The Daily Word of Righteousness

Grace, and the New Covenant, #22

And he brought him to Jerusalem, and set him on a pinnacle of the temple, and said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from hence: (Luke 4:9)

Another unscriptural pursuit:

The challenging of us to "do great things for God." Nowhere in the Bible are we challenged to do great things for God. This is presumption. It is the challenge to leap from the gable of the Temple. It is soulish ambition in the things of God.

The "faith chapter" of the Scriptures is the eleventh chapter of the Book of Hebrews. There is not one instance of aggressive faith in this chapter. The faith portrayed here is obedience to the revealed Word of God. True faith is a confidence in God's goodness, power, and faithfulness such that we obey implicitly His every command.

There is no evidence whatever in the Book of Jeremiah that Jeremiah challenged God to do exploits. A careful study of the Book will reveal that true faith, the faith by which the people of God of every century have lived, is the faith of obedience to that spoken by the Lord.

When God called Jeremiah in the beginning, Jeremiah protested that he was only a child. After this, God gave Jeremiah an unpopular message, a message that aroused hostility. The concept of an aggressive faith that challenges God to perform some grand idea of the believer is foreign to the Book of Jeremiah.

Today we have thousands of Christians who believe that the role of the churches is to govern secular society and to force unsaved people to behave in a manner acceptable to the Christians. Christians are attempting to impose their will on unbelievers. They will fail and may bring intense persecution on all of us.

The proper role of the Christian in the present hour is to bear witness of the Kingdom of God that is coming to the earth. To attempt to govern now is to move outside of the plan of God for His Church.

In America the churches are demanding that the civil government repent. But God is speaking to the churches to repent.

In some quarters the idea has been expressed that Christians are to use their gifts to set up the Kingdom of God now so that all will be ready for the Lord to return. According to the Scriptures, the present age will grow increasingly worse until the end. Then the angels of God will remove all wickedness and wicked people from His Kingdom. In that hour the saints of God will shine as the sun in their righteousness.

Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear. (Matthew 13:43)

The greatest witness of all time will be given just before the Lord returns. But the Kingdom of God will not be established on the earth before the Lord Jesus returns from Heaven with His saints and holy angels. To teach otherwise is to invite presumption and destruction.

To be continued.