We Can Never Repay
Scripture: 2 Corinthians 5:17Devotional Series: Money: Not the Root of All Evil
Teaching: Money: Not The Root Of All Evil pt. 1 (WED 2024-09-25) by Pastor Star R Scott
We stand in awe of some of the great minds of our day. The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. Let’s keep it simple; amen? Let’s not try to think too much in this walk that we’re in. We don’t need to go read Aristotle or Pluto. So, we have Plato, we have Aristotle, we have all these minds, and they begin to now be regurgitated. There is no new thing under the sun. And tragically, many of our churches and many theologians regurgitate. And you have Augustine and some of those that have drawn from worldly wisdom. We have so much of our time today, Christians spending their time in the Reformation theology. You have to go back further. “Oh, we need to read the church fathers. Let’s read Ignatius and let’s read some of those different writers from the church father era in the 300s and 200s. Now, you have to go back further. Great writings by Clement. Polycarp.” But you have to go back further. This (holds Bible aloft) is the living Word of God. Infallible, God-breathed, inerrant, the truth; amen?
How are we going to survive in this last day? How are we going to finish this race? As Paul says, “I have kept the faith.” The faith. This faith that you and I are keeping and holding on to is this—this is not the totality of it, but this is what Paul is mainly trying to transfer to us. Here’s the mystery, Christ in us. Without him, I can do nothing. Corinthians, we are a new creation. “Old things are passed away…all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17); amen? This great redemptive work. Beloved, it not only saved our souls, it created a debtorship in us that we can never repay. We owe Him. And too many of us think we owe this world and the people in it. Somebody that maybe helped you along on your way. Let me remind you who has helped you on your way every day and that’s the Holy Ghost; amen? And so, we see then that that we’re in this world, the Scripture says, but we’re not of it.
As I was in prayer and just looking to the Lord, and where to go with the teaching part here of what I felt the Holy Spirit was leading me in, again, in these Pastoral Epistles (1 and 2 Timothy, Titus). I love the Pastoral Epistles because I’m a pastor. If I ever run out of anything to meditate on, I just go to the Pastoral Epistles. What are we? What’s the church need? I spend a lot of my time for us in these three little books saying, “I know we’re in here.” Where are we; amen? There’s only one church. What are we messing up in now? All these epistles came from a messed-up church. And the Holy Ghost said, “Here’s what you guys need to do to get this thing back in order. The purification of the bride. Begin to think on these sayings.”
When Paul was writing this to young Timothy in one of the great cosmopolitans of that day, you talk about all the different thought processes that were going on when Paul was in Athens, and they were disputing on many different issues and different gods, and he introduced them to the unknown God. But this was what they were talking about in their day. Life back then was very sophisticated. We somehow think that these were just kind of like cavemen or something. You know, you go back and look at what the Egyptians did, and you go back, and they were not aliens. For crying out loud, all the alien stuff today. “Are you saying there are no aliens?” I cannot say 100 percent emphatically that there may or may not be life somewhere else. But if there is, Jesus is Lord there too; amen?
How are we going to survive in this last day? How are we going to finish this race? As Paul says, “I have kept the faith.” The faith. This faith that you and I are keeping and holding on to is this—this is not the totality of it, but this is what Paul is mainly trying to transfer to us. Here’s the mystery, Christ in us. Without him, I can do nothing. Corinthians, we are a new creation. “Old things are passed away…all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17); amen? This great redemptive work. Beloved, it not only saved our souls, it created a debtorship in us that we can never repay. We owe Him. And too many of us think we owe this world and the people in it. Somebody that maybe helped you along on your way. Let me remind you who has helped you on your way every day and that’s the Holy Ghost; amen? And so, we see then that that we’re in this world, the Scripture says, but we’re not of it.
As I was in prayer and just looking to the Lord, and where to go with the teaching part here of what I felt the Holy Spirit was leading me in, again, in these Pastoral Epistles (1 and 2 Timothy, Titus). I love the Pastoral Epistles because I’m a pastor. If I ever run out of anything to meditate on, I just go to the Pastoral Epistles. What are we? What’s the church need? I spend a lot of my time for us in these three little books saying, “I know we’re in here.” Where are we; amen? There’s only one church. What are we messing up in now? All these epistles came from a messed-up church. And the Holy Ghost said, “Here’s what you guys need to do to get this thing back in order. The purification of the bride. Begin to think on these sayings.”
When Paul was writing this to young Timothy in one of the great cosmopolitans of that day, you talk about all the different thought processes that were going on when Paul was in Athens, and they were disputing on many different issues and different gods, and he introduced them to the unknown God. But this was what they were talking about in their day. Life back then was very sophisticated. We somehow think that these were just kind of like cavemen or something. You know, you go back and look at what the Egyptians did, and you go back, and they were not aliens. For crying out loud, all the alien stuff today. “Are you saying there are no aliens?” I cannot say 100 percent emphatically that there may or may not be life somewhere else. But if there is, Jesus is Lord there too; amen?