Let's spend a bit of time in this epistle, again, to identify the hour that we're in and stir our hearts up in excitement for the soon coming of the Lord, amen? Hopefully, you are excited about it. Hopefully, every day it's a priority in your life because He is going to appear to those who are looking for Him, amen? I hope it was on your heart today, sometime during the day, of just, "Come quickly, Lord!" In the time that we get quiet before the Lord and we start to turn to His Word, it's, "Just come quickly, Lord Jesus." He is going to appear to those who are looking for Him and to those who love His appearing, amen?
It should be one of the first things that occupies our thoughts in the morning. When you love somebody, when you love something-some people really have a strong affinity for their jobs. I don't understand that, in the natural, but they do. It's something that they get their worth out of, that they enjoy, and so they're looking forward to that thing in the morning. Some of us get up looking forward to just seeing our wife. Okay. I was just waiting, giving you a chance, guys. A bunch of you blew it! But anyways that expectation, that thing that we love, that affection that we have and just loving His appearing. When we wake up, just to be obsessed with, "This could be the day that the Lord comes! I can see Him face to face today." If we really believed it, we would have that kind of an obsession, wouldn't we? Just ask Father to stir your hearts in this hour, this expectation of the coming of the Lord. He is going to appear to those who love His appearing. That day is coming when we will see Him as He is and finally we'll be like Him, amen? Hallelujah! Everything that we do is for that pursuit of Christlikeness. We make great strides and then we kind of go backwards sometimes. Anybody know what I'm talking about? Two steps forward, one step back. Some of us are: one step forward, two steps back. That's not good. We can't keep that up too long. But we're going to see Him and we're going to be like Him and we'll be with Him and so shall we ever be with the Lord, amen? Praise God! This isn't home, amen? This isn't home...
Not Ashamed at His Coming, Part 2
February 10, 2013 • Pastor Star R. Scott
Hallelujah! Amen. Let's turn to First John and continue our study. I trust that many of you have taken some time to read this epistle over the last number of days. It's an epistle that you can read in minutes, and you can't exhaust in a lifetime the revelation that will come out of it. And we encourage you just to take these next weeks and just read it over and over again and let the Holy Spirit speak to your heart, and you'll hear what the Spirit's saying to the church today. Let those that have hears hear what the Spirit is saying to the church. This is an epistle that prepares us for the coming of the Lord. "Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God:… [Amen?] …and it [doesn't] yet appear what we shall be: but we know [this], when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. And every man that [has] this hope in him [say it with me-] …even as he is pure" (1 John 3:1-3). So the process that we're looking for as we go into this epistle is self-purification. Anybody feel like you could use it to be cleaned up a little bit? Some might say, "Well, no, I think I'm doing pretty good." Well, just set yourself up against the light, for "…God is light, and in him is-?" (1 John 1:5)
Now, how many of you feel you might need to be cleaned up a little bit? See, that's how we look at it. We don't look at how we're progressing, that we're better than we were last week, that we're better than most people in here-for sure. Amen? It's in our thinking. But all we have to do is just slip over a little closer to the light. We've talked about it before, haven't we? I know Greer has one of those at home-the big mirror with the light on it and magnifies you twenty times or whatever it is. It scares me just to look from twenty feet away. And it gets worse every month, it seems, that goes by.
But when you move up there closely and you put a little bit of light, the truth comes out, doesn't it? And many of us are not what we think we are. We've been talking about that for a long time now, haven't we? The realization that we're not what we think we are. How many of you've really struggled with that as God has illuminated your heart in that way? Let me see your hands. Amen. Now, it can do two things. It can cause us to lie and to believe a lie, or it can cause us to humble ourselves, can't it? And to realize that, even with what we are, God can use us if we'll humble ourselves, because His strength is made perfect in our weakness...
Not Ashamed at His Coming, Part 3
February 13, 2013 • Pastor Star R. Scott
Hallelujah! Amen. Let's turn to 1 John, and also the Gospel of John. We'll look at a couple of passages and just continue our study. One of the great admonitions out of this first epistle of John is that if we have that hope of His soon coming, we'll purify ourselves even as He is pure. Amen? "And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure" (1 John 3:3). And so, as we really see the day that's upon us, the admonition for us is to allow this cleansing in our life. We know that the cleansing comes only by the Word of God and the blood of Jesus. Amen? As we go to the Word of God, the cleansing doesn't come from the study of the Word of God, but the obedience to the Word of God. Don't you want to be able to obey it more every day? Every aspect of the lordship of Jesus, the truth, the revelation truth, of the Word of God--we have a heart for that--and as we pursue, the Scripture says that one of the great things that will happen in our lives is that, as we work in obedience, as we submit our lives, it will begin to work in us a habitual strength that begins to be experienced, and that experience, as it works in us, is something that is allowing us, then, to become habitual doers. We begin to mature.
