We have it all backwards. We seem to think that our Deliverer, Christ Jesus, saved us from the Egypt of our sin in order that we might make bricks! We busy ourselves trying to give our utmost for His Highest, and we end up with bricks made from straw. How dare I suggest such a thing! The church is busy about numbers, disciples, baptism quotas, giving programs, all supposedly fulfilling the Lord's "great commission", a "commission, I might add, never passed on from the Apostles to their disciples. Search for it, you won't find it. I know, it's heresy to suggest such a thing. But the result is a church without rest. I have a hunch that when the Lord looks down from His Throne, he sees a perpetual cloud of dust from all the churchly activity. We are busy making bricks without straw, failing to comprehend that our "utmost" is filthy rags!
Acts 17:24-25 makes it plain that God doesn't dwell in temples made by hands, nor is He worshiped with mens hands AS THOUGH HE NEEDS ANYTHING! No, I am not a hyper-calvanist. But I do believe that "there remains a rest for the people of God for he who enters into God's rest must cease from his own works even as He (God) did from His. Let us labor, therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief." Hebrews 4:9-11 Of course, the example of unbelief that is laid before us in the story of the former brick makers who kept wanting to return to Egypt--and make more bricks!
We must quit our brick making, & brick laying, producing defective bricks, and realize that it is God Who makes His people lively stones in His temple of Worship! Ephesians 2:19-22. Ephesians 4 is all about God's means of ensuring the quality of the lively stones--they must look like Jesus! You see, it is this One Temple of Worship, the union of the Redeemed with the Father through the Son, Jesus Christ, that can alone be the witness that the Father Sent the Son! John 17:20-22 (note the twice repeated phrase-"that the world may believe/know that you have sent Me.") This is the true Evangel! And the only "work" the Father has sanctioned is found in John 6:29 "And this is the work of God, that you BELIEVE IN HIM WHOM HE HAS SENT." The one repeated "commission" is our Lord's commandment to Love the Lord our God with all our heart and all our soul, and all our minds, and "that you love one another as I have loved you!
Acts 17:24-25 makes it plain that God doesn't dwell in temples made by hands, nor is He worshiped with mens hands AS THOUGH HE NEEDS ANYTHING! No, I am not a hyper-calvanist. But I do believe that "there remains a rest for the people of God for he who enters into God's rest must cease from his own works even as He (God) did from His. Let us labor, therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief." Hebrews 4:9-11 Of course, the example of unbelief that is laid before us in the story of the former brick makers who kept wanting to return to Egypt--and make more bricks!
We must quit our brick making, & brick laying, producing defective bricks, and realize that it is God Who makes His people lively stones in His temple of Worship! Ephesians 2:19-22. Ephesians 4 is all about God's means of ensuring the quality of the lively stones--they must look like Jesus! You see, it is this One Temple of Worship, the union of the Redeemed with the Father through the Son, Jesus Christ, that can alone be the witness that the Father Sent the Son! John 17:20-22 (note the twice repeated phrase-"that the world may believe/know that you have sent Me.") This is the true Evangel! And the only "work" the Father has sanctioned is found in John 6:29 "And this is the work of God, that you BELIEVE IN HIM WHOM HE HAS SENT." The one repeated "commission" is our Lord's commandment to Love the Lord our God with all our heart and all our soul, and all our minds, and "that you love one another as I have loved you!
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