JUST DO IT

What do these people have in common? 

• Joseph, Ruth, Amos, Elijah, Esther, Joseph, Mary, Luke and Mary Magdalene.

God used their faith to change history. 

What else do they have in common?

• Not one was a priest or pastor. 

In the Bible, we see two kinds of faith heroes. 

• On one hand there were leaders, priests and kings, elders, apostles and pastors. 

Aaron was the first High Priest; Ezekiel was a prophet but also an officially ordained priest. Paul was a trained Pharisee before God made him an apostle.

• On the other hand there were people who changed history through prayer and bold faith but they were never in charge of anything. 
• Noah built an ark with the help of his three sons. He did not have a network of followers to gather the animals. The Holy Spirit brought the animals into the ark. 
• Amos was a farmer and land owner before God sent him to prophesy to Israel. 
• Ruth was a pagan widow before she married a Jew and became the grandmother of King David and an ancestor of Jesus the Messiah.
• Mary Magdalene was a woman possessed by seven demons until Jesus delivered her from the power of darkness. After Jesus rose from the dead, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene. 

When she and some other women were the first to announce the resurrection to the apostles, they did not believe but then Jesus Himself appeared to them and rebuked them for not believing the women. 

Does that mean Mary Magdalene was prophet or a pastor? No it does not. 

• It means that so-called ordinary believers outside the five fold ministry are called to play strategic roles in God’s plan to shape history.

That was in the Bible. What about later times? 

• Copernicus and Galileo both believed in Jesus and the Bible, but they made scientific discoveries that changed our understanding of God’s creation. They showed that the earth was not the centre of creation but rather that the earth orbited around the sun. 

These great scientists were persecuted by the Roman Catholic Church. 

• Martin Luther also rejected these scientific discoveries because they seemed to contradict the Bible.

These scientists used their faith and their God given intelligence to challenge the church, and not only the Roman Catholic hierarchy.

In every generation many ordained leaders of God’s people are right about some things but ignorant or mistaken about other things. 

• Again and again God raises up believers who are not official leaders and uses them to change the thinking of generations to come. 
• Sometimes the new ideas are quickly accepted by church leaders but not always. 

If God has given you an unusual gift or unique vision, it may not be appreciated by your local church or your pastor but if you believe your calling and gifting is from God, don’t be put off or intimidated. 

DO SOMETHING!

Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. James 1:16-17 (ESV)

If your gift is from God, God will bless HIS gift in your life if YOU step out in faith. All pioneers have been misunderstood by other believers. Every man or woman of God has been criticised by leaders who followed conventional thinking.

FAITH WITHOUT WORKS IS DEAD.

For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead. James 2:26 (ESV) 

Parts of the Body of Christ are barely alive because the leaders follow conventional wisdom and the people follow the leaders rather than listening to the Holy Spirit. 

If God shows you a way to go which your church will not accept, don’t talk about it, just do it. 

Don’t start a fight in your church. Just go and do what God shows you to do. 

God Still Heals. Do You Need Healing?

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John tell how the Son of God lived on this earth for 33 years. 

• In his last three years on earth, Jesus preached and taught the people of Israel. 

  • One of the most prominent features of His teaching was the way He consistently performed miraculous healings.

And you know that God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. Then Jesus went around doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. Acts 10:38 (NLT) 

• This is how the Apostle Peter summarised the healing ministry of Jesus. 

  • He makes no distinction between exorcisms and healing physical sickness. 

    • Jesus saw demon possession, deafness, blindness and physical sickness as manifestations of evil.

When John the Baptist was in prison, he was tempted to despair of his faith. He sent his disciples to Jesus, seeking reassurance.

 

And Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: 

• the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. Mt 11:4-5

Clearly Jesus also saw Healing as a central feature of His ministry.

• When Jesus appointed His Apostles, the first thing He did was to give them authority to heal.

 

And he called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every affliction. Mt 10:1 (ESV) 

 

If we look at church history and examine the practices of many churches in the Western World, we see only some churches emphasise healings and miracles.

• Many other churches consider this unbalanced, and yet they read the same Bible that shows Jesus was a healing evangelist. 

• For Jesus and the early church, healing the sick was an essential part of the Good News of the Kingdom of God.

Where did the Western church go wrong? 

Why have we strayed from the ways of Jesus so clearly presented in the New Testament?

