Don’t allow your sin be your ruin.

Ezekiel 18:30 “Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, every one according to his ways, saith the Lord GOD. Repent, and turn yourselves from all your transgressions; so iniquity shall not be your ruin.”

We as believers need to be greatly reminded from time to time of our salvation and how it was accomplished. If I remember correctly it was by the grace of God through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. I remember a day when I was minding my own business and living a very happy sinner’s life when all of a sudden I was convicted in my heart by the Holy Spirit and faith soon followed and I became a child of God and my life was never the same praise God. Then as time went on the Lord graciously taught me His word and I began to gain some spiritual intelligence in learning the truths of God’s Holy Script. All of this by the grace, kindness, and love of God. Beloved I told you all of this to remind you that salvation is of the Lord and no one ever changes their own will to repent and turn to Jesus. Romans 3:10-11 “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: (11.) There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.”

The Lord is speaking to the Nation of Israel here and to every member in particular just as He speaks to us as a Christian people and every member in particular. The Lord is telling these people of Israel to prepare themselves because he is going to judge them and they are going to answer to Him for their sins. The Lord is telling these folks to turn from their sins before He judges them and their iniquity becomes their ruin, which is their cause to fall. Not to fall from salvation because we cannot undo what God by grace has done Romans 8:31 – 39, however we do have an effect on what happens in our relationship to God. Let’s look at it this way beloved, God by grace; that is by His own free will elected us to be saved and in time brought about our salvation and in doing so pardoned every single sin we had, have, or will ever have by the precious blood of His own precious Son. In doing this He made a way for sinners to stand before a Holy God completely without sin and giving us the opportunity to live holy lives the rest of our days on this earth. And to add to this much undeserved grace He is going to give us rewards in heaven for our loyalty to Him on this earth. One day you and I will be in heaven with our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and some of us will have crowns of righteousness for our labors on this earth. Beloved this is going to be one fine day indeed. However some will allow their lust for this world to come between them and their Saviour and in the meantime loose all of the rewards that they have coming by following the wrong roads in this life. Beloved I will say to us all as God spoke to Israel, don’t allow your transgressions to be your ruin! Repent today and make a new life with God and start fresh in following the road of righteousness. Whatever road has come between you and God exit it and get back on the road that is pleasing to God. God believes in second chances and the fact of this is that you and I are saved. Remember this there is a Judge and He is going to judge us all by our works on this earth and it will be a happy time for some and a sad time for others. Is what you are doing in your life today pleasing God? Truly pleasing to God? If you please God in some areas and fail in other then those areas that you fail in will subtract from the areas you are pleasing Him and become your ruin. The Lord said, “Be ye afraid of the sword: for wrath bringeth the punishments of the sword, that ye may know there is a judgment. Job 19:29 Have we lost the fear of God in our hearts, have we lost the fear of ruin in our hearts? Beloved if we have; we had better regain it and regain it today before we find it has become our ruin.

Keep yourselves in the love of God

Jude 1:21 “Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.”

Beloved of God how often shall we all that are loved of God, bow to praise the very God that loves us with an everlasting love, that before the foundation of the world He elected a remnant from this sinful and evil world to be His very own. The writer here (Jude) reminds us all of the love and the great mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, not just for salvation but also for the glorious meeting we will all have with Him either at death of at His second coming. The writer is not saying we can change the love of God by any means but rather that we can loose favor with God by falling out of His blessed will. I spoke last week of Israel and how they fell out of favor with God and God has now removed His Prophets and the Ministers of His word and they as a Nation are still “wondering in the wilderness” so to speak, but He still loves them as a Nation and one day (in the Tribulation period) He will bless a remnant of them with salvation.

Beloved, we (Gentile believers) are not Israelites nor are we thought of in the same way. God loves the Nation of Israel as a Nation only and not every single person, but with the Gentile’s He loves ever single believer and will save all of the elect Gentiles. However every elected member that has been or will ever be saved in the nation of Israel has been personally elected by God the same as we Gentiles are. God has an eternal love which means Israel did nothing to cause God to love them as a “son” just as we Gentiles never did anything to cause God to love us as His chosen people; His love came as a show of His Mercy and Grace totally on His part. 1 Peter 1:2 “Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied.”

