May 12
4
THE GREAT COMPROMISE
Acts 5: 17, 18
The Pharisee claimed to worship Jehovah but they differed from the Sadducee in that they believed that there would be a resurrection from the dead. The Sadducees claimed to believe Jehovah but they differed from the Pharisee in that they believed there was no resurrection. Yet, these differences were overlooked because they both hated the Lord Jesus Christ who is the Resurrection and the Life. Many today claim to believe Christ but compromisers will overlook their differences to join together to tread underfoot the Son of God. Compromisers may disagree with one another but when Christ receives all Pre-eminence those who hate God will always compromise with others of like hatred for God. Clay Curtis.
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The Sadducees: What About the Resurrection? 18 Then some Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Him; and they asked Him, saying: 19 “Teacher, Moses wrote to us that if a man’s brother dies, and leaves his wife behind, and leaves no children, his brother should take his wife and raise up offspring for his brother. 20 Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife; and dying, he left no offspring. 21 And the second took her, and he died; nor did he leave any offspring. And the third likewise. 22 So the seven had her and left no offspring. Last of all the woman died also. 23 Therefore, in the resurrection, when they rise, whose wife will she be? For all seven had her as wife.”24 Jesus answered and said to them, “Are you not therefore mistaken, because you do not know the Scriptures nor the power of God? 25 For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. 26 But concerning the dead, that they rise, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the burning bush passage, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’?[c] 27 He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living. You are therefore greatly mistaken.”
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Discovering Christ in the Gospel of Mark (extract from Don Fortner Mark 12:18-27)
The resurrection is more than a doctrine. It is a person (John 11:25). You cannot know the Person without knowing the doctrine; but you certainly may know the doctrine without knowing the Person. Christ is our resurrection and our life. He is our Resurrection and Life representatively in redemption (Ephesians 2:4-6). He is our Resurrection and our Life experimentally in regeneration (John 5:25; Revelation 20:6; Colossians 3:1-3). And the Lord Jesus Christ is our Resurrection and our Life prospectively in the last day (Colossians 3:4).
Spiritual ignorance, doctrinal error, and heresy of every kind, must be traced to ignorance of the power of God. The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection, because they were totally ignorant of God’s sovereignty, his omnipotence and his gospel.
All false religion, all free will, works religion denies the sovereignty of God’s will and purpose in election and predestination, the omnipotence of his power and grace in redemption, regeneration and effectual calling, and the gospel’s good news of redemption accomplished by the blood of his dear Son. Those who have never felt the power of God in the experience of grace cannot know the power of God, and are therefore utterly ignorant of all the works of God.
It was Christ himself who appeared to Moses in the bush (Acts 7:30), declaring himself to be the eternal, self-existent “I AM” (Exodus 3:14; John 8:58). When he said to Moses, “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,” he was saying, “I am the God of the living.” He who is our God is the God of the living. Remember, it was Christ our Mediator who spoke those words to Moses. Our Savior is telling us here that he is himself the God of the living (Romans 14:9).
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob represent all God’s elect. They were chosen of God. They were heirs of a covenant God made on their behalf. They believed God. They lived in communion with God. They did not fully enjoy the fulfillment of God’s promises until they left this vale of tears; but their bodies are in the grave; they live still, possessing that which the Lord God promised to give them (Hebrews 11:13-16). So it is with all God’s saints who have left this world. They are not dead, but living.
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Consider Jesus– in the Power of His Resurrection
Octavius Winslow.
“That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection.” –Phil. 3:10
Is there not some danger of lingering too exclusively at the cross, to the exclusion of the grave of Jesus? In other words, do we give the subject of Christ’s RESURRECTION that place in our faith and meditation which we give to His Death, and which God gives it in the great scheme of our salvation? Essential and precious as the atoning Death of Jesus is, it had availed us nothing apart from His Resurrection. We needed more than death–we needed life! We needed more than the bond presented by Divine justice, and paid–we needed the seal of its acceptance on the part of God. This was given when God raised up Jesus from the dead, “who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.”
