BUILD ON THE ROCK

BUILD ON THE ROCK

      “Then I heard a loud voice from the temple saying to the seven angels, "Go and pour out the bowls of the wrath of God on the earth."  Rev 16:1 (NKJV)

      God has not closed the doors of the Church of Christ.  The glory of Pentecost will continue until Jesus Comes Again.  But God allows times of testing [tribulation] which involve everyone on the earth.  We sort ourselves out by how we react to these severe times. We love God with all our heart and mind and soul and strength.  And we love our neighbor as our self.

      “Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, 'Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You?  Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?'  And the King will answer and say to them, 'Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.'”  Matt 25:37-40 (NKJV)

      Parables.

     “And He said to them, "To you it has been given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God; but to those who are outside, all things come in parables,  so that 'Seeing they may see and not perceive, And hearing they may hear and not understand; Lest they should turn, And their sins be forgiven them.' "  Mark 4:11-12 (NKJV)

      It was an intentional judgment on the hearers. Jesus' teaching in parables, and the resultant unbelief of outsiders, fulfilled what the Scriptures had predicted.  Jesus' teaching about the Kingdom of God (a theme that would have made Roman authorities very uneasy) made teaching in parables useful in defusing this issue.  If Jesus' hearers could not understand the parable, they might lack the grace of citizenship in Christ's Kingdom. However, even the insiders required Jesus' explanation.

      “Jesus taught and used things of our world to teach spiritual truth.  Different images used for different audiences: for farmers, heaven on earth is painted as a farm deliberately infested with weeds [tares] by an enemy, only to get sorted right at the end. For fishermen, an image of a net full of fish, good and bad, only to be sorted back on shore. For the cooks, an image of tiny bits of yeast lifting the whole loaf into life. For everyone, two similar stories of people selling up everything to scrape the cash together to buy a buried treasure chest / a unique pearl.  Mark joins in with some of these plus new ones: a seed grows – though we don’t know how; the smallest seed becomes the biggest bush – mustard. All images of heaven on earth. This is how Jesus connected with the public.”  Lacey   

      “Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won’t collapse because it is built on bedrock.”  Matt 7:24-25 (NLT)

      "The kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who arranged a marriage for his son, and sent out his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding; and they were not willing to come.”

Matt 22:2-3 (NKJV)

      Jesus tells a parable about a king who threw a wedding banquet for His Son. All the people you might expect to be there turned Him down. So He sent out servants to bring in whoever would come. So the servants went out and invited everyone and filled the banquet hall with anyone who would come. Jesus tells this story just after He has entered Jerusalem. If you were to make a list of those one would expect to figure out who the Messiah was, when He would come and what He would do it was the religious leaders of the day. But they rejected Jesus’ invitation. So, gracefully, Jesus extends the invitation to those one would not expect to be at the messianic banquet – both good and bad. Why? Because He is throwing a party and He wants everyone who wants to be there to be there. They don’t deserve to be there. They were not the ones we would expect to be there but they came eagerly when they received the invitation.

      None of us deserves to be with God and yet He invites us anyway. Now that is grace at its finest! God is throwing a party and we are invited…not because we were good enough but because God was generous enough to offer the invitation to all.

      “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.  For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”  Eph 2:8-10 (NKJV)

      Because we have been saved by our obeying the gospel, we alllow the “Fruit of the Spirit” [Gal 5:22-23] to guide us in our obedience to God’s grace.

   “But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!  Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to his cross and crucified them there.”  Gal 5:22-24 (NLT)