The Power of the Promise

Text: Acts 2:1-13

Focus: Pentecost

Function: Worship, to celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit

Form: Bible Study

Intro:

Happy Birthday to the Church!

Throughout the Scriptures there are stories of great miracles that happen when people felt they were out of options and it literally would take a miracle to move forward.

Abraham and Sarah, Joseph and Pharaoh, Moses and the Red Sea, Gideon and his 300 soldiers.

In all these stories, we see God doing things in the ways that only God can do them.

And time and again we learn the lesson that God is in control, so trust Him.

With Gideon, God kept telling to reduce the size of his army, it went from 30,000 to 300. God said it this way: “I don't want people to think their success was due to their ability. I want my people to know that I am faithful to them.”

What do we learn from this passage?

God is in control, not us.

So, first and foremost, the Power of the Promise is much more than we can imagine or think of.

This was no planned event except:

They were together:

• They were praying
• They were in unity

The power of the promise is much more than anything human, God wants us to know that He is working. God builds His Church.

• This is a completely supernatural event.
  • And, it happens AFTER Jesus' ascension
  • They would have thought that now that Jesus was physically gone from them that His merciful power was over.
  • But no, God is and will always be with His people!
  • It happened to people just like you and me.

What miracles happened?

• They heard the sound of a mighty wind.
  • At some point, the 120 moved from the meeting room into the streets of Jerusalem.
  • A crowd comes running.
  • God gets the attention of the entire city with this sound.
  • This wind is a direct link to the Holy Spirit.
  • The Word Spirit means wind.
  • And the symbol is the Holy Spirit has come, and in a mighty way. The great noise, loud enough to attract a crowd of thousands in a crowded city without electronic amplification is proof to the crowd that God is at work in their midst.
  • The first miracle: God got the people's attention and called people to Him.
    • I had a customer last night tell me the story of a bitter divorce, bankruptcy, loss of mother. I don't know why she opened up to me. But I got to pray with her. God sends people to the Church for the Church to be Jesus to them.
• They saw tongues of fire.
  • I like the banner, tongues of fire, and at the same time, they look like doves, the symbol of the Holy Spirit.
  • But the disciples, and the crowd around them saw these tongues.
  • I can picture them all together in this room and the noise starts, they move outside and then outside, more and more these tongues of fire descend from heaven.
  • I wonder if the tongues all fell at once?
    • I doubt it, otherwise it might have looked like a fire was burning them.
    • No, I get the image that they fell gently, without fear.
    • I can picture the 120 anticipating what would happen when a tongue touched them.
    • I can picture their reaction when it hit someone next to them.
      • There is this anticipation.
      • But there is also something deeply personal. 1 Corinthians 12 lists several of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
      • They are given individually.
      • They are different for each person
      • Each person has their place.
      • Each and every one of us is significant.
    • Fire is another symbol. It is the symbol of the cleansing power.
    • I remember my own conversion, the preacher said to come forward and my sins would be forgiven.
    • I did, and they were. I felt it.
    • And with deliberation, we started this worship service with a prayer of cleansing in preparation from Psalm 51.
    • God cleans us up, and then He uses us.

God calls the crowd to the 120 with a mighty wind. God cleanses them with tongues of fire. And then, God uses them to proclaim the gospel.

The third miracle, unknown tongues and understanding of tongues.

