Our Christian Duty

Colossians 1:3-8

COL-048

Our subject is "Thanksgiving for the Colossians," segment number 26 in Colossians 1:3-8.

Many years ago, the Dallas Metroplex was inundated repeatedly with enormous volumes of rain. Grapevine Lake, at that time, rose steadily, and finally it overflowed the dam, sending a huge torrent of water over the spillway to the riverbed below. The water overflowing the spillway rushed down toward a bridge spanning the river on the road which circled the lake. At dusk, the bridge was washed away, and a huge chasm gouged out across the road, through which the constricted water moved with an awesome force.

At that point, a couple, driving along the lake road, suddenly in the twilight, came upon the washed-out bridge, and plunged into the raging waters below, and were swept down the stream. Their car flowed like a toy, and they were both drowned. In time, the collapse of the bridge was discovered by other motorists, and the victims' car and bodies were found downstream. Steps were immediately taken, of course, by the alerted authorities, to place a barricade across the road, and to set up a sign warning motorist that the bridge was out, and to approach, therefore, with caution.

Now no rational person, it is obvious, would have hesitated to set up such a warning sign of the danger to anyone who was continuing down that road. No rational person would've resented being warned of the potential danger awaiting them down the road if they persisted speeding along on it. No rational person would have felt embarrassed about warning people of the deadly danger awaiting them on the road that they were traveling. And no rational person, who had been worn not to continue on that road, would've resented it, and taken the attitude that it was nobody's business. Now, anyone, under those conditions, obviously, who would not believe the warning, and who refused to be restrained, would surely die, thereby paying for their unbelief.

The Gospel

So too is it with the unsaved sinner, who is obviously traveling through life on a road which is leading into the chasm of the lake of fire. No spiritual Christian would fail to warn the unsaved of the eternal danger which awaits him before the Holy God. No spiritual Christian would hesitate to cry out a warning to those who would meet God on the basis of their human good works; promises; or, any religious ritual for their salvation. No spiritual Christian would feel embarrassed to tell the unsaved the gospel of the grace of God for salvation in order to escape the lake of fire for which they were headed. And no person, convicted by the Holy Spirit of the danger awaiting him, who is chosen for salvation, would resent the believers' warning and the gospel testimony as an invasion of his privacy. Anyone, therefore, under those conditions, who would choose not to believe the gospel of salvation – a salvation through faith alone in Jesus Christ, will plunge into his eternal death in the lake of fire, forever separated from God, and receive the just desserts of his decision.

The apostle Paul, here in the opening verses of the book of Colossians, has been praising these Colossian Christians for their positive response to the warning that the gospel gives the believer when they heard it. They fled from a destiny of eternal suffering in the lake of fire. They changed their minds; that is, they repented by getting off the hell road and onto the heaven road. This power of the gospel brought Jesus Christ into their lives as the foundation upon which they served God their Father for ultimate eternal rewards. From the foundation of the gospel, the Colossians saints grew to spiritual maturity by learning and obeying the full gamut of doctrine.

Wherever, in Satan's world of unbelievers, the gospel warning has gone, people have believed it and they have been saved from the lake of fire. And Colossians 1:6 has described that as the gospel bearing fruit. The gospel of the grace of God, furthermore, is constantly bearing the fruit of new converts all over the world where it is preached.

The gospel, we have learned, has inherent power – the inherent power of God. And it can reproduce itself in new believers. The gospel of the grace of God is, of course, the only way a lost sinner can get off the road to eternal suffering in hell, and onto the road of eternal happiness in heaven.

Now, once a person is saved, and thus gets on the salvation road, he must begin a lifelong journey of learning the Word of God. He must begin the journey of learning doctrine for the Holy Spirit to use in bringing him to spiritual maturity. If you have no doctrinal understanding, you have no spiritual maturity. This is no small thing, and it is the individual believer's responsibility to see to it that he does not deny himself access to the knowledge of the Word of God. It is up to the individual believer to realize the enormous eternal consequences, as well as the temporal consequences, of being out of step with the Word of God.