This is what many of us are striving for. Many are just looking for sanctification, and sanctification is that process. It's not just an individual work, where once we're sanctified we can begin to coast. Once we're sanctified, we begin to see how much we lack, how much more we need the grace of God, how much more we need to pursue, how much more we need to study and to pray. So we want to look at some of those factors as we go on in this study. In John's Gospel, the first chapter, we want to look at a few verses there, and, of course, over into the third chapter of John, and then we'll go right back to the epistle. We all know that John, that Apostle that was called the Beloved and the Scripture says Jesus loved this man. Isn't that quite a statement about him? There are not a lot of references to that, but this man was loved of Jesus. What do you think it was that caused that affection from the Master? Do you think it was his works, his outward works? It seems like Peter was more of a worker, doesn't it? Martha was a worker, but Mary chose the greater part, didn't she? I believe John was that man...
Not Ashamed at His Coming, Part 4
February 17, 2013 • Pastor Star R. Scott
"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13). "I love you," He said, "if you keep My commandments" (John 15:14). So there's this also that continues to manifest itself in this epistle that the Lord just continually says, "If you love Me, you'll walk in obedience. You'll be a doer of My word and not a hearer only" as James makes very clear to us.
So as we continue through the gospel, there are very practical parts of it. He said if we love one another, then we don't close up our bowels of compassion. If we see a brother or sister in need, and we have the wherewithal to meet that need, then we do so without any question. It's how they were able to live practically in the book of Acts in one accord: "No man said that anything he possessed was his own." Of course, that is the heart of every one of us here. None of us are controlling of anything we have. We are all ready to liquidate anything on behalf of our brothers, amen? That's the love of God. To think we love God and love one another and not have that heart attitude, we're not being truthful with ourselves. We have a little bit to work on, don't we?
When we love our natural family better than we love the body of Christ and make choices to neglect, despise, to minimalize the spiritual family in pursuit of appeasing the natural family, we really don't know Him. Because He makes it very clear, "You're not worthy of Me if you don't love Me, My body, more than mothers and fathers and houses and lands." That's just practical 101 Christianity. Yet it seems to stumble so many people, and 1 John speaks towards that. He said it's because you really don't know God. You've fallen into religion. You've embraced a form of Christianity, a form of godliness. But you really don't understand the power to transform. There is the formalism of religion and then there is the transformation of new birth: "Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new" (2 Corinthians 5:17). John is speaking towards all of those aspects of genuine Christianity...
Not Ashamed at His Coming, Part 5
February 17, 2013 • Pastor Star R. Scott
Hallelujah! Amen. Let's turn to First John and continue in this epistle. It's a book I have always loved. I like how straightforward it is. It's the same thing with the Epistle of James: they just bring out the practical aspects of walking in the Spirit and of how to relate to our brothers and sisters. There is really almost no way to get lost in these books. What I mean by that is that we are able to just read the simplistic truth that the Holy Spirit is bringing out. Really, the only way to get lost is to enter with prejudice. We saw this morning that a number of us have read this epistle over and over at least five times in the past couple of weeks, some considerably more than that. How many of you, in your reading through the epistle, took some time to read some of the commentaries on First John? Anybody? Let me see your hands. Okay. Have you noticed, in reading the commentaries, that you don't always find agreement? Let me give you one of the best commentaries to read on the Epistle of John: the Gospel of John. So if you want to read a great commentary on the Epistle of John, read the Gospel of John; it's the same Holy Spirit (amen?) and the same Apostle trying to communicate the same truth to us. The emphasis of the Gospel of John is on the deity of Christ, the love of God for us, and the necessity of our loving one another. So you can fill any gaps or questions that you have in the epistle by reading the gospel.
That would be my encouragement to you. Because, if we begin to read just commentary (and I'm not discouraging you, because there is so much to be learned), remember as you read these, that you will see prejudice based upon humanistic truths, which have infiltrated because of repetition over the last hundred years. I'll say it more plainly than that: You are going to be able to pick out very quickly who the Calvinists are and who the Armenians are as you begin to read these commentaries. Very few people have the ability to come without prejudice. How many of you have found yourself even going into this epistle approaching the Word of God with prejudice? You don't have to raise your hands. There are certain things we want to hear, aren't there? And when we can come in innocence and we can come with a child-like faith, the promise is that the Holy Spirit will lead us into truth; amen?...
Not Ashamed at His Coming, Part 6
February 24, 2013 • Pastor Star R. Scott
Amen. Hallelujah! Let's turn to 1 John. As you're turning over there, we're so thankful for God's work among us, for godly young men and young women; amen? That are living their lives according to the Word of God. You just don't see a lot of that today. So don't take it for granted. Pray for these young people that their lives and their marriages would really be an example and honor God in this day.
The fourth chapter of 1 John, we've been dealing with a number of issues. I think we might begin to slip over, this morning, into the nine characteristics that really reveal that eternal life is abiding in us. John makes that clear here in his epistle. We've been spending a lot of time just refreshing our hearts and our minds on the spirit that John was battling in this age and that it wasn't a first century problem. It's a twenty-first century problem, isn't it? Gnosticism is alive and well! We talked about the aspect of what Gnosticism is. It comes from the root word in the Greek gnosis which means "to know." These were a people that believed that their knowledge of God was superior, not only to the original foundational apostles. That's a problem, isn't it? Whenever we believe that we're getting greater revelation than the foundational apostles, we're in trouble. Whenever they begin to answer to us, we're in trouble. Whenever we doubt what God had revealed to these holy men, we're in trouble; amen? We're already deceived.
