March 18, 2023 - Just Informed Talk - Craig James
14:43
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| Hi, welcome to another God's Grace is Greater segment, where we're going to be doing a deep dive into the scripture. | |
| And if you guys don't know already, we're in the gospel of Luke. | |
| Today, we're in chapter 12. | |
| Going forward from where we left off yesterday, we left off on verse four, we're picking up on verse five, or left off on verse three yesterday, we're picking up on verse four today. | |
| And, you know, look, This is a powerful set of verses that I'm going to go through. | |
| Verse 4 through 12 talks about the power of Christ and the power that he gives us over the fear that remains in our hearts. | |
| But what is healthy to fear as well? | |
| Because there is a fear that we should all have, and that is for the Lord. | |
| But we shouldn't let fear drive us and control us. | |
| We should have trust and faith in God to guide us through the problems that we face. | |
| So if you have a problem with fear, If fear is something that happens to you in your life and keeps you from being successful for God, for Christ, these are some words that I think can speak to your heart and all of our hearts to show us what Jesus tells us about fear, when it's appropriate and when it's not. | |
| And I'm going to explain after we read these verses here. | |
| Now this is Luke chapter 12, verse 4 through 12 saying, Now, and to give you context, I should say, where we're picking up from, we left off on the yeast of the Pharisees, right, in chapter 12 and the end of chapter 11. | |
| Jesus was telling us the woe to the Pharisees and the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and how it was such a dangerous thing that they were doing, right? | |
| And in that, he ends by saying that all of the things that are said in the darkness will come to the light. | |
| All of the things that will be happening when they don't think it's going to come out will come out eventually. | |
| And he picks up from there with these words, saying, And I say to you, my friends, don't fear those who kill the body, and after that can do nothing more. | |
| But I will show you the one to fear. | |
| Fear him who has authority to throw people into hell after death. | |
| Yes, I say to you, this is the one to fear. | |
| Aren't five sparrows sold for two pennies? | |
| Yet not one of them is forgotten in God's sight. | |
| Indeed, the hairs of your head are all counted. | |
| Don't be afraid. | |
| You are worth more than many sparrows. | |
| And I say to you, anyone who acknowledges Me before men, the Son of Man will also acknowledge Him before the angels of God. | |
| But whoever denies me before men will be denied before the angels of God. | |
| Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but the one who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. | |
| Whenever they bring you before synagogues and rulers and authorities, don't worry about how you should defend yourselves or what you should say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that very hour what must be said. | |
| Now, this is powerful, and it is teaching us an invaluable lesson, a very, very powerful lesson. - What does he start with? | |
| Talking about fear. | |
| Don't fear those who can kill the body, but after that can do nothing. | |
| Now that's something that a lot of us take for granted. | |
| We think In our lives, we fear all types of things. | |
| Some people are afraid of, you know, failure. | |
| Some people are afraid of losing a relationship. | |
| Some people are afraid of not being able to provide or support your family and friends. | |
| Other people are worried about more trivial things, you know, how much wealth they've attained, how many cars they have, what status they have in society. | |
| Some people are fearful of vain things, the vanity. | |
| They're afraid of losing followers on Twitter or Facebook or YouTube. | |
| They're afraid of losing the status that they've established for themselves in whatever way or form that it has been constructed by their own Ego and vanity, but we all fear certain, we all fear something, right? | |
| And what does Jesus teach us? | |
| He teaches us that we shouldn't fear any of this. | |
| And some people fear, as Jesus points out, those who can kill the body. | |
| You fear other people. | |
| But Jesus is telling us not to fear any of those things. | |
| Right? | |
| Because once you're dead, they can't do anything else to you. | |
| And we're taught through the sacrifice that was made on the cross, and the Holy Spirit that lives inside of us, and God who loves us as a father loves his children, that we are valuable, but we are saved through that sacrifice on the cross. | |
| That our sin, which we were dead to before, that we are now alive in Him. | |
| Not just alive for this temporal existence that we enjoy here on this earth, but for the existence that comes after we pass into the next realm. | |
| Jesus says there is someone you should fear. | |
| Fear the man, God, who has the authority to throw people into hell after death. | |
| This is the one to fear, Jesus says. | |
| So if you're going to fear something in this world, don't be afraid of trivial things that come to nothing. | |
| Don't be afraid of things that truly won't matter to any of us in the end. | |
| And when you're dead and gone, and you're standing before Christ in judgment, is Jesus going to ask you how many followers you had on Twitter? | |
| Is Jesus going to say, oh, that was a nice Lamborghini you drove. | |
| I mean, is Jesus going to say, oh, you failed in this relationship that you were trying to make successful with your kids or your spouse? | |
| I don't think so. | |
| I mean, depending on what the circumstances are, of course, there may be certain parts where Jesus will show judgment for those things if you truly fail, but our forgiveness comes from God's grace. | |
| Which is truly greater than anything. | |
| And what is grace? | |
| Grace is undeserved forgiveness. | |
| Undeserved favor. | |
| Right? | |
| And Jesus gives us this great example when he says, five sparrows are worth two pennies. | |
| So he's telling us about the cheapest and most worthless living thing on earth. | |
| I mean, relatively speaking there. | |
| He's saying these sparrows that you get for a couple pennies, that God cares about them. | |
| That's why they fly in the sky, and God made this incredible world for them to exist in, and they're able to build a nest, and have babies, and then have more sparrows, and God cares about him. | |
