Author: Leaman Ralph

When people talk about, “What must I do to be saved?” I don’t; I’m going to speak for this church and I’m going to tell you this very simply put. God expects that once you have an encounter with Christ through His word, that you come to a place of faith, to a place of amen where you say, “That happened. He is Lord,” not robotically, to come to know Him in reality. Not some box I check, but something that suddenly the word of God is no longer a book with words. It is alive and comes alive to me. “What must I do to be saved?” Okay, the answer is to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved, have faith in Him, trust in Him, that He is the Messiah, that He is the Deliverer, that He has the power to save because He did what He did at the cross, that He’s coming back, that He’s promised you and me eternal life. ♪ ♪ Now many years ago I delivered a message about the musts of Christ, the use of the Lord’s words, “one must,” “he must,” all right? It’s quite a significant word in the Greek, the word die, and I’ve got my Theological Dictionary of the New Testament in front of me, Erdmann’s, and they’re in so many volumes, so I mentioned it, all right? But if you look under the Greek word dei, it says, “The character of necessity or compulsion in an event. In most cases, the word bears a weakened sense derived from everyday processes. It thus denotes that which is given, which in a given moment seems to be necessary or inevitable to a man or to a group of men.” Then if you move on, there was something that I found very interesting and that is that there are 102 occurrences of the word either dei, which translates to our English word “must,” or deon esti, which would be the equivalent of “one must” or “you must”; 41 of the 102 occurrences are found in Luke’s writing. That’s pretty significant, significant in the way we know how Luke used words. So this is what I want to actually focus on a little bit, a dining in of a word which I think is very helpful for us a lot of times, not so much in the technical, and linguistic, but in the actual applications and examples. So let me give you examples to kind of set the stage for the message. Let’s start with the boldest of the musts of our Lord coming out of the mouth of a young boy, possibly no older than 12 years old, and He says, “Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” Now this statement is made in conjunction with Him going into the temple, His parents leaving and leaving Him behind. Well, we’ll leave that part alone for a bit. I don’t know how you’d leave your kid behind, but whatever. Okay, so what’s interesting about what He says, “Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” coming out of the mouth of a young person like that is the fact that He didn’t, He didn’t say, “Don’t ye know I’m just a kid and I should be able to play and do whatever I want and get a trophy for showing up,” right? But at this young age He says, “I must be about my Father’s business.” Now here’s my thinking. How could a child be so focused and say, “This is what I must do, and don’t you know that this is what I must do?” Now, wouldn’t you be surprised, moms and dads out there, if your kid turned around and said, “Hey, I got business to take, I got the Father’s business to take care of,” you know, you’d be kind of like, “Whoa, what happened there?” But I think the big thing is to see there is no harm. And I will probably take a lot of flack for this, but I do not care. There is no harm in teaching a child the Bible. There is no harm in steeping and raising your child in the Lord’s word. There is no harm in opening up the horizons to be able to sit down and talk about, even if they are done in more simplistic ways, what God does how He does it, and who we are in Christ. So it’s interesting, this must be the first one that kind of caught, my mind. Now, we have another one of Christ’s musts. He says, “The Son of man must be lifted,” and this passage directly tells us, this is now, He’s much older, which tells us that He knew exactly what His mission was. He was not confused. I wish that we would even just take; I could make a whole message just out of these two verses. I wonder what would happen to the church if two things, if we all took it seriously as in we all have something to do in the Father’s realm, like Christ, said, “Don’t you know I must be about my father’s business?” if we all took that as, we all have a part in that, number one. And number two, the fact that when Christ said He must be, He must be lifted, He must die, that we also come to accept we have a mission too. I often feel like a lot of Christians don’t see the vision and the value of what God has placed in front of them. And that mission and that value, if you will, is not just so that you can be infused and imbued with information, but you also become a beacon of light for other people. And I’ve said this before, I am not a proselytizer, I don’t like people coming up to me and talking to me about, you know, “Do you know God? Do you know who God is?” But I am a big fan of conversation at any place, at any stage, if someone is open to having the conversation. And that makes every one of us if you just took these two musts, that makes every one of us kind of understand these musts, they are for Christ, they are His work. But we also have a part in it. If you remember last week I talked about fellowship. This is almost directly tied into that in some way, shape, or form. Before He says, “The Son of man must be lifted ,” He says, “The Son of man must suffer many things.” Now who walks around telling other people, “This must,” out of necessity, according to this dictionary, “This must come to pass,” this “I must,” can you imagine walking around town saying, “Yeah, I’ve got to suffer. I must suffer”? You’d have people looking at you going, “Yeah, okay, all right.” But if you understand in the context of what He was saying, that this is inevitable, it must happen. And I think as I said, just looking at these, it actually kind of could make you see how we are kind of, we’ll say, a little bit laxer when it comes to the kind of digging in, seeing what His musts were. Now He also gave musts to us, which I will get to later on in the message. But back to when He