So, we're people that live our lives in subordination to the position that these twelve men had, thirteen with Paul, to these writers of the epistles. "Holy men of God [spoke] as they were moved by the Holy [Spirit]; amen? (2 Peter 1:21). This Word is profitable to us in all things, and one of the things that we've been sharing it's profitable for is doctrine. In this generation, men are making doctrine secondary to experience just like they were here, as John was addressing and condemning. We're living in a day when we're almost like the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church, and many of you, for decades, have looked at Catholicism. You have seen and known one of the primary errors, which is that they raise tradition and make it equal with the Word of God...
Not Ashamed at His Coming, Part 7
February 24, 2013 • Pastor Star R. Scott
Hallelujah! Amen. Let's turn back to John's first epistle and just continue along in 1 John, looking at these nine aspects that give us the assurance of eternal life abiding in us.
As we've been really taking a little bit of time in this epistle, I'm sure it's been a blessing to you as you've continued to read it over and over. Thank God for that assurance of eternal life. Amen? The admonition is to keep His commandments and that new commandment that He's given us'that we ought to love as we've been loved, that the acknowledging of His abiding Spirit in us is that we have a love one for another.
We'll be talking about some of the practical aspects of that. We've done it good, as a body, over the years. We've even had to take time over the years to reemphasize the first and great commandment, which is to love God with all of our hearts, and the second that's like unto it, to love our brothers and sisters as we love ourselves. We were admonished over the years to make sure that the focal point is the Lord and His glory, amen?, and that our relationships are to be built in the kingdom of God, within the kingdom of God, and for the glory of God...
Not Ashamed at His Coming, Part 8
March 3, 2013 • Pastor Star R. Scott
Let's turn to John, Chapter 15. We are going to see what we can do about moving along in these nine signposts of having the assurance of eternal life in us that we find in the Epistle of John. It's the Gospel of John, Chapter 15, and then, of course, the First Epistle of John, Chapter 4. We left off Wednesday or whenever it was; it was last Sunday night. We left off as we were talking about our relationship with the world. James makes it very clear that to be friend with the world is to be the enemy of God. That rolls off our lips so easily, doesn't it? What about the reality of that? What does it mean to befriend the world? How much of an influence does the world have on us in our daily lives? It is probably more than we would like to admit.
Jesus said, "All that's in the world is the lust of flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life." That's all that's in the world. It is to be involved in the world's system, and we have been placed there by our own lusts. What is the meaning of "lust?" "Lust" is defined as "an insatiable desire" as it pertains to the worldliness that we were talking about. It is "an insatiable desire for self-gratification." The greatest gratification to self is self-rule. It's not many of these external things. It's not fame. It's not fortune. It's not the feeding of the flesh through lasciviousness. It's self-rule. The deception is that there is such a thing as self-rule. The reality is that there's a god of this system called "the world," and the god of the world is… Who is it? It's Satan. Of course, the lie that has been told to man since he was in the garden is this: you can be your own man, you can set your own course, and you can make your own discernment as to what is good and evil.
It wasn't verbalized the same way to Eve as it was to Jesus. The temptation for Jesus was this: "If You'll bow down, I'll give You all of these. They're mine to give." Think about that for a moment. Satan is the lord of all that this world has to offer. "It's mine to give." How many of us desire the fruit of Satan's kingdom? Most of us would say, "Well, I don't desire Satan's kingdom. I only want to receive the blessings of the Lord."...
Not Ashamed at His Coming, Part 9
March 3, 2013 • Pastor Star R. Scott
Hallelujah! Let's turn to 1 John and continue along looking at these nine signposts that indicate whether we have eternal life abiding in us.
We shared this morning the fact that Number 1, A Belief in His Name, faith, is what we're talking about, an absolute trust in the name of Jesus. Salvation is what "Yeshua" means. We've talked about that belief being a turning of our lives over in acknowledgment to His lordship; to believe in the name of Jesus is to subordinate ourselves to where we live lives that, without Him, we can do nothing. We talked about Number 2, The Keeping of His Commandments, and about walking as He walked.
Number 3, The Hatred of this World System. We talked this morning a little bit about the need for Number 4, Habitual Righteousness, in our lives, not a doctrine of righteousness, but a lifestyle of righteousness. Not just morality, but availability to God. So that righteous life being a life that is acceptable to God. The life that's acceptable to God is a life that's subordinate, abiding in Him as we saw in John 15, the vine and the branches. Understanding how we relate to Him, His Word abiding in us and our lives abiding in Him.
Tonight, we want to talk about Number 5 being, and it's something we talked about and talked about through the whole teaching, but Number 5 is The Love of the Brethren. Let me give you the others just in case, I'm going to be gone for a couple of services; and I would like to, at least, get these to us, not knowing whether we'll come back and spend a lot of time on them or not...
