“I know you, that you do not have the love of God in yourselves” (John 5:42).
Audio Sermon: John 5:41-47

Do you have the love of God in you? Does the love of God constrain you? Do you study His love? Are His loves your loves? Do you live in the habitual thought of the wonder of God’s love for you personally?

What do you witness when you study God’s love? You see the Cross. No other event allows you to capture the length, height, depth and width of His love. At the Cross, you discover no loveableness in man, yet God’s brand of love comes from the depth of Himself who loves because He is love.

In God’s love through Christ, you perceive that true love shrinks from no sacrifice: “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” (Ro. 8:32-35).

Why should you examine God’s love for you? In your investigation, you will behold:
 The Holy Spirit dwelling within you bearing witness with your spirit that you are God’s alone - no longer a stranger or alien to grace, but one with the Kinsman Redeemer
 The angels are your ministering spirits bearing you up so that you might not dash your foot against the stone
 The trials/afflictions/persecutions coming your way are sculpting you into Christlikeness
 That Jesus is not ashamed to call you His brethren, to proclaim your name to all eternity

You are commanded to perceive what has truly occurred. Pry into the inner chambers of perpetual love and you discover that God (not man!) calls you His child. He gifts you with the most coveted name in all of heaven and hell - Christian. Behold your adoption! Can you imagine that one of the depraved race of Adam should become a child of glory? When you reach the new Jerusalem will you not speak throughout eternity of your regeneration and of the miracles of grace?

Because you are your Lord’s and are taking on the likeness of Christ, this world does not know you because it does not know Christ. The world’s rejection of you is your confirmation of your relationship to Christ. God’s love is more powerful than death and sin, yet oh so gentle as it descends upon you as an autumnal dew. He gives you Christ and then the sequel/continuation of Christ is the Holy Spirit within you. You, a partaker of the divine nature, are more nearly resembling the divine nature you have come to love.

“Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not” (I Jn. 3:1, KJV).

GLORIA IN EXCELSIS DEO!

“You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is these that bear witness of Me” (John 5:39).
Audio Sermon: John 5:30-40

The cultural, civic and church leaders in Jesus’ society refused to believe what the Bible said. They refused to appreciate the everlasting truth that their eternity depended upon their address to Scripture. They did not want to see Jesus in the Old Testament Scriptures, so they did not see Him.

Scores of churchmen torture the Bible with their obstinate refusals to accept what God says is His word. Facts are stubborn, they just do not move - the Bible is the same way except it never changes. That God has spoken and you have His speaking is foundational to the fullness of life. Can you find Jesus and His exclusivity in both Testaments?

Every century brings apparently new challenges, but they are just the old woman with a new dress. Those of the First Century A. D. and in your century are engaged in a holy war with unholy half-truths and untruth. The war is difficult because many of those in the enemy’s camp wear your uniform, but it is not impossible to discern their true allegiances.

Contemporary people no longer “stand by the ways and see and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is, and walk in it” (Jer. 6:16). Those in certain gatherings are declaring that what God declares as sin (see I Cor. 6:9f. for a catalogue) is more a matter of choice for them. They perceive vice as virtue because they refuse to believe that God said what He intended and intended all He said. They want to eliminate doctrine because they recognize its divisiveness. They are right in that it does divide the church militant from one another because biblical doctrine is the only means to bind Christ’s true bride to Himself. They want liberty at the cost of righteousness and only too late they will discover that their refusal of righteousness has denied them of eternity’s most splendid freedom.

You can discern when those claiming Christianity leave the doctrinal truths because a clear loss of purity, chastity, righteousness, heavenliness begins to surface in their lives. They no longer speak so often, so fondly or so deeply of their Christianity. They are offended when they think they are being judged. Their pleasures and amusements become more dominant than their love for worshiping God. Their church becomes the theater, the mountains, the beaches and rivers, the golf courses and sports outlets.

They are drinking deeply of the cup of worldly poison. God is calling you to search the Scriptures so that your hearts may be opened to His holy truth. You cannot miss the person of Christ, the holiness of Christ, the uniqueness of Christ and the presence of Christ throughout God’s Bible. Trust Him to illumine your way to His presence by praying for the Spirit of Christ to direct your heart and eyes to His truth.