• The apostles spoke in several unknown languages.
• And the audience heard their own language.
• People have argued over the gift of tongues.
• 1 Corinthians 13:1 speaks of the gift, and it is called “The tongues of men and of angels.”
• Romans 8, 1 Corinthians 12 and then 14 also refer to the gift of tongues as well as several other places in the book of Acts.
• Sometimes it is a prayer language that God gives to a person to pray for certain issues. These people also have the Spiritual gift of intercessory prayer.
• Other times, it is the gift to either speak or hear a human tongues.
• I have a Lutheran Pastor friend who was taught that this gift either was an exaggeration, or the gift died with the apostles.
• But his first pastoral placement was overseas.
• He didn't know the language yet, but at a prayer meeting, he heard someone pray a very powerful prayer in English, and it seemed to have something to do with him.
• He asked the pastor to introduce him to his “English speaking parishioner.” The Pastor then told him that no one spoke English in the worship service.
• But my friend heard it.
• The pastor explained to him that the Bible wasn't exaggerating when this miracle occurred.
• I had a friend once tell me that it isn't speaking in an unknown language, it is hearing in an unknown language.
• Who cares?
• The point is this: God had a message to get out. And God wanted it to go out to the entire world.
• So, when all these people were there, worshiping during this national Jewish Holiday, Pentecost, a miracle happened.
• The point was that God got His message out in spite of language barriers.
• God builds the Church!

What did the 120 learn?

God could reach people in ways they had not imagined!

God could overcome language barriers to get the good news out!

God cares about preaching the good news!

What do we learn?

God still wants people to hear the good news.

And, God's primary plan has not changed.

It is still through us, the Church.

But what else does the passage tell us?

They left the meeting house and went into the streets to preach the gospel.

• This sanctuary is wonderful
• I always love the way it is decorated.
• And I love the significance of these decorations.
• Two weeks ago, when we had funeral services for Ray Jackson, this place was like a womb of healing. It was so comforting to be here, in a familiar place where we worship God.
• Last week, when Rosalie sang, I thought of what people who are driving by were missing.
• Today, there is an exciting atmosphere.
• And I am sure that when those 120 believers were together and praying, when they were sensing the comfort, strength and support of each other now that Jesus was not physically in their presence that the meaning of what it means to be the church meant a lot to them.
• What goes on in here is significant.
• But, when the Holy Spirit was leading them, when the Holy Spirit came down upon them, He compelled them to leave the building.
• The revival took place in the streets of Jerusalem.
• The text says that the sound of the wind was so loud, and apparently it was coming from one specific place, that a large crowd from throughout the city of Jerusalem came running.
• God nurtures us in here and then sends us out there.
• The ministry is there, not here.

So, God called a crowd to hear them.

God sent tongues of fire to cleanse them.

And God used them beyond any human ability to reach them.

That same God is still at work today.

How many people are nervous about sharing their faith?

It isn't up to you.

Every one of you has a story to tell of how God called you to himself.

For some, it made sense, in a logical way, it made so much sense that you were willing to let the preacher dunk you in the water.

For others, there was a burning inside of your heart that was irresistable. You couldn't explain it, but you knew it was true.

For others, a miracle happened and you knew that God cared for you.

There is no set way for a person to become one of God's own.

Except, just as the Holy Spirit preached the message in all the languages around, God knows what it takes to reach inside the heart of every single person.

Let God use you.

The Promise of the Power

Text: Acts1:6-11

Focus: Pentecost

Function: To get people enthused (increase their faith about) the promise of help by God.

Form: Bible study/story

Intro:

I suppose in one way or another, at times, all of us are amazed at the stupidity of others. And, I suppose as well, others are amazed at my own stupidity. It is human nature. It isn't good human nature to be so proud of oneself. But sometimes people do some pretty dumb things and we wonder why they don't get it.

I am not going to call the apostles stupid, I probably would have reacted the same way as them. But in this passage, they seem to be deliberately ignorant.

Time after time, during Jesus' three years, He told the apostles that He would die for everyone's sins. He told them He was going away and would send the Holy Spirit to them. He told them that He would rise from the dead. He told them that God's Kingdom was not a human kingdom. He told them that God loved the entire world, not just the Jewish nation. He told them that God's Kingdom was spiritual and that it would live right inside of them, changing them into people who react differently to problems.

And yet, after the apostles have seen almost all of this take place, they come up with the same old question. They ask Jesus, “Is this the time for you to restore the Kingdom of Israel?”

