and so on. He is guarding the great truths God had entrusted to the writers of the Old Testament. The writers of the Bible all guard what had been entrusted to their care.
ii] The men God has raised up through the history of the church have done so. At the beginning no one was admitted into the church without making a confession of faith: "Jesus is Lord." Then the false teachers arose - just as Christ has warned, wolves in sheep's clothing. The truth about the deity of Christ, or the truth about the Trinity, or the truth about the depravity of man, or the truth about the sufficiency of Scripture, or the truth about the basis of a free justification were stolen by the heretics. The church grew careless about guarding what God had entrusted to it, and some men saw this. They were holy men, courageous men. Their lives were moulded by the Bible. All of them were persecuted for what they taught, and many were martyred for guarding what was entrusted to their care. But they would never stop obeying what God said - "Guard what has been entrusted to you care."
Those men gathered the church into great councils and assemblies and they produced statements of what they knew the Bible was teaching, like the Apostles' Creed and the formula of Chalcedon, the 39 Articles and the 1689 London Confession of Faith. Those creeds are like diamonds mined from the Bible. As long as a diamond is in the dark womb of the earth is does not seem to be made for the light. You could easily fail to see its value, but once it is extracted and polished, how it sparkles. So too when a Christian takes up a verse from Scripture, polishes it in the right way, puts it in a certain setting and lets the light of the rest of the Bible shine upon it. Then it can become the most beautiful truth you have ever seen.
The creeds are like hymns. Their purpose is to glorify God. Doxology is too great for us to speak. It needs to be sung. In Psalm 116 the psalmist asks, "What shall I render unto the Lord?" Psalm 111 gives the answer, "I will praise the Lord with my whole heart in the assembly of the upright." When we answer the first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, with the words, "Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him for ever," there is something of extraordinary beauty about that sentence. In the year 451 the church was being attacked by error about the Person of Christ. False teachers were trying to rob Christ the God-man of his two-fold nature. So the leaders of the church met near Istanbul in Turkey in a place called Chalcedon and they came up with a magnificent, thoughtful summary of the two-fold nature of Christ, the heart of which stated that the divine and human natures were "without confusion, without change, without division, without separation." Over thirteen centuries later lived the most famous Welsh woman hymn-writer, Ann Griffiths. She has a hymn in which she has turned those words of the Chalcedon Confession into doxology. The hymn is 'O am gael ffydd i edrych' - 'O to have faith to see Christ as he is,' is its theme. She declares in the first verse that she wants to see this:-
'Two natures in one Person,
Conjoined inseparably,
Distinct and not confounded,
In perfect unity.'
That is pure Chalcedonian theology, and it was the stuff of Ann Griffith's meditation and her longing. Whether it was the ordinary Christian people of the fifth century with few of our educational advantages, or the 18th century Christians in Wales, a farmer's daughter from Powys, they all expected to be taught the theology of the Bible, and learn it, and love God with all their hearts. What were they doing? They were guarding what had been entrusted to their care in worship.
The confessions and catechisms of earlier generations are our heritage, left to us by our fathers in which they tell "the generation to come the praises of the Lord, and his strength, and his wonderful works that he has done" (Ps. 78:4). But the confessions are also a weapon by which we guard what has been entrusted to us against numerous enemies. Christians are called to "earnestly contend for the faith" (Jude 3). Don't let the gospel suffer because you were silent. One reads of arrogant surgeons who walk about hospitals like dictators, whose butchery cripples the lives of scores of women, but who are such intimidating personalities that none dares to challenge their incompetence. So it has been with the modernists who dominate large denominations and cry to simple Bible believing men and women that they should stay out of church politics, that they do not understand theology, and that they are going to split the church if they challenge their religious butchery. So the glory is taken from Christ, and Christians fail to guard what has been entrusted to their care. The consequence of that is the churches become irrelevant and go into rapid decline. What denomination dominated by liberal ideas is growing anywhere in the world? Not a single one. God has taken his light from them.

2. How Must We Guard What has been Entrusted to Our Care?
Think of this letter and all that the apostle has been telling Timothy as to how he should behave each day - "hold on to faith and a good conscience ... the overseer must be above reproach ... temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle ... set an example to for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity ... watch your life and doctrine closely ... pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness." Here is this absolute obsession, that runs through the letter, with how Timothy lives his life.
Christlikeness is something to be pursued throughout the pilgrimage of our walk with the Lord to heaven. There is no secret to getting it other than what we find written in every chapter of the Bible, look to God in faith seeking his grace, and turn each day from your sins. Only such people can guard what has been entrusted to their care.
A man with a mere intellectual grasp of orthodoxy is useless in guarding Christianity. That is the faith which King Agrippa had. The apostle said to him, "King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know you do." (Acts 26:27). But the king, though he believed the Bible, had no interest in guarding its truths. He continued to serve himself and the desires of his heart and mind. He had the same faith that demons have: "You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that - and shudder" (James 2:19). One who lives in the fellowship of demons cannot defend the truths of Christ. The grace of the doctrine is essential to guard the doctrines of grace. The living waters of the word may not be served in rusty cups.
But there is another danger too, and that is present in our circles, and that is that guarding the gospel results in doctrinal complacency or static orthodoxy. What is that a picture of? A church resting on its oars, or a church retiring on its laurels. "We have the faith." Yes. "It is stated wonderfully in our confessions." Yes. "Now we have to protect it." No. A church must never suppose it has exhausted the Word of God. The Lord Jesus said that out of that treasure we are to be bringing forth old things, to be sure, but also new (Matt. 13:52). The church must be conservative, that is, it must conserve all that is true, all that our fathers have bought by the insights and their very lives, but a church must also be progressive. The enemy will require it. There are new attacks from what the apostle calls here, "the opposing ideas of what is falsely called knowledge" (v.21). They must be answered. There are new understandings and clarifications which God himself opens up from his word. So, we are exhorting one another to abide in the Word, and we also have to build on that Word, and keep building. Failure to abide spells destruction. Failure to keep building results in petrifaction. To guard what has been entrusted to our care means more than being orthodox. It means being holy and creative.



How then are we to effectively guard what has been entrusted to us? We have cleared away how it is not to be done, but positively what are we to do to obey this exhortation? Three things:-

i] With our minds. The mark of the Christian is teachableness. He was not always like this. He once had a mind that was empty of the things of God. Maybe he was initially put off when he entered a church like ours to see behind the smiling deacons a book table, and he who only read a newspaper, thought, "If I become a Christian I will have to read! Impossible!" But what a change has taken place. He gradually become interested in the faith, and in the Bible, and then in reading it for himself, and then in books that would help him enter into the Bible. The Lord opens the understanding of the people he regenerates. That is why we are not embarrassed about a book table in the vestibule. Grace gives a believer a seriousness about growing in wisdom and knowledge, gaining a literal knowledge of the Old and New Testaments by reading it day by day. When one of the Pharaohs asked Ptolemy to teach him geometry by a short method, the sage is reported to have replied, "There is no royal road to learning." There is no royal road to heaven.
Think of the change in young people when they become Christians. Mary Jones walked miles barefoot to Bala to buy her own Bible, and she was one of thousands of teenagers in whom the new birth registered itself in a new frame of mind. A mighty work of God makes a nation literate.
We are saying that in order to guard the faith you have to know the faith. We sing, "Take my intellect and use Every power as Thou wouldst choose." Then let us be sure that our intellects are growing in grasping preaching, and reading books about the Bible and the history of the church. Go to the Christian Book Shop and select some. Borrow some from me or from the little church library. Take notes of the sermons and think about them afterwards. Ask other Christians for help. Write down verses that you find have been helpful to you. Especially there is one way of growing in the grace of guarding the faith, by getting involved in service - young people' work on a beach mission or in a camp this summer - and then you will have to be growing. We have to guard the faith with our minds, by studying it and knowing it well, so that we are not defeated by ignorance.
ii] With our souls. Think of the writer of Psalm 119. How does he go about gaining a knowledge of the Bible? Prayerfully. "Open my eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of your law" (Ps. 119:18). I am like a blind man before something wonderful - a painting, some embroidery, or a piece of jewellery. I'll never see why people are speaking in tones of such wonder about it until I get my sight. So it is with us, we need to address God with this problem that we are not being moved by the Scriptures. Maybe they no longer grip us as once they did. It is not a better preacher which is your paramount need. It is not more data about the Bible. It is the illumination of the Holy Spirit. "God give me light!"

