HOW GOD CLOSED THE BOOK
INTRODUCTION
In my hand I hold God's love letter to mortal man.
I hold the Magna Carta and Constitution for the soul. This book that
I hold is a Holy book, breathed and inspired by the God of the universe.
This book is sacred and powerful. The contents of this book has liberated
man far greater than anything on this earth. Please give careful
attention to how the God of heaven saw fit to close and end his book.
The Book
The Bible is totally inspired of God and is not of private interpretation.
II Pet. 1:20-21 knowing this first, that no prophecy of
scripture is of private interpretation.
For no prophecy ever came by the will of man: but men spake from God,
being moved by the Holy Spirit.
This book contains the sacred writings or divine scriptures breathed by a holy God.
II Tim. 3:16-17 Every scripture inspired of God is also
profitable for teaching, for reproof,
for correction, for instruction which is in righteousness.
That the man of God
may be complete, furnished completely unto every good work.
This book has the answer for the life on earth, and holds the invitation for life eternal to come.
Eph. 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, who hath blessed
us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ:
There will never be need for addition or any other testament from God. The faith has been delivered completely and fully to humanity.
Jude 3 Beloved, while I was giving all diligence to write
unto you of our common salvation,
I was constrained to write unto you exhorting you to contend earnestly
for the faith
which was once for all delivered unto the saints.
Truly we have God's personal letter of law and love to mankind.
Two great divisions are contained. The Old Testament and the New Testament.
39 books in the Old and 27 in the New, making the complete body in harmony, prophecy, and totality.
1,189 chapters, 31,173 verses, 773,693 words. 3,589,693 letters. The word "and" appears about 46,277 times.
A period of nearly 1600 years in writing. 40 different writers all in perfect harmony, because it's inspired of God.
From the "goodmorning" of Genesis 1 to the "goodbye" of Revelation 22 every word is inspired of God. I believe every word of this book of time. This message is the longest thought woven in the loom of time, this is our Bible. If I cannot believe in the creation of Genesis 1 , Then I cannot believe in the eternal city of God called heaven, Revelation 22.
If I cannot believe one verse or passage, I can't trust any of them. Oh my how we ought to love and embrace this book, and clasp it in to our hearts and our very being.
I should keep This word of God in my heart, so as not to sin against the glorious God of the heaven.
Psalms 119:11 Thy word have I laid up in my heart, That I might not sin against thee.
The deterrent too sin is the word of the Lord which is living and abiding in us.
I would like to announce here and now, if there is anyone in this audience that has never done wrong, never sinned, and has been perfect all the days of their life to please leave now.
Since nobody walked out, I see we all understand, all of us have sinned, and that none of us are above sin.
Rom. 3:23 for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God;
Sin reached out with its tentacles in the beautiful garden planted eastward in Eden, sin destroyed our paradise. I still wish Adam and Eve would have left that forbidden fruit alone! We could have been born in a place of paradise and eternal bliss.
One man said one time, sometimes we can promote our ignorance. " Why there would never had been any children, if man had not sinned against God and transgressed". Oh no God had already told man and woman to be fruitful and to multiply. God had already said replenish the earth. There just would not have been sin had the man and woman not disobeyed God.
God's marvelous grace has been extended to us through his son Jesus dying on the tree of calvary. That thought from Genesis 3 to Revelation 22 is extended to us in every section of the word of God.
That thought completed the Old testament, and then there was a silence
of 400 years, akin to the silence of the tomb and grave.
God did not speak too man at this time. There was a famine for the
word of God in the land.
Then after 400 years, there burst on the scene, the fulfillment of the prophets words of old, from the inspired word of God. The fulfillment was Jesus Christ the son of God. The precious Jesus the promised messiah was born.
Gal. 4:4 but when the fulness of the time came, God sent
forth his Son,
born of a woman, born under the law,
Now the thought continues, and goes to the very end of this book divine. How will God end his written message of law and love to us?
Would the ending be something dramatic as he closes? Will
it lift us up above understanding? Will it be rooted in a tremendous
miracle surrounding the closing passages? Will he sign off,
"love God"? What will the closing be? Well
lets look at it!
