grace - The Text Messages

October 23, 2022October 23, 2022

Identifying Our Enemies – Consider the Heart

““You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so? Therefore, you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.” (Matthew 5:43–48)

Who is my enemy? That is the question of the day right; or is it? For people, identifying our enemy is simple as evaluating a person’s intentions toward us. If a person is running toward you with a gun or knife, he is your enemy right? Well, maybe; their intent depends on how they are holding the weapon and what they are saying too. They may be running past you and away from an attacking enemy; on the other hand, they may be pointing the gun or knife at you as they are running toward you – usually, it’s not hard to ascertain their intent. An invading army is a more obvious enemy while a sinister group of leaders may veil their true intent to harm you with deceptive words and promises. If they intend to harm our peace, our families, our livelihoods or our future we usually deem them to be enemies.

But are they really?

In the quoted section of His sermon on the mount, Jesus pointed the listener to a problem not in the scriptures but in the way the listener interprets them. When we read the Bible context is important, often people pull verses out of the context into which they’ve been nested and develop a doctrine, belief or principal which is not biblical; but the local context is not always the only one to consider. For example, Jesus begins this teaching with a quote from (Lev.19:18), “You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord;” and contrasts it with another quote from Moses in (Deut. 23:3-6) where the Israelites were commanded to never seek the peace or prosperity of the Ammonites or Moabites because of the way they treated them as they journeyed through the wilderness away from Egypt and towards the land of promise. The people apparently interpreted those commands to mean love those who agree with you or are like you in terms of national and religious identity and hate or despise those who do not. In (v.46-47) Jesus makes it clear to His audience (then and now) that it is no great act of love to love those who love you rather, to truly offer neighborly love, love those who curse, hate, use, persecute and despise you.

That’s what Jesus did!

Lately, I have been struggling with the question of how to handle my perceived enemies maybe you have been struggling similarly. To be honest, my eyes and ears inform me that I live in a world void of justice, sense, decency, morality – void of everything but hope in Jesus. The world seems to have declared the right to be wrong and the wrong to be right or, put another way – good to be evil and evil to be good. Trust me, I could list my grievances here and chances are that many of you would see it the same as I do but to do so would only fan the flame without arriving at an answer to my question: who is my (our) enemy?

The best way to get to the answer is to consider the question from Jesus’ perspective and to get that, I would direct your attention to the words He spoke just before He was persecuted and killed – “Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out. And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself.”” (John 12:31–32) Satan, is the one Jesus called “the ruler of this world.”

Satan is the great deceiver who darkens the minds of people like Judas which betrayed the Lord for worthless coin. Through His Son, God has “delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love.” (Colossians 1:13) As the apostle Paul made clear in (Ephesians 6:12): “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” Taken with what we read in (Romans 5:10) “For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life;” we get an understanding that the enemy of Christ was and is the prince of darkness.

Unpacking (Romans 5:10) we see that when we were literally hateful adversaries of Jesus Christ and captive servants of Satan (John 8:43-44) Christ died for us (Rom. 5:8). Jesus died for people conducting themselves as His enemies. Why? Because He did not perceive people to be the enemy to be defeated rather, His war was against the enemy within us – the darkness of the deceiver and knowing that Jesus came to set the captive free should change the way we see those who are adversarial, hateful and worse to us.

The answer to a world full of people who seem to hate God, His word, His people and His church is to love them anyway – not to agree with their foibles or join them in those activities which oppose God; nor to compromise for the sake of our own peace or shrink back from our mission of preaching the gospel and discipling the believer. In order to be effective in evangelizing we must do what God did when He chose David to be king of Israel – “look upon the(ir) hearts.” (1 Sam. 16:7) It’s a common saying but we need to remember that every person is someone for whom Christ Jesus died and if we can see them for their need rather than for what they’ve done we have a chance of reaching them. Above all, we have a chance of sidestepping the bitterness which will no doubt fill our hearts if we let the iniquity abounding in the world today cause our hearts to grow cold (Matt. 24:12).

December 23, 2021

God’s Best Gift

Satisfied with less…

Does that describe the hearts of people during a season which I’ve come to call the season of discontent – are they satisfied with less?

Are you?

I call it a season of discontent because when asked, rather than an “I have everything I need”” people young and old readily state what they want for Christmas. In reality, discontent rather than contentment is a problem for many people and the materialism of the season feeds that felt need for more or better.

This isn’t a rant on that but it is meant to challenge you to consider your desires. You see, I believe that the desire which God has for your life is far greater and better than what you want for and from it. I Believe that most people are simply satisfied with less than what God in Christ wants for them.

Those outside of faith in Jesus Christ are perfectly content to be in the condition I just described and that fact makes clear to me that while some people are never truly content with the things they possess – more are simply content with less.