The simple proposition is that God is right; and, man is wrong. The wisdom of man in religious matter always leads him astray. The self-will determination of man to do right always ends in tragedy. God is right; His method is right; it's the only right; and, it's the only method. But you'll never know a thing about it until you are well-versed in doctrine, and you continue to feed upon the Word of God. The unbeliever has a natural antipathy for God.

One of our men this week told me that, at work, somebody had suggested that they pray to thank God for the food before they were going to sit down and eat there at the employees' lunchroom. And one man said, "Why should we thank God for it? We are the ones who worked and earned the money for this food." And we recoil from that kind of a statement as Christians. But that is the nature and the understanding of the unbeliever. His focus is upon his arrogant self. But none of you are any different. You had the same sin nature; you had the same lust patterns; and, you had the same inclination toward arrogance, and it is only the humble childlike willingness to be taught the Word of God and to set on the back burner what you're not sure about; but to feed upon the Word of God so that you do not talk like a fool as that man did in the lunchroom.

If he were a man of spiritual orientation, he would know that the only reason he can eat that fool is because God is metabolizing the systems of his body so that he has the energy and the mental capacity to make the decision to eat; and, that he has the capacity to function to be able to earn the money. It is a brutal statement.

I've never watched the cartoon program on TV called "The Simpsons." Is that the name – Simpsons? Yeah, that's the program. That sounds right: "The Simpsons." Anyhow, I've just read about it, and this kid is a big smart mouth. And on one occasion, I was reading, that one of the scripts said that very thing. They sat down to pray, and they said, "Somebody lead in prayer," and he said that very thing: "Why should we thank God? We're the ones who worked for the money to earn it. He didn't give it to us."

Now, here's a television program. All television programs (except a few) are designed to destroy the spiritual orientation in our children. They want to kick you people out too – the adults, but you're a harder nut to crack. They're after the kids. There's hardly anything that a child can watch on television that is not morally degrading, and that is not subtly undermining his confidence in the Word of God and in Jesus Christ. And here's a program that kids watch by the millions because they think it's funny. And their parents are too busy having their own lives to see to it that they don't watch programs like that. In fact, any child, who is under real supervision at home, hardly ever sees anything on television. It's so rare that there is a program that is not corrupting of that child's mind and soul.

The Lord Jesus Christ is the pattern. He is the role model – not these people on television. But who gets prime billing? It's not Christ in the average Christian home, because the sin nature is so corrupt that it flows over the whole family, and the parents have an uphill fight trying to keep themselves oriented to their true loyalties and to the person of Christ.

Lordship

Well, it's the Lord Jesus Christ who has become the Savior of those in Colossae who trusted in Christ. Now he must become their Lord. Until he becomes their Savior, he cannot become their Lord. And, of course, the two do not go together. Christ, of course, is Lord, as we pointed out, positionally over everybody – even over the unbelievers. That is His position. But He is Lord only of those who have entered the inner circle of temporal fellowship. Salvation is instantaneous. It is complete. And it is a permanent eternal fellowship with God the Father. The Lordship of Christ in the life of a Christian is a status of temporal fellowship with God the Father at any point in time, which may be broken by sin, but restored by confession to the Father. So, Lordship goes up and down. It's in and out. Salvation is a permanent thing.

Spiritual Maturity

Now, the consequence of maintaining Christ as Lord in your life will be spiritual maturity. I see one of my favorite church sign here in town – one of the biggies. I go by every week to see what the basis will be for the gospel sermon which is going to be preached as I know it will be in that church. This week it's on the subject of backsliding. And as I drove by, I thought to myself, "Oh dear, could I ever teach them something about backsliding?" . . . We call it "reversion," but the old timers called it "backsliding." And I can just tell you that that preacher's going to talk about backsliding, and they won't know anything about it. They won't understand the reversion from the Lordship of Christ – the leaving of the inner circle. That backsliding sermon is going to be about getting saved. And if you're already saved, he's going to ask the folks to come down and reaffirm the Lordship of Christ in their lives.