SOLI DEO GLORIA!

“To Him be the glory in the church” (Ephesians 3:21).
Audio Sermon: Ephesaisn 3:14-21 - “Glory in the Church” (Dr. Douglas Kelly)

Every evangelical church is purposed by God to be reflect His glory by being a colony of heaven. Nonetheless, scores of those within the Church are now outsinning the unchurched of Sodom and Gomorrah. Could the Church be becoming more of an amusement park than a sanctuary for holiness, more focused upon entertaining than illuminating, riveted upon being happy rather than holy, and pop psychology has become its therapeutic means rather than Scriptures of the eternally wise God.

Today’s Church appears more afraid of holiness, righteousness and piety than of sin. The contemporary Church so craves acceptance within this adulterous and sinful, crooked and perverse culture that it is itself becoming adulterous and sinful, crooked and perverse.

God says, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (Rev. 2:7). The Holy Spirit is the speaker, informer, inspirer, energizer and engager of Christian hearing. He speaks to the ekklesia. Who is the ekklesia having the ear to hear? Those into whom God has fulfilled His promise: “I will put My laws into their minds, and I will write them upon their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be My people” (Heb. 8:10).

What identifies those hearing the Holy Spirit? They take upon themselves the activity of Peter and Andrew who “immediately left the nets and followed Him” (Mt. 4:19f.). Have you left your nets?

Your desire is to learn from God through the teaching of His Spirit just how He views the Church and who He wants you to become as His ekklesia. God expects His congregation to live sanctified lives. He saves people in order that they might live like a saved people!

Are there those occupying the pews in your church who act upon the directives of politicians and government officials and employers, but are they as quick to respond to the voice of the Spirit of Christ? Does your church center its worship and teaching upon God or man? Do the ministers and teachers in your church believe in the inspiration, inerrancy and infallibility of Scripture? Does every person occupying a teaching station believe that Jesus Christ is the exclusive way to enter heaven? Is your church serious about christianizing Christians and growing more holy?

The church fearing the Lord is a nursery for revival, a vehicle for lifestyle transformation and a mini-culture schooling its members on how heavenlings are to conduct themselves during their tenure on earth. The Church has experienced a Reformation (1500s), Great Awakenings (1720s – 1740s and the early 1800s) and a Prayer Revival (1858-59). Nonetheless, these extraordinary outpourings of the Holy Spirit upon the people of God shall not occur again unless great fear comes upon the whole Church.

A story is told of a lady touring Westminster Abbey whose tour guide repeatedly advised her of the significance of the people buried in the hallowed ground of that church. As the unimpressed lady walked past the graves of Britain’s most courageous prime ministers, learned playwrights and literary geniuses, she asked, “Has anyone been saved in this church lately?” Perhaps you should ask that question of the principals in your church.

The social and economic commerce of the Christian is never ordinary, for it is never separated from his spiritual commitments to the lordship of Christ. God desires a pure Church unmixed with the world’s hypocritical models (I Cor. 5:5; 11:32). The purer you are, the more glorious will be the glory of the living Christ in the Church.

SOLI DEO GLORIA!

“So it came about when Moses held his hand up, that Israel prevailed, and when he let his hand down, Amalek prevailed” (Exodus 17:11).
Audio Sermon: Exodus 18:8-16 - “Intercession Overcomes All Evil” (Dr. Douglas Kelly)

God condescends to listen to the heartbeat of His most favored creation. Unconditional trust is the handmaiden of prayer, for prayer is ineffective unless the one praying actually expects the Lord God to honor the prayer (Heb. 11:6). The historians report that Monica prayed thirty-two years for her son, Augustine – God’s answer to a mother’s prayers affected the course of world history.

The marrow of prayer is listening obediently while standing in God’s presence. Prayer is one of the means God utilizes to communicate with you. All communication requires cultivation – special communication requires special cultivation. Prayer opens heaven’s portholes to the one praying.

Some Christians are gifted with being in the front lines of the battle, fighting even as David did knowing that in Christ the Holy Spirit slays His ten thousands. Other Christians are as Moses at Rephidim who in the battle with the Amalekites took no sword, but only the staff of the Lord in his hand and went to the top of the hill with Hur and Aaron so he could petition for the Lord to be the banner over His people in their labors (Ex. 17:8ff).