There was once a 30 year-old man in Scotland called Alexander Henderson who went in disguise to hear the minister Robert Bruce preaching. Henderson despised evangelical religion, and he did not want anyone in the congregation to recognise him, but he wanted to hear Bruce who had the reputation of being a famous orator. So he sat incognito in the congregation, but God knew he was there. Robert Bruce got up and announced the words of the Lord Jesus as his text, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber." Alexander was deeply convicted merely at hearing that portion of the word of God being read. "I shouldn't be here," he thought. "I am in a sphere to which I do not belong. I'm a burglar who has crept in. But I want to belong to these people. I don't want to be a thief. I want to join them in the fold of Christ by the right way." That was the beginning of salvation, seeing the truth of the Bible, convicted by it and understanding what it was saying to him. He then became the great champion of the Bible for thirty more years of his life.
Jesus from John 14:21, "I will love him, and will manifest myself to him." That was the verse that spoke to him, and in those words the very experience which the Lord Jesus speaks of became his also; he knew the Lord as his own Saviour. He wrote these grand words, "The naughty was taken out of my heart, and the good put in ... The Bible looked new; creation looked new, and I felt a love for all mankind." If you are to become a defender of the faith then the naughty must be taken out of your soul and the good put in." We have to guard the faith with our souls, by regular habits of Christian devotion - poured out prayers, persistent Bible reading, attentive church attendance.
iii] With our bodies. One of the strongest keeps for the faith is a pattern of good deeds. Paul tells the Romans that in the light of the grace they have received from God they should be presenting their bodies as living sacrifices to him. In other words, their hands and feet and tongues, their strength and energy should be spent in service. You know how we are built, that if we start acting badly the faith which we say we profess doesn't seem real to us. We consider ourselves hypocrites. But as we stretch out our hands in kindness and care intelligently for others Jesus Christ seems to have truly manifest himself to us.
Think of an athlete and how he trains. There is a diet which he sticks to. He gets to bed the right time and he takes on the daily discipline of training. If he is the goal-kicker for a rugby team he will kick hundreds of balls from all over the ground between the posts every week. If he is a hurdler he will cross hundreds of hurdles just trying to shave them. Certain muscle groups will be worked in thousands of repetitions till they have mass and flexibility. Certain moves will be practised again and again until they become second nature, a dummy, a sidestep, a backhand.
Each time he trains he gets a little better, some careless habit dies a little and a disciplined new one begins to come to life. That is, each training session causes a tiny conversion. But it is only after many seasons of such training that a person can perform his skills by second nature. The mini-conversion repeated thousands of times add up to the change of one's life. A worthy athlete becomes a disciplined athlete. That is the way a person becomes a defender of the faith.
"We have to be trained in godliness or holiness, till it becomes a second nature. Each time we pray; every time we resist a temptation, or bring a gift to a lonely person, or make ourselves think of the needs of others - each time we do these things our old self dies a little and our new self comes more to life. Add up all these mini-conversions across years of training and you have a spiritual athlete. A flabby and clumsy Christian becomes a trim and graceful one"
How crucial this is. When you first defended the faith you were unwise. You were hectoring, disrespectful to your parents, angry, a bit of a bully. You jumped in at the deep end. You thought you were smarter than you were. People tied you up in knots. You got embarrassed and you were an embarrassment. It happens to all of us. Don't give up. Don't mock what once you were. Don't become cynical. Don't do things but sullenly - "I suppose I have to go to Prayer Meeting tonight." Don't think that you are not gifted for defending the faith. Don't think it is too hard or too boring. People will sneer at the God-squad.
You are simply out of shape. The best athletes go through bad patches. A soccer player will have a whole season when he seems to have lost it all, but he comes back. He keeps coming back. He keeps fit because without that he will never come back. It is trained people who have fun. It takes hard work to play well. Doing good with your mind and body, your arms and legs, your heart and soul is the very stuff of the Christian life. We are not saved by doing it. We are saved to do it. We are saved to guard what has been entrusted to the care of the church by the Lord Jesus, and we can never keep the faith unless we keep fit and work for people, just as the Lord Jesus did, seeing the dirty feet, and seeing the basin and seeing the towel, and noticing nobody wanted to do this work, and then doing it ourselves. That shows the reality of the faith in us, and we also have more confidence then to guard it by our words when we are keeping it by our lives.



3. What are the Consequences of Guarding What Has Been Entrusted to Our Care?
Grace will be with us (v.21). These are the final words of the apostle in this letter. What is grace? It is not 'goodbye.' It is not a farewell greeting. It is the omnipotence of God saving and keeping his people. It is Paul reminding Timothy again that he cannot survive without the unmerited power of God. As we keep away from error, and guard whatever things are true and lovely that have been entrusted to us then we will find the grace of God all sufficient.
And how will that sustaining grace manifest itself in those who guard the faith?
i] The Peace and Unity of the Church. It is error and immorality that divides the church not evangelical Christians. King Ahab who married Jezebel and they introduced idolatry into Israel, and very few spoke out against it. The prophet Elijah was one and he preached against the worship of Baal, and God sent a drought on Israel because of its sin. But when King Ahab met Elijah what did he say to him, "Is that you, you troubler of Israel?" (I Kings 18:17). That is always the response of the world. Evangelical Christians will speak again modernistic unbelief and the tolerance of immorality within a denomination. They are immediately dubbed trouble-makers. We reply as Elijah did, "I have not made trouble for Israel, but you ... You have abandoned the Lord's command and have followed the Baals" (I Kings 18:18). It was not Luther who caused the great separation from the unreformed Roman church it was the doctrines and practices of Rome. Those who guard what has been entrusted to the church bring peace and unity. It is error that splits churches.
ii] Pastoral Encouragement and Wisdom. When a congregation is united in guarding all that God has said in his word what a wise congregation that is. There are timid members but they are always being reminded that salvation depends ultimately not upon their efforts but upon God's grace towards them. This God is not like a chameleon whose moods change as ours do, but he says, "I the Lord change not" (Mal.3:6). Once this all-knowing God has sovereignly and lovingly determined to save a person he will not change when we fall into sin, as fall we do each day. He will give us the grace of repentance and pick us up that we keep going and keep going. What God begins, God finishes. "I am persuaded of this one thing: he who started a good work in you will complete it by the day of Christ Jesus" (Phil.1:6). Those who guard the biblical faith have real encouragement to offer their congregations. A merciful sovereign Shepherd to be our Saviour. Rely on the eternal unchanging love of God, and look to him.
Are the answer to our problems found in man's reason or in the Word of God? Everyone in the congregation must answer that. Are you going to accept only what makes sense to you, or what God's word says even when it sounds contradictory? The Bible teaches the foreordination of all things - the selling of Joseph into Egypt, and the crucifixion of Jesus. On the other hand the Bible clearly testifies that God hates sin, that he will not listen to the prayers of the unrepentant, and that he is Holy Holy Holy. These things seem two seemingly unreconcilable positions, yet the Christian guards them both because God has spoken them both. So often we end up with Paul's exclamation of worship before so great a Lord - "Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgements and his ways past finding out" (Romans 11:33). The question is, do you believe such a God or not? If you do then guard all he has said.

THE SANDALS OF PEACE

Ephesians 6:15 “and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.”

