The Gospel Of Repentance

In Luke 16 Jesus gives a parable about a steward ( Gk. oikonomos [1] ) who is mismanaging his employer’s money / resources. Word gets out to the steward’s boss who says to him, “What is this I hear about you? Turn in the account of your management, for you can no longer be manager.” And the manager says to himself, “What shall I do since my master is taking the management away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do, so that when I am removed from management, people may receive me into their homes.” So summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he said to the first, “How much do you owe my master?’ He said, ‘A hundred measures of oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.’ Then he said to another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He said, ‘A hundred measure of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and write eighty.’” The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness. For the sons of this worl...

  You want to know why the world is in the mess it is in? Because of the above truth. It is in our fallen nature to sin. Guess what? We are ALL STARS – WORLD CHAMPIONS when it comes to sin. We would all need our own galaxy just to store all of our sinful rewards and trophies. That still would not be enough room. I realize I am writing in what some of you may regard as exaggerated language, but I think it is important we discuss this matter for a minute. We sin so often that we have become desensitized to it. We laugh at it. We enjoy it (John 3:19). We’re no longer grieved by our evil. “After all, I’m just being me right? God knows my heart so stop trippin and don’t judge me!” The prophet Isaiah said this in chapter five of his book, “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever and shrewd in their own sight” (I...

  The best person to imitate when dealing with our enemies is the Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible tells us that when He was reviled, He did not revile back, but committed Himself to Him (The Father) that judges righteously (1 Peter 2:23). Jesus said in Matthew 5:44, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.” That will never be easy to do due to the corruption of our minds and flesh. We want to quote the words of the “Godfather of Soul” James Brown. We want our BIG PAYBACK! Waiting on the Lord to settle the score against our enemies takes much prayer, patience, faith, and endurance. Many will fail their fiery trial and take matters into their own hands and exact their own revenge. I want to explain Biblically why this is tragic. Proverbs 24:17 tells us, “Do not gloat when your enemy falls; when they stumble, do not let your heart rejoice, or the Lord will see and disapprove and turn his wrath from them.” If we rejo...

  Old Testament legislation was better known as the Law of Moses or the Mosaic Law. God started instituting the Law on the day the Hebrews exited Egypt during the inaugural Passover. Now the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, “This month shall be your beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you. Speak to all the congregation of Israel saying, ‘On the tenth of this month every man shall take for himself a lamb, according to the house of his father, a lamb for the household. And if the household is too small for the lamb, let him and his neighbor next to his house take it according to the number of the persons; according to each man’s need you shall make your count for the lamb. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year. You make take it from the sheep or from the goats. Now you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month. Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at twilight....

  “For assuredly whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and cast into the sea’, and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says. Therefore, I say to you whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you have received them, and you will have them” (Mark 11:23-24). These verses have been used like a magic formula in the Charismatic-Neo-Pentecostal-Name-it-and-claim-it movement. They have been used to write a blank check type of prayer to get whatever you desire from God. Of course, these verses like so many others, have been aborted from their original context so that a pretext has been created around them – to make them mean other than what Jesus said it means. So, let’s go back to verse twelve to get the context and flow of thought, Now the next day, when they had come out from Bethany, He (Jesus) was hungry. And seeing from afar a fig tree having leaves, He went to see if perhaps He would find somet...

  I often wonder if God speaks to people audibly today. Many Christians’ replies are, “Yes! Of course He does!” Many evangelical leaders claim God is telling them specific details about someone’s life; like they are going to get a financial breakthrough in 10 days. Or their prodigal son and daughter will come home in the next 30 days. What happens when these predictions do not come to pass because most of them do not happen as the preacher “prophesied” they would? Some of them have and will blame the person they prophesied to that they lacked faith in the “word of the Lord” they heard so it neutralized the prophecy. No. What actually happened is the preacher either presumed they heard from God (some inner unction?) like several false teachers did when they claimed the Lord told them Donald Trump would be re-elected in 2020, or they willingly lied and put Jesus’ name on their false prophecy to give it “divine authority.” It has and will be continually argued that modern day prophe...

W hen we are going through the trials of life, it seems like there is no light at the end of the tunnel. I realize that is cliché. The stress is often so painful we want to give up. Quitting should never be an option. Those that quit have guaranteed their failure to see what their endurance would have shown them. Tough times are designed to test us for sure, but the pain of our trials if we endure them is building us up and making us stronger. The gospel group Commissioned captured this well in one of their songs, “One Step After Another” Trials of life can be a teacher for us if we do not just look at them negatively although the trial itself is negative. Trials come to us from the Lord, and trials can come from the devil. We suffer trials due to our own sins, and we can suffer trials from the sins of others. We are not responsible for the sins of others, but unfortunately we can become collateral damage because of their sins. Remember, be careful who you keep company with. Bad comp...