They still didn't get it, or they refused to get it.

These men were still looking for power, for the benefit of being administrators, diplomats, officials in the new Kingdom that they thought Jesus was going to set up with military power.

Even though Jesus has been clear about what is happening, right before Jesus ascends from earth to heaven, they ask Him again.

And Jesus patiently corrects them.

The first point of the message.

The Future is in the God's hands, not ours.

Next week we celebrate the 1983^rd birthday of the Church, Pentecost. That is the day that the Holy Spirit came in power and the Church proper began.

The future of the Church is in God's hands, not ours.

The Church is the work of God, not man.

Jesus says: “It is not for you to know the times and seasons appointed by God...”

That is God's job.

They wanted political power, but Jesus gives them much, much more. He gives to them the Promise of Power. Not political, but power to change the world for the good.

He gives them the promise of a power that will indeed give them the power to act, and react, like Jesus.

He hasn't abandoned them even though they still don't get it. The problem is, they were limiting God to something small, something that only dealt with regional politics, one single nation. And God has them in mind to change the entire world.

The promise of this power is world changing power.

And we too, possess this promise.

Jesus tells them to wait for it.

He implies that they are not going to be successful without the Holy Spirit's power at work in their own lives.

Jesus is preparing them for the day of Pentecost.

It is all about the power of the Holy Spirit.

The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit has caused some confusion and even some division within the Church over the last two centuries.

Again, let me explain the difference between receiving the Holy Spirit and the filling of the Holy Spirit.

In John 20, after Jesus rises from the dead, He breathes on the believers and tells them that they have received the Holy Spirit. He tells them that they now have the power to forgive.

This is what is spoken of in Romans 8. It is the seal of our salvation. God's Spirit dwells in us.

When that happens, it changes who we are.

Every Christian has a measure of the Holy Spirit inside of them.

And it is a relationship that we learn to trust in.

It is only through the power of the Holy Spirit that we can love our enemy. It is only through the power of the Holy Spirit that we can forgive those who wrong us. It is only through the power of the Spirit that we can overcome our own warlike ways.

For example, a relative of mine recently who had an huge amount of money stolen from them. They were defrauded of the money and they have no civil recourse through the courts.

They were tempted to hope that in the end, God will get that person for stealing from them.

But God, by the power of the Spirit lead that person to forgive.

Their preacher said to them: “It is only money. Would you exchange your soul for money? Would you give up your eternal reward for temporary riches?” Many people would.

But the Holy Spirit gives us a different value system.

This morning, in my morning devotions, I read these words from Psalm 49. These are words that talk about our relationship to money and God. The Psalmist says:

⁵Why should I be afraid
in times of trouble,
when I am surrounded
by vicious enemies?
⁶They trust in their riches
and brag about
all of their wealth.
⁷You cannot buy back your life
or pay off God!
⁸It costs far too much
to buy back your life.
You can never pay God enough
⁹to stay alive forever
and safe from death.

And:

¹⁶Don’t let it bother you
when others get rich
and live in luxury.
¹⁷Soon they will die
and all of their wealthwill be left behind.¹⁸Even if someone is satisfied with this life
and is praised because he is successful, ¹⁹he will join all his ancestors in death,
where the darkness lasts forever. ²⁰Our greatness cannot keep us from death;
we will still die like the animals.

It is important to put money in the perspective of eternity!

The whole thing changes when we become Christians. The Holy Spirit is inside everyone who believes.

Romans 8 calls that difference in our mindset as a seal of the Holy Spirit. It is proof to every believer that they are trusting in Christ.

Every believer has Him inside of them.

I couldn't sleep last night. So I did my morning devotions at about 2:00 this morning. I read this passage and again I was shocked at how other worldly minded the Scriptures call us to be.

It is impossible to do in our own strength. That is why Jesus breathed on them and gave them the Holy Spirit. He gave them the power to forgive. He gave them the power to live by a different, a Christ-like, set of values.