What the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, has done is to have achieved peace with God. This is what the Bible affirms in many places, for example, in Romans 5:1, “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” This is something every Christian possesses. Paul joins himself in solidarity with the entire Roman congregation of believing men and women, slaves and free, the illiterate and the poets; he assures them, “All of us now have peace with God and it’s through our Lord Jesus.” It wasn’t because of Paul’s blameless Christian living and years of self-denying service that he had peace with God. It was only because of the life and death of the Lord Jesus. The Son had propitiated the wrath of God which is revealed from heaven against our ungodly and unrighteous lives, and he has done this by taking our sin and dying under the judgment of God upon the cross. Jesus has taken responsibility for all our guilt and answered God’s demands in his own body by his life and death, and God is totally and completely satisfied to look on Jesus and pardon us. His anger towards us has been replaced by peace. He now loves us with the same love with which he loves his own Son, because he sees us in his Son, clothed with the righteousness of his Son, as blameless as his Son, as lovely in his eyes as his own dear Son. There is peace with God though the achievement of Jesus Christ alone. That is the message of Christianity. You can know the peace of God and the love of God though your sins are uncountable. But you must face up to that guilt. You mustn’t play games with God pretending everything is fine and that your sins have only been little pink sins and that “it doesn’t matter to God how men live, and that it’s his job to forgive us.” It is not like that with you. It is not like that with anyone. It has never been like that nor ever will be. Your sins are as red as scarlet when the thrice holy God looks at them. The very angels hide their eyes in his presence, but you were born in sin and shapen in iniquity. You’ve never
done anything wholly free from sin, and while you are rejecting the Son of God you will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on you (Jn. 3:36). Your only hope is to cry mightily to God. He may hear you today. He may give you assurance of his forgiveness today. But there is certainly no peace with God without Jesus Christ. Look to him! Pray the publican’s prayer until you know you’ve been forgiven, “God be merciful to me a sinner.”

So this is the peace that our verse is talking about. It is not our feelings of peace but the good news of peace with God through Jesus Christ for every sinner who trust in him. That is the message of the gospel; “there is peace for you brother, and peace for you sister; there is peace for the vilest offender; there is peace for the chief of sinners as long as they confess their sin and cast themselves on the mercy of God. Come from the war-zone of your daily life; come from the tension and guilt of not doing what you ought to do, and doing what you should not be doing. Find peace with God through the person and work of his beloved Son, Jesus Christ. Cast yourself on the merits of Jesus the great peace-offering.” That is the message of the Christian soldier. That is the gospel of peace.

The half boot of the Roman legionary. It was made of leather; it left the toes exposed; it had thick studded soles and was tied to the ankles and shins with straps. With these boots the legionary marched from Rome to Wales and stood solidly on them while engaged in warfare with the ancient Brits! Shoes have to be fitted individually on the feet of soldiers. One style, officially issued, and provided by the powers that be - your own trainers or loafers are strictly forbidden - but the sandals are all different sizes and get creased and worn in different ways. You understand the analogy? There is one gospel of peace with God through Jesus Christ. One only-begotten Son of God; one Mediator with God, the man Christ Jesus; one name under heaven given amongst men whereby we must be saved; one way, truth and life; no man comes to the Father but by him alone. So there is only one gospel boot for every Christian to put on, but all of us are different personalities with different gifts. We have come to God from different backgrounds at different times in our lives. When I look at a congregation I don’t see a page of postage stamps, rows of identical people all looking back at me. Everyone is different, but no one may say, “Well. I think of the gospel like this. .” The Christian gospel has been defined for us once and for all in the Bible and we have to adjust and shape ourselves to receive and serve it. Our feet are ‘fitted’ with one style of gospel boots, but each one of is different, with different gifts and abilities.

So what is this “readiness” that Paul speaks of here? You notice that the apostle doesn’t urge us to “put on the shoes of peace.” It is more interesting than that. We are being urged to be fitted with “the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.” You see advertisements for perfume or clothes and they suggest that you will possess a poise if you put on this product. It is not just a garment you are wearing but confidence and style, so that you enter a room wearing this and people’s heads will turn and you will be surrounded by fascinating people. That is the gimmick of the advertiser to encourage you to purchase his product. Paul is not selling us anything here; these are not Nike half-boots, but he is telling us that receiving this gospel of peace as your gospel gives you the only foundation for a successful life as a Christian. It will make you ready for the challenges and opportunities in this fascinating pilgrimage of being a Christian. You will be fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. Now what does he mean by this?



i] GOSPEL SHOES MAKE US STEADFAST.
These Roman soldiers’ shoes helped them to grip the ground when they fought. So the Christian too must have stability; you have a foundation of peace with God through the Lord Jesus on which to build your entire life. The hymnist Edward Mote affirms that truth in these familiar words,

“His oath, His covenant and His blood,
Support me in the ‘whelming flood;
When all around my soul gives way,
He then is all my hope and stay.
On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;
All other ground is sinking sand.”

God has given us some fine stepping stones through the quicksands of life.
The first is that God is, and that he is love and that he grips this world and so our lives have a purpose. Another is that he has spoken to us by prophets and apostles and his Son so we know his mind. Another is that God has told his creatures what is right and wrong; he has told us how we should live in ten great stepping stones. There are more; he has told us what he has done through his Son Jesus Christ to make us right and that we need to entrust ourselves to him. There is no need for any of us to sink. There is another great stepping stone; he has put the Spirit of truth within us, and so with what he has given us in his wise law, and what we have within our hearts in a biblically enlightened conscience it is like having a permanent personal foundation to stand on
day by day. I go to work and face all the moral dilemmas of relationships with other people, and there are moments when I feel out of my depth. I am going under, but no, God gives me a foundation; it is the sandals of the gospel of peace, on which I can stand secure day by day. You can stand your ground. You have a wonderfully strong but maneuverable and flexible foundation.

ii] GOSPEL SHOES MAKE US ABOUNDING IN GOD’S WORK.
“What then is the spiritual application? The point, clearly, is that we must not be slow, we must not be heavy-footed, there must be no dragging of the feet. There is nothing which is so fatal to successful progress as a sluggish, lifeless Christian. Ask the average man in the street why he doesn’t come to a place of worship, why he is not a Christian, and you will find that the answer he is most likely to give you is that it is all so dull, and so dead. He says there is nothing in it, no life. And of course there is much to justify what he says. You have but to compare and contrast a typical sample of worldly people with a typical sample of Christian people to see the basis on which he makes his statement. Look at the enthusiasm and the vitality of people who watch the football on Saturday afternoon in the winter, or the people who go to the races. Listen to the shouting and the excitement! Look at those people who go after their sports or whatever they are interested in! They want to be there in time, they want the best seats, and they want the sport to go on and on, and are disappointed when it finishes. Contrast that with Christian people who seem to think they are doing something wonderful by going to a place of worship on a Sunday morning. They are not quite sure whether they will go or not when they wake up in the morning, but at last, as a matter of duty, they decide they will go — hoping the service will not be too long. Isn’t that the position?
“Do we give the impression when we come to our places of worship that we are doing the most wonderful and thrilling thing in the world? Are we alive, are we rejoicing? How do we compare with these other people? A staid, lifeless Christian is a denial, in many respects, of the Gospel at its most glorious point. To be heavy-footed, slow-moving, lethargic, having to be whipped up and roused constantly, and urged to do this and that instead of running to it, and rejoicing in it, is a sad misrepresentation of Christianity.

iii] GOSPEL SHOES MAKE US EVANGELISTICALLY SUCCESSFUL.
“Our feet are fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.” You are ready for action. You are standing on this great objective reality that it is well with your soul and God. Peace with God is crucial to inner peace. I say to you that if a man is torn up inside by guilt feelings, God’s pardon alone can bring him peace. If you’re full of anxiety and despair about the future, I say that God’s strength alone can give you energy to go on. Lack of peace with God is a dangerous state to be in; it can sometimes move you to do things that are self-destructive or harmful to others. Something inside us tells us that if something is wrong, somebody’s got to pay for it - so we either put ourselves through needless suffering or we make other people suffer by being cruel to them. But once you know that Jesus has suffered for you and paid the price to give you peace with God, then you can have this inner peace. It passes all understanding. Guilt is replaced with assurance, anger with compassion, fear with courage, despair with confidence.

When God makes a peace treaty with you and you feel his peace in your heart, you become a soldier for God. Satan loses his ability to intimidate you. Satan will attack your heart, but you keep working for your master. You fall into various sins, but you confess them to God each day and you keep working for the Lord. If your feet are fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace, your inner peace will help motivate to keep working for him.

