Jesus was there at the beginning with God, but humbly accepted his fate to come to Earth to live and die as a man. He lived his childhood and early adulthood in relative obscurity. He came to be baptized by John which led to being tempted by Satan for forty days in the wilderness. Satan tried offering the riches and pleasures of the world to Jesus. Jesus relied on scripture to rebuke the devil. Holding fast, Jesus relied on the Word of God. After defeating temptation, he then taught, performed miracles, inspired and led many people to God. The established religious order falsely accused, persecuted, then compelled the Romans to sentence Jesus to death. All of this was for declaring the truth of his divinity.
We find ourselves today in competition with Judaism, Islam, Scientology, Mormonism, etc. We even have competing Christian doctrine. More insidious still is Satan's ideal form of self aggrandizement, the New Age movement. A convenient denial of biblical principles, the New Age (like Satan) is about pride, self empowerment and rejection of moral order. New Age proponents like to call Christians hypocritical, ignoring the fact that as Christians, we know we are sinners, fallen, fragile and broken. It is the New Age believers that are hypocritical, imagining themselves as having attained inner truth and enlightenment.
Ephesians 3:20: "Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be the glory"
No comments:
Post a Comment