How many times have I sat in services, in my former denominational associations, and watched the preacher wax eloquent, and invite them to reaffirm the Lordship of Christ by walking an aisle. And it didn't do a thing, because nobody explained to them 1 John 1:9, and told them how to do that. And the whole concept of the gospel, this great power of God, is so corrupted, and so hard to keep in a proper perspective.

I saw one of the biggies on television this morning. When he finished a very significant true sermon on a very significant topic, he gave an invitation to be saved. He had said not one word about the gospel. It was just the cute little stuff: "Invite Him into your life. Make Him your Lord and Savior." But how does one do that? What is the basis for it? There was not a word about that. So, it's no wonder that Satan is winning his victories left and right. And, of course, those of us who are knowledgeable about prophecy have been puzzled for many years how the book of the Revelation, a tribulation situation, could ever come about (could ever be fulfilled) as long as the United States was there: the United States with its Biblical heritage; and, the United States which is a client nation of God as the main distributor of divine viewpoint in the world today.

Well, within the last few years we have seen this nation practically shredded morally. We have seen liberty destroyed left and right. . . We have seen the United States increasingly accepting the most vile, disgusting, degrading things, so that what we do in such an area as Christian education is more important today than ever before. That is why we're under the gun from Satan on that. I'm having people tell me: "We ought to get out this business of Christian education. We can't afford it." Good heavens, can you afford to corrupt your child? Can you afford to scar up a life? What on earth are you thinking about? And whose child are you talking about? What do you think happens to a youngster who goes out into the filth of the public school system? That kid has an uphill fight all the time. It's an uphill fight all the time.

I always appreciated what my number two son told me one time. After he finished ninth grade in the Berean Academy, and we had to go on to the public school, he said, "I walked into that stew pot. And I hated it the day I walked into it. And I hated it the day I walked out of it." And it wasn't all that bad then. But anybody who is sensitive to spiritual thing is going to realize that I am a child of Lot. Lot is my daddy. He's sending me to Sodom and Gomorrah to go to school. And my daddy is so proud to be there as one of the members of the community in significance. And the Bible says that Lot grieved his own soul.

So, don't try to dignify to me what Satan has built out there. Is it your right to go there? You bet. Is it your right to choose that? You bet. Is it your right to silence a voice of caution? No. You may have your opinion, but you have no right to silence a voice of caution because that voice is well-taken. And all of this springs from the gospel. The gospel in us is the foundation of the power of God from which springs all of our capacity to know the Word of God, and to grow into the magnificence of the family of God as His royal members. It is important to be saved, but it is equally important to make Jesus Christ your Lord through the intake of the Word of God, and through your loyalty to Him. And when it doesn't work, you confess, and you get back in line with His will.

John 3:16 makes Jesus Christ your Savior. 1 John 1:9 makes Him your Lord. That's the winning combination. And the more time that you spend in the status of logging in time where He is your Lord, the greater will be your spiritual maturity. And the greater your spiritual maturity will be, the more you will be contemptuous toward the people around you who are in the world in terms of what they believe and how they live. The more you are in touch with Christ as Lord, the greater will be your dislike for the people around you that you have to deal with, whether in school; business; or, any place else. You will never view them as anything but the pigs and the dogs they are. Why would you take a pig or a dog to your bosom when you are a member of the royal family of God? Because you've lost your orientation.

Salvation is through the grace of God. Maturity is through the grace of doctrine. It is the duty and the mission of the local church to provide instruction in doctrine to bring believers to strong spiritual maturity, and to a position of divine good production in Christian service.