The Conclusion Of The Book For Man
Rev. 22:17- 21 And the spirit and the bride say come!
and let him who hears say come!
and let him that thirsts come. whoever desires, let him take the water
of life
freely.
Wow, brethren look at this closing! Our great God and precious savior Jesus, who went to a Roman cross, cannot close the book without one more invitation. There is one more last plea! One last begging from God for our life and our soul. One more call for our redemption, salvation. "and the spirit and the bride says come".
This Book, this spirit filled book, which we bring to you today, and joyfully so. It says again and again, come, come, come, come, come. Christ said:
John. 14:1-4
If we believe in God we will believe in him as God's son. The fleshy Jews said they believed in God, yet did not believe in Jesus.
He had announced that "he and the father were one".
John 14:7 If ye had known me, ye would have known
my Father also: from henceforth ye
know him, and have seen him.
He talked about his father's house having many mansions. Jesus said he was going to prepare a place for man.
Man did not prepare for Jesus when he came. There was no room in the inn.
Jesus own family did not believe on him, except his mother.
John 2:1-12 And the third day there was a marriage in Cana
of Galilee; and the mother
of Jesus was there: and Jesus also was bidden, and his disciples,
to the
marriage. And when the wine failed, the mother of Jesus saith unto
him,
They have no wine. And Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have
I to do
with thee? mine hour is not yet come. His mother saith
unto the servants,
Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it. Now there were six
waterpots of stone
set there after the Jews' manner of purifying, containing two or three
firkins
apiece. Jesus saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And
they filled
them up to the brim. And he saith unto them, Draw out now,
and bear unto the
ruler of the feast. And they bare it. And when the ruler
of the feast tasted the
water now become wine, and knew not whence it was (but the servants that
had
drawn the water knew), the ruler of the feast calleth the bridegroom,
and saith
unto him, Every man setteth on first the good wine; and when men have drunk
freely, then that which is worse: thou hast kept the good wine until now.
This
beginning of his signs did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested his
glory; and
his disciples believed on him. After this he went down to Capernaum,
he, and
his mother, and his brethren, and his disciples; and there they abode not
many days.
John 7:4 For no man doeth anything in secret, and
himself seeketh to be known openly.
If thou doest these things, manifest thyself to the world. 7
The Jewish leaders did not believe in him.
John 1:11 He came to his own but his own received him not.
Jesus said he was going to prepare a place for us. Heaven will not have a "no vacancy" sign for those that obey the Lord. Heaven is a real prepared place for a real prepared people.
I will not go into a spiritual stable like Jesus was born in a physical stable. I will not be surrounded with livestock or laid in a manger. Because of Jesus sacrifice, and his preparing a place, I am taken care of. He prepares a place for his people.
Jesus did not go to build a place for his people but to prepare a place for his people.
When we have guests come stay with us, we don't build a house, we prepare
the one we already have and dwell in.
In his fathers house are many mansions. The Lord went back to
prepare the place for us.
We know how our wives prepare the house and the rooms for company.
They clean, move furniture, lay out new sheets on the beds that will be
slept in. Our wives scrub the floors and make everything just right
for our guest. Jesus prepares a place
that is in perfect condition for his people to abide and dwell
in for all eternity.
I stayed in a place with some people that was untidy, smelly and musky. The people had not prepared for my visit. You could tell the preparation had not been made, The Lord prepares a place for us.
The father's house is already built and prepared so we must prepare ourselves by obedience to the Lord.
Jesus says believe in me. The spirit through the word comes one last time in Revelation 22 to plead for my soul.
The spirit and the bride plead. The church is the bride of Christ. Lets get to the nitty gritty. As the church which is his bride, how good are we at promoting, begging, imploring, and pleading for the souls of others?
Anyone get a publisher Clearing House sweepstakes letter in the mail ? If they called and said, I will be at your house with that ten million dollar check advertised, who among us would hang up on that call? Who among us would tell them I am not interested.
If you would do that I think you might be one sandwich short of a picnic.
