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This is an uncertain world. Insurance actuaries have calculated how successful you’ll be in navigating a trip to the convenience store and back, whether or not you’ll have a traffic accident, or even return home alive. What is certain? Is your job secure? What if there’s a corporate downsizing, or the company goes bankrupt, or you’re terminated? Many working Americans are just a couple of paychecks away from being homeless. If too many of us become destitute, even the charities will disappear. How certain is your health or your good looks or functioning mind? There are statistics on the chances of being raped, mugged, burglarized, assaulted or murdered, and the list goes on. How certain is this life?
The world can’t offer certainty, but the God of the Holy Scriptures can. God does not promise a Christian a life without adversity, but He does promise a way of escape, and that contrary situations will work to our good. Psalms 34:19:
Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the LORD delivereth him out of them all.
Yes, trials, tribulation, temptation, persecution, and affliction are surely in the believer’s future, but the beautiful thing is that God makes them work for the good of the faithful. Romans 8:28:
And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
Two things are very certain for a follower of Christ: (1.) uncertainty laced with trouble will come, and (2.) God will make a way of escape, and will be an ever present help in time of trouble. It is within life’s adversities that God develops our spiritual muscle, even fashioning us into the image of Christ.
On the other hand, those who reject the Lordship of Jesus Christ also have two very certain things in their future: (1.) uncertainty laced with trouble, and (2.) the promise of eternal damnation.
The Scriptures teach that it is God’s will that all men should be saved and that none should perish, but most have rejected His invitation. Are you born-again? Do you know the certainty of Jesus Christ? Click onto "Further With Jesus" before you proceed. Today will be the best day of your life! NOW FOR TODAY’S SUBJECT.
GOD SAID, Exodus 20:3:
Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
GOD SAID, Matthew 4:10:
Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.
GOD SAID, Matthew 22:36-39:
36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
38 This is the first and great commandment.
39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
MAN SAID: Why should we follow the commandments of a self-serving God? Everyone should be able to do their own thing—to each his own.
Now, THE RECORD. As you will often hear on GodSaidManSaid, God is not a self-serving God. He does not give His commandments to gratify Himself, but instead to bless the adherent. Every Godly charge has inherent within it a blessing or a curse. The blessing is simply the benefit of doing the right thing, and the blessing is multifaceted.
Matthew 22:36-38: "Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment." This great commandment will prove, once again, the unassailable veracity of God and His Holy words.
Understanding the nature of God is central to pleasing Him and benefitting from His instructions. Two foundational attributes of God are (1.) the God of love never changes. Malachi 3:6, "For I am the LORD, I change not;" Hebrews 13:8, "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever." And, (2.) God is truth. Jesus spoke of God’s Word, which is God manifested, and He said, John 17:17, "Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth." God, therefore, is never-changing truth.
An e-mailer accused GodSaidManSaid of not being tolerant, confusing the popular big tent tolerance of today’s churchianity with the God of the Bible. God is never-changing truth, and truth by nature has zero tolerance for all other positions. Two plus two is four, and even 3.999 will be rejected as incorrect. God does not have tolerance. Instead, He offers forgiveness and deliverance for all who repent and reject their evil ways and conform to the Word of God. John 14:6:
Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
There is no access to God except through Christ. God is the God of zero tolerance, because He is the God of never-changing truth. There is no other way.
Students of the Scriptures are verbally, and many times physically, challenged for embracing and promoting the very adamant positions taken by the Word of God. God requires His children to conform to the word of truth. II Corinthians 10:3-5:
3 For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh:
4 (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;)
5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;
God requires Christians to think the same thing and to speak the same thing, and that same thing is His Holy Word. God requires His believers to align themselves with truth, which is His Word. Becoming one with God’s Word is what King Jesus refers to in John 17:20-23:
20 Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word;
21 That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.
22 And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one:
23 I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.
Evolving into the image of Christ requires me to divest of self, and put on His mind.
As believers continue to embrace the Word of God, the promise in Deuteronomy 11:21becomes theirs:
That your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children, in the land which the LORD sware unto your fathers to give them, as the days of heaven upon the earth.
The principles outlined above bring us to the great commandment, which, as promised earlier, will be just one more foundational proof that God is and that He authored the Holy Scriptures. The principles covered are as follows:
1. All commandments of God have inherent within them a blessing or a curse.
2. The God of love never changes.
3. God is truth.
4. God is never-changing truth.
5. Truth, by nature, has zero tolerance for all contrary positions.
6. God has forgiveness for those who repent and conform to His Word, not tolerance.
7. We must bring our thoughts and emotions into conformity with the Word of God.
8. If we align ourselves with Christ, our days can be like the days of heaven upon the earth.
These thoughts may seem a little abstract. Let me attempt to pull it all together. To the casual observer, the commandment to have no other gods before the God of the Bible, to serve Him only, and to love Him with all your being, does seem self-serving. Yet, this commandment is the literal key to paradise and eternal life.
Every single problem that afflicts mankind is a result of one event carried out by our great grandparents, Adam and Eve, who were originally created to live forever. They were immortal, at least until the second voice—Satan’s—spoke in the Garden, and was embraced by mother Eve, with father Adam following her lead. At that moment, they both died spiritually. They no longer had the spirit of life to pass on to their progeny. They were booted out of Paradise. Today, there are a multitude of voices that stand contrary to the first voice: God’s voice. They appear diverse, but every single one is united by a common denominator: the rejection of the first voice. God strives to bring His children into compliance with the first voice. Remember, this is the key to paradise and eternal life. Allegiance to the first voice and the great commandment are synonymous.
If every commandment has inherent within it a blessing or a curse, what has man reaped as a result of his rejection of the God of the Scriptures in exchange for another god? The most obvious is the curse of the law of sin and death, but it doesn’t end there. What is the product of embracing other gods?
Religious wars have been fought from time immemorial as a result of rejecting the first voice, as a result of rejecting the God of the Bible. Even wars fought by rival "Christian" groups are a result of denominationalism, which is a product of additions and deletions to the original plan of God. This spirit is not of God.
The world is replete with the terrible, deadly fruit of false gods. Imagine those who worship the cobra snake, or those who revere the temple of the rats, the holy cow, worshipers of the goddess of fertility, and others. Or consider the Muslim religion of the Koran, which was written by their prophet approximately 600 years after Jesus Christ and 2,100 years after the first five books of the Bible were written. Their doctrine of death and destruction affects the entire earth, and according to Iran’s leader (and others), they will be the tip of the spear that leads the world to Armageddon. But unbeknownst to them, it will lead to their own complete annihilation. Have no doubts, they will lead the charge, and it is totally because they and the world have chosen a god other than the God of the Bible. They have chosen the second voice.
God’s call to the world to conform to Him and His Word is not for self-gratification, but to bring a people to paradise and eternal life—to have life and to have it more abundantly. God’s Word is proven correct again and again.
GOD SAID, Exodus 20:3:
Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
GOD SAID, Matthew 4:10:
Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.
GOD SAID, Matthew 22:36-39:
36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
38 This is the first and great commandment.
39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
MAN SAID: Why should we follow the commandments of a self-serving God? Everyone should be able to do their own thing—to each his own.
Now you have THE RECORD.
References:
Authorized King James Version