| He says, not one of them is forgotten in his sight, and that God cares so much more about you, that he knows the number of hairs on our head! | |
| Something we don't even know about ourselves! | |
| Maybe you've counted them, but maybe you're not 100% accurate. | |
| He says, don't be afraid, because we are worth more than all of these sparrows, or than many of these sparrows, I should be correct in saying. | |
| Then he tells us the recipe, or the format for success, if you will. | |
| He says, and I say to you, anyone who acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man will also acknowledge him before the angels of God. | |
| Now what he's telling us is that if you are in fear of proclaiming the gospel of Christ and proclaiming Him as your Savior, | |
| If you show bravery and courage and stand up for the gospel wherever you're at, whether it's on social media where you might lose a few followers, whether it's in your business where you might lose a few dollars and you might not be able to buy that Lamborghini or that nice F-150 Raptor that you've been looking at, whether it's in your ability to have a great personal life, if a relationship comes up with a spouse, a potential spouse or your spouse, if there's an issue that comes up and you don't put Christ first, | |
| He's telling us what's going to happen. | |
| Is it worth an eternity in hell to not? | |
| Or is that relationship, that momentary temporal relationship worth more than that? | |
| Well, he's teaching us, no! | |
| We have to put Christ first. | |
| And it's not saying, he's not saying, well, you have to do it, you have to put me first or else. | |
| He's essentially saying, if you really believe, if you really believe in this eternal salvation, in this kingdom that I'm building, Then you will do it freely, without any promise or any reward, because you believe that the reward's already been given. | |
| You're not waiting for it, you've already got it! | |
| The grace has already been given, the sacrifice has already been made, your eternal salvation has already been bought and paid for! | |
| If you deny it to move ahead in this world, if you ignore it because you want that little bit of extra that you wouldn't have otherwise gotten, And when you face the angels in heaven, when you have to account for yourself and be judged, this will be accounted against you. | |
| He says, whoever denies me before men will be denied before the angels of God. | |
| Now, then he tells us that anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but the one who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. | |
| Well, he realizes, I think Jesus does in this moment, who he's talking to. | |
| He's talking to his disciples. | |
| He's talking to Peter. | |
| What's Peter about to do? | |
| Peter's about to deny him three times! | |
| Judas is about to betray him! | |
| The disciples are going to run away when he gets hauled off to be executed. | |
| He says, you can be forgiven for that. | |
| Because we've all been there, right? | |
| We've all been in a place where maybe we weren't taking our faith too seriously. | |
| Maybe we weren't thinking of Jesus in the way that we should or treating him as the Messiah. | |
| We were just treating him as whatever. | |
| It says you can be forgiven for that, but if you deny the Holy Spirit and blaspheme against it, then you will not be forgiven. | |
| We have a really unruly generation, and they do talk all kinds of blasphemy against God, and they reject the Holy Spirit outright. | |
| It'll be a very, very bad existence for them. | |
| That doesn't mean we can't work to save as many as we can with the power of God and Christ in our hearts, and the Holy Spirit. | |
| Whenever they bring you to the synagogues and rulers and authorities, don't worry about what you should say to defend yourselves, or what you should say. | |
| Does the Holy Spirit teach at that very hour what must be said? | |
| Now, how crazy is that? | |
| Well, he's telling his disciples, because they're going to face persecution. | |
| He's going to be killed, and then he's going to be buried, then he's going to be resurrected, and they're going to face persecution. | |
| So he's telling them that, but this message is for us too! | |
| Today! | |
| It lives too today! | |
| Right? | |
| That not only are we going to face persecution for his word, we may suffer for it. | |
| We may lose a little bit of what we really want. | |
| And guess what? | |
| That's okay. | |
| Because Jesus tells us that we will stand before God. | |
| And in that time, the angels of God will acknowledge what we've done, how we've done it. | |
| Now I'm not telling you this as a preacher who preaches down from a high pulpit that says, you need to do this. | |
| We all need to do it. | |
| It's not, I'm not perfect. | |
| And I, and I pray to God that I get better every day for him to help others and to help myself become stronger for Christ and become his most humble servant. | |
| I pray that every day. | |
| But I will say this, that we all have to take this very seriously. | |
| And remember to have no fear, but to fear God. | |
| Because you shouldn't fear those who can just kill the flesh, but nothing can be done after. | |
| You should fear the one who can not only kill the flesh, but sentence us to an eternity in hell. | |
| And that's where I'm going to leave it. | |
| We'll say a prayer and we'll wrap it up. | |
| Lord and Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day. | |
| We pray for an ability to discern what's right and what's wrong for your will and great purpose. | |
| Lord, we pray that you'll show us how to fear you, Lord, in your power and might. | |
| And at the same time, learn not to fear the things of this world that lead us into sin and lead us into falling short time and time again. | |
| No one is perfect and except your son Lord and we thank you for him as our Savior. | |
| And we pray, Lord, that we learn to become more like him every day, and that we come closer to you through him, and that we always embrace the Holy Spirit inside of us to help not only ourselves, but others. | |
| As we thank you most of all for our eternal salvation in Jesus' name. | |
| Amen. | |
| Alright guys, well I hope you enjoyed that. | |
| We'll see on the next one. | |
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| Go ahead and just hit that button or check out those links to Rumble and Bitchute and the rest. | |
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| That being said, thanks for watching this episode of God's Grace is Greater. | |
| We'll see you on the next one. | |
| Until then, my name is Craig. |
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