Jesus Christ promised abundant life (John 10:10) to those who trust in Him – abundant life now and forever more but so many people are satisfied with less than that.

So many are satisfied with less because they can’t imagine a better life, a fuller life or a happier life than the one they have – they are satisfied with less because they don’t know or believe that there is more or better than what they have now or that they can have it.

God sent His Son to usher in better things – whether you know it or not, more than anything else, you really have need of those better things – of grace, mercy, forgiveness, eternal life and an eternal relationship with the Lord.

In Christ, those better things have been provided and are yours for the asking.

Click the link to listen to the full message on today’s subject. https://www.thetextmessages.org/sermons/gods-best-gift/

June 13, 2021June 13, 2021

By the Grace of God Go I

God is faithful, but this isn’t a story about His faithfulness. You see faithfulness involves a promise but God did NOT promise me as a believer in Jesus Christ that my days would be pain or trouble free; in fact, because I believe in Him, I can expect my days to be more challenging because His enemy is now mine as well. This story is a testimony instead to the mercy and grace of God and involves the events which unfolded one Saturday morning.

Two o’clock in the morning can’t come soon enough when you’re nearing the end of another night shift and in the wee hours of the morning my thoughts had already turned to the afternoon of fishing that I had planned with my wife for later that day. I should tell you that I also drive an eighteen wheeler for a living and was making final preparations to drive the short 144 miles home and begin the weekend. After hooking up my two trailers and completing my pretrip safety inspection I departed for what I assumed would be another routine trip into the south Texas countryside.

Thirty five miles south of my location someone else was getting ready to go home as well – too much to drink, not enough rest, more problems than power in his life. He headed out from wherever he had been and entered a 4 lane toll road going the wrong way. It was ten miles travelling northbound in southbound lanes on a road limited to 85mph before he met anyone else on that road. He could have hit a carload of kids, a family headed on a vacation trip, a bus or any number of big trucks but he didn’t, at least not until he met me.

At night, headlights breaking from a right curve all look like they belong to vehicles on your side of the road and eventually it becomes clear that they are actually where they belong, so when I saw the headlights of this mans pickup truck rounding the curve ahead of me I thought nothing of it for a few seconds and then I realized he was in my lane. Closing the distance rapidly between us, the driver left me only two choices: veer to the right and meet him driver side to driver side or attempt to escape by heading to the left lane and hoping the man would realize that he was on the wrong side of the road and stay where he was until he passed me…but he didn’t. He followed me across the center stripe and collided with the right front side of my truck, knocking my steering axle under the cab and folding the wheels underneath. The collision ruptured my fuel tank, dislodged my single rear axle and turned the single axle on my first trailer side ways ending with me jackknifed half on and half off off the fast lane of the road and the opposing driver coming to rest in the ditch, trapped in his pickup. Within a minute, two more vehicles passed through the debris field and kept going and then, climbing out of my driver side window, I got out of my truck.

Upon arriving, first responders attention was on the driver in the pick up and using hydraulics they were able to pry the door open and get the man out. The man stepped out of his truck and walked with firefighters to a pumper truck 30 yards away and after a few minutes left the scene talking with EMS first responders.

I share this story with you not for the dramatics but to give God glory for His mercy and grace, you see it’s not every day that people walk away from a head-on wreck. God was with that man as he drove the wrong way, protecting him and others from a terrible outcome. Had we met, driver side to driver side there is no doubt that he would have been killed. Had we met on that side his still occupied pickup would have remained in the road and the two vehicles passing through the debris field would have struck his vehicle leading to what would have become a chain reaction wreck.

Finally, a number of people from my company have reviewed the video commenting that my ability to correct my jackknifing truck and trailers kept them from laying over. They say that it is apparent that I was steering to avoid the layover which I no doubt was doing. But what they forget and what I didn’t know was that my steering wheel linkage was no longer connected after impact and that my front axle was dislodged….I didn’t do anything!!! It was God’s hands that kept my equipment up right!!! His hands that shielded the wrong way driver at impact and His hands that kept me from suffering even the slightest ache, pain, bump or bruise in this wreck!!!

God IS merciful! He has a plan for your life, for the drunk driver’s life and for my life! God is also persistent, sometimes going to great lengths to get our attention and to turn us in the right direction. Have you believed in His Son whom God sent to redeem your soul and give you a forever place with Him in Heaven? My hope is that your “come to Jesus” moment isn’t this drastic and severe but that you hear the words which declare that “God so loved the world,” including you, “that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever (you) believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” If you have not yet believed, having heard the word, how far will God have to go to get your attention?

I have since returned to my night run into Austin, returning to work the next business day and praising Him who is merciful; acknowledging out loud what I KNOW in my heart to be true: it has been by His grace that I have come thus far and in that same grace that I will continue to go.