There is a great exhortation of Peter in his first letter about this readiness to speak the gospel of peace. What are the methods he suggests? Is there some surefire, copper-bottomed, guaranteed way of witnessing so that whenever I speak people become Christians? No there is none of that, but he mentions essentials that we dare not ignore. “In your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience,” (I Pet. 3:15&16). What does he say? Five things:



Firstly, to make sure that in our hearts Christ is set apart as Lord. Our religion isn’t one interest among many to be picked up and laid down as the mood takes us. We don’t embrace Christ for a time, just while on our way to something else which is more important to us. Christ is set apart to a special place in our life and that special place is his Lordship over us. He is Lord of every part of our beings, our time, our desires and ambitions, our possessions, our relationships, our enthusiams and pleasures. Christ is total and absolute Lord of our lives, and if we find something coming in and taking over and easing him off the throne of our hearts then we hear all sorts of alarm bells ringing. We will never be effective in spreading the gospel unless Jesus Christ is set apart in our lives as our Lord. There is that earlier incident in the life of Peter himself that he might have been reflecting on here, when God gave Peter a vision of a sheet coming down from heaven with all kinds of animals on it, and God said to him, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.” And Peter’s response was “Surely not, Lord!” (Acts 10:14). “No . . . Lord!” You surely see the impossibility of that attitude. If he is your Lord then it must always be, “Yes.” Either the lordship is going to end the disobedience or the disobedience will end the lordship. Peter eventually does what his Lord says and then he is able to go to the house of Cornelius and preach the gospel to the Gentiles. Christ must be set apart as supreme Lord of your life for any success in evangelism.


Secondly, Peter says to be always ready to answer our questioners. We may be ready to answer when we have attended a particularly helpful meeting. We may be ready to give a reason for our faith the week after we have attended a weekend course in how to witness, but when we are lying on the floor of despondency, overwhelmed by our sense of failure, conscious of how poor we are as believers, that we have served God so unprofitably, then when the questioner says, “Don’t you go to church? Why do you go?” Then are we ready? Is the gospel true on a wet February Monday? Is there peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ when our hearts are as cold as refrigerators? We have to be always ready because we don’t know when a question about our faith is going to be asked. We can't tell when the conversation is going to move around to faith and church and Christianity, and we cannot dictate that it has to be at our best times and on our terms, and so we have to prepared always. Our feet must always be fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace

Thirdly, Peter says, with gentleness. Amazing! Here is a soldier in all his armour and with his sword in his hand, but he is not like other soldiers, he is gentle. Why does Peter say this? He is reminding us of the personalness of the testimony. Always remember it is a human being you are speaking to; always consider his worth and his dignity. Always remind yourself that though this man is not a Christian that does not give you the right to speak to him from a position of conscious assured superiority. You know only too well that he may be a human being in the depths of degradation - it may be that - but you know that there but for the grace of God go you. Your attitude to men and women is that you esteem them better than yourself.

It seems to me exceedingly important - even psychologically - that those to whom we are speaking have the true impression that they are very important to us, that they matter to us, and our regard for them is very high. We are not approaching them with any presumption, far less with any consciousness of our superiority, but we approach them with gentleness, not sectarian pride or intellectual arrogance, but meekness, considering our own weakness and unworthiness.
Better a patient man than a warrior, a man who controls his temper than one who takes a city” (Provs. 16:32). The City of Man is always besieged and taken by gentleness.

Fourthly, Peter says, with respect, or literally with ‘fear’ or awe. I don’t think that it means that we witness with a fear of those to whom we speak - it’s not the fear of cowardice, or the fear on a human level of the person to whom we are testifying. It is the fear of which Paul speaks about on other occasions when he says, for example to the church in Corinth , “I was among you in weakness and fear and much trembling.” Now Paul wasn’t frightened of the people of Corinth one little bit, so where did the fear come from? He was overwhelmed by the greatness of his responsibility, that knowing the momentousness of the issues it should be up to him to bear witness to a living soul. Our hearers will live for ever in either heaven or hell and this may be the only chance they have of hearing of Jesus Christ. How solemn and fearful that is, and how great the issues

Fifthly, Peter says, you keep a clear conscience. If you are a hypocrite, witnessing from under layers of fresh guilt and failure, then you are not going to speak with any conviction about the saving and keeping power of the Lord Jesus. You confess your sins to God; you put things right with the people you have offended.

Peter tells us this is the way to readiness and evangelistic success. It is very disappointing isn’t it? No ‘three laws’ or ‘four methods’ or a course of study and a meal in which to win people for Christ. Rather, gentleness, fear, a clear conscience and Christ as the Lord of our hearts. This is the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. How very searching, that these are the means God blesses to present the gospel of peace to others. This is how the kingdom of God advances.

The Armor of God :Eph6 :11-12

The bible depicts countless battles from Genesis to revelation it pages reveal there are both physical and spiritual wars raging . however the primary forces of Scripture is the ongoing conflict between Christ and Satan. Revelation speaks that what began as a cosmic war in heaven will soon end in Armageddon .showdown between the forces of good and the powers of evil, every single one fo us is involved the battleground for this intense spiritual struggle is no some piece of earthly real estate it is the human heart. Both Jesus and the devil are supremely interested in winning pssession of our minds and hearts for this reason , for this reason Christians are called to be more than peaceful spectators in the cataclysmic conflict we must be committed front-line commandos
St Paul , reminds us' we wrestle not against flesh and bllod but against principalities against powers against the rulers of the darkness of this world against spiritual wickedness in high places (Ephesians 6:12). Paul also marks it clear that Christians commitment to his cause and commander should be as real and complete as for any earthly soldiers
the importance of wearing armor when charging off into battle We are not called to wear the faulty body armor of Saul, or Goliath ,rather we must put on the unfailing armor of God ! St paul was expanding on the words of the old testament prophet Isaiah who had made a similar spiritual association for two of the articles of armor' For he put on righteousness as a breastplate, and an a helmet of salvation upon his head (Isaiah 59:17)

let's consider each of these articles of defense one by one to see what we can learn



Belt of Truth
the spiritual significance is that God does not simply want us to point are the truth; he wants us to wear it have it wrapped about us not only does that belt hold everything in place but it also serves to carry the sheath that holds the sword of spirit for ready access . Christians have fled haked and ashamed when challenged by the enemy because they have not secured the belt of truth. never forget that wearing the belt of truth also means wearing Christ for he is ' the way , the truth and the life ( john 14:6). That is whey Paul said ' for as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ (Galatians 3:27, emphasis added )

Breastplate of righteousness
the breastplate was an important article of defense that protected the front torso and all of the vital organs from a mortal wound, It was often composed for a solid piece of metal but it could also numerous small pieces that were sewn to cloth of leather that overlapped much like scales of a fish, as 700 to 1,000 per coat,
Waring the breastplate of righteousness is always in partnership with the robe of Jesus righteousness
'I put on righteousness and it clothed me (Jho29:14) . also keep in mind that the high priest wore a golden breastplate over his linen robe that was set with 12 precious stones each inscribed with one of the names of the 12 tribes of Israel, ‘ And Aaron shall bear the name of the children of Israel in the breastplate of judgment upon his heart (Exodus 28:29) . the only way we can experience victory in battle against the devil is through confidence that the righteousness of Jesus covers our hear that we are forgiven
Another interesting aspect of the breastplate was that it offered no protection to the person’s back it was assumed that the soldiers would not turn there backs toward the enemy to retreat Likewise Christina soldiers should stand firm and never surrender any ground to the devil, Instead let the devil flee from you steadfast loyalty ‘ submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you ( James 4:7, emphasis added )

