Living Hope family Bible Hour

Hungering and thirsting for Christ alone must occupy the highest portion of our daily life affections.  We must not let anything take the place of Jesus Christ.  WHO or WHAT consumes and controls your affections, your pursuits, your goals, today?  Is it Jesus Christ?  It must be, if we would be most pleasing to the Heavenly Father.   This life is most satisfied when our idolatry is destroyed and Christ is supreme.  Who rules you - idols or Christ?

Grace is the underlying work of the Godhead in our lives, both Jew and Gentile.  Our lives, once redeemed by grace are further sanctified by grace.  Grace that produces holiness over time in the life of the true saint.  Marvel over this work of grace, if it resides in your soul!

As our culture in the USA continues to spiral downward deeper and deeper into sinful ways, even the saints, those who truly know Christ in genuine saving faith often find themselves tempted to allow our words and conversations to become base and crude.  It is time for Christians to reform our language, even veiling it in our conversations so that we and those who hear us are not unnecessarily soiled.  It is equally serious that pastors, teachers, parents, grandparents, and others learn to preserve the innocence of our precious children, even our older sons and daughters, by using tasteful, modest words, so that they are not further polluted by the present iniquity in our land. Try this in our homes, and in our churches, and see if we cannot restore a bit of the formerly lost holiness in our language, and all be more Christlike in the process.  

 This was originally preached a few years ago.  Now that 2021 has arrived, the call to stand up for Christ, His Gospel, and the Word of God  (the Bible) should be ever nearer and dearer to the genuine follower of the Lord Jesus Christ.  To those owned by Him, through His amazing, unmerited grace, our affections should be above all for the glory and honor of His Name, His Truth, and His Kingdom, for they, and we, will never perish.   Muse as you listen.

King Josiah set his heart to follow the Lord at an early age.  He determined that He would follow the Lord even though his father and grandfather refused to follow the Lord.  Josiah was faithful to the Lord, by God's Grace, all his days.  O that you and I would do as Josiah did for the glory of God and the good of the generations to follow until Christ returns.

Until the Christian in his home and church, exposes and puts to death his sacred cows, he will not see God's mercy of repentance poured out on our wicked land.  The church has erected sacred cows on high places in our collective lives and they are a sinful offense to a Holy God.  Christ will not  bless us again until we repent and that means repentance in very practical areas of our lives, for we are a people full of rebellion against the Word of God and the Lord Jesus Christ.  May the Lord Jesus Christ smite our hearts and bring us to true repentance while we have the opportunity, so that sweet holiness might again be in our land, churches, homes, and lives.

The Christmas Carol "Silent Night" incorrectly refers to the Christ Child as having radiant beams from His holy face.  This is not true.  Isaiah 53 indicates that Christ looked like any other ordinary baby, boy, and man.  There was nothing in His appearance that would make us think He was the Messiah, the Christ, the God-Man.   Actually Christ's glory was fully veiled at His birth, but not so at His return to earth someday.  Then, His glory will be radiant.  Muse over how the God of Creation and Time/Eternity could choose to veil His indescribable  Divine Glory so He would come to earth to live a sinless life and died a horrid death in our place, paying the divine penalty for our sin, so that we who will believe in Him can have Eternal Life.  Selah.  Yield your complete life to this Saviour, as your Lord and King now while there is time.  Repent and believe in complete dependent faith in His Person as your Sin-Bearer.  In this surrender, you will find Life Eternal in the Person of Jesus Christ.