God wants His saints to offer their petitions to Him (Phil. 4:6). You will remember that Hezekiah took the despairing letter and spread it out before the Lord in the house of the Lord (II Ki. 19:14). “Then it happened that night that the angel of the Lord went out, and struck 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians; and when men rose early in the morning, behold, all of them were dead” (II Ki. 19:35).

Limiting prayer increases burdens – God answers prayer! Those serving the Lord should pray for pure motives in support of their request for success (Gen. 24:12; Josh. 1:8; Neh. 1:11 ). God’s people expect God to bow the heavens and visit them with a stirring work so that this day will manifest His power and grace.

The unbeliever perceives prayer a waste of time. The believer views prayer as that occasion when the prayer participant finds himself nestled in the Holy of Holies. Your prayer should be vigorous, urgent and pleasing. You must never doubt that God has heard you when you are contrite and transparent in your petition (Hab. 2:1).

Perhaps the words of those mortal men who have gone before will serve as an encouragement to your prayer life:
• Prayer begets and maintains holy courage and magnanimity in evil times. When all things about you tend to discouragement, it is your being with Jesus that makes you bold, Acts 4:13. He that uses to be before a great God, will not be afraid to look such little things as men are in the face. John Flavel
• Neglect of private prayer is the locust which devours the strength of the church. Charles Haddon Spurgeon
• I ought to study Christ as an Intercessor. He prayed most for Peter who was to be most tempted. I am on his breastplate. If I could hear Christ praying for me in the next room, I would not fear a million enemies. Yet the distance makes no difference; he is praying for me. Robert Murray McCheyne

“He went off to the mountain to pray, and He spent the whole night in prayer to God” (Lk. 6:12).

GLORIA IN EXCELSIS DEO!

“Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear shall live” (John 5:25).
Audio Sermon: John 5:25-29

God gives what only He has: eternal life. “The Father has life in Himself. I give eternal life to them and they shall never perish” (Jn. 5:26; 10:28). Eternal life begins in this world and continues even after time is no more. Eternal life is a life invested in Christ Jesus - no Jesus, no eternal life.

“It is the Spirit who gives life” (Jn. 6:63). The Holy Spirit prepares your heart to receive the word of eternal life. Without the Holy Spirit, the servants of God are like Gehazi, Elisha’s servant, who laid Elisha’s staff, the staff of the Lord, upon the dead child, but he had no life until the one commissioned by God came himself. All other addresses to life are little more than spiritual suicides.

The life Jesus gives commences in grace, continues in grace, is strengthened by grace and is completed in glory. Nonetheless, your benefit from this life is proportioned to your dependence upon Him during this life. The nature of eternal life is eternal; the source of eternal life is God; the means of eternal life is Jesus; the certainty of eternal life is discovered in God’s word; the enjoyment of eternal life is through the Holy Spirit.

Your recognition of, and appreciation for, the urgency of eternity and the pressure of living for eternity should supersede the press of the world. Westerners know the price of all things, but the value of few. If you were only going to exist three score and ten years, you would not need to be as particular about who you are becoming - but you are going to live forever! Your life in the eternal state is going to be more real and more affective than your life in this world. Therefore, you are concerned about your todays due to their affect upon your tomorrows. Every choice you make fits you more for the place you are going to live eternally. Your next choice is going to bring you into greater harmony with heaven or hell, with either Jesus or the devil, with believers or unbelievers.

Several of your Puritan brothers allow peculiarly insightful perspectives on eternal life:
 The longest life reached not to a thousand years, and that is not a day to God. Worldly things are but a tabernacle, a movable; heaven is a mansion: whatsoever become of the former, if thou canst keep the other, say, ‘I have lost that I could not keep, I have kept that I cannot lose. Thomas Adams
 Heaven will pay for the loss of anything that we can lose to get it, but nothing can pay for the loss of heaven. Richard Baxter

No one can imagine the weight and long-term influences of a life lived entirely Christian. You grow from strength to strength, and yes, there is life in the acorn, but the oak has the acorn’s life more abundantly. Many Christians are just barely alive. They have the reality of divine grace, but not the advance of the divine life. The love of sin can defile your life as much as the practice. You may be the means of awakening and enlivening others after your death, not by your bones, but by your example, your words and your prayers.