Shield of Faith
The warriors shield was his first line of defense, Usually made of wood or bronze, it was often big enough to protect the whole body when the soldiers crouched down under a hail of arrows . Likewise, faith in Christ’s blood is our first defense against the great accuser (Zechariah 3:1-5)
The purpose for this shield of faith was to deflect the fiery darts of the enemy and prevent them from ever making contact. The shield was not held lossely in the solder’s hand, but was firmly strapped to his forearm so he could resist the mighty blow of any enemy’s sword without fear of dropping it ,Likewise, Christians cannot afford to have a flimsy faith while in the heart of spiritual battle
The shields of he old were also often of a distinctive nature sometimes marked with the insignia or name of the king to the help soldiers avoid fighting their own comrades in the confusion of battle, in the same way when the devil sends his flaming arrows of temptation we are to hold up the shield bearing the name of our king of Kings , Jesus , through faith in his name we can resist.
‘ there hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man : but god is faithful who will suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able: but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it’ (1 Corinthians10:13)



Helmet of Salvation
Wearing a helmet improperly prove to be a fatal mistake , in (1 Samuel 17:40-49 ) we see what Goliath did with his helmet. The purpose for this helmet of salvation , Your mind should not be open to anything and everything As we study and come to understand God’s Word, there should be a settling into the truth ‘ that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by trickery of men in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting’(Ephesians 4:14, NKJV)
We must firmly strap the helmet of salvation in place and guard these avenues to the soul

Gospel shoes
In the Bible , the foot is a symbol for the direction or the walk of a person’s life.
‘how beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings of tidings of good that published salivation (Isaiah 52:7)
You don’t want to be caught without your gospel shoes while journeying through this wilderness ! don’t remove your gospel shoes for any we never need to worry about them wearing away God will resole them every time we return to the cross, It we are faithful he will say to us as he did to the children of the Israel: Your sandals have not worn out your feet( Deuteronomy 26:5, NKJV)

Sword of God’s word
The sword was the most common weapons in battle. The sword of god’s word is what Jesus used against the devil and it also gave the beast of Revelation 13 a deadly wound (Revelation 13:3-4) .When Jesus said ‘ I did not come to bring peace but a sword,’
He was not saying that he , the Prince of peace had come to start war ( Matthew 10:34)
.Rather he was pointing out that the sword that god’s world has a dividing effect
Several time this sword is depicted as having two edges: ‘for the word of god is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow and it a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the hearts’ ( Hebrews 4:12)
The again in Revelation 1:16, the bible says ‘ He had in his right hand seven stars; and of his moth went a sharp tow-edged sword;
The two edges of the Spirit’s sword are the two witnesses of god Word the new and Old testaments,. I t is also call a two- edged sword because it is to be used both against the enemy and for personal use, Like the Philippian jailer we must be ready to apply the sword of god’s word to over selves (Act 16:27)
Ancient soldiers also used their swords for cooking splitting , kindling and for cutting the ropes that bound their captives to set them free , likewise the word of god is a practical too for every are of life as well as in fighting the devil.
A soldier traveling in enemy territory never left his sword out of reach in the same way a Christian ‘should be ready always to give a an answer to every man that asketh you’re a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear (1 Peter 3:15)

All prayer
The last of the armaments were really an attitude, any general knows that victory almost always depends on which army has the element of surprise. Even the best of armor is almost useless if the soldiers are found dozing, We are commanded to be ‘watchful to this end with all perseverance’ (Ephesians 6:18)
‘take ye heed , watch and pray; for ye know not when the time is ‘ (Mark 13:33)
‘be sober , be vigilant; because your adversary the devil as a roaring lion walketh about seeking whom he may devour’ (1 Peter 5:8)

Three times Paul urges his reader to stand with the armor, an army is not better than its discipline. God pays the bill for entire arsenal, all that we need was purchased at Calvary with the blood of his own dear son, Just as Jonathan so loved David that he gave his armor , sword , robe and indeed his very throne (1 Samuel 18:3,4 ) so Jesus gives us all we need to be assured to total and final victory

End Times Events Summarized

The Second Coming of Christ: No Secret Rapture!
It must, therefore, be plainly manifest, that they who talk of expecting Christ’s return at any moment, and in secret, are declaring that which is according to the traditions of men, which make void the Word of God; and not according to those Scriptures of Truth, which alone are to be the Christian’s standard, and guide to a right knowledge of the revealed will of God. These tell us, that His Coming is to be IMMEDIATELY AFTER the tribulation of those days. If any shall say, "Behold He is in the desert;" we are not to go forth; or if they say, "Behold He is in the secret chambers;" we are not to believe it; for as the lightening cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the Coming of the Son of Man be (Matthew 24:26-30).



Rise and Destruction of Antichrist
And we are distinctly told in Scripture that before the Day of Christ, THE APOSTASY Must FIRST come, and that THE MAN OF SIN (Antichrist) must be revealed, etc., and that he, and his hosts, are to be destroyed by the brightness of Christ’s Coming (2 Thess. 2).


The Character of Antichrist

And if we would but read more carefully and earnestly our Bibles, we should see his character and work fully described; how that he will rise gradually into prominence, his early career being symbolized by "a Little Horn" coming up amongst the Ten Horns (i.e., the Ten Kings, Dan. 7) at first supporting the mighty Babylonish system (Rev. 17:3) which he will finally control, when the Ten Kings "have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the Beast." (v. 13). We should learn also, how fascinating, magnificent, and mighty, yet crafty and deceiving, he will be; being energized by Satan: a cruel persecutor; a blaspheming Apostate; causing those who will not worship him, to be put to death. Consequently we should see how the Nations under his control, will apostatize, and worship him and the Devil (Rev. 13:4).



The Great Tribulation

We should also learn respecting the last three and a half years of this age—the period of his supreme control and reign over the Ten Kingdoms. During this time the "two witnesses" prophesy; (Rev. 11) when Christianity (represented by the "woman") will be driven out of the Roman Earth; (Rev. 12) a time of fierce persecution of the Truth and people of God, both Jew and Gentile. It is at the commencement of this period, that he breaks the seven years covenant made with Israel, and becomes their great Oppressor (Dan. 9:27; Dan. 8:9-25). Also during this period will many and fearful judgments be poured upon the earth. The last act of Antichrist will be, to gather together the Ten Kings and their armies to Armageddon (Rev. 16:14-16) purposing to cut Israel off from being a Nation; (Ps. 83 and Ps. 2) and will bring his hosts to the Valley of Jehoshaphat, where they will be met, and destroyed, by the Lord Jesus in the brightness of His glory (Joel 3; 2 Thess 2; Rev. 19).


The Day of the Lord

This destruction of Antichrist and his hosts, however, will not be the first act of the Day of the Lord. The Day of the Lord will commence in Heaven, when Christ is brought before the Ancient of Days (God) and invested with the sovereignty of Earth (Dan. 7:9-14; Rev. 11:15).



The First Resurrection

The FIRST act as regards the Earth, will be concerning Christendom; namely, "the First Resurrection" (Rev. 20:4-6) which will include all who have died in faith since Adam—"they that are Christ’s at His Coming"—(1 Cor. 15:23), called also, "the Church of the first-born-ones" (Heb. 12:23). At the same time-when the trumpet shall sound—will the living saints be changed, in a moment. (Compare 1 Thess. 4:13-17, with 1 Cor. 15:51, 52). THEN will the angels (the reapers of the harvest) come forth and separate the tares (mere professors) from the wheat (true believers) and will gather together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them. (See Matthew 13:30,41,42). THEN will the changed ones, together with the raised dead, be caught up to meet the Lord in the air (1 Thess. 4:17). From thence they will descend with Christ to the earth, in glory, when He will execute judgment upon the wicked; (Zech. 14:5; Col. 3:4; Jude 14; Isa. 24:21; 26:21) and bind Satan for a thousand years (Rev. 20:2,3). The spared remnant of Israel, will then be converted at once, as a Nation born in a day (Isa. 10:20-23; 31:4,5; 66:5-24).



