Living in Expectation: The Urgency of Christ's Return

And behold I am coming soon blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book now one thing it's important for us to understand he's writing about the book but he's also writing about the book The Bible which is the word the book in in uh Greek is the Bible or the book he is saying of this book and of what has been written it is important that you understand this the only way it's going to transform your life is if you look at it and if you look at the words of God and you say they are trustworthy and true. [00:02:41]

If we're truly going to be called to Holiness we need to know that the words that are written in the Bible are trustworthy and true they come directly from God I talk about this if you have and I am not an engine guy but I know this much if you have a gas engine do not put de in it and you're like well well I can do whatever I want it's my car yes you can and then you'll get a different car because that's not what you're supposed to put in it but I didn't trust that the person was telling me the truth the manual I can't trust that manual how do I know well this other person told me diesel was better and I that's a ridiculous example but it's the way a lot of people treat the Bible we pick and choose. [00:04:37]

Worship God Alone we can put nothing in front of God there can be nothing the word worship is to give Worth to something there is nothing higher than God nothing and that's important that we understand that it's important that we keep those words only that and those who he says we are Servants of God he uses that term to your fellow servants it means that we are followers of God we follow the commands of God not because the ways he has given us are bad because the ways he has given us means that he loves us and he wants us to do the what is best and we're willing to serve him because he has what's Best in store for us. [00:10:55]

Behold I am coming soon bringing my recompense with me to repay each one for what he has done now you look at the beginning of that verse it's not probably a verse you want to use it's just the first half that's my verse I go to let the filthy be filthy all right you have to say Well there must be something to this well this is what a a prophetic tool that is used uh especially Old Testament prophets they would say hey evildoer just keep on doing your evil hey filthy is how's that working for you be filthy and it's an ironic thing that is a tool that is used to point out what they are doing and that kind of like Dr Phil how's that working out for you how's that working out filthy filthy you liking the filth and the evil keep doing it good job good job and he's pointing this out to people. [00:11:55]

When you are truly a believer in him when you truly believe that he's true and trustworthy that you are all in on him you are going to change you're not going to be the same person you're not going to be somebody who lies you're not you're going to be somebody who's honest and you're going to be somebody who's changing constantly does that mean you're perfect I've heard this said well you Christians just think you're perfect I said you have not met many Christians then because we are not but we are forgiven for what we have done and we strive every day through the work of the Holy Spirit In Our Lives to become better people every day because we are followers of Christ and we want to be more like him every day and if we truly believe in him it says the Book of James your faith will will manifest itself in works and it cannot there cannot be a faith that does not have works that are attached to it because Works naturally flow. [00:15:45]

The spirit and the bride say come and let the one who hears say come and let the one who is thirsty come let the one who desires take the Water of Life without price so basically he first of all he sets it up and he says I am God Jesus says it directly here there's people out there that have that are out there and they say Jesus never said he was God he just said I am the Alpha and the Omega the first and the last the beginning of the end these are the exact words that God the Father just said recently he uses the exact words he says I am God and he says blessed are those who have washed their robes what does this mean washed our robes in the blood and you may say that sounds kind of contradictory you know you get a blood stain the first thing you do is like well just throw some blood on it that would help okay so that's not this kind of blood but the those who have washed their robes in the blood and that was what cleanses us from all sin. [00:18:06]

The world is incredibly thirsty and they're drinking anything they can find and it's not satisfying them but they'll continue to drink it we need to bring the good news of Jesus Christ and have this come and let the one who is thirsty come we need to be the ambassadors of Christ as we see the time growing shorter that we are out there saying come to the people who are thirsty come we have a path for you and you know what here's the deal here's the catch you have eternal life with Jesus forever what's the other catch you don't have any pain or suffering or death what's the other catch I'm sorry there's no catch the the whole concept without price and if you ever received something when it says call this 1 1800 number we're going to give you a free Cruise anybody ever call one of those numbers I have C just for fun um and it's usually not fun after a little bit of time it's never free well you know we're going to give you a free cruise with $1,000 uh uh insurance policy you have to take out for it well that's not free get the cruise is free but you just have to give us $1,000 there's always a catch right but I love this concept those who desire to take the Water of Life without price you know who paid the price Jesus Christ that's that's the thing and that's the part that people can't grasp that's the part I don't think I grasp when I get to heaven nothing I've done I've earned nothing nothing when I stand before God and he is judging me the only reason I'm there is because my robes have been washed I have been set free I have been uh declared righteous by Jesus Christ himself because of his sacrifice on the cross and it came without a price to me but the ultimate price for him. [00:24:54]