After the fall of the Roman Empire in the Europe, most people were poor and illiterate. 

• Faith in the Word of God was replaced with faith in religious traditions including prayers to saints and bathing with holy water. Healing and miracles became associated with very unbiblical practices.

When Luther and Calvin restored the Bible as the only source of spiritual authority, they rejected the papacy. They also condemned faith in miracles obtained by prayers to saints or touching sacred objects. This was idolatry.

• However they made the mistake of rejecting all healing miracles. 

  Calvin taught that the miraculous ministry of Jesus and the Apostles were not a model to imitate.  

  • He taught they did miracles to prove that Jesus was the Son of God and to confirm the truth of the Gospel of salvation. 

    Once the church and the gospel were established, they considered miracles were no longer necessary but were counterfeit miracles associated with Roman Catholic idolatry. 

Once the miraculous element was banished from much of Western Christianity, faith in scientific materialism was blended with biblical belief. 

• Faith in human reason began to supplement and then replace faith in the Word of God.

This is why many Christians in Britain, Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand find it difficult to receive divine healing or to exercise faith for miracles. 

Our whole culture has been corrupted by systematic unbelief in God’s supernatural power.

• Faith is a personal matter but it is also corporate. Faith is contagious but unbelief is also contagious. 

Conservative Protestant tradition and academic theology  have made unbelief respectable in in Europe and North America.

• The result has been a catastrophic decline of faith amongst professing Christians and the abandonment of Christianity by the majority of Europeans.

But God has not changed and the Bible has not changed.

God loves you. 

He knows you are broken and wounded in many ways. We all are. 

• We all have emotional issues that cause us pain and prevent us from being all we could be. 

• We all get sick from time to time and many of us have bodily functions that don’t operate as they should.

God wants to heal you, to change your life, to set you free of the painful limitations that stop you fulfilling your potential.

IS SALVATION CONDITIONAL?

Christian history is full of extreme overreactions. 
Medieval Catholics lived in fear of judgement from day to day based on their variable moral and spiritual performance. 

Then came Martin Luther and declared that salvation is a free gift from God which we cannot earn. This is true.

• We access the grace and favour of God by trusting once and for all in the finished work of Jesus who paid for all our sin on the cross, once and for all time. This is also true.

But that no one is justified by the law in the sight of God is evident, for 

• "the just shall live by faith." Galatians 3:11 (NKJV) 

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. Ephesians 2:8-9 (NKJV) 

But then Luther and Calvin really overreacted and adopted an extreme opposite teaching to Catholicism.

• They said a believer once saved can never be lost.

Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. 

And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?" John 11:25-26 (NKJV) 

Yes of course all true Christians believe this. 

Eternal life is the free gift of God and eternal life means what it says.

Luther and Calvin rightly taught that we cannot earn salvation and they were right. 

• But that does not mean salvation is unconditional.

Salvation is conditional on our decision to trust in the love of God who gave His only Son to die for our sins.

• Right through the Bible, God gave free choice to men and women, to choose for Him or against Him, to trust or mistrust, to obey or disobey. 

But the LORD God warned him, “You may freely eat the fruit of every tree in the garden— except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 

• If you eat its fruit, you are sure to die.” Genesis 2:16-17 (NLT) 

God created Adam in His own perfect likeness, with the moral character of God Himself and the free gift of eternal life but for Adam, eternal life was conditional. 

• Adam could keep or lose eternal life depending on his decision to continue trusting God. 

It is the same for us today.

Now the just shall live by faith; But if anyone draws back, My soul has no pleasure in him." Hebrews 10:38 (NKJV) 

Of course we may grieve God and still be His children. This was the true revelation of the Reformation.

• But if we keep on presuming on the mercy of God without a serious attitude of repentance, we cannot take our home in heaven for granted.

Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. Hebrews 12:14 (NIV)  

The Bible cannot be telling unsaved people to make an effort to be holy. That makes no sense at all. 

• The writer of Hebrews is telling born again believers they must be serious about living a holy life after they are saved, or else they will not stay saved.

So often we can become like the church in Laodicea and there is no automatic ticket to heaven for lukewarm Christians.

I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. 

• So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth. Revelation 3:15-16 (NKJV)

Jesus cannot vomit you out of His mouth if you are not IN CHRIST to begin with.

• This is not talking about nominal believers who have never said the “Sinners’ Prayer.”