Being What Jesus Taught

by Jeff Curtis

     How does happiness to come to us? Is it someone else’s responsibility to make us happy? Does happiness come from having a high-income job, having a house that suits our desires, living in nice community, or having a nice retirement plan? No, it comes from none of these things. In fact, the search for happiness itself can produce the greatest unhappiness (1Timothy 6:9-10). Happiness essentially comes from inside us. A truly happy person lives a controlled and balanced life. In other words, true happiness comes from being in a right relationship with God and with the people around us. We are to be what Jesus taught us to be (Matthew 5:1-12).

    The first four Beatitudes listed in Matthew’s account concern inner principles of the heart and the mind. The last four are showing the way we are to relate to other people. For example, when we are “poor in spirit” (5:3), we will understand God’s mercy toward us. And in turn, that should make us more merciful toward others (5:7). Recognizing our own sins and being truly sorry for them (5:4) should give us the desire to live purer lives (5:8). Being gentile in spirit (5:5) will cause us to seek after the things that lead to peace (5:9). When we truly “hunger and thirst for righteousness” (5:6), we will understand the price that must be paid to live as followers of Jesus (5:10-12). Paul wrote that those “who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2Timothy 3:12).

     Marten Lloyd James pointed out four important truths about the Beatitudes. (1) They are a description of how every Christian should live. (2) They are intended to be completely absorbed by every Christian. (3) They are not what we would call natural tendencies; they challenge us to the opposite of what may come naturally. (4) They call upon us to live above the world and its lusts and to be truly different and distinctive from those around us.

     Too many Christians today, and even more congregations of the Lord’s church, waste time and money attempting to adapt and adjust to the environment of the world around us. Rather than doing this, we should do our best to stand out (James 4:4; 1John 2:15-17). We have allowed the world to invade the church, and the church has become too much like the world. Jesus said that His disciples, though they would be in the world, should not be “of the world” (John 17:15-17).

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Suffering

Richie Thetford

Job 5:7 tells us: “Man is born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upward.” Yes, suffering is the burden of humanity.

Perhaps, your heart is aching today, and you say, “What can I do with this burden?” Often God allows us to have burdens to exercise our faith. People who run from problems, for example, those who try to fill the valleys in their lives with drugs or alcohol, are really missing a blessing.

God works to make us more valuable through difficulties and hardships. A bar of iron may be worth $5.00. Make it into horseshoes, and it will be worth $10.00. Make it into needles, and it might be worth hundreds of dollars. Make it into balance wheels for watches and its value might run to tens of thousands of dollars. To be worth more, it has to be refined, superheated, drawn out, and purified.

Our faith is like that; it grows under pressure (disappointments, trials, difficulties) far more than when things are comfortable. Paul underlined this in Romans chapter 5 where he tells us to rejoice in our sufferings because they are good for us. They teach us patience, and patience develops strength of character and helps us to trust God more each time we exercise it until, finally, our faith and hope are strong and steady.

Accordingly, we’re able to hold our heads high no matter what happens. We know all is well because God loves us. Therefore, strengthen your faith, bear your burden gracefully; trust in God, and He will see you through to the end.

Saved Through Water

by Jeff Curtis

     In Genesis 6:5-7, the text tells us; “ ⁵ Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil ^[c]continually. ⁶ And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. ⁷ So the Lord said, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.”  

     The event of the world wide flood in Genesis chapter 8 that gives several lessons to learn from and to apply to New Testament Christianity. The Bible says nothing about how the passengers aboard the ark ate or slept or how they spent their days. It gives not description of the sights, sounds, smells that Noah’s family experienced for months as God cleansed the world of its sinful inhabitants. The eight passengers who were in the ark with the animals God was preserving may have wondered if God had forgotten about them.

     Chapter 8 tells about God’s “remembrance” of Noah’s family and all the creatures in the ark. He caused the flood waters to recede (8:1-5) and the face of the earth to dry (8:6-14). At God’s command, Noah family and all the animals left the ark (8:15-19). The chapter concludes with Noah’s offering a sacrifice and God’s promise to never again destroy every living creature as long as the earth remains (8:20-22).

     In this article, we need to also look and make comparison of the flood to what Peter tells us in 1Peter 3. That the flood was more than a purging of sinfulness from the world, it was also an anti-type of baptism.

     As for the eight people in the ark, their deliverance was a type of the salvation that Christians have enjoyed from Pentecost to the present day.

     (1) The record says that, by faith, Noah and his family entered the ark, a place of physical refuge. Penitent believers are “baptized into Christ” (Romans 6:3), our place of spiritual refuge.

     (2) The flood was the instrument of death to those who did not repent on that old world; but it saved Noah and the others in the ark. When penitent believers are baptized into the death of Christ (Romans 6:3), instead of dying, they receive spiritual life through Him.

     (3) Peter stated that “eight persons (Noah and his family), were brought safely through the water,” even so, or “corresponding to that, baptism now saves you” (1Peter 3:20,21).

     (4) By faith, Noah and his family came out of the ark as new (saved) individuals, with a new beginning in a world washed clean of the wickedness of the past. When penitent believers arise out of the waters of baptism, they come forth in “newness of life” (Romans 6:4), as new creatures “in Christ.” This means that “the old things (have) passed away,” and “new things have come” (2Corthinians 5:17).

     (5) The salvation of Noah and his family was not water salvation, that is, the water did not literally save them. It was what divided the old world from the new, and, by faith, they had passed through it. In the same way, the water of baptism doesn’t literally wash away sins (1Peter 3:21). It marks the dividing line between the old life and the new life in Christ. Only by faith in Jesus Christ and the cleansing power of His blood can our souls be washed away as we pass through the watery grave of baptism (Matthew 26:28; Acts 22:16; Romans 6:4-6).

    (6) The survivors who came out of the ark owed the salvation to God, since it was His grace that had saved them and given them a good conscience for a new life in a cleansed world. Even so, penitent believers are saved by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:4-9) when they are baptized into Christ (Galatians 3:26,27; Titus 3:4-7). They make an “appeal to God for a good conscience – through the resurrection of Jesus Christ” (1Peter 3:21).

     (7) God promised not judge mankind as worthy of death by another flood. Rather, He determined to bless them with a new world that would have regular seasons for seedtime and harvest, where man could once again enjoy the fruit of the land. Today, God blesses His people with new life in Christ. Christians enjoy the Holy Spirit’s fruit of righteousness now (Galatians 5:22,23). In the heavenly paradise, those who remain faithful will share spiritually in the tree of life, which bears the “twelve kinds of fruit… for the healing of the nations,” in the presence of God, the Father, and the Lamb, for eternity (Revelation 22:2).