If anyone adds to them God will add to him the plagues described in this book and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city which are described in this book He Who testifies to these things says surely I am coming soon amen come Lord Jesus so he gives a warning right here and he say how is a warning an encouragement to be holy well let me tell you what churches tend to do and churches I use the word Loosely at some of this point because at some point we go past I heard we're a part of the assembles of God denomination and I heard one of our uh leaders one time say this he says many times it's tougher to get into the Assemblies of God than it is the kingdom of God and he was getting us as he was getting honest he wasn't saying that as a oh we're proud of that that we make it so hard you have to be just a certain way and you you have to wear this and do this and act like this and we add to the Bible we add things well if you're going to be a good Christian you have to you have to talk a certain way and and I I Haven talk about this you know we have dress codes sometimes good dress codes but I remember when I was uh in college I played drums at a church and the church wanted me to wear a tie well I I find wearing a tie and playing drums I know Tyler can do it but I can't uh it was always hard for me to do and then I discovered this was right after when I was in college the Cold War was ending the Berlin Wall was coming down and the Church of Romania I heard a missionary he says you know in Romania if you wear a tie to church they tell you you are a sinner and they make you take it off and I said my people those are my people I'm a Romanian Christian forever but we make rules and we make rules that that add and we add these burdens on people like the we can be our own Pharisees we make it hard and you say well we're not adding something to the yes you are you're adding to this you're you're interpreting verses to make sure that they they make it difficult for people and then there's other people who take away the words of the Bible take away the words of the prophecy now there's going to be extremes on this but basically this would be the same thing I was talking about with people that look at the Bible and the new one that I've hear over and over again is if the first century writers would have known biology they would have known not to write these things and my thought is I just told you that these words came from the spirit of God God understands everything he was was n shocked to find all these things but we try to take our our our understanding and we we can pick on other people like in the first century they were into Greek philosophy Plato Plato believed I'm going to give you a short history of Plato Plato believed that everything that was good was in the heavens and everything on Earth was evil flesh was evil so a whole group of people called gnostics or knowers they came up with this whole system and they said oh the old testament's evil because that God put us in these bodies what a terrible God so they just dumped the Old Testament and then they went in the New Testament they started picking out the parts they didn't like and they came up with a whole new gospel and if you already heard of Gospel of Thomas and things like that that came out of this and they came up with a whole new gospel because they said this fits better with our culture and we say well that's just ridiculous why would anybody do that oh really let's look at our culture how we take our culture and say you know the Bible just doesn't speak anymore the old Teen Challenge thing that I when I worked at Teen Challenge you know the Bible says do not be drunk with wine but it doesn't say be high don't be high on meth you know so obviously they they were okay with that I did hear that a couple times but you know it's just like no the Bible understood it it spoke to the play people is written to but it transforms all generations and we can't take our little culture and jam it on the Bible and take Parts out of it that don't fit with our that's not how modern people think you know that's that's postmodern that's that's not what we we're going to make it fit within our American culture and we're just going to wrap ourselves in that the Bible is very the warning here is extremely harsh the plagues will come upon you if you add to it I don't want to add to it I don't like the plagues I don't like the Bulls being poured out I don't like that he's saying all the plagues and then he says if you take away anything from this if you start cutting things out that you don't like and taking certain paths and say well this doesn't work anymore he says I'll take away your share in the tree of life in other words you want to start taking stuff away I'll take it away this is a very harsh warning right here why because we're supposed to present the whole word of God to people because it's true and trustworthy and it makes you blessed and it makes you the best person you can possibly be and it helps you to become more like Christ and It prepares you to be a witness for him it's it why would we take anything away from that or add anything to that so God's not trying to be picky he's trying to say I wrote the perfect thing stop trying to make make it less perfect stick with it. 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The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all and he said says first of all you're going to need the grace of God for all of this okay because you're not going to get all of it right and understand the grace of God's going to give you enable you to understand this and to obey the word that I've just given you only by the grace of God and when we get to heaven and we see the the Books open I've talked about we're going to be like oh that Grace oh thank God for the grace of God we needed a lot of it and thank God for all of it but then he says this is true or I say this is true Amen to this and we need to be like this we need to be living Our Lives saying Christ could return in any moment in fact we're praying we're praying amen come Lord Jesus maratha come Lord we are waiting for you please come we would love to see you I've got a to-do list that's forever long please come I'd love to leave that here all right I'd love to be out of this world I would but in the meantime you've got work for me to do you've got people for me to reach you've got my things in my life that I need to turn over to you and I need to become more of a follower of you every single day. [00:34:17]