Rejoicing In The Gift Of God

Be kindly affectionate to one another

with brotherly love, in honor giving

preference to one another, not

lagging in diligence, fervent in spirit,

serving the Lord; rejoicing in hope,

patient in tribulation, continuing

steadfastly in prayer; distributing

to the needs of the saints,

given to hospitality.

Romans 12:10–13

           

            Paul is writing under inspiration very important words for all the children of God to apply in their lives: “brotherly love” and this to the “saints,” as this holds the first priority. From this love towards our brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ the world benefits. The Apostle John writes: “We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother abides in death” (1John 3:14). It is not enough to say we love if that love is not exercised, if not, then one is speaking falsely: “By this we know love, because He laid down His life fro us. And we also ought to la down our lives for the brethren. But whoever has this world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him? My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth” (1John 3:16–18). Both Paul and John agree, Christians are to love one another in deed and truth, and where there is need to distribute what is needed to the needy. This implies that a person is looking to see if there is a need, not sitting back apathetically hoping needs met. At this time of the year, a time of celebration and the giving of gifts so often becomes focused upon family and some friends and there is nothing wrong with that in the first place, but in the second place this celebration makes cause to forget there are others who will not be able to celebrate and are in need. I am not speaking of the ungodly, I am speaking about those who worship with us and are our brothers and sisters. So often at this time Christians spend much money, even going to the point of buying costly things that are temporary, and overspending making a rise in their indebtedness to some credit card company, and they do this so that they will look good to those they are giving gifts. The greatest gift a person can give is what God gave to His children: His Son Jesus Christ. Are you of God? Did God give to you the Holy Spirit to indwell you? Are you becoming sanctified, more, and more, formed into the image of Jesus Christ? Do you profess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh? Is this what Christmas is all about for you? I just wrote about Romans 12:1 where we are to present our bodies a living sacrifice for God. So, how is that being exercised in your life? For you only, or for just your family? Or, is the love of Jesus Christ having it way with you in all you do and say? “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love” (1John 3:7–8). The gift of God is eternal life through His Son: “In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him” (1John 3:9). The “us” is not the world. John is speaking to Christians and to you if you are a Christian: “Beloved, if God so love us, we also ought to love one another” (1John 3:11). I write this so that we do not become so consumed with the holiday that we forget that we are not celebrating a holiday: NO! We are setting aside time to celebrate that God came to earth and became incarnate to die for sin and that God, the Father, applies that propitiation for sin to you who are a child of God, chosen by Him, enabled by Him, drawn to Him, all by the grace of God. John writes: “We love Him because he first loved us. If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this commandment we hove from Him: that he who loves Gog must love his brother also” (1John 4:20–21). The Greek word, “μισή” translated liar has this meaning: malicious and unjustifiable feelings towards others, whether towards the innocent or by mutual animosity, and is one who speaks falsely, and by this type of feelings and speaking is making himself a liar.

            God has commanded us that we love one another: and I ask you and me; are we following that command? “Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves Him who begot also loves him who is begotten of Him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome” (1John 5:1–4).  What a joyous time of the year: how can we make it joyful to others? Not just our family: also, to our extended family, our brothers, and sisters in Jesus Christ. Make this a special time for yourselves and for others, God blesses those who keep His commandments. Happiness is to be spread far and wide, and as possible we are the ones sowing this love and joy. Praise God for this is not burdensome, no, it is a joy.

He brought me to the

            Banqueting house,

And his banner over me

            Was love.

                        Song of Solomon 2:4

Receive today the gift of God

Richard L. Crumb

Grace The Gift Of God

For as we have many members in one body,

but all the members do not have the same

function, so we, being many, are one

body in Christ, and individually members

of one another.