Here's the impact of doctrine. Here's the apostolic message. The gospel of the Bible when properly presented and believed will change lives from sin. The gospel of the grace of God is the foundation for salvation and for all of your Christian service. There is no other source of divine good in Christian service apart from doctrine which has been stored in the human spirit, beginning with the gospel.

Please don't forget how the system works. Every time you learn a principle of doctrinal truth, such as is your custom in these services, you sit here in the privacy and the silence of your own priesthood. It would've been interesting if we had on this screen all of the thoughts that ran through people's heads in the last 15 minutes. But they've all had a different reaction. They've all had an opinion. And they've all been registered in heaven. And they've all been observed. And they all will be acted upon by the Almighty. The source of the Word of God is the Bible. When you have been taught it, you may say, "Yes. Amen. I believe it." If you accept it, what is up here in your head pops down into your human spirit.

I had a lady call me yesterday, a longtime Christian, who is in a formalistic liturgical church. And she said that her pastor refused to marry a lady in their church who wants to marry a man who is a Christian, but not born-again. I said, "He's a Christian but not born-again?" That's like a dumb Pentecostal once asking a good question on one of these radio talk shows. And he was asking about the Holy Ghost doing something miraculously. And the speaker said, "Well the Holy Spirit works like this." And the guy said, "No, no, no, no. I'm not talking about the Holy Spirit. I'm talking about the Holy Ghost." And the speaker said, "What's the matter with you man? You don't know that that's the same thing? Why am I even talking to you?"

So, here's this lady. And I mean she's not a dolt. She didn't just fall off the turnip truck last week. She mostly has two ores in the water, but she said, "He's a Christian, but he's not born-again." So I said, "Well, being born-again means this – that you're come into the human race with a dead human spirit, and it remains dead until you are regenerated. That's what the Bible word "regeneration" means. "Regeneration" means that you are brought to life. Your human spirit is brought alive. And it is important that it be alive because that's your only point of contact with God. You do not have contact with God through your body. That's what the pagans used to try to do with their sex worship. You do not contact God through your soul. That's what the personality boys try to do in contacting God through the soul. Your only point of contact with God is the human spirit. When it's alive spiritually, you're alive, and now God can speak to you. You have a point of contact.

So, I said, "This is the issue. If this man is a Christian, then he is spiritually alive, but he may be very immature." But apparently this lady senses something, and her pastor is absolutely right. The Bible says, "Do not be unequally yoked together in marriage with an unbeliever." And he is right in accepting that principle, and refusing to perform this marriage. I said, "That is especially true because he doesn't know this man. This man is being brought in. I said, I have pretty well eliminated that myself, because I follow the policy that I don't marry anybody except the people in my own congregation. So, generally I know them, and I know how bad they are, and I try to get the worst ones and the best ones together to balance each other out. But I don't have this problem. Unfortunately the name of our church begins with the letter "B." So they thumb through the phone book, and they want a church and a preacher. And they say, "Aha, 'Berean.' That sounds like a hotshot guy. Very good. I heard about a Berean place out in Kentucky somewhere." So, they come, and they're knocking on my door. . . And I need to decide whether or not they have a legitimate reason for being married.

Well, what should be on television this morning, but a big program (I think it was up in the state of Michigan) where a lady (who I think is in the legislature there) says, "It's time for us to revise the no-fault divorce laws in this country." No-fault divorce has caused the total deterioration of marriage in a family so that ten people get married, and five of them will get divorced. And the Bible says in so many words, "God hates divorce," because it's a violation of His eternal one-on-one principle. There are exceptions. Yes. And lo and behold, this lady had the wisdom. She must be a Christian oriented person. She put in the two biggest ones: continuous adultery; and, abandonment (desertion). When that happens, you may have a divorce. And it says that you may be remarried, but, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7, only to another Christian.

So, I told this lady, "Your pastor understands this, and you cannot place upon him this burden, and he must follow his conscience in the matter. And this lady should have the wisdom to know about one thing, because she said, "He's such a nice fellow. Oh, he's such a nice man." I said, "Yeah, it's one thing to know somebody who's nice that you can walk away from and go home. But to be with somebody that you're going to have to stay within the same house, you better be more than nice. And if he's not a Christian, that's a great potential danger.

