“I AM the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me”
John 14: 6
12 “Look, I AM coming soon! My reward is with Me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done. 13 I AM the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
Revelation 22: 12-13
Pastors Noreen & Henry Kevern
Watch and See That No One Deceives You
As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, “Tell us,” they said, “when will this happen, and what will be the sign of Your coming and of the end of the age?”
Jesus answered: “Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in My Name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will deceive many. You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these things are the beginning of birth pains.
Matthew 24:3-8
The message that you are about to hear over these next few weeks may cause some to change their whole lives immediately, some to laugh and walk away, some to ponder and see if there is any worth in this message and some who know how important this message is and will grow in their faith and bring this message to others. It is a wonderfully, fearful message that the Lord has brought me to write about, one that will invoke fear in many, but joyful fear in others. It is above all a message of hope, because those who wait upon the Lord will rejoice because they do not belong to this world and long to go home.
In my life I have seen such a slow fade of what people live as right and wrong. Most people do not even know that they have been deceived for so long. They have abandoned God in their lives because the devil has caused them to become immune to all the evil that is going on in their lives. They do not see how over the years the devil has slowly changed their way of thinking from God’s way to the devil’s way. We have lost our fear of the LORD. There are those who have been blessed in so many ways and teach others that they only need themselves to succeed in life. The power of self.
We have been deceived. We have not watched out. We do not know what God wants in our lives and so we live selfishly, desiring whatever makes us happy. We have no self-control, no desire for God; we allow the devil to twist the Word of God for the devil desires your very souls and yet most people think that all is well, that we don’t have to follow the way of the LORD. They think that the “good” things that they do are fine, that they do not have to live according to God’s standards. And so we have millions of standards that people live by and many of them think that all is well and that when they die, they will go to heaven, not realizing the truth of where they will go when they die. Jesus said: “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of My Father Who is in heaven. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your Name and in Your Name drive out demons and in Your Name perform many miracles? Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from Me, you evildoers!” (Matthew 7:21-23) We have to live our lives in the way of the LORD and His standards are far from the world’s standards.
We have to know that living our way is not the LORD’s way. God does not change, and His law teaches us what we are not to do and what we are to do. But people do not even look at the LORD’s law. I ask you when was the last time you read the commands of the LORD and mediated upon them? There are those who tell us that Paul said that we don’t need to live under the law but fail to know that Paul said that benefit of the law was to learn what one was to do or not to do. In Romans 6:11-14: “In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to Him as an instrument of righteousness. For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.”
Let’s step back a moment to understand this Scripture. We have to count ourselves dead to sin. How do we do that: Simply by beginning our lives in Christ as a child. Jesus said: “Let the little children come to Me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” (Luke 18:16-17) Jesus is telling us that we have to learn to know how to follow His way and to do so is to begin as a child. Jesus said we must be born again, so we begin our lives over, starting as a baby and learning from His Word. Paul speaks about being fed with spiritual milk and to grow and learn. Babies start with milk before they go onto solid food. And even their first solid food is thin and watery. As we grow, we are able to consume food that is more solid and then we can get to the meat and potatoes of God’s way. We take these baby steps so that we can put to death in our lives the sins that Jesus paid the price for on the cross. And just like babies, there are going to be times when we fall but we ask God to pick us up and begin again. Because we are reborn, we are alive to God in Christ Jesus. We cannot let sin be a part of our lives any longer. We can no longer let our bodies be chained in sin that the devil is trying to keep us as slaves in. We have to surrender our lives to God and realize that we cannot do this on our own. We have to invite God into our lives and let His grace cover us and ask God to let His Holy Spirit dwell in us and guide us and teach us.
So how do we learn? First we come to the LORD and ask Him to fill us with His Spirit and to go to His Word, the Bible and learn from Him. Just as we first learn from our parents, and then we go to school to learn for 13 more years and then we must become lifelong learners. We have to first learn from our Parent-God and then we can learn from God’s ministers and others. Church is always a good thing. Make certain that you find a Bible based church that will teach from the Word and not a church who will teach you their way. You are learning about faith in God. Many churches teach their religion before the Bible. We teach faith in Christ Jesus, not following a bunch of man-made rules. There is a big difference between faith and religion. Once you learn the way of the Lord, you will be able to discern what the Lord is saying and find a church that follows the Bible. One thing that I want you to know is that we have to be reading and studying the Bible all the rest of our days. Just like our faith in God, it is a life-long thing, not something to be read once and put on a shelf. It is only through reading and studying that we can put together as it were, the Old Testament and the New Testament. Think of the Bible as our daily Bread that will nourish us with God thoughts and His way for our lives.
