He Keeps His Sheep

         Hebrews 13:20-21-"Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, the great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the eternal covenant, make you complete in every good work to do His will, working in you what is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen."


  Man is not at peace. He's not at peace with God, and usually not with anybody else. It's amazing how we sin and pursue the satisfaction of our desires and our pleasures and we'll sit there, and if we think about it long enough we'll say, "I'm not any happier than before I did this."  We are in this condition of sin which brings ruin, disorder, chaos and destruction, and into that kind of a world the Son of God came to make peace. He is the God of peace. Through Christ and the gospel He made peace with sinners, and they are able to make peace with each other. Christ can make peace and He gives peace (Romans 5:1). 
          This is the grace of God: it doesn't matter how far down you've gone into your sin, He's greater than your sin.  The One who the hostility is against is the One that takes the initiative to go and get the one who is at war (John 10:16). We can't fix our state; we can't pick ourselves up; we can't free ourselves. Only He can break the hold of our own sin and self destruction. That sheep on that cliff is going to fall off and is going to be destroyed if the Shepherd doesn't grab it (Luke 15:1-7)! 
         I don't care what age you got saved. Have you ever thought about what you would've become and what you would've done to yourself if He hadn't of intervened? He keeps His sheep! I don't care "super christian" who you are, I'm gonna tell you why you've been sustained and haven't destroyed yourself, even as a Christian: He's kept you! He has kept you!

John the Baptist: A Model Preacher and the greatest man that ever Lived

Luke 3:1-9

                    "John the Baptist was a man governed by the Spirit, a God-centered man.  He had a commitment to fearlessly, powerfully, uncompromisingly preach.  He spoke the truth whether people liked it or not.  He spoke the truth whether it was received or not.  His goal was not to get and keep a large crowd, like many preachers today.  He didn't think his job was to be as positive and "feel-good" as people wanted him to be.  His job was to speak the truth for God's glory and to be helpful to people by telling them the truth for their own good, whether they understood it or not. 
                     He was a model preacher.  Many preachers today try to make you feel as good as they possibly can, even if it means not telling you the whole truth. What if you had a doctor like that?  Now say you have blood where you shouldn't have blood, pain in your chest where you shouldn't have pain, numbness in your body where you shouldn't have numbness, you've got severe headaches.  So you finally go in to the doctor and he smiles and says to you, "everything's gonna be alright!" even though you'll be dead in two years.  People that won't accept that with doctors, will accept that with preachers.
                    The people were telling themselves, "I'm Okay! Abraham's my father, I know that the scriptures are from the prophets and they're from God.  John says, "Don't even begin to say to yourself because you know all that, that you're okay! I can tell by your life that you are not okay.  If God has done His work in you, you'd be following Him and have left all that behind. The axe is laid at the root of the tree!" 
                    John the Baptist was also a good news preacher (vs 3). His aim was not to judge them or condemn them, his aim was to get them to see, "you too need to repent, you too need to be forgiven".  He preached  God's grace and mercy and pardon in Christ. The glory of Christ captivated John beyond any man that ever lived (John 1:24-27).  He clearly saw the glory of the person of Christ ( John 1:29-30). When he preached forgiveness, he understood that the forgiveness of sins would be because of the atoning work that Christ did on the cross.  He says in John 1:29 when he say Jesus coming to him, "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" 
                     This is the greatest man that ever lived."

All That We Need

Colossians 2:9,10 - "For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power."

           In Christ is access to every believer for their completeness.  I don’t care how messed up your background was, how deep your scars are, how evil the people were that raised you.  You can be complete (1:28)! And you can be encouraged (2:2) because in Him, in bodily form now, is a fullness accessible to you.  Christ possesses in His being and in human form as the God-man, the  entirety of the infinite being of all of God’s attributes. The perfections of God’s nature in their entirety and fullness are found in Christ.  

          He is infinite in His knowledge, in His wisdom, in His love, in His mercy, in His graciousness.  He possesses infinitely every single  attribute that the Father possesses.  How can  there not be what we need??? Sustaining power? He’s infinitely powerful!  Mercy??  To sustain someone that does not deserve to be sustained? He’s infinitely merciful!  Infinitely faithful, loving and just!  The attributes are not only infinite, they are immutable. They cannot be changed!  He can’t love an object of His love less.  If you can sin and He love you less, then you can change Him.  Can you change Him?  No!  He can be less happy with you, less pleased with you, but He loves you the same (Psalm 89:1).  The essence of the glory of the being of Christ and of God the Father is their sufficiency.  There’s Someone who helps you, there’s Someone who sustains you, there’s Someone who gives you wisdom, , there’s Someone who gives you power, and He’s all powerful and He’s all wise. There’s Someone who restores- there’s a Person and He’s all sufficient-

 and this is His glory. 

Reconciled in Christ

 As I was listening to my father's sermon online,  the Lord put it on my heart to begin posting pieces of them kind of like a devotional.  I pray God continues to use my dad to bring souls to Christ and proclaim His name. 

Colossians 1:21,22 - “And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, He has now reconciled in His body of flesh by His death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before Him.”

                 What He did in removing the offense of reconciliation is SO entire, SO complete, SO final that He can present us before God without any blame, without any reproach; It's ALL been removed! All the offenses, all the sins that would breach us are gone! He can present us faultless in Christ, not faultless in ourselves. 

                 How, How do we not cherish Him? How do we not serve Him? How do we not love Him? How? And how, how – when we are offended – we say, “you know they offended me man, let me tell you what they did, and I'm hurt”, how do we not say to them, “What did you do and did I do anything to cause you to do that? Was there anything that I might have done to precipitate this? Take what's out of your eye first – the log, and then you get the speck out of your brother's. How do you just lay in to someone without fist saying, “ did I do anything to create this thing? Was there anything on my side?” You say, “I don't want to do that, why should I have to do that?”

               He did it ALL friends! He took away your offense! How can we NOT approach people that way and say, did I do anything to make this breach? Was there anything on my side that caused this, even a little bit? Now you already know in your mind what's on their side and it's huge to you. That's not the issue. The issue is this: If Christ approached you this way, how can you not approach people that way? How do we do this?? We forget what He did for us. 

              Oh what a Savior! Oh Lord You came our way, You went to us, the angry rebel that spit in your face and didn't even know it. We say “what do You want? Hey get out of my life!” Children of wrath.. and You reconciled us. We should be in the dust. Who are we? Who do we think we are? Please forgive us, forgive every one of us. Amen.