The Millennium

Thus will the: Millennial reign of Christ he inaugurated upon God’s holy hill of Zion (Ps. 2:6; Isa. 11) and "the Church of the first-born ones" (Heb. 12:23), the Heavenly branch of His Kingdom, will reign with Him a thousand years (Rev. 20:4; Dan. 7:18,22,27) from the Heavenly Jerusalem above: whilst Israel on the earth, who will then form the earthly branch of Christ’s Kingdom, will be a righteous Nation, a Kingdom of Priests (Isa. 26:2; 60; 61; 62; Rev. 5:10) to whom shall be the first dominion (Micah 4:8). The Gentile Nations shall be subject to them, and blessed through them (Isa. 14:1-3; 49:22,23; chapter 60; Ps. 67), Jerusalem and Zion being the recognized center of the Earth’s Government (Isa. 2:2, 3; Jer. 3:17; Zech. 14:16-19). Creation shall be delivered from its groan, from the bondage of corruption (Rom. 8:19-23; Isa. 9:6-9). Truth shall be triumphant, and righteousness and peace shall go forth from Jerusalem (Ps. 72 & Ps. 85). Yet, although thus blessed, the Millennium will not be a Perfect state; for although Satan will be bound, the innate evil of man’s heart will still be working; (Isa 45:20; Zech. 14:17-19) some will yield a feigned obedience (Ps. 18:44, margin). At the close, Satan will be loosed for a season, and will go forth to deceive the Nations again, and gather them together to battle, and they will compass the Citadel of the Saints about, and the Beloved City, and fire will come down from God out of Heaven and devour them (Rev. 20:7-9).



The Last Resurrection, and the Great White Throne, The Second Death

The Millennial Dispensation will close with the Last Resurrection; and the Judgment of the Great White Throne; when Satan and all the wicked, will be cast into the lake of fire—the Second Death—and be tormented for ever and ever. (Rev. 20:10-15; John 5:28, 29; Rev. 21:8).

"Then cometh the end," when this Adamic Creation, shall be burned up, and pass away; no place being found for it; (2 Pet. 3:10-12; Rev. 20:11; 21:1) and when Christ will deliver up the Kingdom to God, even the Father, that God may be all in all (1 Cor. 15:24-28).


The New Creation

And all things will be made new. God will create a New Heaven and a New Earth (Rev. 21:1, 5; Isa. 65:17), into which, John, in the prophetic vision, saw the New Jerusalem descend, coming down from God out of Heaven (Rev. 21:2, 10, to 22:5) and wherein righteousness shall DWELL (2 Pet. 3:13) this will be the Eternal Home and inheritance of all the redeemed, with Christ.

Now all that we have said here, about the future, is but a mere outline of what the Prophetic Scriptures would teach us, if we would but give them even half the consideration that we do the affairs of this world, that concern our present comfort. Let no one imagine that the Scriptures quoted in support of these things are all that can be cited, for they are only examples, which if considered, would lead to a multitude of other Scriptures, which would abundantly confirm, and fill in the details concerning, all the events to which we have but merely referred.

Now let us briefly sum up, in our minds, the things of which we have thus far spoken; and let us consider what the state of the Professing Church is, to day, as viewed by God.

Think of all the worldliness connected with what are called "places of worship," with all their amusements; their many man-invented and man-pleasing contrivances, to maintain their hold upon the people. Think of all the false and unscriptural teaching of the man-made ministers of Christendom, both in the Established Church, and in Dissent; with all their manifest ignorance, or rejection of, definite Truth, as contained in God’s pure and Holy Word.

Think of all the sentimentalism, which constitutes by far the greater part of present-day Christianity; and of the utter indifference of professing Christians as to whether what is taught, is in accordance with the Word of God, or not.

And then remember, what God has forewarned us would be the characteristics of the Professing Church in these "last days" —evil waxing worse and worse, until the close of the age: God’s true children being in the minority and in suffering, rejected and despised, and even by Professing Christians, for the sake of the Truth. Think of all that He has told us would be found in the world, as well as in the Church—lying wonders working with all deceivableness; hatred of God and His Truth; the love of the greater part, even of Christians, waxing cold. Think of all the Prophetic instruction and warning given, concerning the end and doom of the wicked, both of the apostate nations, and of false professors.

Then, when we have considered these things, let us as Christians, ask ourselves: what should be the reasonable result of our salvation? What should be our position in relation to these things which are UNSCRIPTURAL, and THEREFORE EVIL; and in relation to those who hold false doctrine, and reject the Truth of God; and to those who associate with such as do these things?

Are we left to please ourselves, and to consider our own present comfort and ease concerning these things?

FAITH
The Christian life is dependent upon faith. We stand on faith; we live by faith. "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me" (Galatians 2:20). Do we have that kind of faith?

What is Faith?
Faith is clearly defined in Hebrews 11:1, "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Faith implies four things: self-renunciation, reliance with utter confidence on Christ, obedience and a changed life.

First, to have faith implies self-renunciation. The problems of the world are not from without. They are not political, social or economic in origin. Christ said that all of these evil things come from within.

Our soul has a disease called sin.

What is sin? Sin is transgression, lawbreaking, coming short of God's standards. We break a law of the United States and we are a lawbreaker. We break the moral law of God and we are a lawbreaker. Every person who has ever lived is a lawbreaker; he or she is a sinner in God's sight.

Christ died on the cross for our sins. The Bible teaches, "For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him" (2 Corinthians 5:21). "The Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all" (Isaiah 53:6).

3 things that prayer does...
1. Prayer relieves us.
2. Prayer refreshes us.
3. Prayer rewards us.


LAZINESS
2 Thessalonians 3:7-10

The Lord has appointed believers to be His ambassadors to a lost and hurting world. As His followers, we are to represent Him in our character, conduct, and conversation whenever we interact with family, friends, neighbors, or coworkers.

God expects us to be diligent in our work and faithful to complete it. However, in our self-absorbed, pleasure-seeking culture, it is very easy to get sidetracked into laziness. This sin is dangerous in a Christian's life because of the potential harm that can result -- it can hurt our witness for Christ, damage our relationships with others, and waste both the time and the gifts the Lord has given us. One negative result of such a lifestyle is a character marked as unreliable and untrustworthy.

Laziness frequently shows up as procrastination. For example, despite saying that we will take action, we repeatedly delay the start time. Or we may begin a project and yet find reasons not to finish it. Being neglectful is another manifestation: though we make an attempt to carry out responsibilities, they are handled in a haphazard or incomplete way; relationships with loved ones go untended; or the needs of others are overlooked.

Irresponsible behavior doesn't fit who we are in Christ. If you realize you've been careless in some area of your life, pray, "Lord, I have not lived as I should, and I ask You to forgive me. I choose to turn away from lazy attitudes and neglectful behavior. Please help me to follow through and become someone who is industrious for You."

The Problem with Just Looking

Maybe I'm just too sensitive about it, but I always feel a little sheepish
when I walk into a store, knowing that I won't buy anything. I'll just be
browsing along and some bored salesperson stands up and starts moving my
direction. Maybe that's what makes me feel bad. It's her look of hope, of
expectancy, of "at last I can justify my existence." "At last I can
accomplish what I'm here to do." So the salesperson pleasantly asks, "May I
help you?" To which I answer with the two most hated words in the life of a
salesperson, "Just looking." I am such a disappointment.

It's not just sales people who are bored by folks who are "just looking."
Jesus is troubled by people, often people like you and me, who aren't
interested in buying spiritually. They're "just looking." Like the people in
our word for today from the Word of God in John 9:13.

Now, this follows Jesus' amazing miracle of healing a man who had been blind
from birth. It should have been amazing to the religious leaders, the
Pharisees. But all they could see was that Jesus had healed this man on the
Sabbath, which they considered a violation of their laws.

The Bible says, "They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been born
blind. Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man's eyes
was a Sabbath. Therefore, the Pharisees also asked him how he had received
his sight. 'He put mud on my eyes,' the man replied, 'and I washed, and now
I see." Awesome, huh? Not to the Pharisees. Their reaction? "Some of the
Pharisees said, 'This man is not from God, for He does not keep the
Sabbath.'"

