General Articles

Hebrews Study: The Need for Discernment :: By Sean Gooding

Published on: by RR10

Hebrews 5:12-14

“12 For though by this time, you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food. 13 For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. 14 But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.”

Today, someone posted the story of the ‘Thief on the Cross’ (Luke 23:32-43). This is the simplicity of the Gospel. And God, in His eternal wisdom, made sure that one of the last things we see and deal with in the crucifixion is that the Gospel is simple. This thief could not be baptized; he was a thief, so we know he broke the Law. He began the fateful morning as a heckler, making fun of Jesus as He was dying for his sins. He never joined a church, never handed out a Gospel tract, never even knelt to pray. No, no, no. He simply believed that Jesus was who He said He was; he addressed Him as Lord; and he, the thief, believed in the resurrection: “Lord, remember me when you come into your Kingdom.”

This simple act of faith of belief in Jesus was all that was needed. Jesus assures him that He would be in Paradise that very day. He will be there to greet us when we arrive as well. This is why it is so important to know the truth of the Gospel and to vigorously defend the simplicity and purity of the Gospel. People will go to Hell when we complicate it and allow it to be polluted. It is important for a local church to repeat the simplicity of the Gospel as often as possible. It is essential that every leader, every Sunday School teacher, and even the very greeters at the doors (if your church is that big) be fluent in the simple Gospel, the pure Gospel of Jesus’ complete and utter sacrifice for my sins and yours.

  • First Principles, verse 12

Someone told me a long time ago, or I heard it as an old wives’ tale, that you can judge the cleanliness of the kitchen in a restaurant by how clean the washrooms are. Some of you know that I work in the car business, and I can tell you that often one can determine the way that people kept their cars by looking in the trunk. For some reason, people will clean the whole car and often forget the trunk. In a similar manner, one can judge the scriptural footing of a person or a church by asking about the Gospel.

As we have discussed over the past few weeks and will continue for some time, the Gospel is ONLY about Jesus. We accept by faith all that Jesus has done, and nothing else. Too many people, like the religious leaders who added a myriad of man-made ‘rules and laws’ to Moses’ Law, think that the Gospel is too simple and that somehow we need to prove our worth to attain it. So, we need to jump through the right number of hoops and perform the right amount of penance to be accepted. We must say this prayer, repeat this phrase, and on and on. We have to show the fruits of salvation; we have to cry and be emotionally sorrowful to be saved. But this is not the case.

The Bible is very clear that all that is required is that we accept, put our faith in, believe that Jesus is who He says He is, and we will be saved. In Acts 8:37, the Ethiopian Eunuch says the following (this verse is removed from some Bibles. This is a litmus test for your Bible. If it is not there, you should get a Bible that has it).

“Then Philip said, ‘If you believe with all your heart, you may.’ And he answered and said, ‘I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God'” (NKJV).

The man is told about Jesus by Philip, and they come to a body of water, and he asks to be baptized. Philip asks him about his belief in regard to Jesus, and we can see his reply above. He is then baptized and goes on his merry way. No sinner’s prayer, no emotional meltdown, just a simple acknowledgment that Jesus is God. John 5:18 tells us that Jesus, by saying he was the ‘Son of God,’ was making Himself equal with God. Keep the Gospel simple and pure. In John 12:42, we see many of the council who believed in Jesus, but they kept it a secret. We do not know for how long they kept it a secret, but they believed; that is as simple as it gets.

  • Discerning good and evil, verse 14

When the Gospel is wrong, so will the stand be on other doctrines. Make no mistake; a corrupt Gospel is a sign of other doctrinal corruption, and this is why it is so important to build the right foundations. Be wary of those that pollute the Gospel; they do not do so for your benefit. Either they are seeking more power or more money. They seek to control the free will that God has given man. They seek to curtail what God is allowed to do when people obey Him but not them. They tell you that you are not saved because you did not do this or that. They are lying. If a person denies that Jesus is the Christ, he is not of God. In deliberate contrast, no one can declare that Jesus is the Christ except that it has been revealed by God through the Holy Spirit.