said, “The Son of man must suffer many things,” this was in direct connection to Him saying, “The temple must be destroyed.” He made all these statements. And what I love about this is, that it’s not just, “This is what must happen.” You read the book and you realize that is exactly what happened. So His musts that He declared were, we’ll call them, of necessity. Not “must” as in a mandate that may or may not, but “must” as in there is no way, shape, or form that this is not going to happen. So you get that emphasis, I think, is pretty important. Now, why did it become a must, this is self-evident, for Christ to go to the cross, why not? We could have just said, “You know, whatever happens, happens,” but there was something else said. You remember repeatedly, “The Scripture must needs be fulfilled.” I want you to think about that. That’s another one of those mind-boggling things that what was written afore time must come to pass. Now imagine making these statements. We wouldn’t be standing here. We wouldn’t be sitting here if the statements didn’t come to pass. That’s, that’s the obvious one. Somebody says, “This must happen. This inevitably must happen,” and it doesn’t come to pass. Christ said He must die. He must suffer many things. He must die, “Don’t you know I must be about My Father’s business? These are the things I came to do. The Scripture must needs be fulfilled.” And then nothing happens. This is why when people argue about the veracity of Christianity in Christ, I have to say this is where faith kicks in. You either read this book with confidence that the writers were chronicling to leave us the information that we process, that we take in, that we must somehow come to the faith in or not. And so this is why I think it’s interesting. These words, and I’m emphasizing the word “must” obviously, I think is interesting because it keeps something in focus. Let me go back and reread this, in case you think I am just trying to kill something already dead. The emphasis on the word “character of necessity or compulsion in an event, and in most cases moments that seem to be necessary or inevitable to man or a group of men,” inevitable: this must happen. So this is why I stand here because I’ve come to the place. You read this and you kind of go, it, it happened. There’s no question that it happened. So if you take all of this information, if it didn’t happen, we’re just a bunch of fools gathered talking about imaginary stuff, but it happened. So let’s get back into the musts because these actually will lead us to first His musts and then ours. He also says elsewhere, Christ says, “I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day.” And that brings me to an interesting must for, even though this is a must for Him. I want to make this a little license because there are some things we can apply to us. When will people stop putting off for God? I want you to think about that. So, you know, we, we’ve often had the caricature of the evangelist, “If you died today, do you know where you’re going?” and all that good stuff, all right? But the fact of the matter is there are so many people in the sound of my voice that procrastinate and put off what, if you think about and take a page out of Christ’s work, He says, “I must work the works of him that sent me while it is the day,” while we still have the time. This is Why Paul said we are to redeem the time, the days are evil, while you have the time; not when you’re on your deathbed, not when you can barely see, but now, today, if you hear His voice. So, you know, if you kind of start picking these apart, it Actually may be a little bit of a conviction that we could get so complacent in a lot of our understanding, even Scripture we read regularly. There’s another interesting must of Christ, which I’ve referred to in the last two or three weeks, I’m sure. That one is Christ referring to, He said, “Other sheep I have which are not of this fold, them also I must bring and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.” Now that’s a future time, but He said there are sheep that He must bring in that are not of this flock. So again, things that have come to pass or things that will come to pass, and this specific one I know scholars are all over the map on this. I’m a big believer in the fact that this was God’s way of putting in the book, Think of this, people that do not view Christ as Lord, future time, remember, we talked about this, will look on Him and know He is Lord. There’ll be no confusion. You know, right now People can fight about which prophet or which deity, but when You stand and you’re standing before God, I don’t think you’re going to have too much more to argue about, but That’s just my opinion. What do I know, right? Then you have, as I said Jesus’ many statements that He makes that He must lay down His life for the sheep. He says He must rise again from the dead, of course, He did. Just if I was preaching on a message about the Resurrection, this one-word would be important. And the reason why? Because if He said, “The Son of man must die, the Son of man came to suffer many things, this is what must happen” and it didn’t, again, we’d be reading, we’d be quoting Paul, but not for Christ, “Our faith is vain,” right? Because Paul said, “If Christ has not risen, our faith is vain.” So I want you to think that they must are tethered essentially, all in all, to Christ’s death and Resurrection, because of all the other stuff that was said, “I must━don’t you know, I must be about My Father’s business,” could have just been a statement if these other things didn’t happen. You’ve got to start with those musts, death and Resurrection, then everything else becomes clear. So I would say there are a lot of musts from Christ that we should be cognizant of. Now there are other musts, and I’m going to touch on this one real quickly, but I’m going to come back to it, because, I want to finish the message with this for another reason. If you remember in the passage in Luke, don’t turn there, because we’ll turn there in a little bit. Christ, upon seeing the tax collector Zacchaeus, and says, “Make haste, and come down; today I must abide in thy house.” And I was thinking about this must. See, Christ is still doing this, but we don’t have