So, what are we saying? We're saying that Christianity ennobles a person. It gives him a foundation for living his life. And when he is instructed in the Word of God, he has the capacity to do right, because the Spirit of God is there (when he's in temporal fellowship) to do that for you, so that Christ can be your Lord. And you should not be sloppy about this. You should not be careless about maintaining that hardcore relationship of the Lordship of Christ by the temporal fellowship of God your Heavenly Father. If you do, you will start looking upon the pigs and the dogs of human society as acceptable people for you to associate with and to take into your life. And you will always regret that. It is the duty and the mission of the local church to provide instruction in Bible doctrine, to bring believers to strong spiritual maturity and divine good production in their services. Yeah, I heard you just say, "How do you know that?"

In Acts 2:42, here's how the early church functioned. They had just brought a large number of people to salvation. Acts 2:42 says, "And they" – these newly born-again Christians, who were associated with the previous body of Christ now that have been formed on Pentecost: "And they were continually devoting themselves to the apostles teaching." What is the apostles teaching? Bible doctrine: "And to fellowship" – associating with Christians (not with pigs and dogs): "Associating with believers as your intimate ones; to the breaking of bread" – the observing of the Lord's Supper ceremony, and social times of meals: "And to Wednesday night permit prayer meeting." They dropped the word "Wednesday" out of the Greek. It should have been there: "The Wednesday night prayer meeting." And I think that one of the eight earlier manuscripts has that in there. But that's what it was.

So, are we outrageous to ask you to attend Sunday morning and Sunday evening services because it's the Lord's day? It doesn't belong to you. And it is your only time where you're really fed the Word of God. Don't kid yourself that you're getting little kicks on the television, and in your books you read. That is very primitive by comparison to in-depth instruction in the deep things of the Spirit of God that has been the result of multiplied hours of preparation, background, and experience – and you thumb your nose at it? Are you sure you want to stand at the Judgment Seat of Christ and have that on your computer record up there?

Yes, they continually devoted themselves to the learning of doctrine. And that's what happened in their services, and to associating with one another: "To the fellowship."

I was very happy to see so many of you come out Friday night. Some of you just sat around and talked, but you show that Christians aren't that much of an offensive group. And it is not all that bad just to be there with people who, while you don't need them, they have needed you a lot more. They would have been greatly blessed had you been here even though it didn't bless you. And I appreciated one of our young men saying, "I'm sorry I couldn't be there. I had another engagement." He didn't have to tell me that. But he was telling me: "That's a good thing that you're doing, and I want you to know that I support good things."

Their fellowship, to the breaking of bread" – that Lord's Supper meeting. And I have no doubt whatsoever that they talk to one another about the Lord, just as we do, when they did that. That is what makes me sad when I see Christians who come every service except the Lord's Supper meeting. That's when they cut out.

"And to prayer" – personal prayer, of course, but certainly corporate prayer. But they had the Roman government breathing down their necks. They had the spear at their throat. They didn't know how long they were going to be able to stay alive. So, it was much easier to focus upon the things of eternity and the fellowship with the people of God here. The impact of doctrine, it will change our lives from sin. It is the foundation. There's no other source. All effective, consistent Christian fruit-bearing is based upon the use of doctrine which you have previously learned and accepted. You believe what you are taught of doctrine. It immediately leaves the head, and is stored in that living human spirit, which is your point of contact with God. And there you build these huge reservoirs of doctrinal understanding.