“We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal” (II Cor. 4:18).

GLORIA IN EXCELSIS DEO!

“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life” (John 5:24).
Audio Sermon: John 5:19-24

Why would someone listen to the word of God and not trust Jesus to fulfill all that God’s word provides? Is it reasonable for people to hear from the heart of God and yet pass on into death? Are friends of yours escaping so great a salvation because they refuse to acknowledge the providential hand of God upon those He set apart to write the sacred writ? Or is it your associates refuse to recognize the significance of Scripture?

God said and Peter wrote that the Bible is not the product of the will of man, “But men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God” (II Pe. 1:20f.). The Holy Spirit impressed human authors to record God’s “breathings” to man. God moved the writers to write and He inspired the words employed by the writers (II Ti. 3:16f.). Therefore, the Bible comes from God reflecting His character and purpose.

God Almighty indeed speaks directly to His people via His oracles. David explained the inspiration of Scripture saying, “The Spirit of the Lord spoke by me, and His word was on my tongue” (II Sam. 23:2). God’s human authors wrote exactly what He wanted them to write, and yet the words they wrote were their own.

God gripped His authors and gave them His message for His people. John Calvin described the human writers of Scripture as “organs of the Holy Spirit.” You should be alert to the truth that the Holy Spirit was superintending their lives before, during and after they actually reduced into writing the designs of God. Jeremiah cited God as saying, “Behold, I have put My words in your mouth” (Jer. 1:9).

God determined language to serve as the Spirit’s lasting conveyor of truth - and it has. Paul applauded the Thessalonians saying, “When you received from us the word of God’s message, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe” (I Thess. 2:13). God’s word contains all you need for faith and practice, as well as life and godliness.

Have you received the Bible as God’s message for you? Refusing to trust the word of God is expensive. Jesus said, “The Scripture cannot be broken” (Jn. 10:35). If He is right (and He is!), should you not cling to what “cannot be broken?” Covenant with God to have the same high view of Scripture proclaimed by David in Psalm 19.

Have you placed your life under the authority of Scripture? Or are you attempting to negotiate with the non-negotiating God? Are you not sure that the Bible is actually God’s word?

SOLI DEO GLORIA!

“Turn to Me, and be saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other” (Isaiah 45:22).
Audio Sermon: Isaiah 45:22-25

God Himself says, “If you return, then I will restore you. Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord and whose trust is in the Lord” (Jer. 15:19; 17:7). Do not prize, defend or live in any sin. Do not hug the serpent that daily stings you to death. Though all pleasing sins have apparent arguments for being loved, you must battle the world, the flesh and the devil remembering that your worst enemy is your own will (Isa. 55:2f.).

Why do you need to turn to God in order to be saved? Sin is an inward and outward desire of the natural man. Sons of the devil complain of the hurt sin causes yet without loosing themselves from the very sin that so exhausts them. The mission of sin is to fight the greatest good (God!) and work at “un-Goding” God. The slightest sin contradicts the character of your God. Nonetheless, the unsaved refuse to believe that even their small sins led to the construction of hell - those sins now fit the unsaved for hell.

On this side of the lake of fire, man can only approximate the heinousness of sin. Its breadth, length, height and depth are unfathomable to any man who is not presently experiencing its full fury. If you could lay your ear to hell and hear the shrieking howls of the hellions, and if you could smell the noxious odor of burning flesh that remains unconsumed eternally, only then could you begin to evaluate sin’s damnableness. No sufficient vehicle is known to man that enables him to grasp the excruciating punishment mandated by sin and its perpetrator.

Jesus died to save His people from their sins and one of the authenticators of a saved people is that they will not remain in their sins. Saved people know that no sin is forgiven as long as the sinner deliberately refuses to forsake other known sins. In God’s economy, absolute surrender marked by a complete and thorough turning is the requirement, not giving a little of yourself to God now and a little later.

You must beware of making man your bosom friend at the expense of causing God to be your bosom enemy. You can either be God’s servant or the world and the devil’s servant. Fleshly company is a fleshly devil battling to bring as many to hell with him as he possibly can (Ps. 1:1).