these, you want to call them vignettes or stories; Christ is still doing this. He’s not saying, you know, “Hey, you up there come down and you must,” No, but He’s still saying, “I must come and abide in your house,” this tabernacle. He’s still saying that, and that’s what’s important when you read this to recognize that these musts are still in force. They’re still applicable, they’re still powerfully moving if we are analyzing them right. And of course, I, as I said, we’ll come back to this, but Zacchaeus was going to be saved. We have that crystal clear in that passage, and I always think it’s thrilling because something about that man who we know had to be ripping people off━he is a tax collector. Come on. And Jesus focuses on him, calls his name, and says, “I must abide with you.” And that tells me that, you know, again, when people say, “Well, how does salvation occur? How do these things happen? What is the process?” Let’s read that. God finds you right where you are. Now granted, Zacchaeus was curious, and he went to look. He wanted to see about this Jesus. But when Jesus said, “I must abide,” essentially in his house, it wasn’t as though━how many houses were around Jesus. He could have taken up anywhere, but it was that one that He wanted. Again, I’m going to come back to this, because this is the picture I want people to understand. I’m tired of the whole idea somehow that we, we play, we have a façade. If this isn’t where the rubber meets the road, and if this isn’t helping you to live out your life as a Christian, then as I said, maybe Christianity isn’t for you. And you might say, “How could a pastor say that?” I did. I just did. Do you want me to say it again? I mean what I say, and I say what I mean. So the reason why this is important, as simple as it is, is you can understand He had a focus, and He repeated his focus, “I must.” And when you start looking at all of the musts that He declared for Himself that He must do in His brief ministry on earth, and then what He must do, be raised, obviously reappeared, and then ascended, and will return. But this is all part of these musts. And again, for somebody who’s just starting, you might say, “Well, okay, He said all this for Him.” Yes, and, we should learn of that, by the way. Remember where I started. If we all took the position, “I must be about my Father’s business,” it doesn’t mean that you spend all day in the things of God and the things of the church, but a commitment like that says, “I’m serious about God.” Now I’m not suggesting we walk around and say, “I must be about my Father’s business.” People are going to say, “Okay, yeah.” But this is my commitment as a child of God. I’m not just in, I’ve not just been thrown into some little play universe. God expects something of me. And whether that’s my simple faith or whatever else He requires of every one of us as He reveals His plan and His will for you in your life, some musts must be applied. So we’ll start with the first one. It’s the one, and now we’re going to talk about us, not Him, but us. So the top of my list, and I’ve preached this many, many times, but I’m going to talk about this real quickly and move through it, so the first one at the top of my list is Jesus tells Nicodemus, “You must be born again.” And I love to talk about this, and I cannot talk about this enough. I want you to think about this. Nicodemus was a religious man. He knew God. He at least knew the God of the Old Testament; Let’s put you this way. There was no New Testament yet. So it’s not as though he was godless. Christ says, “You must be born again.” That translation strictly word for word from the Greek, “You must be born from above,” because the question is, “Well, how can a man when he’s old go back into his mother’s womb?” And what Christ was saying there, and I’ve preached on this many times, “You cannot will yourself into the kingdom. You cannot act yourself into the kingdom. You must be born again from above.” And I don’t care how religious you think you are. If that Spirit of God does not descend and take up residence in you, you are not born from above. And I’ve said this before. I used to listen to Dr. Scott’s comments, I believe it was Jimmy Carter, and he used to say, “I believe in the born-again experience.” No. I believe everyone must be born again. Period. No experience. Period. This is a must and a mandate of God. It is a necessity. When you put it that way, it becomes clear. It’s not an experience. It’s not a choice. You either are receiving your salvation and all the motivation that comes with it, that power to change, that power to have faith, that power to understand, the desire to learn from above or nothing at all, or you’re operating in the flesh, which a lot of people do. They don’t understand this passage and they think, “Okay.” So that’s number one. So to be clear, for those people who maybe don’t think, you know, they think, “How, how spiritual, a very religious, self-righteous Nicodemus,” when in fact Jesus said, “No. All that info that you have is info in your brain, but you need something from above.” And without that, you ain’t going to do any musting, all right? All right. The next one is out of the book of Acts, and there’s a statement there that says, “We ought to obey God rather than men,” and this verse says, “We must obey God rather than men,” if you read the translation aright. So What does that mean? It means you must be a follower of Christ and a learner of Christ to be a Christian, and when we talk about this, this is quite relevant today. You can decide that you want to be in on the latest trends, and you want to identify as a giraffe today, and that’s fine. Or you understand you’re a child of God and you identify with the heavenly Father and in that identification, I must come to an understanding. God has a plan for my life which is revealed in this book, which is why the great commission is “Go into every corner and make learners, make disciples.” He didn’t say, “Go make entertainment.” He didn’t say, “Go make fans that are, “Whoo, Jesus, yay!” No; make learners. Now how many of you, I, I want to hear you on this because I think a lot of people think the church is an entertainment center. It’s to be taken lightly. It’s a game. How many understand that