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Sunday, May 5th, 2024

After your view of God, the most important thing about you is your view of you. To get the true view of you, the word of God must be consulted. Only God knows the true you, the real you. Don’t consult your heart for you can deceive yourself. “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it?” (Jer.17:9)  But God cannot be deceived and He will always tell you the truth about you. God knows you better than you know yourself. He knows your thoughts, remembers all your actions from the time you were born, knows the motives behind all your words and deeds. “What does God say about you?” That’s what matters.

A good place to get a grasp of the important “Doctrine of Man” is the story of the Prodigal Son (Lk.15). There Jesus explains to us in story form who we are. If you have repented, there are actually two of you. There are two yous that you will see in the Luke 15 passage....To read more, click here: https://sites.google.com/view/gracehouseclinton/sermons

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Wednesday, May 1, 2024 

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Sunday, April 28, 2024. Continuation of the Joy of Jesus Series. 

“Happy are the people whose God is the Lord.” (Psalm 144:15)

Your view of God is the most important thing about you. You are living out your view of God. You are being molded into the image of the God you think exists. What you think, what you say and what you do are all determined by your view of God.

If you are living the life of a “practical atheist” there’s a reason. This is someone who says he believes in God but acts as though He is irrelevant and unimportant to his everyday life, the decisions he makes, what he thinks about and does. He doesn’t pray or consult Him in any major or even minor decisions in his life. He thinks God is distant, undetached from people and unconcerned about having a relationship with anyone. He’s too uncaring to be intimately concerned with anybody. And so he lives his life as though He does not exist. But the Bible’s view of God is just the opposite. He notices every sparrow that falls from the sky and has the hairs on every head numbered. He cares deeply about how we think and what we do. He loves us as a husband loves his bride and a mother loves her children.

To find the correct view of God we must look into God’s word where He tells us everything we need to know about God so we can bear the image of God and live the best life possible on this earth. We see everything we need to know about God in Jesus Christ; by His works and words He gives us the perfect picture of God.

I’ve already stated that Jesus was the happiest man on earth when He was here (Heb.1:9). Religious people are basically not happy. Look at their faces in church and you will see many unhappy people. A man got into the choir one week and never again. When I asked him about it, he said he couldn’t stand looking at so many unhappy faces in church! Religion will make you sour because it gives you the wrong view of God.

Religious people are happy at other places. Put that same sad church face at a ballgame and he’s excited, shouting and having a good time. He’s high-fiving people! With the religious world, even among church members, God is like the Pharisees imagined Him to be – too righteous to have anything to do with sinners. They picture Him as cold, legalistic and unmerciful toward those who make wrong choices and mess up their lives. They become like the God they imagine and look down on sinners as being unworthy to eat with.

In contrast to that we see Jesus hanging around sinners all the time. He went to sinners. Invited Himself into their homes to eat and fellowship. We see this in Luke 15 where Jesus has accepted an invitation to Matthew’s home for a party. There you will see the Pharisees critical about what Jesus is doing. They are all in one house among all kinds of notorious sinners. Jesus hears their murmuring and knows their problem is they have a wrong view of God. So He sets about correcting their view of God by telling a parable with three stories. It’s one parable with three stories. This is for emphasis; as if to say, I want you to really get this message about the correct view of God....Click here to read more: https://sites.google.com/view/gracehouseclinton/sermons

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When God becomes a Man

“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God…. And the Word became flesh.”  (John 1:1,14)

What happens when God becomes a man? It reveals everything. It changes everything.

 “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, John shows that he is familiar with Greek philosophy and the Old Testament. He states that in the beginning the Word created the heavens and the earth. This is right out of Genesis. Now John introduces the next page of revelation. He moves from creator to redeemer, from creation to redemption, from Genesis to Exodus. I say that because the word he used for dwelt is the word that means tabernacled, which takes us to the book of Exodus where God redeems His chosen people and right after that gives them the Law and the Tabernacle. That elaborate ornate tent was the place where God dwelt with them. God not only delivered His people; He actually came down to live among them in that wilderness. Jesus did that for all His people. He dwelt among us. Read Exodus 40:33-38 and notice the glory in it.

 33 And he raised up the court all around the tabernacle and the altar, and hung up the screen of the court gate. So Moses finished the work. 34 Then the cloud covered the tabernacle of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. 35 And Moses was not able to enter the tabernacle of meeting, because the cloud rested above it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. 36 Whenever the cloud was taken up from above the tabernacle, the children of Israel would go onward in all their journeys. 37 But if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not journey till the day that it was taken up. 38 For the cloud of the Lord was above the tabernacle by day, and fire was over it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel, throughout all their journeys.

In the New Testament God did not come to live in a tent, He lived in a man, the Word, and His name was Jesus Christ. He was God in the flesh: fully God and fully human. Think of how astounding this is. Paul states it like this, “Great is the mystery of godliness, God was manifest in the flesh.” (2Tim.3:16)

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The RIGHTEOUSNESS of God

Romans 3: 21 But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, 22 even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference; 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God set forth as a [c]propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, 26 to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

As it relates to God, righteousness means to be right with God, to be approved by Him. It is the same Greek word for justification which means to be declared right with God. God justifies, declares righteous, those who have faith in Jesus. Righteousness is the gift of God to those who believe the gospel. Believers have peace with God (Rm.5:1) because the offense of sin has been removed by the sufferings of Jesus.

