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By now, if you are a regular church go-er, you have all likely heard thematic messages concerning the Passion of the Christ.  For those who don’t know what that is, it is a term to describe the sufferings of Christ between the night of the Last Supper and his death.  Being that this last sunday is also known as palm sunday, you probably heard about the events going all way back to a week before the beginning of the Passion. _{Therein lies a fascinating study of the 70 weeks of Daniel from Daniel 9.}

All of this is well and good.  We should remember that Jesus did suffer and pay the penalty for our sins.  At the end, everyone in attendance is probably feeling really down.  However, a thought occurred to me as I listened to the sermon this past sunday.  I had a thought of just chopping down that cross posted at the front of the sanctuary.

If that last statement shocked you, I pray that you continue reading as I explain.

There are many principles applicable to christianity that are also applicable to your dealings in the secular world. One of them is stated above.  Another is a favorite of mine that I shorten to call Acts 17:11.

These people were more receptive than those in Thessalonica. They were very willing to receive the message, and every day they carefully examined the Scriptures to see if those things were so. (Act 17:11)

This passage is speaking of the Bereans who were told the gospel but didn’t just take what they heard as truth until they could verify it though the scriptures.  They didn’t take a single source and run with it.  They checked the facts.  I suggest you all be like the Bereans particularly with the Bible, but also in your general lives.  We live in an age with the Internet.  While it is a great resource, I am sure a great number of you already know how many lies spread using the same tool.

A few years ago, a fairly famous man died. I believe he was a politician, I can’t remember his name now.  He wasn’t a very nice man when he lived and the internet forums were full of rejoicing over the man’s death.  I expressed some compassion for the man’s family and was quickly rebuked for doing so. In response I tried to explain that it is easy to have compassion for someone you like or is likeable, it is an entirely different and more difficult thing to have compassion for someone you don’t like. They didn’t understand at the time.

Maybe now they do, but this is a biblical theme. Take your pick from the scriptures. You may have seen the following as a random proverb to the right:

I have a simple message this time around. Maybe you’ve been on the fence about wether you are worthy to be saved. Maybe you don’t know if you are good enough to be used by God. The answer to both of these is no, but that is why it is called grace. You can be saved and you can be used by God in ways you probably can’t even imagine.

Read the Bible. Learn who God is and how He loves you.
Give yourself to Christ. Ask Him to come into your life.
Get saved. Do so sincerely.

It really isn’t hard. There is no elaborate ritual required. You do not already have to be good to be eligible. You need only be sincerely repentant of your sins and ask Jesus to come into your life.

“Come to me, all of you who are weary and loaded down with burdens, and I will give you rest. Place my yoke on you and learn from me, because I am gentle and humble, and you will find rest for your souls, because my yoke is pleasant, and my burden is light.”
(Mat 11:28-30)

There are two myths I want to address today.  First, the idea that the devil is the equal and opposite of God.  This is just untrue, and an understanding of this is important.

The second one is related and is the idea the the devil has his own domain to rule over and that domain is hell.  This, too, is untrue.

This is going to be short.

First, my heart goes out to the victims and witnessess of this past weekend’s tragedy.  It was an awful act committed by an awful man.  Perhaps, if the news reports are true, more than one person involved.  May justice be served with sufficient mercy.

Now to those who are playing the blame game, this was an act of one or two extremely misguided individuals.  It has nothing to do with political affiliation beyond the perpetrator’s belief in unwarranted armed rebellion.  In fact, it was not an act of rebellion, it was simply a terrible crime.  This isn’t a Republic thing, it isn’t a Democrat thing, it isn’t a Tea Party thing, it isn’t the fault of talk radio or conservative television.  Get over yourselves.  This isn’t about you or your political party.  There are real human being suffering out there.  Extend whatever help you can even if it is just in the form of prayers.

The title of this article came about from something a young woman said over the last week.  It is something all of us have convinced ourselves is true at one point or another.  Other than in moments of weakness, which we all have, I believe this idea stems from two sources.  Firstly is a lack of understanding of the nature of God.  It isn’t an uncommon problem.  The subject is covered in the Bible. I want to use this article to show you that God’s arm is not too short.  He does care about you and He cares about you individually.

I have heard Dr. Missler speak about this tool on several occasions but not until today did I actually pick it up to look at it.  The IT I am talking about is possibly the best Biblical study tool you can get.  It is like having an entire library of concordances, dictionaries and Bible versions all on your computer.  In multiple languages.  Furthermore, it is free and comes in flavors that work on Windows PCs, Linux and Mac.

I’ve added a link to it on the links section to the right.  I encourage you to check it out.  It downloads with the King Jame’s and King Jame’s with Strong’s Numbers but you can easily go download (right from e-Sword itself) several other versions as well.  In fact, the reason I was reminded of e-Sword today was because of an email from Dr. Welty of the ISV foundation that the ISV (international standard version) is now available for e-Sword.

I have the ISV in Word format on my computer as well has a hebrew bible.  I had been doing my research manually. Clipping and pasting and looking things up with Word.  e-Sword makes this process a whole lot easier.  With Strong’s Numbers you can even hover over a word and get a word’s meaning from the Strong’s Hebrew and Greek dictionary. 

Not all of the Bible versions you can download are free but there are a huge number of them and those that aren’t free do not seem to be at an unreasonable price (for instance, the Amplified Bible is $20).  You can even get the septuigent (LXX). Incredible stuff.

We live in a time when just about the only time we see anything Christian related in the general news is when someone is or has promised to do something crazy.  It is too bad, too, because we are surrounded by Christians every day that are normal sane individuals. Among them professions which include scientists (yes, scientists), doctors, mathematicians, grocers and burger flippers; the majority of which do not do anything crazy.  So, the New Year begins and immediately I see an article about the rapture coming on May 21, 2011.

I have several statements about the rapture which I have learned purely from reading the Bible.  Something, again, I suggest you do every day.  I say I learned it purely from reading the Bible because in my growing up in the church, the rapture was a concept that oddly enough I had never heard of.  Something one would think was fundamental to Christian teaching.  Yet, there it is, or wasn’t in my case.

There has been much in the news for the last few weeks about Wikileaks’ release of diplomatic cables from our nation’s representatives abroad.  The first thing that came to mind is that these leaks wouldn’t be nearly as embarrassing if our representatives remembered the words of our Lord written through the hand of Paul, the Apostle.

“Let no filthy talk be heard from your mouths, but only what is good for building up people and meeting the need of the moment. This way you will administer grace to those who hear you.” (Ephesians 4:29)

In thinking about these things.  It brought to mind a thought.  How will our own spiritual wikileaks look when that day comes?  Jesus has told us:

“Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree rotten and its fruit rotten, because a tree is known by its fruit. You children of serpents! How can you say anything good when you are evil? The mouth speaks about what overflows from the heart. A good person brings good things out of a good treasure house, and an evil person brings evil things out of an evil treasure house. I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give an account for every thoughtless word they have uttered, because by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.”  (Matthew 12:33-37)

I don’t know that our lives will be played like a movie for all to see, but we will be held accountable for what we’ve done.  I’m not saying that salvation is achieved through works, but we still must act as ambassadors to Christ.  Do not take the name of the Lord in vain.  Represent Him well.