“Now the people stood by [calmly and leisurely] watching; but the rulers scoffed and sneered (turned up their noses) at Him, saying, He rescued others [from death]; let Him now rescue Himself, if He is the Christ (the Messiah) of God, His Chosen One!”
Dear people of God, sometime in late October 2019, the news media was trending about a popular American Rap musician Kanye West becoming a “born again” Christian and claiming that he would no longer sing any other songs except the Gospel genre.
Kanye had just released an album entitled “Jesus is King” with songs focusing on his relationship with God and his fight with the devil that features some rap and gospel songs.
I have not listened to the album because as a Christian, I am not supposed to listen to such rap songs.
The main point I am trying to bring out here is that while Kanye West had RIGHTLY stated that he would stop singing rap music because it is the devil’s music, his so called pastor who should know better, retorted with a confusing and misleading statement telling Kanye that rap is a genre and he (Kanye) should rap for God!
Can you see how some spiritually ignorant and blind ministers of the Gospel confuse and mislead baby Christians into sinning against God?
Such was also the case in the time of our Lord Jesus Christ whilst He was here on earth as a human being. As you can see from today’s lead text above, whilst the crowd were just watching Jesus on the Cross in His pain and suffering for the sins of mankind, the Jewish leaders, who were religious leaders, were busy mocking Jesus and asking Him to rescue Himself from death as He rescued others if He was truly the Messiah.
Even the Roman soldiers were also mocking their Creator, the Lord Jesus Christ and saying the same things to Him.
Of two criminals that met Jesus at the trial under Pilate, it would appear both had previously heard about Him but while one of them sneered at Him and commanded Him to save Himself and them, the second criminal rebuked his colleague and told him that both of them were rightly suffering for doing wrong while Jesus had done nothing wrong to deserve His suffering.
It is pertinent to note also that a common criminal who just met Jesus at the trial under Pontius Pilate recognized Jesus’ Messiah status from the conversation Pilate had with Him and asked Jesus to remember him in His (Jesus’) kingdom to which Jesus assured him that that would happen the same day.
It is equally pertinent to note that the Roman Governor of that era Pontius Pilate recognized that Jesus had done nothing wrong deserving of a death sentence and that the Jewish leaders were reacting and inciting hatred against Jesus out of envy for His followership – Matthew 27:18.
As much as Pilate tried to free the Lord, he had to succumb to the pressure of the Jewish leaders to crucify the Lord just to prevent a riot.
Dear friend, you could see from this message so far that the fact that someone is a religious leader does not mean he has sound understanding of spiritual matters.
Unfortunately, the world is filled with many such religious leaders with spiritual ignorance because they are not grounded in spiritual matters.
So how does one cure spiritual ignorance? God Himself gives us the answer in Joshua 1:8 (AMPC), “This Book of the Law shall not depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, that you may observe and do according to all that is written in it. For then you shall make your way prosperous, and then you shall deal wisely and have good success.”
The directive from God Almighty and Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is simple but the implementation is where many Christians struggle to understand and actualize.
In his teaching on how to develop the human spirit, Kenneth E. Hagin prescribes as follows:
(1) Meditation on God’s Word. To do this, of course you must have consistent study of the Word day and night as the Bible commands.
(2) Putting God’s Word first. This is also clear in God’s instruction to Joshua. Putting God’s Word first implies going into the Holy Bible with every single situation with which you are faced in life. This is where many fail because they would rather rely on their own human understanding that would fail whenever they have any problem.
(3) Obeying God’s Word. When you put God’s Word first by first searching the Scriptures to see what it says on any matter of life, the next sensible thing to do is to implement EXACTLY what the Bible says on that matter.
For instance, if you put God’s Word first, you would never ever consider divorcing your spouse no matter the kind of disagreement or quarrel or challenge you have because God HATES divorce as stated in Malachi 2:16.
Rather, you would do as God’s Word says to pursue peace with ALL HUMANS and holiness without which no human would ever see the Lord – Hebrews 12:14.
(4) Listening to your spirit. God speaks to His children through that small inner voice we hear from time to time giving us advice. When you have consistently practised recommendations (1) to (3) above over a period of time because it would not happen overnight, then recommendation (4) becomes easy because God would always speak to you either through His Word or through His Spirit to your spirit man, the part of you that becomes born again or a new creation in Christ Jesus.
Dear friends, do not allow anybody mislead you in the things of God. Always put God’s Word FIRST to search His Word to know the truth for yourself on any matter and then obey and do EXACTLY what God’s Word recommends.
This way, you can never go wrong and you would always deal wisely because God ALWAYS keeps His Word and never fails.
This is the way to grow spiritually in the things of God to be able to give sound spiritual advice.
May the good Lord bless you as you heed His Word today, act on it and share with others in Jesus’ Most Righteous Name, Amen.
Gabriel Ama.
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