'Obedience
is mission: "I have come into this world to do the will of my Father, who
has sent me." Where there is no obedience, there is no virtue; where there
is no virtue there is no good; where good is wanting, there is no love, there
is no God; where God is not, there is no Heaven.'--St. Padre Pio
Scripture
text:
Brothers and sisters:
Every high priest is taken from among
men
and made their representative before
God,
to offer gifts and sacrifices for
sins.
He is able to deal patiently with the
ignorant and erring,
for he himself is beset by weakness
and so, for this reason, must make sin
offerings for himself
as well as for the people.
No one takes this honor upon himself
but only when called by God,
just as Aaron was.
In the same way,
it was not Christ who glorified
himself in becoming high priest,
but rather the one who said to him:
You are my Son:
this day I have begotten you;
just as he says in another place,
You are a priest forever
according to the order of
Melchizedek.
In the days when he was in the Flesh,
he offered prayers and supplications
with loud cries and tears
to the one who was able to save him
from death,
and he was heard because of his
reverence.
Son though he was, he learned
obedience from what he suffered;
and when he was made perfect,
he became the source of eternal
salvation for all who obey him.
Our
lives are sometimes pictured as a fabric.
This fabric consists of family,
marriage, children, friends, work, finances, social life, habits,
entertainment, service, etc.
It is
the old choice which still is presented to every soul; the old crisis which
reappears in every experience. Caesar, or Christ, that is the question: the
vast, attractive, skeptical world, with its pleasures and ambitions and its
prodigal promise, or the meek, majestic, and winning figure of Him of
Nazareth?
The election remains for each of us.
And the moment of the election, in the shaded and solemn "Valley of
Decision," will be memorable in our history, when suns for us have
ceased to shine!
One
step forward in obedience is worth years of study about it.
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THE SERPENT OF BRONZE
ReplyDeleteThe Israelites spoke against God and Moses, so God sent fiery serpents among them because they sinned and many people of Israel died. (Numbers 21:4-7)
God gave them a plan to escape death.
Numbers 21:8-9 Then the Lord said to Moses, "Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and it shall be that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, shall live." 9 So Moses made a bronze serpent, and put it on a pole; and so it was, if a serpent had bitten anyone, when he looked at the bronze serpent, he lived. (NKJV)
TAKE NOTICE.
1. Not one Israelite said "Looking at the bronze serpent did save me from death, because I was saved the minute I believed in the message of Moses."
2. Not one Israelite said "I was saved from death by faith alone, and looking at the bronze serpent was just an act of obedience."
3. Not one Israelite said, "Looking at the serpent of bronze was a testimony of my faith, however, if had no bearing on my sins being forgiven by the Lord and I was saved from death before I looked at the bronze serpent."
4. Not one Israelite said, " Looking at a serpent of bronze is a work and works cannot saved anyone from death."
5. Not one Israelite said, "Moses meant that we were to look at the serpent of bronze because we were already saved from death."
6. Not one Israelite said, " You must look at the serpent of bronze in order to join the local synagogue, however, it has nothing to do with being saved from death."
7. Not one Israelite said, There are three modes of looking at the serpent of bronze. 1. Looking at the serpent of bronze. 2. Talking about looking at the serpent of bronze. 3. Reading a book about looking at the serpent of bronze.
8. Not one Israelite said, "Looking at the serpent is an outward sign that we have already been saved from death."
You notice, that unlike the denominational churches of today, the Israelites did not write down some man-creeds in order to be saved from death from snake bites. They believed the words of Moses, as spoken by the Lord.
If only men today would simply believe what God says about the terms of pardon under the New Covenant.
THE TERMS: 1. Faith-John 3:16 2. Repentance-Acts 2:38, Acts 19:3 3. Confession-Romans 10:9 4. Water baptism-Acts 2:38, Mark 16:16, 1 Peter 3:21
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