Romans 12:4–5

            How much clearer can God reveal to us that we are “one body” and that individually are members of one another? It is therefore, by our being “one body” that we have a responsibility to one another as we also take responsibility for any of the members of our physical body. Individually each member has a gift(s) and that gift(s) may differ to one another, and yet any gift we have is a gift given to us by the grace of God: “Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, let us prophesy in proportion to our faith; or ministry6, let us use it in our ministering; he who teaches, in teaching; he who exhorts, in exhortation, he who gives, with liberality; he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness” (Romans 12:6–8). So many “Christians” today are running to and fro attempting to somehow snatch a gift from God. They attend such schools as that here in Redding by Bethel Church, School of Supernatural, attending so as somehow God would use them in a supernatural way. Yes, we must be diligent in our loyalty to God and allow Him to impart to us a gift, and yet that Gift that God gives, given only by His will and in His time. Many Christians are so impatient and so desiring of things by God that in the least make God to be a vending machine, hoping that if they do just enough good then God will impart to them a gift, maybe even a supernatural gift. Our Lord and Savior often dethroned by such enthusiasm, even the world does not dethrone our Lord in such a manner. Christians are looking for some blessing and even Jesus Christ made nothing more than a Worker among workers, and this is supposed to be some form of loyalty and worship. It is not! Those gifts that God gives by His grace is not that we do work for God, rather it is out of our loyalty to Him that He can do His work through us; what we put in, God puts out through us. Therefore, it is important that what we put in is actually the truth and not some man–made doctrine. Just as said in the computer world: Garbage in; garbage out. Did not God use His Son to fulfill His purpose? Yes! God wants to use us as well, why do you think you, as a Christian are here on earth? If we are going to heaven, then why does God wait to take us there? Could not God, when we convert to Him, just take us, then, and eliminate all the problems and trials that come upon us? No! God has a plan and purpose and we are part, and parcel of that plan and purpose. We are His arms and legs to take the Gospel, not some doctrine about healing, or speaking in some gibberish language that no one understands, no, we are to be about the same work as Jesus, and that work is to tell about a person need for salvation. Until a person comes to recognize they are a sinner and in need of a Savior, they will not convert To Jesus Christ. Oh, they may decide to follow Jesus, but when the trials come, they will be as what Jesus spoke of when He said that some seed; will be sown on shallow ground and when trials come, they will be rooted out of the ground. Christians are to be faithful in every circumstance in life and if we do not believe that God engineers all circumstances to fulfill His purpose then our belief in God is shallow and our loyalty is shallow. To be loyal to God is to follow what He as revealed to us in His word, and what God has revealed is that He is in charge of all that happens for He is omniscient, to believe that God is engineering all things for His purpose is where the test of our loyalty comes. We also, by God's grace, believe that the Word of the Father is Himself divine, that all things that are owe their being to His will and power, and that it is through Him that the Father gives order to creation, by Him that all things are moved, and through Him that they receive their being. Now in dealing with these matters, it is necessary first to recall the previous words said. You must understand why it is that the Word of the Father, so great and so high, manifest in bodily form. He has not assumed a body as proper to His own nature, far from it, for as the Word He is without body. He manifested in a human body for this reason only, out of the love and goodness of His Father, for the salvation of us men. There is God’s purpose for us to have gift(s), and that purpose is for the salvation of men, those who have been given the gift of faith, (Ephesians 2:8), who are the called ones, the ones enabled by God, and we are to use those grace given gifts to aid people to be enabled. Who are the called ones? Do not know! Just use your gift to bring to your world the Gospel, this is what is needed, not anything else. We do not attempt to trick people to come to Christ, or to have them come because Jesus heals. Yes, Jesus healed, and we have accounts of His healing some people even the raising of the dead. Those accounts of Jesus healing had a purpose, to demonstrate His divinity, that He was God incarnate. For us used in some manner by God we must present our bodies a living sacrifice as chapter 12 began: “Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good” (Romans 12:9).

            We are individually members of the body of Jesus Christ, and yet we are the body of Jesus Christ. Therefore we are to live what we are: the body of Jesus Christ upon this earth at this present time to do His will, and forever we will be the body of Jesus Christ in all times and ages for God’s children live eternally.

 Also I heard the voice of the LORD,

            Saying: ‘Whom shall I send,

And who will go for Us?’

            Then I said, “Here am I!

Send me.”

                                    Isaiah 6:8

Declare the Glory of God

Richard L. Crumb

Sin The Plight Of Men

For I say, through the grace given to me,

to everyone who is among you, not to

think of himself more highly than he

ought to think, but to think soberly,

as God has dealt to each one a measure

of faith.

