Gospel Archives - Page 2 of 2 - Pastor Marvin McKenzie

Joshua 9:4 No Deals Cut With God

Joshua 9:4 (KJV)

They did work wilily, and went and made as if they had been ambassadors, and took old sacks upon their asses, and wine bottles, old, and rent, and bound up;

Rahab the harlot establishes that, had any of the Canaanites repented, they could have been spared. Unfortunately, that is not what most of them did.

Some walled themselves away inside their fortresses (but God tore them down)
Some banded together as one against Israel
Some feared God’s judgment but chose to fight instead of repent

Gibeon chose to work wilily, to use trickery and deceit. Their plot appeared to work on the surface. They did get a treaty of peace, but in doing so they incurred the wrath of the world around them and, what is worse, no real relationship with the people of God.

Churches today are filled with Gibeonite type people. These are the ones attempting to cut a deal with God. They pretend to be something they are not hoping that, if they can convince the Christians, they can convince God to spare them. Their strategy will not work. All they really succeed in doing is

To alienate themselves from the world
To frustrate their relationship with Christians
To bind themselves as prisoners from saving faith and
To ultimately end up eternal lost in hell

All of this (except the wrath of the world) could have been avoided if only they had sincerely repented and asked for salvation.

For this and more than 3000 earlier Daily Visits with God visit Marvin McKenzie’s blogger page. There you will find daily visits going back to 2007.

Joshua 9:4 Repentance

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Let It Die Already

Hebrews 8:13 KJV

In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away.

Years ago I pastored a young lady who had a childhood friend who was battling what turned out to be terminal cancer. Since this lady and her family were brand new in our church, they were excited about our church and anxious to get their friends to come there with them. One of those friends, of course, was this woman with cancer. She never came to our church but we got regular updates on her declining condition from the family who had recently joined.

The battle with the cancer was brutal. At one point the friend in our church blurted out to me, “Why doesn’t she just give up and die already?” I knew what she meant. I knew she meant well and that death would end the unbelievable suffering her friend was enduring. Still, it struck me odd, almost cruel. As far as I could tell this new member in our church was about as gracious and compassionate a person as I have ever been blessed to know. But she wanted this struggle to be over.

The incident reminds me of the very emotional struggle of replacing Old Testament laws with New Testament faith.

There is no question that the new is here
There is little debate that it is better

But some refuse to let the fight die.

As strange as it may seem, the gracious and the compassionate position is to urge the old to simply “vanish away.”

It is not unkind or hateful to urge Jews, especially those who claim to have faith in Christ, to make a clean break from the Old Testament Law.
It is an act of love to push Christians who are Gentiles by birth away from Judaistic rituals and toward a Bible believing New Testament Baptist church.

God has a plan that will one day restore Israel’s holy and rightful place. But that is the business of the future. Today’s business is to lead all men, Jew or Gentile:

to Christ,
to baptism and
to common fellowship in a local New Testament Bible believing Baptist church.

For this and more than 3000 earlier Daily Visits with God visit Marvin McKenzie’s blogger page. There you will find daily visits going back to 2007.

Baptist Hebrews 8:13

The Author of Eternal Salvation

Hebrews 5:9 KJV

And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him;

Christ was never made in the sense of creation.

He has always been
He became flesh
He increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man but
He was not created

However, as a man, Jesus perfected the role of a man. He was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. He suffered in His flesh and, in that suffering, offered prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears.

And it was in this perfection He became the author of our salvation.

For this and more than 3000 earlier Daily Visits with God visit Marvin McKenzie’s blogger page. There you will find daily visits going back to 2007.

Hebrews 5:9 Jesus Christ is the author of eternal salvation

Work At Not Working

Hebrews 4:9-11 KJV

There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.
For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his.
Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.

One could view this passage as a kind of play on words. We are to “work at not working.”

This entire chapter is taken up with the doctrine of a spiritual rest that be longs to those who believe. This rest was rejected by the first people to hear it, those Jews in the wilderness, – carrying forth to those Jews who, looking the rest of God in the face in the person of Jesus Christ, crucified him rather than give up their religious traditions. It was once again offered to Gentiles of whom the Bible says, they would hear.

Apostle Paul writes to those believers here and warns them of “seeming to come short of it”. It is not that they could come short, for a believer can never come short of salvation, but that they might seem to come short of it by not enjoying the fullness of rest in Christ.

John Gill writes, “….is here meant, that rest which believers now enter into, and is at this present time for them, and though true believers are entered into it, yet their rest, peace, and joy in Christ, is not full; they enter by degrees into it, and by believing enjoy more of it: and this is to be laboured for by prayer, hearing the word, and attendance on ordinances…”

It would serve us well to see also that the remainder of Hebrews four offers at least four helps for entering into this full rest:

The Word of God

Which is able to cut deeply into our hearts and souls to remove unbelief and replace it with faith.

The watchful eye of God

Who sees our faith as well as our lack thereof. He knows we believe, if we are believers. He also knows we do not yet believe perfectly.

Our High Priest, Christ

Whose function it is, to minister towards our weakness. He serves as our advocate whenever we miss the mark of faith. When the weakness of our faith becomes apparent it is then that we best hold tightly to our profession of faith in Christ. He is the overcomer of our unbelief.

The throne of grace

To which we are invited to come boldly. When we lack faith, when our rest is less than full, when we struggle between our two natures of belief and unbelief, we are invited, urged even, to come without hesitation to the throne where we may obtain mercy cover our lack of faith and grace to help us strengthen our faith.

For this and more than 3000 earlier Daily Visits with God visit Marvin McKenzie’s blogger page. There you will find daily visits going back to 2007.

Hebrews 4:9-11Rest with God

The More Perfect of the Testaments

1 Timothy 1:9-11 KJV

Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers,

For whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine;

According to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust.

Albert Barnes writes, “The gospel … makes known the will of God. It states what is duty, and accords in its great principles with the law, or is in harmony with it. The law, in principle, forbids all which the gospel forbids, and in publishing the requirements of the gospel, therefore, Paul says that the law really forbade all which was prohibited in the gospel, and was designed to restrain all who would act contrary to that gospel. There is no contradiction between the law and the gospel. They forbid the same things, and in regard to morals and true piety, the clearer revelations of the gospel are but carrying out the principles stated in the law.”

We may verify the appropriate use of an interpretation of the law by the gospel. They are not in conflict but in harmony. The gospel however is to be the judge as it is