“Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end.” Ephesians 3:21
It has been said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. In the eyes of the Lord Jesus Christ, the local New Testament Church is beautiful, it’s worth determined by it’s purchased price, the perfect shed blood of Christ! See Ephesians 5:25-27
Modern man has set the local church aside as being too insufficient and has put his trust in his multi-funded, big business religious organizations. How long would those big organizations last, if there was to be hard times?
The Lord’s work has come down through the ages in the form of the local church, with one church making possible the perpetuation of another. It has proven itself to be sufficient, with not even the gates of hell able to prevail against it, because the Lord has been (and is) with it always. (Matthew 16:18 and Matthew 28:19-20)
God has always used a plan that has been considered foolishness by the wisdom of man- 1 Corinthians 1:26-31. This is so “That no flesh should glory in his presence.” and “That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.”
Those who would turn from the glory of the plan of God, unto the ways and means of men, are not visionaries, but rather those who do not see what God sets before man. Eternity will manifest the difference, as God judges all things according to His Word.
The spirits of our day are projecting that man needs to be catered to, in order to get him to take up with God. The idea being, since men have no interest in the local church, then we should give them a religious program outside of the church, suited to their tastes. So, rather than preaching that sinners need to repent and be born again in order to see and enter the kingdom of God, the idea is to give them a god and a religious kingdom they can see and partake of with the eye and desires of the flesh.
The proud sinner is saying, “God if you please me, I’ll recognize you.” But God’s position with sinners is: “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.” Isaiah 55:7 The sinner’s alienation from God’s way, is due to his spiritually dead and blind condition. To be saved from this sin condition, one must repent, i.e., have a complete change of mind about himself, see himself unworthy before God, and in contrition and godly sorrow, seek unto God with all his heart, receiving Christ as both Saviour and Lord. Then one can see the beauty of the local church that Jesus purchased with His own blood!
SHARING