learning takes effort and is difficult? Do you know the worst part of learning? Learning things you don’t want to learn and you’re not interested in. Trust me, been there and done that. You don’t go through a Ph.D. program without being subjected to having to read stuff. You’re like, “Oh, I would rather watch paint dry than read this stuff”” okay? But it’s opening up your mind because if you’re going to get an education, that’s how you get educated. You don’t just educate yourself on, “I want to become a mechanical engineer so I only learn about this dimension.” No, there are other things that you would want to secondary or tertiary subjects that will complement and give you a better understanding, maybe beyond that even. So when it says we must obey God rather than man, even in the current climate of things. Important for people to get this right, We are not following the multitude and what the multitude does. Now, if you want to do that, that’s your business. I’m not interested. I’ve seen what the multitude is going for and I’m, I’m just not there. I don’t want it, okay? So, but if I’m going to say this right, I’m going to say what the book of Acts says that we must obey God rather than man. We must learn about God. We must understand, process, and take it in and that requires effort. Don’t come to a church, this church, or any other church and think, “Oh, I’m going to learn. Oh, I’m going to learn like it’s going to be a great hour-long massage and I’m going to walk out of there and I’m just going to feel like a bag of marshmallows.” No, learning is tiring. It’s exhausting. It makes your brain hurt. If you’re listening, I told you this before, your heart rate goes up. You do not necessarily break out of sweat, but your body temperature does get hotter. There are different components in your body happening as you really if you’re listening versus the people that I’m just talking right now and they’re going, “Wah wah wah wah wah wah,” right? Or she said, “Must. Oh, I must go to the grocery store later.” That’s those, you know, undisciplined, “I’m not here. I’m here but I’m not here” type people. All right, so I’ll move on to the next one because I think I killed that one. The question that is always asked in the Bible is, “What must I do to be saved?” And the reason why I’m going down there is I realize with so many new people, there are so many people asking questions and coming in with all kinds of weird ideas. So I just figure, you know what, this is a message that can cover a lot of the problems. It’s, it’s pretty, it’s pretty simple. Let me ask you this. What would you do if you were dropped on a desert island? You’re all alone. You don’t have a Bible. You don’t have a Bible teacher. But you suddenly decide, you cry out and you say, “I want to know You and I want to be saved.” Now faith says, you know, God can open up your mind and God can through the Spirit do stuff. But I want you to think about this. We are so distracted that when people talk about, “What should I do to be saved?” they go down a laundry list so that the person who thinks, “Well, if I check all these boxes, I will have arrived.” If you watch any of these religious programs, they will go through their shtick, and at the close of the shtick, they will say, “Now, if you want to be saved, you must repeat this prayer. And once you repeat this prayer, you are saved.” I have a problem with that. And the The reason I have a problem with that is that no two people are alike. Somebody watching that same person on TV may be in a terrible crisis, in terrible torment, and they’ll latch onto anything because they’re desperate. And you’ve got other people who may just go through this kind of rote, “I’m a sinner and I know I’m a sinner.” And there’ll be people who’ll say, “Well, how could you even criticize that, because that’s showing people who don’t know?” Well, here’s my problem with that. There are a lot of people who don’t know who didn’t have the auditorium or the front row experience or who come up and say the sinner’s prayer. They were just saved by hearing the word of God. No one coerced them. No one kicked their shins, “You’re kicking my shins! You’re kicking my shins!” When people talk about, “What must I do to be saved?” I don’t; I’m going to speak for this church and I’m going to tell you this very simply put. God expects that once you have an encounter with Christ through His word, you come to a place of faith, to a place of amen where you say, “That happened. He is Lord,” not robotically, to come to know Him in reality. Not some box I check, but something that suddenly the word of God is no longer a book with words. It is alive and comes alive to me. “What must I do to be saved?” Okay, the answer is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved, have faith in Him, trust in Him, that He is the Messiah, that He is the Deliverer, that He has the power to save because He did what He did at the cross, that He’s coming back, that He’s promised you and me eternal life. Number four on my list, “He that cometh to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” Have you heard the word must again? You must believe that. You must believe that. It’s not enough to come and say robotically, “I follow Christ.” No. I believe that not only He is God, but He is also a Rewarder. Now, that shouldn’t make you think, you know like you just pulled the jackpot in Vegas or something. Don’t━it’s not like that. He is a Rewarder of them who diligently seek Him. He rewards people who are seeking Him out, and how does He reward them? Some, with some, in favor, with others, it may be extra faith, and some are extra blessed in other ways. I can’t tell you, maybe it’s a spiritual gift, but whoever comes must believe that He is and that He is a Rewarder. You don’t just come and it’s like, “Oh, I just showed up now.” No, I’m standing in line. God told me to come here today and I’m standing in line until my number is ultimately called and I’m, and I’m not only faith, trusting, and believing all that He said, but He has also promised to reward the ones seeking Him out. And whatever that might mean to some, I can tell you what it means to me. You may say, “Well, do you think that’s a reward?” Yeah, I do actually. My reward is God’s given