17 And take the helmet of salvation, and the
sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God: 18 Praying always with all prayer and
supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and
supplication for all saints;
If you remember, Isaiah refers to the “helmet of salvation.”
Isaiah 59:17a For he put on righteousness as a breastplate,
and an helmet of salvation upon his head…..
We are saved, not because of any works which we have done,
but because of God’s mercy.
Titus 3:5a Not by works of righteousness which we have
done, but according to his mercy he saved us…
We have this assurance of our salvation based on our belief
and God’s response to our belief.
Romans 10:9 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the
Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the
dead, thou shalt be saved.
There is no question. You aren’t saved from everlasting
destruction and agony because you feel saved. You are saved because of what the
Bible says about it. You aren’t saved because of a ritual you perform, a
posture in which you pray, or the intercession of a dead relative. You are
saved because of your belief and God’s response to that belief. You aren’t
saved one day and unsaved the next, weaving in and out of being destined for
Heaven in the morning and destined for Hell in the afternoon. You are sealed until
the day of redemption.
Ephesians 4:30 And grieve not the holy Spirit of God,
whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.
Salvation is said to be a helmet. Let your thoughts and your
mind be protected by the knowledge that, through no effort of your own outside
of a simple, childlike belief and faith and trust in Christ, you have
salvation.
The only word of God that is accessible to us is our Bible.
It is forever settled.
Psalm 119:89 LAMED. For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled
in heaven.
God regards it as very important.
Psalm 138:2 I will worship toward thy holy temple, and
praise thy name for thy lovingkindness and for thy truth: for thou hast
magnified thy word above all thy name.
The question of what constitutes the Bible is very important,
therefore. As it is a sword with which you will fight your flesh, the Devil,
and the world system it is important for you to know if you are equipped with a
sword from God….
Hebrews 4:12 For the word of God is quick, and powerful,
and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of
soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the
thoughts and intents of the heart.
…or a plastic butter knife with no spiritual power in it at
all…
2Corinthians 2:17 For we are not as many, which corrupt the
word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God speak we
in Christ.
This is not the place to review how the role of the
translator changed hundreds of years ago from being a faithful messenger of
God’s word to being a critic, pretending to know more than God. This is not the
place to review the foolishness of taking trash in a garbage dump in Egypt and
regarding it as the key by which God’s word should be translated and
understood.
This is not the place to review the foolishness of
Fundamentalism, of limiting God’s involvement in the Bible to a single event at
one time in the distant past, of denying that the God you think can direct the
events of your daily life can also preserve His word through faithful copyists
and translators.
This is not the place to point out the fact that all modern
Bible translations give authority to two Bible manuscripts that were rejected
by the mass of Christians for a millennia and a half before their exaltation as
the wrench thrown in the gears of faith. Nor is it the time to talk about
verses that were quoted or alluded to in every century of Christianity being
ripped from modern Bibles, even leaving gaps in their verse numbering, based on
the fact that those verses weren’t in those two phony, manufactured
manuscripts.
This is not the time to question the motives of translators
seeking a copyright to sell their drivel calling Jesus Christ and Satan both
the “morning star,” referring to Jesus as a new age avatar called “the Coming
One,” reducing Him to a “begotten God,” or denying the uniqueness of God’s
appearance as a man in the flesh and the result of our salvation by calling
Jesus God’s “only Son.”
The word of God, the Bible, is the only offensive weapon in
the arsenal God has assigned to the Christian. It is to be used with much prayer
as you humbly ask the Holy Spirit to teach you it’s simple to understand
commands and its deepest doctrine. You, as they did in Antioch where the
disciples (Luke 14:26, 27, 33) were first called Christians (Acts 11:26), are to take the Bible literally
unless the passage you are reading simply cannot be taken literally. For
instance, Genesis 1:1 is clearly a literal statement while Job 11:12 is a
simile and Psalm 119:105 is a metaphor while Galatians 4:22-26 is an allegory.
Bible literalism is not new, like skeptics insist, but is as old as the Bible
itself.
Deuteronomy 8:3 And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to
hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy
fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread
only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man
live.
Matthew 4:4 But he answered and said, It is written, Man
shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the
mouth of God.
Proverbs 30:5 Every word of God is pure: he is a shield
unto them that put their trust in him.
Psalm 119:160 Thy word is true from the beginning: and
every one of thy righteous judgments endureth for ever.
It has already been shown from verses how we are to be in a
state of constant prayerfulness and this is even more important when we are
trying to understand God’s words in His Book. Prayer can effectively consist of
four parts using the acronym, ACTS. A is for adoration as we praise God, C is
for confession as we bring our sins to Him, T is for Thanksgiving as we express
our humble gratitude, and S is for supplication as we make the requests of Him
that burden our hearts.
Prayer here is listed synonymously with supplication. We
intercede for others as we pray for understanding. We pray that God would
change us through His word and that others would fall in love with that word as
we have done, making every effort to help people draw close to God through His
word.
Reading the Bible, hearing the Bible read, and hearing the
Bible faithfully preached are essential to growing in the Lord if you are not
under terrible persecution. Our faith grows in only two ways, when it is watered
and fed by the written word of God or our own blood.
No comments:
Post a Comment