Along comes an issue of life, and you have to make a decision: "Should I treat the Lord's day like this, or should I treat it like something else?" That Holy Spirit comes up and He kicks up the information from your human spirit to your mind (to the decision-making side of your mentality). And bingo, you say, "Oh yeah. That's what the Word of God says. Yes, this is what the will of God says. I don't have to think this through. I know what to do." You come up against an opportunity of temptation of something to violate the laws of God and you say, "Oh, I wonder if I should do this." Bingo, the Holy Spirit comes in, and He kicks up the principle out of your human spirit into your mind. And you say, "Ah, yes. That's my guidance for this." But if there's nothing there, then there's nothing to be brought up. Do not think that you'll make it in the devil's world unscathed if your human spirit is not filled with these huge reservoirs of categories of doctrinal understanding.

Do you remember the line from "Sound of Music" – "Nothing comes from nothing? Nothing ever could." And what comes from you spiritually is what God has first put in there through the Word of God. Devotional and inspirational talks will not keep you safe in Satan's world, and keep you from wasting your life. Spiritual casualties among Christians are due to the ignorance of doctrine, or to the ignoring of the doctrinal principles for life in the devil's world. What you know is what you'll act upon. Anyone who belittles, therefore, and demeans the learning of doctrine as the core activity of the Christian life is attacking the principle of fruit-bearing that Paul is praising here – the principle of fruit-bearing, and of godly living, and of fulfilling your divine mission in life.

Well, you may not want to badmouth the Word of God, but you do it by your actions. You do it by where you are on the Lord's day when it comes time for Sunday school, and the morning service, and the Training Union hour, and the evening service – these splendid opportunities for respecting the Lord's day as the Lord's day. That's the apostolic message, and that gives us our duty as believers.

What is our Christian Duty?

2 Timothy 2:15 says, "Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, handling accurately the word of truth." It is a very shameful thing for a person who is a Christian to be ignorant of basic doctrinal principles. It's terrible. And Paul says, "Don't do that." From spiritual maturity, the Holy Spirit will guide the spiritual Christian to the fulfillment of God's will for his life.

2 Timothy 3:16-17: "All scripture is inspired by God, and profitable for teaching; for reproof; for correction; and, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be adequate – equipped for every good work." The reason that Christians do not do right, and they do not serve God properly, is because they have no depth of Bible doctrine in their human spirits to orient them to God's viewpoint. They have no filling of the Holy Spirit for divine power to be able to live and serve right. It is a terrible thing to be out of fellowship with God your Father. You are a sitting duck out in the world, and the devil's going to win every time.

The apostle Paul was pleased with what the gospel had done and lives of these people in Colossae. It was bearing fruit of reproducing more Christians. And then he said it was doing something else for which the apostle was so pleased, and which he wanted them to understand. In Colossians 1:10, he said, "It is not only bearing fruit, but this gospel is increasing." The Greek word is "auxano" (owx-an'-o) A U X A N O. This word means "to grow," but it means to grow in the sense of "spreading abroad." The Greek construction here is in the form of a compound tense which stresses the fact that this is continually happening. The word of the gospel is not only producing born-again people, but it's like one of these plants that throws out tentacles and spreads, and it keeps going and going and going. It was very early on in the Roman Empire, during the early days of the Christian church, that the whole empire was permeated with a message of the gospel, as it went out from major important centers such as the city of Colossae.

So, here we have a continual dissemination of the gospel. And in the Greek language, this is in the passive voice, indicating that the gospel does not spread itself. It is the power of God which is inherent in this message that causes it to spread. And what this gospel does is to produce spiritually born-again people as it spreads abroad in the world like tentacles shooting out from a vine: "Bearing fruit (born-again people), and spreading abroad, even as it has been doing." "Even as" means "in the same way" as it has been doing in you. There, the word "in" means "in a sense of among you:" "as it has been doing among you." What has happened in the city of Colossae? Somebody got the gospel. We think it could have been their main pastor teacher who is there in Rome helping Paul now – Epaphras brought the gospel. Some people believed. And the result was that the gospel began bearing fruit. Then it began multiplying itself, and spreading out throughout the whole city of Colossae. And pretty soon everybody in the city had heard about this new concept of a God who made all living creatures in all of the universe, and who is the God to Whom we must account, and Who has made it possible for us to live in eternal bliss in His presence, through a payment for the moral guilt and the sin that every human being knows by nature that he has.