me extra faith. He’s given me, the surety that I’m not alone. He’s given me the surety of eternity. I can keep building on these. They all come back to the same place, very repetitive. All right, we’ll go to the next one and I think this one is also an important must. “He must reign, till he hath put all his enemies under his feet.” This is why it’s important for the church of Jesus Christ right now to get its groove back: “He must reign,” He must reign until what? “He hath put all his enemies under his feet.” Now we know that that last act is death. The last enemy is death. And if you want to think about it, it’s not just death, it’s also, if you read the last book or the last book of the Bible, Revelation, you’ve got the devil. But for the Christian, think of it this way. What are people talking about when somebody who is not familiar with the book, somebody dies and goes into a depression? It goes into what’s, what was and there’s no, there’s no hope, there’s no future. So the last enemy being laid down, I love this one because it says very clearly, that the enemies of the children of God and specifically the last enemy, death, are vanquished. Now if this doesn’t make you realize that all this other fretting stuff over here wasn’t worth too much because He says, “This, this must happen.” And this is why the church of Jesus Christ, no matter what’s going on in the world, still must reign. There still must be a voice leading people and guiding people, not entertaining all of this woke garbage and all of this stupidity of the world, but rather focusing on our Lord and Savior, focus on what He said, focus on what He said must happen. And guess what? You’re going to find something incredible when you realize, you know, sorry to say this, there are predictions from AI about when World War III will start. It’s kind of very interesting. If you look these things up, it’s kind of like, “Oh, okay, that’s, that’s interesting.” And somebody said, “Well, don’t, don’t you care?” Well, at the moment when I think about it, I want to do all that I can for the kingdom, but if somebody’s going to launch a bomb that’s going to blow up the world, there’s not too much you can do about it, right? Except for the Christian, because you understand God’s promises are. Now everybody must make the trip. I’ve said this before, but He says that the last enemy’s death is vanquished. That means for the believer, no matter what happens, we will be with Him. So I like reading these musts. They are not only informative, but they enforce something about our faith where it becomes clear. You, if you are worried about all this stuff to the point of having a meltdown, your focus is in the wrong place. Remember, I taught out of Psalms 42 and 43 when people are depressed and down, “Why art thou downcast, O my soul.” Why are you looking there instead of looking up to Him? Why are you looking at the problems? It’s not like you weren’t warned as a Christian. I’m not saying that they’re effective now, but wars are the rumors of wars, tribulation, the Great Tribulation. Somehow, and then people act like, “Oh, I’m surprised. I didn’t know this was going to happen.” Well, we’re not in it right now. That’s number one. And number two, expect it; that’s what we are to expect. We’re to expect persecution. We are to expect the world to hate us. There’s some, “Why do people hate us so much?” Why did they hate Jesus so much? Okay, don’t answer the question. It’s all good. So next must, here we go, that “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and truth.” And I highlight this one because it is one of these pieces of information that people just gloss over. He must be worshiped in spirit and in truth, which brings me back to what He said to Nicodemus, “You must be born again from above.” That’s your connection, to be able to worship in spirit. And if you think about it, Jesus said, “I am the truth.” So this whole idea of how we worship, and I just want you to think about this, and don’t take offense. Anybody listening to me, we all have different ideas on worship. Now somebody could be listening during a music service, and they’re stirred in their soul by what they’re hearing, the words of the song, and they are worshiping in spirit and for their understanding and truth. And I don’t condemn that, and I don’t look upon that and say, “Oh, that’s a freak show. That’s weird.” But I don’t like the idea somehow that if you go into a church and everybody’s not all doing this because one person does it, we all must do it now. Now this is called the chorus line. This is not called worship. This is, “Oh, God, I’ve got to put my hands up now,” right? And this is what happens━trust me; I know these things, okay? This is what people do. I’m like, “Oh, God, I’ve got to put my hands up. Aw, I don’t want to clap anymore. When’s the song going to be over?” Okay? What I’m saying to you is that you could be just standing there enjoying the music and be just as much worshiping in spirit and truth as the person who is praising God with their hands. Remember I said I was going to come back to this? The idea somehow is that godliness and worship must look a certain way. That’s, I’m sorry, that’s the error right there. I, I can tell you, I think I’ve told you this story before, and I’m sure that folks there probably don’t like me telling this story, but I was at a Full Gospel Fellowship meeting and I told you they were playing all kinds of 7/11 music and everybody’s standing up and praising God. And someone’s son who I knew quite well got up and played “How Great Thou Art,” at the piano. I was the only person standing in the room and it ministered to me. I was standing up and I was praising the Lord. I didn’t care. I thought all the people in there were probably saying, “Why is she standing?” Or “She’s the only one standing.” I didn’t care. It wasn’t about anybody in the room. It was about my moment with God and that’s worship. So whatever that looks like, I mean, within reason, I’m not expecting people to━there are some churches where I was watching a video of one woman, she was, they had a dance team, and all of a sudden her dance went into breakdancing. Okay, so I’m not talking about that, okay? All right, next one; better to move on here. These are the