“With a steady diet of the Old Covenant I absorbed something like the attitude of an Orthodox Jew. The Old Testament underscores the vast gulf between God and humanity. God is supreme, omnipotent, transcendent, and any limited contact with Him puts human beings at risk. The worship instructions in a book like Leviticus reminds me of a manual on handling radioactive material.” Wow! What a statement!
Why would anyone build their sermons around the Old Testament scriptures? Jesus forever changed the way we are to view God. God the untouchable, becomes God the father or daddy. The Old Testament is about judgement, whereas the New Testament is about grace and unconditional love. The Holy Spirit has already taken everything out of the Old Testament that we need for doctrine and instruction, and put it in the New Testament by anointed men of old. Please don’t misunderstand what I am saying about the Old Testament. Build your life as a Christian on New Testament principle and doctrine.
If you use something out of the Law you remove the factor of faith. Do you understand this? The Law was about what you had to do, whereas the New Testament is all about what God has done for us. The two are not to be used together. Jesus revealed a God who came looking for the lost children of Adam, just as he came looking for Adam that day in Genesis 3:9. Christianity is the only religion where God looks for us and provides the means for us to touch Him, to see that He loves us in spite of our shortcoming’s and failures. Jesus revealed a God who is love unconditional. Do you see that in the Old Testament? Of course not!
Have we as a people in these modern times forgotten the most important message of the gospel story? For God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten son (John 3:16-8). Are we in such a hurry that we are forgetting, while trying to be a good Christian that we do not take the time to just let God love us? We are in danger of missing the most important message of all! Jesus loves us in spite of us not being lovable. Remember the song, Jesus loves me this I know? Let’s put it this way- Jesus knows me, this I love. It brings love to the forefront of our existence. Jesus knows me, Wow!
My opening paragraph was from a book called “The Jesus I Never Knew,” by Phillip Yancey, and I recommend it to you to read and put in your personal library. Mr. Yancey has much to say about the Jesus of our Bible that we have never considered before.
Jesus never met a disease He could not cure and He never hid this fact from anyone. But did everyone believe on Him? Of course not, He had many skeptic’s and religious people, He could not convince. They were looking for the Messiah, and here He was right in front of them and they could or would not believe. Jesus healed all those who needed healing and gave life to those who were dead, either physically or spiritually. Are we any different from them? We get sick and we go to the doctor and hope we will get well. We make fun of those who preach the faith message that Jesus is the same today as He was yesterday and will never change. Are we any different from the Pharisees?
When we are sick and hurting we want to be well asap. But what about sin? Why does sin not bother us the same way? Pain seems so real to us, while sin seems so harmless? To be fair to the human race and reveal who we really are, we need to realize that we humans have been de-tuned for over six thousand years to be bodily controlled and very little teaching as a whole on who we are in Christ Jesus.
What is sin compared to pain? Sin in the Greek simply means to miss the mark and not share in the prize. To put this on another level about the prize. Just what is this prize? Obedience instead of disobedience, Health instead of sickness, Peace instead of worry, Life instead of death, and so on. These are some of the examples of the prizes we miss out on by the sins we commit every day.
As a whole we do not have a competitive spirit. To be competitive means we are trying to win the prize. When looked at like this, then who are we competing with? Only ourselves would be the answer. Sin is just missing the mark of being obedient. Who are you listening to? Remember the battle is in your mind.
Get your Bible out and begin to read the gospels and see what Jesus has to say to you. Please don’t ignore the spiritual part of you that has eternal life and allow the physical life to control you. You will die even if you stay well all your life. But consider the unseen life of you that will never see death if you made Jesus your Lord by believing on Him (John 8:51).
Remember you will make it, just don’t give up. I hope this letter will be of some use to your pace of life in this race we all are in. See you next week.
Please be in prayer for my wife who is in the hospital due to a brain aneurysm. She underwent surgery and will be in recovery for the next two weeks. Her name is Ingrid. We are all family if you are believers in Christ Jesus and she and I need your support and prayers. Pray the Word. Thanks
In His Service as Kilted Priest
The Kilted Priest 
“Who are you listening to? Remember the battle is in your mind.”
This is something almost exact that I say to Anthony quite often. Sometimes he gets lost in his thoughts compared to his beliefs. Sometimes he’s not sure what his beliefs are. He gets confused and sometimes lost on things when he should be turning to God for help. It usually takes something serious for him to want to turn to God, like being with you this weekend at the hospital. The past few days I’ve been hearing him pray out loud throughout the day. It makes my heart happy to hear it.
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Great read
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