That is the power of the Holy Spirit to change the individual.

And that is not the promise of the power that Jesus is speaking of here.

I believe it is necessary to separate the two.

In this passage, he is talking about extraordinary things accomplished by faith. He is talking about a multiplying factor to our own efforts. He is talking about things happening miraculously, God's way, and not ours.

Verse 8 is one of the first verses I had to memorize in Bible College. “You shall receive power...”

The word POWER in the Greek is Dunamis. It is the same word that we get dynamite from.

So, a measure of the Holy Spirit is given to everyone who believes. The disciples already have this. But they are told to wait for a second blessing that comes at times that gives us power to build the Church.

Notice from the text. The promise of this power comes when the disciples are looking for an human solution, a political solution, to their problems.

Jesus is telling them them to stop limiting God and God's vision.

He tells them that there is more of the Spirit of God to come. And he tells them that going forward is going to be in God's power, not ours.

That leads us to the second point of the message this morning:

The Focus of the Church is on changing hearts, not politics.

Again, the disciples are asking Jesus, “are you going to set the world back to the rights at this time?”

And Jesus' answer is for them to stop worrying about how all of God's judgments and blessings are going to be played out in the world. Instead, he wants them to focus on the hearts of people, not the politics of power.

God knows that no laws, no police force, no threats of punishment or no promises of reward are going to help people do the right thing.

The entire Old Testament is proof that law does not change hearts. Only God can do that, by the power of His Holy Spirit.

So Jesus corrects the focus of the disciples.

Jesus spoke of this earlier in His parables. Matthew 13:33: Jesus tells the disciples that the Kingdom of God will spread like yeast rising in a loaf of bread. It spreads on a molecular level, cell to cell. One cell is transformed and that cell transforms the next one to it and so on.

And again, they are slow on the uptake. Look at verses 10, 11.

They are sort of doing the “what do we do now?” routine.

And instead of Jesus reappearing to them, He sends two angels who chide them.

“Why are you looking up?” They say. “Look out” (point up, then out).

They remind them that Jesus will return, and Jesus will set the world to the right, but not now. Right now, it is their job to get busy working on the transformation, person to person, by the Holy Spirit as people learn to trust Jesus.

The focus of the church is on the transformation of hearts, not governments.

The only real path to peace in this world is not through violent conquering, but by the peace of Christ changing the hearts of individuals.

We could fault the disciples for their desire to have a political solution to their problem, but we should put ourselves in their shoes.

The Roman government had a pretty big boot pressing down on their necks. They were all slaves to a foreign nation that lived in incredible luxury because it extracted huge tributes from the nations it had conquered.

Remember, this whole thing started with Joseph and Mary being forced to leave their home and relocate to Bethlehem just so the Romans could do a better job of collecting their taxes from every single person.

I think of the victims in the Holocaust. They had to be asking themselves, “why doesn't God see what is happening to us and stop it?”

You would think that this would the time for some sort of earth shattering divine intervention.

Thinking that the God of love will indeed act on behalf of the helpless to protect them and deliver them from those who are acting wickedly toward them can bring some comfort and hope.

And the Romans mistreated the Jewish nation.

From history, we know that in 37 more years, they will destroy the city and torture most of its inhabitants to death.

The disciples knew of the threat and would have wanted to prevent it.

Instead, God told them to look out, to the entire world and to see what can happen, through them, by the power of God's Spirit inside of them.

He changed the focus of their lives from things that were merely human to things that mattered throughout eternity.

First, the disciples are looking for an human solution to their problems, Jesus tells them that the Holy Spirit will do more than they can imagine.

So, the Future is in God's hands, in God's way.

The Focus is on spiritual things, not earthly things.

And we also see the Formation of the Church.

We have alluded to this already.

The formation of the Church is not by human power, but by the power of the Holy Spirit.

This point was important for Jesus to emphasize.