In 1669, Nathaniel Vincent published a sermon entitled “The Conversion of a Sinner,” wherein he encapsulated the loathing man should have for eternal damnation: “This second death is called by one of the Fathers ‘the death that is immortal,’ because the sinner is never put out of his pain; always tortured, but never quite dispatched. The fire still burns, but never totally consumes them who it burns. The worm still gnaws, but is never satisfied.”

The time will come when you will no longer have any opportunity to settle your quarrel with God about the way God saves people exclusively through the person of Jesus Christ. Ask yourself now, “How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?” (Heb. 2:3). Shake off your spiritual sloth; attend to the business of salvation while there is still day (I Thess. 5:4-10).

“Repent, and let each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit…. Be saved from this perverse generation! For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain terrifying expectation of judgment, and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries” (Acts 2:38, 40; Heb. 10:26f.).

GLORIA IN EXCELSIS DEO!

“Woe to the one who quarrels with his Maker - an earthenware vessel among the vessels of the earth! Will the clay say to the potter, ‘What are you doing?’ Or the thing you are making say, ‘He has no hands?’” (Isaiah 45:9).
Audio Sermon: Isaiah 45:8-21

God refines saints. Though He deploys second causes such as vocational challenges, health struggles, educational dilemmas and relational difficulties, God rests upon the throne of your furnace of affliction. Followers of the Lamb expect furnaces of affliction knowing that no adversity is able to steal from you your most precious treasure.

Your reaction may be, “But God, I have been in this furnace of affliction so long and it is so troublesome. I know You love me, so why am I still in this difficulty?” Is it possible that your Lord Christ is less than pleased with your address to the afflictions He has brought your way? God progressively removed Job’s protective hedge by allowing Satan’s invasions. Remember the words of your elder brother Job, “Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?” (Job 2:10).

God decrees troubles for the good of His saints (Isa. 45:7). His electing love is most precious when you are in the furnace. His furnaces purge and purify, all the while increasing your malleability so that you might be made into the likeness of the One who walks in the furnace with you. Sanctified afflictions enable you to recognize your own helplessness and teach you to pray as you should - pray that you never waste your afflictions.

In Christ’s last will and testament, He said, “In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world” (Jn. 16:33). God’s afflictions reveal that your portion is not of this world. God has chosen you to holiness and being elected to holiness you must be made holy via the affliction of unwelcomed furnaces. Did not Paul’s thorn of affliction alert him to his fallenness and his need for Christ?

God’s furnaces reveal and remove those possessing a false grace. Hallowed furnaces remove even the saint’s fictitious pride regarding the depth of his love for Christ and the sacrifice he is truly willing to make for the eternal cause of Christ. The most gifted must be tried even as a most expensive diamond must be cut. The English word “character” comes from a Greek word meaning an engraving tool or a die for stamping an image. Life’s trials are God’s tools for engraving His image upon you.

Affliction has much to do in loosening you from this world. Every affliction you suffer is the outpouring of God’s everlasting love. The natural man only wants to escape, but the Christian is ready to have the trial sanctified and become his improving. Did not the Egyptians hatred of the Hebrews result in their freedom?

Those gifted by God to high positions and the noblest of services shall endure increased afflictions. Be ever mindful that Jesus chose many disciples and then twelve of the many, and then three of the twelve, and then only one rested in His bosom. If you want to discover those genuinely redeemed by the Lord, look into the furnace heated seven times hotter. You will discover those resembling Abel, Noah, Caleb, Elisha and Micaiah (I Ki. 22). You will bear witness to the beloved of the Lord bent over double in the brick-kilns of Egypt.

Your Christianity becomes most resplendent to others when you are in the midst of the fiery furnace. Your godly addresses to the unholinesses of this world are more effective than a thousand sermons. John Bunyan needed to not escape his prison in Bedford so that he could write for the benefit of future generations - the readers of his writings praise their God that He did not provide for Mr. Bunyan’s escape.

When God tries you, you shall come forth as the silvered image of Jesus (Isa. 48:10). Know that when you address your present affliction in the power of the Holy Spirit, you are going to bless your God and His Church.

SOLI DEO GLORIA!