Christ’s Resurrection from the grave by the power of God was the Father’s attestation to the completeness of the Son’s work, and His public acknowledgment of its acceptance. Thus the Resurrection of Christ is to us what a legal acknowledgment is at the hands of a creditor whose claim has been met, whose bond is cancelled. The believing soul sees in the emptied tomb of Jesus the evidence and the acknowledgment of his full discharge from all the demands of Law and all the threatenings of justice. Now, it is the power of this truth in our souls that more immediately concerns us. The Resurrection of Jesus is an accomplished fact–what we want to experience is, His Resurrection-life in our heart. This was Paul’s prayer–“That I may know Christ, and the POWER of His Resurrection.”
We first feel this when we realize our mystical union with Jesus. There can be no experience of the power of anything apart from a personal contact with it. Let us first settle the question, “Am I one with Christ?” Have I a vital and spiritual union with the Savior? If so, then I am risen with Him, as the apostle says–“If you be risen with Christ.” O my soul, consider into what an exalted and blessed state your union with Christ places you, making you, through free and sovereign grace, a partaker of all that He was, of all that He now is, and of all that He will be when He comes with all His saints in majesty and glory.
By the power of Christ’s Resurrection, we enter into a new, or resurrection-life–“Quickened together with Him.” Our blessed Lord, when He rose from the dead,
rose with a new-born life. Leaving in the tomb the grave-clothes–the napkin and the shroud–He came back clad with His resurrection robes–a new and wondrous life! Of this resurrection-life all are partakers who know the POWER of His Resurrection.
O my soul, fear not, then, that anything shall ever separate you from Christ. This cannot be, since your spiritual life is bound up and hidden with the Resurrection-life of Jesus.
The power of Jesus’ Resurrection is experienced by us when by it we rise above earth, and “seek those things which are above, where Christ sits on the right hand of God.” Has Jesus risen? Then we, also, must rise. As He left death and earth behind Him, so we, if we be risen with Him, “through faith of the operation of God, who raised Him from the dead,” must rise superior to the deadly pomps and vanities of this poor world, and walk with God in “newness of life.” Oh to feel the “power of His Resurrection,” in a life dead to sin and the world, but living to holiness and God!
We wait to know yet more of the “power of Christ’s Resurrection,” when the trumpet of the Archangel shall sound, and the dead in Christ shall rise first. The slumber of the grave gently broken, the glorified spirit returns to its awakened dust–then both ascends into the air to meet the descending Lord. O blessed, glorious consummation of the power of Christ’s Resurrection!
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The Pillar and Ground of the Truth (I Thessalonians 3:15-16)
The church of the living God as she is seen in her local assemblies is the pillar and ground of the truth. Though these assemblies are few and far between they alone have the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ. They stand wherever God has gathered them as a light in a world filled with darkness and ignorance. We are not here to reform the world, take up its issues, or influence its politics. We are here to preach the gospel of God’s sovereign grace in Christ to as many as will give us a hearing. There are four things concerning the church of which I am being made more aware of every day.
The gospel is the only thing left in this world that can do sinners any good at all. To change or reform the habits and practices of men by laws and punishments only leave men in self-righteousness and false hope. The gospel of Christ regenerates, creates anew, and is sufficient in the power of Gods’ Holy Spirit to do what all else is doomed to fail.
In order for man to benefit of this gospel it must be received. It must be published in such a way that he can be confronted with it. What a blessed thing it is for God to make his gospel accessible to a man! What a glorious work it is that God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, and received up into glory. (I Timothy 3: 16) It is a divine work of grace that enables a person to receive and embrace the Lord Jesus Christ.
It is plainly declared in the word of God that faith cometh by hearing. Any hope of salvation, regeneration, conversion, or faith apart from hearing is an empty and baseless hope. “How shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard?” (Romans 10: 14) Paul presses this issue to the conscience of the church at Galatia, “This only would I learn of you, received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? (Galatians 3:2)
Hearing comes by way of preaching. (I Corinthians 1: 21) Nothing demonstrates the sovereignty of God in the salvation of a sinner more than this, “How shall ye hear without a preacher and how shall they preach except they be sent?”
God give us the grace and determination of heart to be faithful to this stewardship he has trusted to us. Amen Darvin Pruitt.
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The danger we face is less obvious than the catholic pope or the protestant will-worshipper. It is those who mix truth and lies with so much subtlety that the Lord said, “if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.”