I heard of a church consultant who was selling fog machines, stage lighting, expensive video production equipment, sound systems that produced enough volume to reach heaven saying: “with all this technology, glitz and glimmer, we don't need an old fashioned move of the Holy Spirit anymore. We can create all that excitement with all this technology.”

I am not bashing technological advances. Anything that helps us communicate the gospel more clearly is great.

But the power, the formation, of the church is not in man-made devices. It isn't in the cleverness of the preacher, or the ability of the leadership to understand whatever market share is available to them in their community.

The formation of the Church, the thing that Jesus told the disciples to wait for, is in the Holy Spirit.

What does all that mean for us?

It means that success, growth and discipleship is in the hands of God. It means that we have faith in God's unfailing promise to us to build His church.

But the results are in the hand of God.

So, what do we do about it?

We have faith.

We trust.

We look at our own relationship with God.

The Holy Spirit dwells inside of us. We can either let Him lead us, or we can shut him out.

I am impressed with one of the first big miracles that happened after the day of Pentecost.

The text, in Acts 3: 1-10, there is this story of a great miracle where Peter and John heal a man who had been born crippled. And the text sets the scene for the miracle. Peter and John were on the way to pray.

They were seeking God, and God sought out them to do a big thing in the lives of all of His people.

I don't use shame, or guilt to motivate people. And I am certainly not going to blame people and say that if you all prayed more, this Church would be growing.

But this great Church building miracle happened when Peter and John were on the way to pray.

Prayer is important!

I happen to believe that we are right where God wants us to be. I believe in the future of the Church.

But, I do believe that this is a call for us to pray. This passage, and the significance of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer is a call for us to be in right relationship with God and with each other.

Forgiveness can be hard. It was very hard for the person I mentioned who was cheated out of an huge amount of money.

Those kinds of things really put our faith to the test.

When Jesus tells them to wait for God to do His work, He is telling them to live by faith.

The writer of Psalm 49 understood living by faith in relationship to money.

Jesus taught it when the Holy Spirit was first given and we were given the power to forgive.

But God called them, and us, to walk with Him, loving, forgiving and trusting Him to do His will both in us and in our Church.

Jesus said that God provides for the little sparrows, He will provide for us.

We purify ourselves and live a life of faith and then great things happen.

Focused on Jesus

Text: 1 John 4:1-6

Focus: Jesus

Function: To remind people to focus on the big picture: JESUS!

Form:

I love verse 1 from The Message: ¹My dear friends, don't believe everything you hear. Carefully weigh and examine what people tell you. Not everyone who talks about God comes from God. There are a lot of lying preachers loose in the world.

Don't believe everything you hear... ...not everyone who talks about God comes from God... ...a lot of lying preachers loose in the world.

How do we know?

What may seem a little odd is that this is in the 1^st Century of the Church. The apostles, the ones who walked with Jesus, were still alive. If anyone had any questions they could have just went to one of them and asked them what Jesus actually said.

We have been studying 1^st John. You may have noticed two weeks ago that we learned that we are the Children of God regardless. We learned at times that we may doubt our faith and we learned that God's Word tells us to trust God at His word. If He calls us children, then we must be. John answered the question that we although strive to be pure and holy, and all of us sometimes fail, God sees our hearts and knows we are trying. He sees that since we trusted Jesus, the Holy Spirit is in us working to change us and as long as we are in process of change, we can be assured, we can know, that we are His.

We learned, that if we wanted a “test” of our faith, then we shouldn't clear ourselves based on the fact that we are perfect. But we should clear ourselves based on the way the Holy Spirit is changing us. We have a new orientation. Our orientation steers away from evil, unforgiveness, bitterness and revenge. Instead if indeed God has softened our hearts towards others, and we are in a process, then we can have some assurance.

Last week, the same question comes up in our text: How do we know for sure if we are saved?