words of John the Baptist, but if you think about it, they apply to every one of us, “He must increase, I must decrease.” And this is a big one. See, even if you think you’ve heard all this before, these are good reminders. Sometimes, we take up a lot of space and if you were to weigh out the space that we perceive to take up versus the space we allot to God, it’s kind of skewed. So this is a wonderful place to camp out, meditate, and pray because He must increase. He must take up the better part of my thoughts or my life or whatever it is, and I must decrease. It doesn’t mean I cease being. It just means that if I call myself a child of God and I’m tethered to Him by faith, then my mindset is, and my thoughts are about Him more than anything else. Now, how easy is that or how hard is that? I’m going to tell you something. When people make the statement, “Well you’ve got to think of the Lord all day long,” I’m sorry. You’re human. I’m human. That doesn’t happen.” I think about being hungry. I think about being tired. I think about how much work I have to do. I think about all the million things, but I also think about God. See, I’m human. I don’t play at church. I’m not wanting you to play at church. The important part of this reflecting on, “He must increase and I must decrease” is to remind us of proper perspective. I’ll say it this way, In an age of self-absorbedness, of in an age of ego-driven, egomaniac, selfie, whatever you want to call it, “He must increase, I must decrease” will keep a person treading on the right path. I mentioned this one before, “That the Scriptures must need be fulfilled,” and this is important for the Christian because there are Scriptures that have already been fulfilled that build our faith, and then there are Scriptures that are yet to be fulfilled. But He says the Scriptures must, it is inevitable. So when somebody goes and they read the, we’ll call them books on eschatology, specifically Revelation coupled with the pepperings of some of the prophets, the Scriptures and it is inevitable, they must be fulfilled. So when somebody says, “Well, why are you so committed and so,” because I understand something, this all must come to pass. The next one is that “we all must appear before the judgment seat of Christ.” I’m touching on every part of everything, we’ll call it a dimension of our faith. We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ and the Christian does not stand there to receive punishment. You read Romans 8, and Romans 8 says, “There is therefore now no ultimate punishment to those who are in Christ Jesus.” And people get this confused. This is much different. The throne of, the judgment seat of Christ is different than the great white judgment seat; two different and distinct moments. One is for those who have trusted Christ and those who have not. Which door would you like to pick? Never mind. It’s a very bad place to make humor, but I figured a little levity might help the situation. Okay. Number 10, “this corruptible must put on incorruptible.” This one I love; you know why? Because it’s not saying this might happen. It says this is inevitable, and I’m, I’m okay with that. Are you okay with that? This corruptible, this thing that’s rotting every single day and rotting every day that goes on inside and out must put on incorruptible, must put on immortality, must be clothed in that by God, must, this must happen. You start kind of thinking about what it means to be a Christian now when you line up all these musts. You’re not looking at game playing or entertainment. You’re recognizing these are hardcore to the point of what’s expected. All right, from the book of Acts we have another one that says, “The multitudes must needs come together.” And I want to say this happens at every age. You’ll have the banding together of people and then it’s just this kind of movement that happens over time. This one reads a little bit differently in your Bible, but if you were reading it in Greek, it would be translated as “must” and this is out of Romans 8 where it says, “We know not what we should pray for as we ought.” And that word “ought” actually would be a “must.” We don’t know how we must pray, okay? And there couldn’t be a more truer statement. So I’ll go back and kind of put this in proper perspective. Developing a relationship with somebody takes time to learn, you know, in a relationship you have to learn the language of the other person, how they think, how they speak, and until that’s figured out, it can be on rocky ground because you don’t know where the person’s coming from. But if you’re reading this book and you’re talking to God, you’re talking it out with God. You know, prayer is kind of weird. You start off thinking, you know, “Should I, should I say, ‘Dear God,’ or should I,” you know, think about sometimes how silly we are, right? I’m trying to think about how I’m going to pray or what I’m going to say versus I’m just going to sit down here and I’m going to think about God and my issues and what God’s done. And as soon as I kind of feel that everything’s congealed together, I’m going to start talking to God. And I don’t; I can’t tell you that it’s, it’s something that’s planned out. Sometimes I start talking and something else comes out of my mouth. And I didn’t, I was thinking, “I’m going to talk about, I’m going to talk to God about this,” and I’m talking to God about that. Don’t ask me because I can interrupt myself. It doesn’t matter. But what I am saying to you and what is important is if we don’t know how we must pray, then think about how ineffective a lot of our prayers are. Now I’m not saying that there’s a method to prayer like, you know, “Step one, you do this and step two,” What I’m saying though is in sincerity and genuineness. When you relate to somebody, when you’re having a relationship with somebody, you talk to them. You don’t try, and no, sometimes we’re talking to other people which I don’t want to hurt your feelings, so I’m going to be very diplomatic and I’m, I’m going to say this in a way. You want to talk to God in sincerity and with openness of heart. And you might say, “Well, what if that sounds offensive?” Do you think that God doesn’t already know the thoughts that you’ve thought? So speaking it out to Him