The writer here is not telling us by any means to earn God’s love but rather to keep ourselves in His love by doing His blessed will, which Israel refused and still refuses to do. If we “Keep yourselves in the love of God” by following His blessed will and march as Christian warriors into battle with a world controlled by Satan, then we will be hated and not loved by it and will have an urgent need to draw closer and closer to the great God and Saviour that loves us. We (as believers) can either draw closer to God and each other as believers or some give in to Satan’s baited traps and fall away and become enemies of each other therefore some not keeping themselves in God’s love. Beloved walking in holiness is an effort on the part of every single believer and in doing so means we are walking in the love of God and that we are being blessed daily by Him. It is when we allow ourselves to be subjected by Satan’s baited traps that we fall out of God’s love, not His love of election, nor His love of the cross, nothing can ever change that, but of His love of blessings. The one single thing we as believers can learn from Israel is when we pull away from God’s permissive will He will pull away from us. Just and God stopped sending Prophets and Ministers to Israel He will remove a candle stick from a church or exclude a church from His Bride, so to speak.

Beloved unlike what Israel done lets keep ourselves close to God’s love by walking in His blessed will and not allow Satan to bait us into ignorance. We did nothing to earn God’s love just as we can do nothing to separate ourselves from it because His love is eternal, however we can cause God to get angry at us and cause Him to bring disappointment in our lives by not walking in His will. Beloved let’s all keep ourselves in the love of God and keep “looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.”

The Lord will remove blessings.

Jeremiah 5:1-4 “Run ye to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, and see now, and know, and seek in the broad places thereof, if ye can find a man, if there be any that executeth judgment, that seeketh the truth; and I will pardon it. (2.) And though they say, The LORD liveth; surely they swear falsely. (3.) O LORD, are not thine eyes upon the truth? thou hast stricken them, but they have not grieved; thou hast consumed them, but they have refused to receive correction: they have made their faces harder than a rock; they have refused to return. (4.) Therefore I said, Surely these are poor; they are foolish: for they know not the way of the LORD, nor the judgment of their God.”

Beloved, we as Christians search the scriptures to find ways to reproof our lives for errors and heresies, we also use it for correction in our lives to better serve the Lord, we also find it profitable for doctrine because it is the supreme source of everything we believe, and last for instruction in righteousness in our everyday life in walking close to the Lord. Because if we do not use the bible in this fashion then let us not expect to please the Lord our God and let us also not expect to receive blessings from Him.

I preached on this passage of scripture a couple of weeks back at our church and fully expect to speak on it again in a few weeks at a bible conference in Oakdale, La. I am a firm believer that there are some subjects so important that they are universally needed in every church and this is one of those subjects. I will never be able to say in this one article what truly needs to be said about this article however I do intend to cover the highlights of it. Here we find the Lord disgusted with His beloved Nation of Israel because they have over and over again refused to follow the Lord and His laws. We will find in verse 3 that the Lord has done so much to this Nation He loves “thou hast consumed them, but they have refused to receive correction: they have made their faces harder than a rock; they have refused to return.” So we find even though they were a blessed Nation (because God elected to love them) they still over and over again refused to follow the law of God. This reminds us of a time before the flood that the people of God (Seth’s descendants) started to marry the descendants of Cain and evil took over and God was repented that He had created them and destroyed every person in the flood except the eight on the Ark. Genesis 6:6-7 “And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. (7.) And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.” Here we find God is disgusted with Israel His chosen Nation because they have refused God’s laws. We also know these are not the same people that God brought out of Egypt but rather their decedents as Jeremiah reminds us in chapter seven, Jeremiah 7:25 “Since the day that your fathers came forth out of the land of Egypt unto this day I have even sent unto you all my servants the prophets, daily rising up early and sending them:” God had became so disgusted that He has removed of their “God Called” teachers Amos 8:11 “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD:” and today they are wondering in the world without being used of God or receiving God’s blessings. It will be in the Tribulation period before God will once again use and bless Israel as a Nation.

So many today need to grasp and understand the lesson learned from the people of the flood and from Israel, that God blesses those who walk with Him in worship and in truth. Please understand the blessings of God are for our loyalty to Him and His word not for disobedience. If you are being blessed and being disobedient there is a great chance Satan is rewarding you for your disobedience.