Has begotten us again "They were Yours..."

August 27, 2012 7: 39 am: I just had the pleasure of giving my wife a ride to work. She had mentioned earlier that she was still a bit tired. I offered the ride and she took me up on it. She had a Christian radio station on in her car. The pastor was speaking on water baptism. He mentioned to his congregation saying, “If you’re a Christian and you have not been baptized, you’re living in disobedience to God.” He then went on to say, “There is not a Christian in the Bible that has not been baptized.”

If you’re a pastor or a teacher of the Bible, do yourself a favor, preach the Bible! Leave your opinions of it for the coffee shop or a similar setting. If you believe God has called you to preach, from a pulpit, to them that believe God has called to hear His message through you, take my advice, preach the Bible.

My questions to that preacher on the radio would be: “Is the thief on the cross a Christian” and “Did everyone that got baptized in the Jordan River become a Christian?”

The Bible is black and white, gray areas exist due to a lack of understanding. The Spirit of God, when it comes to the word of God, lacks nothing. If you’re in the midst of a conversation and someone says to you “There is not a Christian in the Bible that has not been baptized” please, ask him or her for the source of that statement. The thief on the cross died without having a chance to get water baptized and Yeshua said of him “Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise” does that make him a non Christian on his way to Paradise with Yeshua?

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord and Savior…Messiah Yeshua!

Greetings friends,

“Has begotten us again”

·         John 17: 6 NKJV: “I have manifested Your name to the men whom You have given Me out of the world. They were Yours, You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word.”

When Yeshua said “they were Yours” you can count on it not only being a truth, you can count on “Yours” as being God's. When Yeshua said “You gave them to Me” you can count on it not only being a truth, you can count on “You” as being God and “Me” as being Yeshua. If you believe at any time during that exchange they’re both God, I pray you keep reading.

·         1 Peter 1: 20 NKJV: “He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifested in these last times for you.”

“He” is Messiah Yeshua, and if you believe God was foreordained “before the foundation of the world” I pray you keep reading.

·     Hebrews 1: 5 NKJV: For to which of the angels did He ever say: “You are My Son, Today I have begotten You?”

·         Hebrews 1: 9 NKJV: “You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; Therefore God, Your God, has anointed You With the oil of gladness more than Your companions."

Yeshua’s anointing, by God, doesn’t end in the heavenly realm. He’s God’s Son in heaven and on the earth. No matter where Yeshua is…God is “Your God,” His God.

·         Luke 4: 18 NKJV: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, Because He has anointed Me To preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the broken hearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives And recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; (19) To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”

Do you believe Christ (Messiah) Jesus (Yeshua) is the Son of God?

·         1 John 5: 1 NKJV: “Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves Him who begot also loves Him who is begotten of Him. (2) By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments. (3) For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome. (4) For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. (5) Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?”

Yeshua is the only begotten Son of God because He’ll never have to be “begotten again” as we, sons and daughters of God had to. We were all, including Yeshua, in God, before the foundation of the world. How many of you reading this now can say you were one with God before accepting Yeshua?

There was certainly stuff going on in the heavenly realm before Yeshua, the anointed one of God, came down to the earth. Yeshua Himself said “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” Luke 10: 18 NKJV. There were certainly others “Your companions” present at Yeshua’s anointing. If you believe the Son of God is God, does the word “Chosen” by God” cause you to believe otherwise?

·         1 Peter 2: 4 NKJV: “Coming to Him as to a living stone rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious, (5) you also, as living stones are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”

I was in a conversation recently with a person I’d just met. She asked, after about ten minutes, “What is the difference between Jesus and us?” I said, “The Virgin birth” and “The cross” and “We need to be begotten again.” No one can accomplish what Yeshua has done for us on the cross. He is God’s plan of salvation for the world. Just as Yeshua was chosen, we too have been chosen, but not for the purpose of the cross. Yeshua’s “Virgin birth” separated Him from having to accept Himself as Lord and Savior. He certainly had to be, just as we must be, obedient to His God and Father, which led Him to the cross.

God is the source. Yeshua is the means.  

·         1 John 2: 1 NKJV: “My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. (2) And He himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours alone but also for the whole world.”

·         1 Timothy 2: 5 NKJV: For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus,”

 

·         John 14: 6 NKJV: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”

God is the source. Yeshua is the means.  

Mankind, because of sin, has separated them from God. If you believe we have to go through God to get to God, I pray you keep reading. Does the word “bring” cause you to believe otherwise?

·         1 Peter 3: 18 NKJV: “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit,”

Does the words “will also be subject to” cause you to believe otherwise?

·         1 Corinthians 15: 28 NKJV: Now when all things are made subject to Him, then the Son Himself will also be subject to Him who put all things under Him, that God may be all in all.

“That God may be all in all” is God’s plan my friends. That’s how it all began and the end will be as the beginning. If you believe Yeshua is the Son of God, you're a member of the "all in all" group through Him. 

God is the source. Yeshua is the means. God is God. Yeshua is the Son of God.

·         John 3: 16 NKJV: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

Yeshua, the only begotten Son of God, will also be subject to Him who put all things under Him. My question is to you, those that believe the Son is God: Can you tell me what happens to us “who according to His [the only true God] abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ” when the Son of God becomes subject to God?

·         John 17:3 NKJV: “And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”

 

·         1 Peter 1: 3 NKJV: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,”

In His Care…Jim