God’s gift of righteousness involves two things: our sins are imputed to Jesus who died for them on the cross and Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us. Both of these are huge. God takes our sins away and in the place of our sins He gives us all the righteousness of Christ. Every good thing Jesus ever thought, said and did is credited to our account. We are as righteous as Jesus in the eyes of God. Justification cannot be improved upon. You are as justified when you first believe as you are after decades of right living. It cannot be improved upon and can never be lost. When you are given Christ’s righteousness you are justified before God.

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The Joy of Jesus

Turning Water into Wine  (John 2:1-11)

Many people have the wrong idea of Jesus Christ. They picture Him as some sort of sad sack who never laughed, never went to a party or had any fun. Nothing could be further from the truth, as we will see from the Bible, our only authoritative information on Jesus, the only infallible, inerrant, inspired book that tells us everything we need to know about Jesus.

In the coming lessons we will look at Jesus in the Gospels and the rest of the Bible and we will see that He was the happiest man on earth. And remember, in salvation God is making us to be like Jesus. We all want to be like Jesus; at least we want all others to be like Jesus! There was joy at His birth, joy in His ministry, joy at His resurrection, and there will be great joy in His return.

The only time He was not joyful was when He was “the man of sorrows, acquainted with grief” and that had to do exclusively with His suffering for our redemption. He was full of sorrow in Gethsemane and on the cross when He was taking our sorrow so that we wouldn’t have to take it. He was saving us from our sin and the sorrow it brings. Even then it says in Hebrews 12:2, “Jesus, who for the joy set before Him, endured the cross and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Looking at the end, He endured His suffering with joy. We can do that too.

There is a statement about Jesus that is the defining word on the kind of person Jesus was and is. It’s Hebrews 1:9, “You love justice and hate evil. Therefore, your God has anointed you, pouring out the oil of joy on you more than on anyone else.” The anointing with oil in the Bible was not some little oil on a finger and dabbing it on someone’s forehead. They poured the oil over them. The anointing oil poured over Aaron’s beard. When Samuel anointed little David, he poured it over his head.

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Paradise Between Eden and the New Jerusalem

The Local Church (Acts 2:40-47)

God is the God who creates paradises. He began man’s life on earth by putting him in a paradise called the Garden of Eden. Everything Adam and Eve needed was there. It was perfect: plenty of food, health, prosperity (there was gold in Eden), and basically, it was heaven on earth.

God will end time by creating a new earth and it will be a paradise called the New Jerusalem. You’d probably be surprised how similar Eden and the New Jerusalem are. Read Genesis 1-2 and Revelation 21-22 and you will see they are described in very similar ways. God is the God of paradise. He wants His people to live in paradise, the paradise He Himself gladly provides.

Wouldn’t it be just like God to provide a paradise on earth between the time of Eden and the New Jerusalem? It would. His heart desires that and Jesus taught us to pray it with these words: “Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” That is the will of God.

The paradise God has for us on earth between the two paradises is what we call the local church. Remember, we walk by faith, not by sight. We can only see and experience this paradise by faith. And we can see and experience it. It is the will of God. That paradise is found in Acts 2:40-47, where we find Jesus is the Second Man, the Head over a body of people. This paradise is full of saved, Spirit-filled believers; there is no poverty, no sickness, abounding love and joy unspeakable. This paradise is described for us in Acts.

The local church at Jerusalem was the ideal church, the thing we must all by the grace of God be continually striving for. The problem with this present paradise, the difference between the two at the bookends of time, is that it is placed in the middle of a “perverse generation.” And it has people who sometimes act in the flesh. But it is nevertheless God’s ideal given to us at the beginning of the church age. Between the ascension of Jesus and the descension of Jesus we have this ideal geographical location called the local church.

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“In the beginning was the Word… This man came for a witness.”  (John 1:1-9)

One benefit of an intense study of the books of the Bible is to keep us balanced in the truth, and nothing is more important. It is the pastor’s job to keep the believers in his church balanced. Let me explain. People get revelations of truth that are powerful and life-changing. But any revelation is partial, and the temptation is to make too much of that revelation so that you ignore what the rest of the Bible teaches on that subject. For example, in 1881 Charles Russell got a revelation on the manhood of Jesus. That truth is important, but he ignored what the rest of the Bible had to say about Jesus, that He is God in the flesh: 100% man and 100% God. Thus, a very heretical movement began that has deceived multitudes.

Or people can get a revelation on some aspect of prayer and begin to neglect what the rest of the Bible teaches on prayer that would balance what was revealed to them. “Whatever you desire, when you pray, believe that you receive it and you will have it (Mk.11:24). It becomes a pretext for using God to get whatever they want. They neglect other passages such as John 15:7 and 1 John 5:14-15. We need to know what the whole Bible teaches on any subject or we can go seriously wrong about very important things.

Also, people have very powerful experiences in the Lord. They begin to live off of an experience, that spiritual high, and begin to seek more and more of them. They can ignore doctrine taught in the Bible that grounds them in their walk with the Lord. Then when experiences become rare, they fall away or think they cannot live without another powerful experience. They are shallow and will follow whoever ministers experiences. This can be very dangerous.

Paul wrote to Pastor Timothy, “Take heed to yourself and to the doctrine. Continue in them, for in doing this you will save both yourself and those who hear you.” (1Tim.4:16) ...to read more, click here: https://sites.google.com/view/gracehouseclinton/sermons

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