Romans 12:3

            Sin is the plight of men. It is sin that makes cause for men to think more highly of themselves than they ought. What a Christian must remember, our grace that God has given, and each has enough grace for themselves according to God’s Providence and Omniscience. Think upon this: God made men out of the dust of the ground which God made out of nothing, and by this we are made from nothing according to the will of God. Our life is what God has bestowed upon His creatures and it was by His own life that we have the grace of God Which is by the Word; the Logos, the Only Begotten Son of God, Jesus Christ. Notice this fact: God gives the grace and not man earning His grace. It is by this grace given by God that should lead us to live according to His commandments. Adam and Eve sinned by turning from eternal things to things that are corruptible. We too do the same thing and often that turning from the incorruptible to corruptible is thinking too highly of oneself and this leads to greed and greed leads to poorly acting out lives that are in opposition to God. We too often blame the devil for all the wrongs we do or are done to us, but is this absolutely true? In ones sense it is for by the counsel of the Devil Adam and Eve became the cause for their own corruption and this corruption was death. It must be admitted that Adam and Eve by nature were subject to corruption and whole subject to corruption had no need to turn from incorruption to corruption. Neither do we for we have as they had, and this by the grace of union with the Word which makes us capable of escaping from the natural law, and this only is provided when we retain the innocence that we have been given by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We have the presence of the Word with us and by His presence; we are shielded from natural corruption. The writer in the book Wisdom (Wisdom ii. 23 f.) wrote these words: “God created man for incorruption and as an image of His own eternity; but by envy of the devil death entered into the world." When man made cause for death then men began to die, and corruption then grew worse and worse and holds sway over men because this is the penalty of which God had forewarned them that would happen for transgressing His commandment. We too are under this same forewarning that if we transgress then we are subject to the same penalty, in the least it is chastisement and that chastisement is for our benefit: “You have not yet resisted to bloodshed, striving against sin. and you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons: ‘My son, do not despise the chastening of the LORD, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him; for whom the LORD loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives’” (Proverbs 3:11-12; Hebrews 12:4–6). When we are pursuing that which makes us think more of ourselves than we ought then we find that it is hard to be at peace with others and yet this is what we ought to do when we present our bodies, our minds as a living sacrifice to God: “Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord: looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled” (Hebrews 12: 14–15). From the beginning of the fall by Adam and Eve men have sinned by inventing wickedness, even surpassing all limits, not stopping at any one kind of evil but doing so with insatiable appetites, devising such things as adulteries, thefts, murder, raping, disregarding law and justice. It seems as though each generation strives to outdo the other in wickedness. As I wrote about and quoted by Paul’s writings to the Romans: "Their women changed the natural use into that which is against nature; and the men also, leaving the natural use of the woman, flamed out in lust towards each other, perpetrating shameless acts with their own sex, and receiving in their own persons the due recompense of their pervertedness" (Romans 1:26).

            To think highly of oneself leads to much perversion which is common among those who do not believe in God and to our shame this cultural perversion has in some way entered into the Church. Many Churches allow that which God has specifically spoke against. Our reasonable service (Romans 12:1b) is to not allow our bodies to be perverted, rather to be a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God (Romans 12:1c). We are to protect those who are Christians, those whom we associate with, our brothers and sisters in Christ: “For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function, so we, being many, are on body in Christ, and individually members of one another” (Romans 12:4–5). We do not think more highly of member of our body, the arm is just as important as the leg, and the knee as important as the elbow, so why would we think differently about other members who are as we are, the body of Christ? Let us then love our brothers and sisters, and care for their needs, to associate with them as often as we can, and not let things get in the way of our love and service towards others members of the body of Christ, which we are also. It is by grace we have been saved and not of ourselves, so do not look upon yourselves as greater than others, rather allow the love and life of Jesus Christ to rule all our actions and thoughts.

Blessed is every one who

            Fears the LORD,

Who walks in His ways.

                        Psalm 128:1

Trust in the LORD

Richard L. Crumb