Yes, the devil believes too, but he refuses to acknowledge Jesus as God. Satan is actively seeking to dethrone God. So, yes, there are people who will come to know who Jesus is and then refuse to acknowledge Jesus as God. They are lost; that simple.

As a defense, it is important that we equip people to know and discern the truth. This is why I try to get these lessons out and why I stress that you read and study the truth of the Bible. There is only one truth, God’s truth; all else are lies. It is His truth that sets us free, His truth is the light in a dark world, and His truth is the pure source of eternal life; all else is death. Read and study, ask questions, write verses down, and put them on your walls. Memorize them and speak them out loud. Always answer with ‘the Bible says,’ never ‘I think.’ It is the Bible that has the power and the truth.

The devil is the father of lies (John 8:44), and all who pervert the Gospel are a part of the lies. You should be diligent in seeing where the other lies will be; there will be others. This is what being a mature Christian is; one who is secure in the truth is able to defend it, and one who knows what the Bible says. The muscle of correct doctrinal discernment is essential as we approach the end of the age, and the devil in his death throes tries to take as many to Hell with him as he can. Let us rescue as many as we can with the simple, pure, perfect Gospel of Jesus.

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church

How to Connect with Us

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MississaugaMissionaryBaptistChurch
Online: https://www.mississaugamissionarybaptistchurch.com/ (under construction)
Email: missionarybaptistchurch76@yahoo.ca

To Test Israel :: By Gary W. Ritter

Published on: by RR10

To determine whether God’s Chosen People truly had faith in Him, the Lord allowed pagan nations to remain in the land of Canaan as the Exodus concluded so that the next generation of Israelites might experience war. Judges 1:1-2 tells us:

“Now these are the nations that the Lord left, to test Israel by them, that is, all in Israel who had not experienced all the wars in Canaan. It was only in order that the generations of the people of Israel might know war, to teach war to those who had not known it before.”

Why, we might ask, would God want to subject His children to the violence associated with war? What kind of a loving God would do that?

After listing the nations that would confront them, Judges 4:4 goes on to tell us why:

“They were for the testing of Israel, to know whether Israel would obey the commandments of the Lord, which he commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses.”

So, war was the mechanism for God to determine if Israel would trust Him by obeying all the laws that He had set forth in order that they would live righteously for Him. How did circumstances get to this point that Yahweh had to test the peoples of Israel in this way?

The first generation to leave Egypt had significant issues. They were delivered miraculously by the hand of God time and again. Their failure to trust the Lord was largely due to their having been conditioned for the last 400 years to glorify the pagan Egyptian gods. These gods were visibly represented by idols. Then Moses came along and told them they had to worship an invisible God who was Spirit only. The giving of the Ten Commandments solidified this quandary, as they were instructed to worship no God but Yahweh, and they couldn’t even represent Him through the making of an idol.

That didn’t work out so well, and their lack of trust in this God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – despite the overwhelming miraculous evidence – resulted in this entire generation sentenced to death in the wilderness because of their unbelief.

The second generation learned the lesson. They were generally faithful to God by obeying His Word. Several incidents cropped up that caused them grief, but God knew their hearts and their faith in Him. He ushered them across the Jordan River into the Promised Land. However, part of their duty was to take out the giants of the pagan nations inhabiting Canaan.

They had mixed results, but that was probably to be expected by frail, sinful people. All in all, they generally did what God intended, i.e., to devote these other nations to destruction and to possess the land.

As their leader, Joshua knew – just as Moses before him had – that the Israelites were a stiff-necked people and subject to disobedience. He warned them that other gods would be a snare and that they would have to choose between Yahweh and the pagan gods. It’s why he made his famous declaration in Joshua 24:15:

“And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

Surprisingly, the people heard him and responded positively. In fact, following the death of Joshua, they continued working at their appointed task of driving out the inhabitants of the land as God directed, again having mixed success. But then … trouble!

Judges 2:10 describes what happened in the following years:

“And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers. And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel.”

This new generation, the third counting those who left Egypt, i.e., the grandchildren, completely lost it.

Judges 2:11-13 shows what happened:

“And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals. And they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. They went after other gods, from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed down to them. And they provoked the Lord to anger. They abandoned the Lord and served the Baals and the Ashtaroth.”