So, here among them, he says, "This gospel is increasing (spreading out), even as it has been doing." "It has been doing" is not in the Greek, but it's there to fill out the understanding: "Among you, since the day you heard of it: "It has been doing among you." The gospel message in Colossae has borne its fruit. Some believers have appeared. They began a local church. Then they kept spreading the word through the city as the gospel bore the fruit of salvation, and it spread in Colossae. So, in a wider sense, it has spread in the whole sphere of the Roman Empire.

"It has spread since the day you heard of it." This word "heard" is the Greek word "akouo" (ak-oo'-o), A K O U O, and it means to be informed: "Since you heard of it." The words "of it" are not in the Greek Bible either. They're put in there for the translation. And this is the way the Greek speaks when it wants to be emphatic. Actually if you read this in Greek, it very simply says, "Increasing since you heard." It is just very little short cryptic sentences like that. And it is stressing that something marvelous happened on a certain day. On a certain day, something very marvelous happened, and that marvelous thing is spreading out throughout all the Roman Empire. It included an understanding as we shall see here, at the end of the verse, of the grace of God. They suddenly comprehended what their problem was, and what God had done for them. And the result was that they realized they were dealing with a true reality, and the result was a personal transformation.

How aptly, as I read this, I thought of that hymn: "Heaven Came Down and Glory Filled my Soul." The message is precisely the message that Paul is trying to convey here, of the glory of finding that the gospel became the foundation of their lives. Then it began spreading out through Colossae. And the same thing is happening throughout the whole empire. And it was all on that marvelous day when they heard the gospel and believed it.

Some of you can relate to that. Some of you can remember that day when somebody gave you the gospel, and you went positive to it:

"~Heaven came down and glory filled my soul:"

"Oh, what a wonderful, wonderful day,
Day I will never forget.
After I'd wandered in darkness away,
Jesus my Savior I met.
Oh what a tender, compassionate friend.
He met the need of my heart.
Shadows dispelling, with joy I am telling
He made all the darkness depart.

"Born of the spirit with life from above,
Into God's family divine,
Justified fully through Calvary's love.
Oh, what a standing is mine.
And the transaction so quickly was made,
When as a sinner I came,
Took of the offer, of grace He did proffer.
He saved me, oh, praise His dear name.

"Now I've a hope that will surely endure,
After the passing of time.
I have a future in heaven for sure,
There in those mansions sublime.
And it's because of that wonderful day,
When at the cross I believed,
Riches eternal, and blessing supernal,
From His precious hand I received.

(Chorus) "Heaven came down, and glory filled my soul,
When at the cross, the Savior made me whole.
My sins were washed away,
And my night was turned to day.
Heaven came down, and glory filled my soul."

That's what it's all about in the Christian life.

Heavenly Father, we do thank you for the fact that only in the Word of God can we get Thy point of view on the world; the devil; and, our own sin natures. And only through doctrine which has been properly received into our human spirits. And only through our fellowship with the Spirit of God, so that He is in charge of our lives, can we make our Savior also our Lord. And can we, therefore, be victorious in our Christian service and storing our treasures in heaven.

We thank Thee, our Father, that indeed, through our faith in Christ when we believed the gospel, heaven has come down, and glory has filled our souls. We pray that we shall never presume that our local church is a triviality. That the activities that are focused in various ways upon Christian fellowship; strengthening one another; and, the orientation to the word of doctrine – that that is a triviality that does not need our presence; our loyalty; and our support. We pray that Thou will help us to realize how quickly a life is over, and how soon the accounts are reviewed in heaven. We pray, our Father that we will not become discouraged in doing good even when people want us to be discouraged. . .

Dr. John E. Danish, 1995

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