or meditatingly, however you want to convey your thoughts, He already knows about them. So It’s like, I’m already confirming what God already knows because He knows my thoughts and when I open my mouth and talk to Him, those thoughts and my words connect before Him. So when people try to make this like, “Well, I’m going to think about this now,” have you ever sat down, and somebody says, “Will, you pray for the food?” And instead of ━again, think about this, instead of thinking about why we’re praying to receive food and, and, or the concept of why we would even pray in receiving it. You’ll hear people take the opportunity like, “I’d like to thank the governor and,” You know, their prayer, their prayer is everything, right? “And the silverware, whoever polished the silverware today, they did a very good job.” You’re praying for the food! Now, I know I’m being ludicrous, but I’m trying to make a point that it, it has to be something that comes from here and flows out of you and that genuineness, whatever that is, that is what connects with God; nothing more, nothing less. Anybody gives you a formula, tell them to━yeah, that’s what I said. All right, the next one, which I’m sure you’ll all like, says, “The servant of the Lord must not strive,” and that is a Greek word, machethestai, or machthesthai, “to fight.” That doesn’t mean that a pastor is milquetoast or wimpish, but one who can discern between righteous indignation and blatant, we’ll call it, you know, you can distinguish Between these things, someone who’s angry because something has been done against God or the church or God’s people versus something that affects me personally. Now that personal thing could be righteous indignation if it’s about the things of God, but typically we don’t see it like that. So this daily struggle, if you want to call it this, of what the servant of the Lord must not strive, and I’m saying this because there are people, again, who get critical and they say; Sometimes I’ll say something, “Well, that was kind of brutal”” or “That was kind of harsh.” How about that was kind of honest? And how about, I’d rather tell you to speak the truth in love? And It may be brutal to try to give you some syrupy stuff that doesn’t help you with anything, doesn’t even make you face reality. So when we talk about not striving we’re not talking about someone, I’m not a brawler, and I’m not out there looking for fights, but someone capable of being firm, and leading. That doesn’t mean, as I said, imagine the shepherd, If all the shepherd does all day is take his staff and beat the sheep all day long, okay, you get the point. So I must not beat the sheep, all right. All right, I’m almost done here. For the believer, I will, I ought, or I must, you’re getting the gist of this now. So what the Revelation given to John in that book, says that the Scripture related to what John wrote “must shortly come to pass.” And I want to address this one because what does “shortly come to pass” mean if it’s been all this time? Now, and I want to answer this because I think there are a lot of people that say, “Well, you know, you talk about a lot of stuff, and all the stuff you talk about that’s past and present I can deal with, but the future stuff; how do we know it’s even going to happen because it’s been so long?” Well, again, this is the thing. The Lord talks about a day as a thousand years or a day as a thousand years. People start to go with, “Well, what is, how does that translate, and how should we think about time?” The Scripture says that all the things written must come to pass could mean another thousand years have to happen. It could mean that there are events; not could mean, it does mean that there are events that must happen that are prophetically revealed in some of the prophets that tell us when these events start to happen, other events will start to happen, which will cascade into the final events. So when it says these things must come to pass or shortly come to pass, if somebody’s reading that and saying, “Well, but all this time has passed?” Yes, but in between, many, we’ll call them things that must happen, have happened. And there are; there is an order in God’s book. So what happens, let’s just say in the middle of the week or in the middle of the tribulation, there are events leading up to that before that must take place that If those don’t happen, these other events can’t happen. So Think of it this way for people who say, “Well, I’m still not convinced because all this time has elapsed.” If you are so inclined to, you’d do yourself a really good service to read about, especially out of Daniel and some of those other books that talk about prophecies of kingdoms that didn’t yet exist In Daniel’s time, for example, that was the future that came to pass. And then you start recognizing that this whole book has enough, we’ll call them markers, street signs, neon signs to tell us these are events that have unfolded, these are yet to happen, and when this happens, trust me, you’ll know it. So when he says that the Scripture must shortly come to pass, I don’t want anybody in the sound of my voice thinking, “Well, because it hasn’t happened, it won’t happen.” No, these events will unfortunately happen on earth, ushering in, as I’ve talked about in the last week or two, the Millennial Kingdom. Obviously, for some of us who believe in this, I think it is super important to understand when it says, “This must pass. It must come to pass.” That means it will. And this is why when people don’t take their commitments and their faith and their learning about God in the now seriously, how do you expect to take it seriously when we don’t even really know the timeline of things to come? You start now. That’s all I can tell you. You start now. So here’s what we’ve learned in all of these. There were musts that Christ spoke of Himself. And if you go back and reread those musts, He fulfilled them. He fulfilled every single one of these musts when He said, “This is what I must be about my Father’s business. I must suffer. The Son of man must be lifted.” Everything that He said came to pass. Now the things that were said in direction to us, what must be, how we must be born again, how we must be saved, I want you to think of all this