Is it any wonder that God determined He had to test them?

What happened? The second generation learned their lesson pretty well.

They saw the unbelief of their fathers and realized something had to change. They needed to have faith in the God who delivered them from bondage. All well and good. But look at what they neglected. They didn’t teach their children, despite what God had commanded they do. Recall that Moses declared in Deuteronomy 6:4-7 as the Lord had instructed:

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.”

And if the children didn’t learn and propagate the Word, how then could their children know it? Is it any wonder that the time of the Judges was one of great apostasy, as ignorance of God was passed on for many generations?

Is there a lesson for us today?

Of course. It’s what makes the Bible as relevant as it is – ALL of Scripture, from the Old Testament through the New Testament.

However, we want to describe the faith of the World War 2 generation in America (i.e., the Greatest Generation) and those following. There’s little doubt that the teaching of God’s Word has dramatically declined since then with the resulting Biblical illiteracy that consumes our culture today. People are more inclined to believe in aliens from other planets than they are in the God of the Bible and their absolute need for salvation. In fact, many believe their redemption will come through these visitors from outer space. Given the examples we see in the Old Testament, we know that doesn’t bode well.

These examples also show what God tends to do in order to test His people to see if they really believe and trust in Him. He brings war and difficult times. Why? So that we can learn to rely on Him – or not.

Over the last twenty years, we’ve had a pretty good run at this testing. Starting with 9/11, the serious financial difficulties in 2008, and certainly the last two-plus years of COVID and its aftermath, all these and more have greatly tested the church, not to mention the secular population.

And how have we done? The church embraced Islam, the prosperity and other social gospels have risen greatly, and a large contingent of Christianity decided to trust the government and its authority figures rather than God.

Finding a good church is a major challenge these days, i.e., one that actually preaches and teaches God’s Word as written. Eastern mysticism is rising exponentially as New Age dominates the spiritual realm of many people’s lives. Children have little to no idea of who the God of the Bible is, the fact of their sinfulness, or why they aren’t good people like they’ve been conditioned to believe.

In the time of Judges, the Lord had to raise up a deliverer who would rescue Israel for a brief period, then they’d slip back into apostasy. What can we expect in this day and age?

I think God has clearly shown that judgment must come because there is soon to be an end to things. In the past, that meant subjugation by pagan nations. Now, that means God is getting ready to wrap up the Church Age and history as we know it in order for unbelievers to be under the subjugation of Antichrist in the Tribulation.

Ultimately, in Israel, as the years rolled by, the people were ruled by kings, and they fell further away from God. It meant the absolute destruction of the nation – initially at the hands of the Assyrians and Babylonians, and finally again by the Romans. Judgment fell because it had to.

Are we so special in this nation that we think we’re immune to God’s judgment? Apparently, many people think so. But we’re not. This world – led by the example of America – has been on a downward trajectory for a long time. The blood we’ve shed and the abominations we’ve propagated are a stench to God.

Who is our deliverer in this new time of Judges on the cusp of the Tribulation? None other than Jesus Christ. Mankind has shown that it is incapable of delivering itself from the troubles it brings on through its anti-God actions. We need a true Savior, and we have Him in Jesus. In this world gone rogue, we need the One who will remove us from its midst.

Many of us who name the Name of Christ realize how alien this world has become to us. (Sadly, many Christians don’t, and they’ve decided to embrace the world.) Because of this world’s hostility, such destruction is coming that will make the past violence and oppression of the pagan nations against Israel look like child’s play. Thankfully, God knows all this and will remove those of us who have called upon Him.

Why? Why the pre-Tribulation Rapture? It’s all because of Jesus! It’s His merciful gift to us who believe. We’ve already proven through faith our need for Him and trust in Him. We have no further requirement to demonstrate how thoroughly we can gird up and stand against the horrors of God’s wrath upon this earth. God’s grace is sufficient.

Soon, the Lord will show us this very fact.

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Gary Ritter website: books & blog

http://garyritter.com/

Kindle Vella story: Tribulation Rising

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B099Z462WD