And we learned that we can apply two tests, The two tests of love. The first is: Are we forgiving others? And the second is: “do we give charity without selfishness?”

Now we are at a third text with another way to “test it” to know if it is true.

Someone who is critical might say: “But pastor, if THE ANSWER was given in the first sermon, and THE ANSWER was given in the second sermon in this series from 1 John, then how can there be a third THE ANSWER in this third sermon?

Which one is it? I am not confused.

The reason is: the book goes from passage to passage giving us ways “to know” that our relationship with Jesus is real.

John keeps answering the question of “how can we know?”

There was an heresy that cropped up in the Church in the 1^st Century. The heresy was known as Gnosticism.

The Gnostic believed that there was no way that Jesus could have had a mortal body. They believed that anything mortal was corrupted by the fallen nature of the world.

Therefore, they believed that Jesus was some sort of angelic being, not human at all.

The word Gnostic comes from the Greek word Gnosis. It is spelled: G,N,O,S,I,S. It means knowledge.

The G at the beginning is silent. If you listen to it, “Gnosis” and “know” you can hear that the English word is a direct transliteration. Even the “K” in know is silent like the “G” in Gnosis.

Why did they reject the humanness of Jesus and what difference does that make?

It wasn't so much that they rejected Jesus' humanity as much as it was they took their focus off of Jesus on to something they could do themselves.

As with almost any cult, there is a lot of shame and then duties that must be performed in order to win God's grace.

Every cult has a power structure that is used to burden people down in order to control and exploit them.

And I believe that the reason is that the hardest thing to accept, the most difficult concept to completely believe in, and the hardest thing to trust in is the concept of grace.

Grace is just plain outright messy. In parable after parable, Jesus points out just how difficult grace is for us. The parable of the man who owed a King's ransom proves how great God's grace is. The parable of the prodigal son is more about the elder brother resenting the grace given to the wayward brother.

The story of the demon-possessed prostitute, who washed Jesus feet with tears and perfume, and the way the religious leader thought that it was a scandal that such a woman would be in his house, and that Jesus would allow her to even touch Him exposes how grace is really hard for us to accept.

Jesus was a friend of sinners and the religious people couldn't handle it.

Grace is free. It is a scandal. We cannot earn it by our works. It can only come to us by our love for Jesus and our trust in Him.

We cannot earn God's favor. It is God's gift to us.

And time after time, even when we sin the same sin again and again, God still forgives us.

I don't understand why. But God's grace is incredible.

It is so incredible that throughout the centuries different cults, and factions have rejected grace for their own brand of religion.

The Gnostics were among the first.

Why?

Grace seems to good to be true.

And it gets in the way of our pride. It makes us depend on Jesus. It keeps us focused on Jesus.

Since God saved us by grace, we are completely dependent on Him for our salvation.

Wouldn't salvation be easier if there was indeed a list of black and white rules that we could do ourselves?

Then we could prove that we are believers.

But we know better. The people who had that supposed list of rules were some of the ones who were offended at Jesus Himself and had Him crucified because He didn't buy into their religious system.

But let me tell you, sometimes that list of rules seems more concrete, and it is easy to fall into the trap of trusting ourselves than Jesus.

So this cult that cropped up early in the life of the Church was called the cult of knowledge.

It sprung from the false teaching that Jesus didn't have a real live flesh-and-blood body.

This group would have rather had a human made list of rules than faith in Jesus.

They want God contained in their own little box.

I am studying the book of Job in my morning devotions.

Is anyone else as confused as I am by that book?

I listen to the speeches of Job's friends. It is hard to find anything wrong with what they say.

They say things like: God is fair, so you must be the one in the wrong... God is wise and has proven your own dark heart...

For those who don't know. Job was a mighty man who loved God and Satan was jealous of him. Satan convinced God to let him take away his wealth, his family and his health. All that was left to him was his wife and his wife counseled him to curse God and die.

The men could not imagine that some times bad things happen to good people.