Obviously men - very religious men - have no intention of buying into what
Jesus is doing here. They're just looking. Actually, everywhere Jesus did
miracles there seemed to be two groups: the expecters who are looking for
Jesus to do something, and the dissecters who are just looking at what Jesus
is doing. What bothers me is that the dissecters were the religious folks,
the spiritual veterans. Like me and maybe you. They were always so busy
analyzing what Jesus was doing that they missed what Jesus was doing. That
could be happening to you.

As you get more settled into Christian things, as you know more Christian
ideas, as you do more Christian activity, this subtle numbness can start to
creep in. You go to church, not so much to have God speak to you but to
watch God speak to others. You make spiritual events happen but you seldom
let them happen to you. You start to become a discusser of God's working
rather than an experiencer of God at work. You start to become critical of
other leaders and other methods.

Can you feel that creeping sleep in your soul? Somewhere you stepped out of
the middle of God's life-changing work and you moved to the edges to watch,
to analyze, to categorize, to criticize, or to help it happen. And it's cold
out there, isn't it? You show up at Jesus' store, you look around, but you
just don't buy into the wonder of it all. The great revivalist Gipsy Smith
started preaching when he was 17 and he quit when he was 82 because he died.
When people used to ask him why he was as excited and passionate in his
preaching even like when he was a young man, he simply said, "I have never
lost the wonder."

Maybe you have. It's time to get back into the mainstream where the miracles
are... where the powerful works of God are. Drop your analyzer's detachment
and return to your original love, your original excitement about Jesus. Let
God happen to you again! When Jesus is offering such supernatural
merchandise, it would be a shame if you're just on the edges "just looking."

Victory over the World through Faith

For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world — our faith. Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? (1Jo_5:4-5)
The enemy of our souls would love to devour our lives. "Your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour" (1Pe_5:8). We can enjoy protection from the devil through faith. "Resist him, steadfast in the faith" (1Pe_5:9). When the enemy cannot devastate us by direct attack, he still desires to pull us down into defeat, using the pitfalls and temptations that are available to him throughout the entire world system. "The whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one" (1 John 5:19). All of the unredeemed, as well as all of their cultural networks, are under the influence of the evil one. Nevertheless, we have available to us daily victory over the world through faith.
The only people who can ever walk in victory over the world are born again believers in Jesus Christ. "For whatever is born of God overcomes the world." We urgently need the overcoming grace of God, because of the avenues of earthly enticements that the devil can use against us. "For all that is in the world — the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life — is not of the Father but is of the world" (1Jo_2:16). Through the world around us, our spiritual foe wants to draw us into ungodly areas that our flesh craves, our eyes covet, or our pride wants to feast upon. The path of victory is traveled by faith. "And this is the victory that has overcome the world — our faith." We initially entered into the victory of Christ by placing our faith in Him. "Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?" We continue to experience all the manifold ramifications of that victory through day by day dependence upon the Lord.
Jesus taught these truths when He was here upon earth. "In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world" (Joh_16:33). It is absolutely certain that the world will bring to us all many troubles and trials. Our fully sufficient hope is the Lord Jesus Christ. The world came against Jesus with all of its plots and ploys. Our Lord and Savior never succumbed at any point. He is the one we are to rely upon, in order to walk in victory ourselves. "You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world" (1Jo_4:4). Trusting in the victor allows us to walk in His victory.
Lord Jesus, the world has surely brought me many difficulties and temptations. Yet, You are the overcoming victor, so I look to You for personal victory day by day. How blessed I am to have living in me the one who is far greater than the enemy who roams about in the world, Amen.

Great Blessings through Living by Faith

Therefore do not cast away your confidence, which has great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise: "For yet a little while, And He who is coming will come and will not tarry. Now the just shall live by faith; but if anyone draws back, my soul has no pleasure in him." But we are not of those who draw back to perdition, but of those who believe to the saving of the soul. (Heb_10:35-39)

Our present verses represent the third time that Habakkuk's pronouncement on living by faith is repeated in the New Testament. "The just shall live by his faith" (Hab_2:4). In Rom_1:17, it was connected with the gospel of Christ. In Gal_3:12, it was contrasted with living under the law. Here, it is seen as the pathway to great blessings like spiritual endurance, God-pleasing obedience, and pressing ahead in assurance.
The opening exhortation warns about forsaking bold dependence upon the Lord. "Therefore do not cast away your confidence, which has great reward." The loss of great blessing is the reason given. The Lord wants us to trust in Him without wavering, from the beginning of faith unto the end of our earthly pilgrimage. This makes us consistent partakers of the blessings of grace that are ours in Christ. "For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end" (Heb_3:14).
These blessings include endurance. "For you have need of endurance." The Christian life requires spiritual stamina. The journey of growth, trials, service, and battle can become wearisome. We can be tempted to slack off, to quit pressing ahead. Such is always vain thinking for us, and it is displeasing to the Lord. " If anyone draws back, my soul has no pleasure in him." It is by faith that we persevere in the Christian race. "Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith" (Heb_12:1-2).
Also, these blessings of faith include obedience and assurance. "You have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise." As we walk by faith, we are enabled to do God's will. Walking in obedience with Christ builds assurance that we will some day be in the presence of the Lord. "For yet a little while, And He who is coming will come and will not tarry." Meanwhile, by faith, assurance grows that we are not among those whose profession proves to be vain. "Now the just shall live by faith . . . we are not of those who draw back to perdition but of those who believe to the saving of the soul."

Rom 12:2

And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God

The apostle having closed the part of his epistle wherein he argues and proves various doctrines which are practically applied, here urges important duties from gospel principles. He entreated the Romans, as his brethren in Christ, by the mercies of God, to present their bodies as a living sacrifice to Him. This is a powerful appeal. We receive from the Lord every day the fruits of his mercy. Let us render ourselves; all we are, all we have, all we can do: and after all, what return is it for such very rich receivings? It is acceptable to God: a reasonable service, which we are able and ready to give a reason for, and which we understand. Conversion and sanctification are the renewing of the mind; a change, not of the substance, but of the qualities of the soul. The progress of sanctification, dying to sin more and more, and living to righteousness more and more, is the carrying on this renewing work, till it is perfected in glory. The great enemy to this renewal is, conformity to this world. Take heed of forming plans for happiness, as though it lay in the things of this world, which soon pass away. Do not fall in with the customs of those who walk in the lusts of the flesh, and mind earthly things. The work of the Holy Ghost first begins in the understanding, and is carried on to the will, affections, and conversation, till there is a change of the whole man into the likeness of God, in knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness. Thus, to be godly, is to give up ourselves to God.

It is not those sitting in heavenly places, imitators of God as dear children, but men on earth set free by the delivering power of redemption and grace, yielding themselves up to God to do His will. The exhortation follows the character we have seen to be that of the epistle.


Thus the christian walk was characterised by devotedness and obedience. It was a life subjected to the will of another, namely, to the will of God; and therefore stamped with humility and dependence. But there was absolute devotedness of heart in self-sacrifice. For there was a danger, flowing from the power that acted in it, of the flesh coming in and availing itself of it. With regard to this, every one was to have a spirit of wisdom and moderation, and to act within the limits of the gift which God had dispensed to him, occupying himself with it according to the will of God; even as each member has its own place in the body, and should accomplish the function which God has ascribed to it. The apostle passes on insensibly to all the forms which duty assumes in the Christian, according to the various positions in which he stands, and to the spirit in which he ought to walk in every relationship.

1. Transformation starts on the inside
-Rom. 12:2 “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind…”-Like a butterfly’s metamorphosis, change starts from within. For us, change starts within the mind.

2. Transformation moves from inside-out
-Rom. 12:2 “…that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”-Change starts from within, but works it’s way outside for others to see. This is the proof or the evidence that God is at work in you.–Without real transformation, you have stagnation. Stagnation can breed “Transformation Imitation”–Outward-only, superficial religious changes that have no real transforming power, because God is not the One doing it.

3. Two great examples of genuine,

God-powered wide-spreading transformations were in the lives of Martin Luther (1519) and John Wesley (1738), both of which directly came through the “Gospel” of the book of Romans.