Let’s look at some of the things that have changed or faded away over the years. There was a time when we did not put pictures or words on our cars. Now we see things that are so offensive and that children should not see. We forget to protect our children from the things of the devil. Sure there are some cute things that people put on their cars. We have to say no to the offensive things and teach our children that what they see and read on a car is wrong and that the cute cartoon flipping off is something that we who live in Christ will not copy. We have to choose not to buy these things. Cursing is the norm nowadays. I was in the store the other day and I overheard a couple talking behind me in the frozen food section. The woman wanted to buy something and the man was not interested and as she asked him to try it, he said, “There is no ------ way I am going to like that.” The conversation went on for several minutes and all the while this man used that word to describe his dislike even though he had never tried it. Let’s look at TV. Wow, I can’t even think of where to begin with this. There is so much garbage on the TV. Evil thoughts, slander, adultery, sexual immorality and yes that includes living together and homosexuality, theft, murder, greed, malice, lewdness, envy, arrogance, false testimony, slander and folly, all these things are even in children shows. The devil has slowly faded all these things into our everyday life. He has made these things the norm so that we do not even question them. These things defile us, they make us dirty and sinful and they will keep us out of heaven. Government has been replaced with people who are greedy and self-centered. Because the devil has caused those that we elect to commit all the above sins and to keep God out of our lives so that we can separate church and state.
I could go on and on but there is much too much to list. We have been deceived my dear friends and many of us are not aware of it. Some of us are afraid to speak God’s truth because the devil wants his way and so he enters into peoples’ lives and teaches them that if we don’t let people pursue whatever makes us happy we are wrong. If we teach that living together is a sin, if we teach homosexuality is a sin, if we teach adultery is wrong, we should go to jail for being judgmental towards others.
There are signs out there that we are ignoring because we want to bury our faces in the sand and not keep watch for the time of Jesus’ return. People are asking if the Mayan calendar is right and that the end of the world is coming. Even Christians who say they believe in Jesus ask about the Mayan calendar and do not even know what the Bible says. As Christians, the Mayan calendar should mean nothing to us. There is so many wars going on, and we are threatened with rumors of wars. These things will happen and we do not need to be alarmed. Nations are rising against nations, there are famines and earthquakes are happening more and more. Jesus said that these are the beginnings of birth pains. The heavens and the earth are going to be reborn to what God wants and He will judge us according to our words and how we lived. Jesus said that He came to bring division, that brother would be against brother, sister against sister (Luke 12:49-53) and that is what has happened. Jesus knew that there would be those who would choose to follow the devil instead of Him.
But God loves us so much that He chose to become human and show us personally how to live the life He wants us to live. His perfect love will not make us choose Him, but He will make His perfect judgment on each of us and for those who have chosen to forsake Him, they will go to hell. We have all been warned and hiding your head in the sand and saying you do not know is a lie. Let’s be honest with ourselves. We have heard about Jesus. Christians are talked about everywhere, how evil they are because they believe in the Bible. Playing dumb will not get you a pass to heaven. Those who have accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior, and have chosen to walk in the way of the Lord will go to heaven. But there are those of you who are deceived into thinking that your way is good enough, but it is not. For example if you say that God has lied in His Word and that homosexuality is not a sin, and that you can be living a life of homosexuality or telling others it is okay, that is against God’s way. It’s not that God does not love you, because God loves all His creations. That is the message of the cross. Jesus took our sins upon Himself and took His punishment and died for our sins. We have to choose to surrender our lives to Him and to repent of our sins, even the ones that we don’t consider sins. God will deliver you out of whatever sin we may be in but you have to choose to be saved. He will not force your Salvation upon you.
Anyone who teaches the truths of the Bible can face jail for preaching God’s truths. Jesus talked about this: “Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of Me. At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. And the gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations and then the end will come.” (Matthew 24:9-14) In fact the gospel has been preached to the whole world. Arthur Blessitt has brought the gospel to every nation in this world. And TBN broadcasts to ever country in the world. Another example, KLOVE radio station is on the internet and can be listened to anywhere someone has access to the internet. Many people have lost their faith in God and betray each other. There is so much hatred that it can be very scary. Muslims kill Christians because they will not convert and that they believe that they are the religion of God. But they are not. They teach hatred and kill and Jesus did not come so that we would force people to believe that He is the way, the truth and the life and that only in following His way will we be able to come to the Father. In so many countries, Christians are killed every day by Muslims. And there are other religions that teach things that are not of God. There are ministers, churches, and religions that preach hate which is a gospel other than what is in the Bible. Love has grown cold. There are those who are standing firm in their faith putting on the breastplate of righteousness and shod our feet with the gospel of peace. We have fitted ourselves with shields of faith so that we can protect ourselves from the arrows from the evil one.
For the next week, begin to ask the Lord to look into your heart and allow yourself to honestly begin to open your heart to the Lord. Take time to read Matthew 24. We will continue to look at how we are being deceived by the evil one.