We still struggle with the concept.

They wanted a universe where they were guaranteed that if they did the right thing all the time, they could be sure of success and blessings.

They didn't want a universe where God was in complete control and sometimes things happened for a greater purpose.

They wanted a list of rules, a list of does and don't that they could follow to ensure their own safety and security.

They wanted God placed in a box with boundaries that they could measure and therefore have some sort of control over.

But God, and God's grace does not work that way.

The Gnostics, the cult of knowledge, were very similar in their beliefs.

The name, knowledge meant that the more one knew, the more saved they were.

They believed that Knowledge is divine, so the more knowledge you have, the closer you are to the divine.

The problem with that kind of religion is that it takes no faith. It is centered on us, the human, and our own ability to earn our righteousness by what we do, in this case, what we know. In many dynamics, it was a lot like the Church of Scientology, where you pay to get more and more knowledge.

And sometimes that kind of religion is appealing because it gives us something to do. It gives us something concrete that we can believe in besides God.

But it takes our focus off of Jesus and places it on ourselves and our performance.

It is a form of pride, because we focus on ourselves instead of Jesus and His grace.

That doesn't make knowledge of God's word wrong.

We teach that we should know the Word of God better.

Psalm 119:9: How does a person keep their way pure? By studying God's word?

Or Hosea 4:6: My people perish for lack of knowledge.

Here is the problem with their thinking. Knowing God's word is important but Jesus said clarified its importance: John 5:39: "You search the Scriptures , because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is these that bear witness of Me;”

This knowledge is good when it focuses us on Jesus.

It appears that these Gnostics wanted something other than faith to prove their salvation.

And John is answering the claims of this cult.

In the book of 1 John, John uses the phrase “we know that” fourteen times. We know that we are saved. We know that we are the children of God. We know that we have eternal life. We know that we have assurances before God.

If you want to know anything, you should know the Bible, but don't take pride on Bible knowledge, rejoice in knowing Jesus.

John is pointing this out very clearly in this passage.

Don't believe every thing you here. Test these preachers, or these ideas that come into your heads. The Spirit of the Antichrist is already loose on earth.

Why was it considered an heresy that Jesus didn't have a mortal, flesh-and-blood body?

Last week, at the end of our worship service spells out that importance.

We partook of the symbol of Jesus body and blood that was sacrificed for us.

Jesus says: “I have come to seek and save the lost.” (Luke 19:10)

Jesus is the Savior of the world. And His grace flows freely to everyone who believes. Everyone. Everyone who believes.

To some, the grace given to certain people is a scandal. They have taken their eyes off of Jesus.

Jesus didn't come to prove us as being better than others. He came to save those who admit that they need the savior.

The moment we take our eyes off of Jesus' grace and focus on a specific sin committed by others (one that conveniently happens to not be a sin we do), we have taken our focus off of Jesus.

Jesus came to save us.

And, in the divine order of things, it took a perfect human sacrifice to free us from our sins. Hebrews 10:3-5 tells us that animal sacrifice is merely a reminder of our shame. It took Jesus' own blood to save us.

The perfect human specimen, without sin, either committed by Himself, or inherited by his lineage from Adam and Eve became the sacrifice for all of humanity.

He had to have an human body to provide the means of grace for us.

We have free grace that is amazing. Free grace that transcends all of our sins.

But, it was costly. It cost God dearly. That is why John talks about holiness in this book so much.

But it all ends with Jesus.

John warns the people of the Antichrist.

The Antichrist is the one who denies the atonement of Jesus on our behalf. He denies Grace. He supplants Christianity for something that we do, something that we earn, something in a nice little box with a set of rules that we can live up to or fail in instead of faith and trust in God's grace.

So, the passage starts out with don't believe these Spirits. I have been talking about false preachers.

But this is all a part of spiritual warfare.

So how do we know if we are being tricked?

Let us keep ourselves focused on Jesus and the wonder of His grace.