None of us have to be pleaded with, begged, or forced to accept a 10 million dollar check. They could say, could you come get it in New York and we would ask when we could leave.
Here we are the bride of Christ , offering people eternal life in the
world to come, redemption, and an abundant life here on earth, and we seem
to have a problem getting folks interested. Something is terrible
and wrong!
You as a Christian show the world a pout and give complaints that the
Lord is not blessing you here. The wicked are being blessed you think so
you complain. No wonder people don't want the bread of life when
we look like it's given us indigestion. I have some questions for
you.
Do you have good health? Is your family healthy? Can you get up in the morning and walk outside? Can you see, hear and feed yourself? If the answer is yes to one or more of these questions then thank God and praise him because he is blessing you!
One hospital visit will tell you what your health is worth. 100,000 dollars in 7 days from the operations will get your attention.
Have you been eating regularly? If you are then you are blessed. Our cheeks are so full that it looks like we are eating all the time. We have fared sumptuously by the goodness of God.
God has blessed us bountifully with clothes, food and possessions. Most women look into a closet filled with outfits and then cry out they don't have anything to wear! Oh God has blessed us here in America so greatly. Our problem is not what to wear, but when we wear our different clothes. We have shoes for several occasions, then ask God why we aren't blessed.
I plead with you to ask yourself why we aren't more evangelistic. God has blessed us so freely, why want we reach out for the Lord.
Matt. 6:33 But seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness;
and all these things shall be added
unto you.
God has given us life and as a Christian we will receive an abundant
life. American's fare like kings in another countries, we are so
blessed.
We have to so much spiritually from God as his bride, then have to beg people to think about their souls!
People need to be running to obey God, but we beg and they refuse. We have acted like christianity is a burden and people think that. " Honey get up we gotta go to church." Football ,baseball and other sports we can get interested in, When it comes to God and his church we are not interested enough to do anything about serving him.
Somebody says, "well I gotta go to church". Actually you don't have to go! God is not going to force himself on you. God will allow you to go to hell and be lost if you want to. If you don't love God and his cause God will let you go he doesn't force himself on anybody!.
We need to rise up everyday and be thankful we can serve God and receive his great blessings. We need to look forward to serving him.
We are the bride of Christ and should love our groom. I hope my wife don't hem and haw ,and whine and complain, about being married to me. I don't want my wife to say, "well I'm married to ole Mark Turner and its so rough." Someone says "yeah I don't see how you put up with him". I would not like that attitude and neither does God! Sometimes we tell others that we are Christians and appear miserable. We need to be busy serving the Lord as his bride, instead of complaining, whining and shirking.
Why don't we look for the good. People look to find something bad in serving God!
Jesus looked for the good in an adulterous woman. John. 8:1-12
Jesus saw good in a tax collector, Luke 19:1-10.
God is inviting people through his word and by his church the bride. And as his bride we act like we can't stand being a Christian.
The holy, pure, guileless, son of God pleads with us to come to his
mercy and forgiveness. Like Christ letus also plead with people.
Do we seek diligently after the rightousness of God with hunger and energy?
Matthew 5:6 Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled.
We need a spiritual appetite. The Lord offered quenching of the thirst to those who followed him.
John 4:13-14 Jesus answered and said unto her, Every
one that drinketh of this water
shall thirst again: but whosoever drinketh of the water
that I shall give
him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall become
in
him a well of water springing up unto eternal life.
God concludes his book the Bible by telling us of his love and his coming again.
When Jesus comes again we will see him as our judge, if we are not Christians.
For the Christian Jesus will be our savior.
I don't know when Jesus will come and time will be no more . But I do
know God closed his book pleading with us to come in obedience and receive
that home called heaven.
CONCLUSION
Why not become a Christian and accept the last invitation of Revelation
22:17 even today. To receive his blessings and obey his will,
this is what the Lord has instructed for us to do.
Believe Jesus Christ as God's son, John 8:24
Repent and turn from sin, Acts 3:19
Confess Christ with the mouth, Romans 10:10
Be baptized in water to be saved, Mark 16:16
Live faithful unto death, Revelation 2:10