4. How can God begin a transformation in me?
A. By winning us over with his mercies -Rom. 12:1a, “…therefore brethern, by the mercies of God -Eleven previous chapters of God’s mercies in the book of Romans woo us into the molding hands of God.
B. By accepting us as holy sacrifices -Rom. 12:1b, “…present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy acceptable to God -Through the love and sacrifice of Christ, we who are unholy, dead in sin are considered now living and acceptable sacrifices in Him who now present ourselves as crucified and freed from sin (see Rom. 6.6).
C. By renewing our minds -Rom. 12:2, “…do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind -Wiersbe says, “If the world controls your thinking, you are a conformer; if God controls your thinking, you are a transformer.”

The Commandments

1. Love your enemies: do good to them that hate you (Matt. 5:44).

2. Resist not evil: if a man smite thee on one cheek, turn to him the other also (Matt. 5:30-40).

3. Avenge not yourselves: rather give place unto wrath: and suffer yourselves to be defrauded (Rom. 12:18, 19).

4. If a man take away thy goods, ask them not again (Luke 6:29, 30).

5. Agree with your adversary quickly, submitting even to wrong for the sake of peace (Matt. 5:25; 1 Cor. 6:7).

6. Labor not to be rich: be ready to every good work, give to those who ask; relieve the afflicted (1 Tim. 6:8; Rom. 12:13; Heb. 13:16; James 1:27).

7. Do not your alms before men: Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth (Matt. 6:1-4).

8. Recompense to no man evil for evil: overcome evil with good (Rom. 12:17).

9. Bless them that curse you; let no cursing come out of your mouth (Matt. 5:44; Rom. 12:14)

10. Render not evil for evil, or railing for railing, but contrariwise, blessing (1 Pet. 3:9)
.

11. Pray for them that despitefully use you and afflict you (Matt. 5:44).

12. Grudge not: judge not: complain not: condemn not (James 5:9; Matt. 7:1).

13. Put away anger, wrath, bitterness, and all evil speaking (Eph. 4:31; 1 Pet. 2:1).

14. Confess your faults one to another (James 5:16).

15. Be not conformed to this world: love not the world (Rom. 12:2; 1 John 2:15).

16. Deny all ungodliness and worldly lusts. If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off (Titus 2:13; Matt. 5:30).

17. Servants, be faithful, even to bad masters (Eph. 6:5-8).

18. Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate (Rom. 12:16).

19. Owe no man anything (Rom. 13:7,8).

20. In case of sin (known or heard of) speak not of it to others, but tell the offending brother of the matter between thee and him alone, with a view to recovery (Matt. 18:15; Gal. 6:1).

21. Love the Lord thy God with all they heart (Matt. 22:37).

22. Pray always; pray with brevity and simplicity; pray secretly (Luke 18:1; Matt. 6:7).

23. In everything give thanks to God and recognize Him in all your ways (Eph. 5:20; Prov. 3:6).

24. As you would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them (Matt. 7:12).

25. Take Christ for an example and follow in his steps (1 Pet. 2:21).

26. Let Christ dwell in your heart by faith (Eph. 3:17).

27. Esteem Christ more highly than all earthly things; yea, than your own life (Luke 14:26).

28. Confess Christ freely before men (Luke 12:8).

29. Beware lest the cares of life or the allurements of pleasure weaken his hold on your heart (Matt. 24:44).

30. Love thy neighbor as thyself (Matt. 22:39).

31. Exercise lordship over no one (Matt. 23:11).

32. Seek not your own welfare only, nor bear your own burdens merely, but have regard to those of others (Phil. 2:4; Gal. 6:2).

33. Let your light shine before men: hold forth the word of life. Do good to all men as ye have opportunity (Matt. 5:16; Phil. 2:16; Gal. 6:10).

34. Be blameless and harmless, as the sons of God in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation (Phil. 2:15).

35. Be gentile, meek, kind-hearted, compassionate, merciful, forgiving (2 Tim. 2:24; Titus 2:2; Eph. 4:32).

36. Be sober, grave, sincere, temperate (Phil. 4:5; 1 Pet. 1:13; 5:8).

37. Speak the truth every man with his neighbor: put away all lying (Eph. 4:25).

38. Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily as unto the Lord, and not unto men (Col. 3:23).

39. Be watchful, vigilant, brave, joyful, courteous, and strong (1 Cor. 16:13; Phil. 4:4; 1 Thess. 5:6-10).

40. Be clothed with humility; be patient toward all (Col. 3:12; Rom. 12:12).

41. Follow peace with all men (Heb. 12:14).

42. Sympathize in the joys and sorrows of others (Rom. 12:15).

43. Follow after whatsoever things are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, of good report, virtuous, and praiseful (Phil. 4:8).

44. Refrain utterly from adultery, fornication, uncleanness, drunkenness, covetousness, wrath, strife, sedition, hatred, emulation, boasting, vainglory, envy, jesting, and foolish talking (Eph. 5:3,4).

45. Whatever you do, consider the effect of your action on the honor of God's name among men. Do all to the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31; 3:17).

46. Reckon yourselves dead to all manner of sin. Henceforth live not to yourselves, but to him who died for you, and rose again (Rom. 6-11; 2 Cor. 5:15).

47. Be zealous of good works, always abounding in the work of the Lord, wearying not in well doing (Titus 2:14; Gal. 6:9).

48. Speak evil of no man (Titus 3:2).

49. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly (Col. 3:16).

50. Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt (Col. 3:8; 4:6).

51. Obey rules; submit to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake (Titus 3:1).

52. Be holy in all manner of conversation (1 Pet. 1:15, 16).

53. Give no occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully (1 Tim. 5:14).

What is repentance

Many understand the term “repentance” to mean “turning from sin.” This is not the Biblical definition of repentance. In the Bible, the word “repent” means to "change your mind." The Bible also tells us that true repentance will result in a change of actions (Luke 3:8-14; Acts 3:19). Acts 26:20 declares, “I preached that they should repent and turn to God and prove their repentance by their deeds.” The full Biblical definition of repentance is a change of mind that results in a change of action.What, then, is the connection between repentance and salvation? The Book of Acts seems to especially focus on repentance in regards to salvation (Acts 2:38; 3:19; 11:18; 17:30; 20:21; 26:20). To repent, in relation to salvation, is to change your mind in regards to Jesus Christ. In Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost (Acts chapter 2), he concludes with a call for the people to repent (Acts 2:38). Repent from what? Peter is calling the people who rejected Jesus (Acts 2:36) to change their minds about Him, to recognize that He is indeed “Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36). Peter is calling the people to change their minds from rejection of Christ as the Messiah, to faith in Him as both Messiah and Savior.Repentance and faith can be understood as “two sides of the same coin.” It is impossible to place your faith in Jesus Christ as the Savior without first changing your mind about who He is and what He has done. Whether it is repentance from willful rejection, or repentance from ignorance or disinterest – it is a change of mind. Biblical repentance, in relation to salvation, is changing your mind from rejection of Christ, to faith in Christ.It is crucially important that we understand repentance is not a work we do to earn salvation. No one can repent and come to God unless God pulls that person to Him (John 6:44). Acts 5:31 and 11:18 indicate that repentance is something God gives – it is only possible because of His grace. No one can repent unless God grants repentance. All of salvation, including repentance and faith, is a result of God's drawing us, opening our eyes, and changing our hearts. God's longsuffering leads us to repentance (2 Peter 3:9), as does His kindness (Romans 2:4).While repentance is not a work that earns salvation, repentance unto salvation does result in works. It is impossible to truly and fully change your mind without that causing a change in action. In the Bible, repentance results in a change in behavior. That is why John the Baptist called people to “produce fruit in keeping with repentance” (Matthew 3:8). A person who has truly repented from rejection of Christ to faith in Christ will give evidence of a changed life (2 Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 5:19-23; James 2:14-26). Repentance, properly defined, is necessary for salvation. Biblical repentance is changing your mind about Jesus Christ and turning to God in faith for salvation (Acts 3:19). Turning from sin is not the definition of repentance, but it is one of the results of genuine, faith-based repentance towards the Lord Jesus Christ.