Monday, September 15, 2008

Part 3 of Chapter 6 from Magnify The Lord (Pages 143-145)

Magnify the Lord
Chapter 6 (Part 3)
He's Come to Deliver
IT'S A PROBLEM
Countless millions have done all they have been told to do. They have been taught to believe more in what they must do than what Christ has already done. Therefore, men have put their faith in their actions, prayers, and more than anything else their own personal faith. They have made every attempt to be "saved" to assure themselves rather than being consumed with the biblical truth that Jesus Christ is God's Deliverer who has come to deliver us from ourselves,sin, society, and Satan. Jesus is God's Deliverer, and He has come to deliver each of us from a carnal way of thinking and to set us free to follow Him. He is our deliverance, and in Him we are eternally safe and secure. What has He come to deliver us from?
1. He's Come to Deliver Us from Something
A. He's Come to Deliver Us from Self
"That we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us" (Luke 1:71). Salvation from our enemies speaks of a specific place of refuge and safety we would come to know and embrace after we'd been delivered from their hand into the hands of Jesus Christ. The passage above is a prophetic message that Zacharias, John the Baptist's father, is prophesying in regards to the fact that God has come to visit and redeem His people. In particular, he is prophetically speaking of a promised Deliverer, the Lord Jesus Christ, who at that time was still in the womb of Mary. This prophetic word speaks of a deliverance that would be effectually applied to those whom God would redeem. One aspect of God's promise was the fact they would be delivered from their enemies and the hand of all who hated them. This promise speaks of the faithfulnessof God and the power of His Son to truly deliver us. The significance of this deliverance comes when we see that we ourselves are an enemy of the things of God. There can be no salvation from God (safety, refuge, rest) without first being delivered from that place of hostility and rebellion toward the kingdom of God. God has promised to reconcile His people to Himself; therefore, He rescues them from themselves.
OWN WORST ENEMY
Our worst enemy is our self. The nature we were born with was completely and totally an enemy to anything godly. We have already discussed the nature we inherited from Adam. We were bent on sin. Everything about our life was ungodly and a lie. We were corrupt creatures because of the seed of sin passed down to us through the ages. God describes us as unrighteous enemies with a heart set on rebelling against Him. As products of the fall, He called us children of wrath. We were hostile toward Him, and in no way did we seek after Him. What then? are we better than they? No, in no wise: for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin; As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: Their feet are swift to shed blood: Destruction and misery are in their ways: And the way of peace have they not known: There is no fear of God before their eyes. Romans 3:9-18
IT IS CRITICAL
The reason men and women do not follow Jesus today is because they have never been delivered from themselves. To follow Jesus, one must first be delivered by Him. As discussed in the previous chapter, one must be born again to escape the blindness of Satan and the power of darkness that all lost men are under. The reason He came to destroy the works of the devil was to ultimately deliver us from his controlling hand. We first had to be delivered from the condition in which we were born. We were born in rebellion. Why were we born this way? We were conceived in iniquity: "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me" (Psalm 51:5). What is the only natural result of this conception? "Yea, in heart ye work wickedness; ye weigh the violence of your hands in the earth. The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies" (Psalm 58:2-3). From the womb, we are sinners, and we live out our days as sinners. We are our worst enemy. We need to be delivered from ourselves. The things we do that are hostile toward God are the result of who we are in our lost condition inherited from our fathers. "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9). As a result of this crooked and perverse heart, we "feel" like we're right and just: "All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes; but the Lord weigheth the spirits" (Proverbs 16:2). The way we think and the way we do things will always seem right and good to us because "we" are the most deceptive enemy we have. (Jer. 17:9) "There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death" (Proverbs 16:25). God's Word is true, and we are messed up people. Who are we going to believe?(Rom. 3:4)

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