For the New Year, our teacher Pastor Landis Fisher started us off with a topical message on how to harness the power of persistent faith and due to time constraints was unable to complete his train of thought and therefore decided to do a sequel to that teaching this week before returning to the teaching through the entire book of Romans, which he plans to reconvene on next Lord’s Day. So listen in today as Pastor Landis Fisher teaches a message he has titled: “Persistent Faith Against the Grain”
Old Testament Scripture Reading: Dueteronomy 29:19 – 29 (KJV)
Deu 29:19 And it come to pass, when he heareth the words of this curse, that he bless himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of mine heart, to add drunkenness to thirst:
Deu 29:20 The LORD will not spare him, but then the anger of the LORD and his jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him, and the LORD shall blot out his name from under heaven.
Deu 29:21 And the LORD shall separate him unto evil out of all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant that are written in this book of the law:
Deu 29:22 So that the generation to come of your children that shall rise up after you, and the stranger that shall come from a far land, shall say, when they see the plagues of that land, and the sicknesses which the LORD hath laid upon it;
Deu 29:23 And that the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning, that it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein, like the overthrow of Sodom, and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim, which the LORD overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath:
Deu 29:24 Even all nations shall say, Wherefore hath the LORD done thus unto this land? what meaneth the heat of this great anger?
Deu 29:25 Then men shall say, Because they have forsaken the covenant of the LORD God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them forth out of the land of Egypt:
Deu 29:26 For they went and served other gods, and worshipped them, gods whom they knew not, and whom he had not given unto them:
Deu 29:27 And the anger of the LORD was kindled against this land, to bring upon it all the curses that are written in this book:
Deu 29:28 And the LORD rooted them out of their land in anger, and in wrath, and in great indignation, and cast them into another land, as it is this day.
Deu 29:29 The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.
New Testament Scripture Reading: Colossians 3:1 – 10 (KJV)
Col 3:1 Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.
Col 3:2 Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth.
Col 3:3 For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
Col 3:4 When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.
Col 3:5 Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.
Col 3:6 For it is because of these things that the wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience,
Col 3:7 and in them you also once walked, when you were living in them.
Col 3:8 But now you also, put them all aside: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth.
Col 3:9 Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices,
Col 3:10 and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him–
Transforming Power Statements:
1) Just as it was when God had sanctified the believing descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Israel) He utilized the benefits of their interactions with Him to maintain a distance between them and the unbelieving people surrounding them, who were doing things according to their own sinful impulses, which were moving them further away from godliness and embedding them in self-reliance and the illusion of autonomous operations; and the sicknesses of the flesh of the lost were so “Main-stream” (common) eventually were chosen by the covenant people.
2) Godless living is easily adopted by the masses who choose to “legalize” and even “moralize” godless behaviors to the point of making even the criticism of such behaviors criminal by anyone who continues to stand up for that which is the truth as stated by God in His Word; therefore, our faith must become developed to the point that we choose to apply our faith against the grain of the majority.
3) The people of God shall be protected by God, Who has promised to preserve the salt of the earth, and to bring wrath on all defectors and perpetrators of antichristian philosophies through their stubbornness against the grain of His love for them which He has publically displayed to all the world by the offering of His Only Begotten Son Jesus the Christ, which has been indelibly embedded into history and into the everyday lives of all people, leaving all WITHOUT EXCUSE for failing to believe in Christ Jesus, God’s unmerited gift!
