In This Issue:
Changed!
The Wrong Doctors
What Christ Did
Just As I Am
Need of a New Birth
Volume: 981 November 11, 2024
Theme: Changes
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Changed!
Bill Brinkworth
When a person is saved, there will be changes in him. He will act, live, and think differently than he did before.
“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” II Corinthians 5:17
After the Holy Spirit becomes the controlling conscience of a born-again individual, there will usually be at least one area that His convicting Spirit urges us to deal with. He often “speaks” to our hearts about our flesh’s desires.
“That he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God.” I Peter 4:2
Fulfilling the lusts for the things in this world never actually filled us in the past and did nothing to help us. After salvation, the Holy Spirit directs us to eliminate the sinful, damaging baggage we do not need.
In the past, indulgences of animal desires (“lasciviousness”), lusts, drunkenness, partying (“revellings”), and putting other things above the Lord (“idolatries”) ruled our lives (I Peter 4:3). Now, on the side of salvation, they are to be halted.
Another important area the indwelling Spirit of God will most likely address is the company one keeps. Those who were once part of our sinful lifestyles will either get saved or need to be separated from a saved individual. It is not uncommon that those who were “friends” in sin break off the relationship and even speak negatively of the saved person they used to sin with (I Peter 4:4).
The changes in the new believer are often emotionally painful. If they are not made, the person will certainly not lose their salvation. However, their testimony for Christ and their living for Him will not be what God desires for His child.
Many get saved, and immediately the Holy Spirit of God deals with their heart about an area of their lives that needs to be changed. Often, the child of God will try to obey the voice but may fail and fall back into sin. The Holy Spirit does not give up. Repeatedly, He deals with the person’s heart. He is undoubtedly a second, third, fourth, etc., chance God.
However, when the individual hardens his heart and purposely disobeys or ignores the convicting Spirit, God may cease dealing with the child of God until he repents. When he says “No” to God too many times, God’s “voice” stops speaking to him. It is in that place many Christians find themselves. God urged them to forsake a sin they had before their salvation or their association with the ungodly, but they refused to obey.
The key to having a victorious Christian life is to listen to the convicting “voice” of the Holy Spirit and to obey it. When He deals with past involvements, He attempts to remove us from what He knows will harm us.
When saved, we are new creatures in Christ. We have a second chance in life not to make the mistakes we made in the past. Listen and obey the Holy Spirit’s directions!
“In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” Proverbs 3:6
The Wrong Doctors
Edited from an article by C. H. Spurgeon
Have you been to Doctor Ceremony? He is, at this time, a fashionable doctor. Has he told you that you must heed him and obey his rules? Has he prescribed you so many prayers and so many church services? Ah! Many go to him, and they persevere in a round of religious observances, but those yield no lasting ease to one’s conscience.
Perhaps you have tried Doctor Morality? He has an extensive practice and is a fine old Jewish physician. He suggests, “Be good in outward character, and it will work inwardly and cleanse your heart!” Many persons are supposed to have been cured by him and his assistant, Doctor Civility, who is nearly as clever as his master. I have it on good evidence that neither of them apart nor the two together could ever deal with inward sin’s disease.
Do what you may, but your doings will not heal the wounds of a bleeding heart. Doctor Mortification also has a select practice, but men are not saved by denying themselves until they first deny their self-righteousness.
Doctor Excitement also has many patients. However, his cures seldom outlive the setting of the sun.
Doctor Feeling is much sought after by tender spirits. These try to feel sorrow and remorse, but the way of cure does not lie in their efforts.
Apart from accepting our blessed Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour, everything that is done will not better the sin-sick soul. You may try human remedies for a lifetime, but sin will remain in power, guilt will cling to the conscience, and the heart will be as sinful as ever.
A young woman turned aside a friend’s appeal for salvation immediately by saying, “I only want time enough when I die to say two words to the Lord, ‘Save me’”
Having neglected her soul’s salvation, she was soon called away by death, but the only two words she could utter were the wails of despair, “Too late! Too late!” — Author Unknown
What Christ Did
Edited from an article by Clarence Larkin
Those who are saved, the Bride of the Lamb, are from a disowned and outcast race made so by the disobedience of the head of that race in the Garden of Eden. However, Jesus, the Bridegroom, saw her and loved her.
To redeem her, He came from His own lovely home in Heaven to her sin-cursed home on Earth. It was there He was rejected by members of her family, seized and subjected to a mock trial, and nailed to a cross as a malefactor. He voluntarily laid down His life for her, though, thus demonstrating His love and opening up the way for her redemption from the Law that held her in bondage.
Jesus then left her to return to His Father’s House to prepare a home for her. During her betrothal, He has left her with her own family. He sent the Holy Spirit to teach, protect, and fit her for the day of her marriage. One day, He will descend midair to meet her on her way to the bridal halls of Heaven.
“For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” I Thessalonians 4:16-17
“That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”
Romans 10:9
Just As I Am
Edited from an article by Pentecost
A London artist had hired a dirty, wretched beggar to come to his studio so that he might paint the man’s want and woe. The painter was disappointed to have the man appear with his face washed, hair combed, and store clothes put on.
“I don’t want you that way. I want that beggar I saw in filth and squalor.”
Many a sinner falsely feels that, before he comes to Jesus, he must fix up a little, improve his condition, and borrow the second-hand garments of empty righteousness instead of coming just as he is, waiting not to cleanse away a single blot.
“But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8
Need of a New Birth
Edited from an article by C. H. Spurgeon
I was staying at an inn in one of the valleys of Northern Italy, where the floor was dreadfully dirty. I had it in my mind to advise the landlady to scrub it, but when I perceived it was made of mud, I reflected that the more she scrubbed the worse it would be.
The man who knows his own heart soon perceives that his corrupt nature admits to no improvement. Outward “cleaning” will not change its nature. A new nature must be implanted, or the man will be only washed like that mud floor.
“That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.” John 3:6-7
Ours is not a case for mending but for making new. No outward actions can make you clean. Your sin-leprosy lies deep within, and only accepting the sacrificial death of God’s only Son, Jesus, can change one’s heart and make one born into the family of God.