9/16/11

Just a little remodeling job...


Imagine for a moment, that you are a carpenter and that you just received a call from Joe Dokes, who owns this wonderful little bungalow.  He wants to remodel the living room, but when you arrive at the address you are greeted by this sight.  What do you do?  If you have the intelligence of a retarded snail... you run as fast as you can!  How could you possibly remodel something that apparently doesn't have a straight line in it?  Think for a moment about religion in our world today; how fragmented it is, how devoid of any semblance of unity?  Could this possibly be what God wants?  Now, take a moment and read the Bible passages below... and think!!!

2 Timothy 3:1-17 (WEB)
1) But know this, that in the last days, grievous times will come.
2) For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,
3) without natural affection, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, fierce, no lovers of good,
4) traitors, headstrong, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God;
5) holding a form of godliness, but having denied its power. Turn away from these, also.
6) For some of these are people who creep into houses, and take captive gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts,
7) always learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
8) Even as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so do these also oppose the truth; men corrupted in mind, who concerning the faith, are rejected.
9) But they will proceed no further. For their folly will be evident to all men, as theirs also came to be.
10) But you did follow my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, patience, love, steadfastness,
11) persecutions, and sufferings: those things that happened to me at Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra. I endured those persecutions. Out of them all the Lord delivered me.
12) Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.
13) But evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.
14) But you remain in the things which you have learned and have been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them.
15) From infancy, you have known the holy Scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus.
16) Every Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness,
17) that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

1 Corinthians 3:1-15 (WEB)
1) Brothers, I couldn’t speak to you as to spiritual, but as to fleshly, as to babies in Christ.
2) I fed you with milk, not with meat; for you weren’t yet ready. Indeed, not even now are you ready,
3) for you are still fleshly. For insofar as there is jealousy, strife, and factions among you, aren’t you fleshly, and don’t you walk in the ways of men?
4) For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” aren’t you fleshly?
5) Who then is Apollos, and who is Paul, but servants through whom you believed; and each as the Lord gave to him?
6) I planted. Apollos watered. But God gave the increase.
7) So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase.
8) Now he who plants and he who waters are the same, but each will receive his own reward according to his own labor.
9) For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s farming, God’s building.
10) According to the grace of God which was given to me, as a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and another builds on it. But let each man be careful how he builds on it.
11) For no one can lay any other foundation than that which has been laid, which is Jesus Christ.
12) But if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay, or stubble;
13) each man’s work will be revealed. For the Day will declare it, because it is revealed in fire; and the fire itself will test what sort of work each man’s work is.
14) If any man’s work remains which he built on it, he will receive a reward.
15) If any man’s work is burned, he will suffer loss, but he himself will be saved, but as through fire.

In a world that has become "confused" because "everyone is right", God has the answer.  It is not the teaching of some religious leader that we should be following, its not any old idea that is true, it is what God has to say though the Bible that is important.  If you take the time to read the first half of the Bible, you will see that it points to Jesus in literally thousands of ways and if you want to make sense out the world, listen to HIM!  Realistically, no one could fix the house in the picture; the best thing to do is to tear it down and build one on a solid foundation, using a rule this time.  My advise is to follow the example of the early church... start by reading Acts chapter two.  You won't be sorry!!!