because the reality is when you take all of this information in, you realize that there’s a lot more, there’s a lot more substance in analyzing these words, what must happen. I said I would take you to the passage in Luke 19 to close out, and that’s what we’re going to do because I do want to show you something here. It’s a passage we’ve read before, Luke 19, the conversion of Zacchaeus. But I want you to look at this as we bring, this message to a close for a purpose, and here is the purpose. As you know, “Jesus entered and passed through Jericho. Behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus, who was the chief among the publicans, and he was rich. And he sought to see Jesus who he was; and could not for the press,” the crowd, and “because he was a man of little stature,” he was short. “And he ran before, climbed up into a sycomore tree to see him: for he was to pass that way. And Jesus came to the place, he looked up, saw him, and said unto him, Zacchaeus, make haste, come down; for today I must abide at thy house.” Now, I want you to stop right there. Anybody reading this, there’s your must. He wasn’t saying it like, “Hey, I’ve got to come in because I’ve got to use your bathroom,” or “I need a cup of coffee.” “I must abide at thy house,” it was Christ’s way of saying, I must; Forgive me, it’s a really weird way to explain this. Like the Spirit coming into a person, “I must come and live in your; in this abode.” And the only way that could happen, is because the Spirit was not yet given, was for Christ, whatever was said inside that house, whatever was done inside that house, who knows, except when everything was said and done, “Zacchaeus stood, and said unto the Lord; Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken anything from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold. And Jesus said unto him, This day is salvation come to this house, forasmuch as he also is the son of Abraham. The Son of man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.” I want the takeaway for this to be, that it is a must for Christ to take up residence in a person. This is why you must be born from above. But I also want you to take a look at something. If you looked at Zacchaeus standing or hanging in the tree, you’d say, “That’s not godliness. That’s not a picture of godliness.” Well, because all you see is a man who’s collected taxes, who’s rich, who’s probably hated by people, and probably had a hateful appearance even. But godliness looks like this, that same man said, “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; if I have taken anything from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold.” That’s what godliness looks like. Don’t make the mistake of succumbing to the stupidity of the vast majority of people who think somehow this is what spirituality looks like and anything else is not. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that a message like this in its simplicity cannot show you the bullet points; we’ll call them the mandatory sign points of the Christian. This is not law, this is not some mandate by God, but if you’re going to be a Christian, you be one, which means you read the words and you understand at some point, I hate to say this, but something has to happen with the words. You can take the words in, you can masticate them, and then you can forget about them, you can reflect on them, you can pray about it, or you can ask yourself, how, what, what does this mean for me? That’s the starting point in my opinion asking, “How does this apply to me and how am I to apply this?” Because once you start asking those questions, it reveals something about where you are. I sat and asked myself these questions in preparing for this message and it was kind of a revelation to me. I could do a lot better, a lot better, and that’s not work. That’s talking about pressing in and pressing close and doing all the things that I just chronicled to you today about the musts of God. So don’t think this is just an exercise in futility. For my new listeners, welcome to a church that does not; I don’t judge you, do not judge me. Welcome to a church where people come from, We’ve got Jewish people, Muslim people, we’ve got Christian people, we’ve got people who are not sure. That’s all fine because God has to sort that out for you, not me. And last but not least, we’ve got, as I said, a body of people who come together, we’re like-minded and these reinforcements for those who have been here for a long time are good because they show us sometimes, “I might be getting a little bit complacent here. I need to step up my game or step up my faith,” however you choose to say that. So I hope that this is a message that people will listen to again. And it’s not that I haven’t preached on the musts of Christ before, but this is a good staple to say, if somebody’s confused about what Christianity looks like, I just laid it out for you today. These are the words of Christ or the words of Paul or any other writer of the New Testament telling us what is important, and why it matters. And as I said, just a little bit of reflecting on these musts can carry a big weight on our understanding of where we’re at. It’s called a spiritual inventory. It’s good to do every once in a while just to see that you are still in the faith. That’s my message. You have been watching me, Pastor Melissa Scott, live from Glendale, California at Faith Center. If you would like to attend the service with us, on Sunday at 11 am, simply Call 1-800-338-3030 to receive your pass. If you’d like more teaching and you would like to go straight to our website, The address is www.PastorMelissaScott.com. As found on YouTube http://flywait.4parkinson.hop.clickbank.net $49.⁰⁰ Blue Heron Health News I thought my Parkinson’s diagnosis was a death sentence – I was so wrong! Instead of surrendering as the disease ruined my physical and mental health… I turned everything around to be healthier, happier, and more energetic than I was BEFORE my diagnosis! The Parkinson’s Protocol Review ||Beat the Parkinson’s Disease Only 12 steps||Blue Heron Health News 12 simple steps tackled this dreadful disease at its source – and saw my symptoms melt away in days Welcome! 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