First the Question: Stephen saw Christ standing in Heaven. Was Christ, STANDING, ready to come back as King then, at that moment. Yes or No?
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and NOW, Today let us consider….
THE GOSPEL OF JOHN....THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST, pt. 14 of 24
MY FATHER WORKETH HITHERTO AND I WORK
In John 5:18 we read that the Jews sought to kill Jesus, because He healed the impotent man on their Sabbath and because He said, “My Father worketh hitherto: and I work.” (John 5:17). They understood from this statement that the Lord Jesus made Himself equal with God. (John 5:18). Again they sought to stone Him when He said, in John 10:30, “I and Father are ONE.” The Lord Jesus said to Philip, His apostle, “he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.” (John 14:9).
In speaking to and concerning His Father, in John’s Record, the Lord Jesus called Him ‘FATHER’ about ten times, ‘THE FATHER’, about 70 times, and ‘MY FATHER’ about 38 times. In John’s Record God, the Father, is mentioned 122 times. No other Book in the New Testament Scriptures mentions the ‘FATHER’ even half this number; in fact God is mentioned as ‘FATHER’ a greater number of times in John’s Record than in Matthew, Mark, Luke, Acts and in all of Paul’s Epistles combined. “FATHER” is in John’s five Books 144 times. We have already observed that God, the Son, is called ‘JESUS’ more than 250 times in John which is far more than in any other Book in the Bible. It is interesting to note that God is called ‘FATHER’, 269 times in Books from Matthew to Revelation.
At Sinai the Lord God gave man some work which he was never able to do. (Acts 15:10). The people had said to Moses, “All that the Lord hath spoken, we will do.” (Exodus 19:8). A short while after this pledge the same people said to Moses, after God had given him the ten commandments, “speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die.” (Exodus 20:19). About 1500 years later Christ said to the same nation, “Did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you keepeth the law?” (John 7:19). But in rejecting their Messiah, by Whom came Grace and Truth, they said, “we are Moses’s disciples.” (John 9:28). “Being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, they have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.” (Romans 10:3). They made the fatal blunder mentioned in Romans 9:32, “they sought not righteousness by faith, but as it were, by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that stumblingstone.” (Romans 9:32).
So now, here’s the question: In this year, 2011 A.D. how many church members even try to understand Romans 4:4? How few of them receive and believe this truth of God, “Now to him that worketh is the reward NOT reckoned of Grace, but of debt?”
“But to him that worketh NOT but believeth in Him that justifieth the ungodly his faith is counted for righteousness.” (Romans 4:4-5). In Romans 10:4 we read that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth. As to how this was accomplished, we are told in 2 Cor. 5:21, that the Lord Jesus, Who knew no sin, was made sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. Jesus Christ, the Righteous (1 John 2:1), became our Sinbearer, bearing our sins in His own Body on the tree. (1 Peter 2:24).
LONG BEFORE God “sabbathed” on the seventh day, after six days of creation, “resting from all His work which He had made” (Genesis 2:1-2), He and His Son, Who before the foundation of the world was in the form of God, entered into an agreement that that Son was to come to this earth as the spotless Lamb of God to bear away the sins of the world. (1 Peter 1:18-23).
When God’s sabbath was ENDED at the time sin entered, by Adam, into the world (Romans 5:12), God promised that His Son would come as the Seed of the woman (Genesis 3:14-15). Later on, the obedient Son of the Father said, “Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God.” (Hebrews 10:7). The whole creation was travailing in pain. (Romans 8:22). The whole world was lying in the Wicked One. (1 John 5:19). God was working. Satan was working. The children of Adam were being conceived in sin and shapen in iniquity. At the time of the flood “God saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” (Genesis 6:5).
Again after the flood the human race decided to give up God; and God gave them up. (Romans 1:21-32). Out of the wreck and ruin of humanity God established one Nation on the earth. Through this Nation (Israel) God continued to work. Within a few centuries God said to that people, “Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, they have forsaken the Lord.” ”The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but ISRAEL doth not know, my people doth not consider.” (Isaiah 1:1-4). Then this appraisal of God’s chosen nation (chosen to be His peculiar nation) is recorded in the verses that follow, “The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness, but wounds and bruises and putrifying sores” (Isaiah 1:5-6).
This was God’s holy Nation, through whom He was to do His work for the rest of the human race. This was the Nation, who said at Sinai, “all that the Lord hath spoken we will do.” (Exodus 19:8). God gave them a perfect work to do, the ten commandments. With that perfect work God included a Sabbath. God rested in His perfect work of creation. In Hebrews 10:10-14 we learn that Christ rested in a perfect work of redemption. To accomplish that perfect work of redemption, the Author (Causer) of eternal salvation, (Hebrews 5:8-9), had to become the Man of Sorrows acquainted with grief, had to be despised and rejected by His own chosen nation and forsaken by His own Father, crying on the cross, “My God! My God! Why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46). In Gethsemane the Lord of glory sweat as it were great drops of blood. He was very heavy and said, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death.” (Mark 14:34). As He contemplated Calvary He prayed to His Father, “take away this cup from Me: nevertheless not what I will, but what Thou wilt.” (Mark 14:36). All of this was included in the Father’s Will concerning His Son’s work for a condemned human race. That Son, Who was obedient unto death (Philippians 2:5-11), said “I came down from heaven not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me.” (John 6:38).
As we seriously consider Him Who suffered such contradiction of sinners, bleeding in Gethsemane and on the cross ( Hebrews 12:1-5), we should know the truth of Romans 3:19 and Galatians 2:21, “what things soever the law saith, it saith to them that are under the law: that EVERY MOUTH MAY BE STOPPED, and all the world become guilty before God”. “I do not frustrate the Grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ has died in vain (for nothing).” With these statements we should read Romans 4:15 and Colossians 1:20; that the law worketh wrath, but that Christ made PEACE through the blood of His cross.
So we read in Romans 8:3, “what the law could NOT do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh.”
And what is the result? The result: believing sinners freed from the law of sin and death; then the righteousness of the law could be fulfilled IN BELIEVERS who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. (Romans 8:1-4).
“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved” Acts 16:31, while there is still time!
So There You Have it!
Spread this message to everyone you know, far and wide. The time is short
Grace be to you and peace, from God: our Father, and The LORD Jesus Christ.
In The LORD Jesus Christ,
The Lion and Lamb Ministry
Pastor David Picos, D.D.
Minister and Ambassador for Christ in the Ministry of Reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:18-20)
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