Author: thegospelmailman@yahoo.com

What Does A Man Gain from His Toil?

Scripture: Ecclesiastes 1: 2-4

Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.  What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?  A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.

Scripture Commentary: Better is a handful of quietness than two hands full of toil and a striving after wind.*

All of our human toil and accomplishment will come to naught.  As it was with our forefathers, so shall it be with us.  We need to keep this in mind as we journey through life.  It we don’t, we will become either proud when we succeed (thinking we did this on our own) or sorely disappointed when we fail.

Solomon’s goal was to show that earthly possessions and accomplishments are ultimately meaningless.  Only by pursuing God do we achieve real satisfaction.

We should honor God in all we say, think, and do.

As you take a hard look at your life, as Solomon did his, you will see how important serving God is above all other options.  Perhaps God is asking you to rethink your purpose and direction in life.  As you set out to find the meaning of your life, you must be ready to feel, think, question, hurt, and do more for God.

When we ignore God, it only highlights our problems because there are no answers without God’s eternal perspective.

True wisdom is found in God, and true happiness is pleasing him.

*Ecclesiastes 4: 6

Read the Entire Chapter:
Ecclesiastes Chapter 1

Additional Reading:
Ecclesiastes Chapter 4

Jesus Set Us Free with His Sacrifice on the Cross

Scripture: Romans 8: 1-2

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.   For the law of the Spirit of life has set you[b] free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.

Scripture Commentary: Jesus’ sacrifice has made us free!

Free at last, O mightly God, I’m free at last!  This is what Jesus Christ did for us when he went to the cross.  We were on death row, justly condemned for repeatedly breaking God’s Holy law.  (If you haven’t accepted Jesus in your life, you are still there!)

Without Jesus we would have no hope at all!

Jesus gave himself as a sacrifice for our sins.  But if you don’t turn from sin, what he did is lost on you.  You can’t say, “The devil made me do it,” if Christ is in your life.

Jesus’s sacrifice has declared us ‘not guilty’.  He has offered us freedom from sin and the power to do his will through the Holy Spirit which is the power behind the rebirth of every Christian.

We have a choice to make.

We have a choice to be controlled by our sinful nature or to follow the Holy Spirit.  Once you have said ‘yes’ to Jesus, you want to continue to follow Christ.

Ask the Holy Spirit to intercede for you in accordance with God’s will.  Then, when you bring your requests to God, trust that he will always do what is best for we are truly free at last!

Read the Entire Chapter:
Romans Chapter 8

We Are From God and God Is Love

Scripture: 1 John 4: 4-8

 Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.   They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them.   We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.  Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.  Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

Scripture Commentary: We, who are from God, should love everyone.

How can you say that you hate someone and still consider yourself to be from God?  If we are God’s children, and Jesus Christ is our Savior, we are to love everyone.

If you truly follow Christ, the Holy Spirit dwells in you.  And if the Holy Spirit is in you, you will love everyone, even your enemy.  When you choose to love even those who do you wrong, God reveals himself to others through you.

God is love.

John tells us that “God is love,” not that “Love is God.”  Our world, with its shallow and selfish view of love, has turned these words around and has contaminated our understanding of love.

Real love is God, for He gave His only begotten son in order to show us His love for each and every one of us.

How can you say you love God and dislike someone?  If you truly know God, you will love as He loves!

Read the Entire Chapter:
1 John Chapter 4

Saul, why do you persecute me?

Scripture:  Acts 9: 1-4

Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem.  As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”

Scripture Commentary: Saul set out to persecute but then he met the risen Christ.

Saul was on his way to Damascus to persecute anyone who followed Jesus Christ.  But on the way he was confronted by the risen Jesus Christ and was brought face-to-face with the true God.

As you travel your road to Damascus, you too will come face-to-face with God.  And when you do and he stops you, will you take the time to listen to him?

Jesus comes to everyone to show them the way.

Sometimes God breaks into a person’s life in a spectacular manner, and sometimes it is a quiet experience.  But as with Saul, God comes into your life to show you how to live, work, and love.

And like Saul, when that time comes you must acknowledge Jesus as Lord, confess your sins, surrender your life, and resolve to obey him.  True conversion comes from a personal encounter with Jesus Christ.  It leads to a new life relationship with him.

What road are you on?

And are you hearing what God is saying to you?  Or are you just hearing yourself?

Read the Entire Chapter:
Acts Chapter 9

 

The True Christian Has Good Stored in His Heart

Scripture: Luke 6: 45-47

A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.  “Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say? As for everyone who comes to me and hears my words and puts them into practice, I will show you what they are like.

Scripture Commentary: Is good stored in your heart?

Do you say something good to appear good, but in your heart you are saying something that is completely different?  You can’t live a double life before God.  Jesus reminds us that our speech and actions reveal our true beliefs, attitudes and motivations.

The good impression you try to make won’t last if you hold deception in your heart.  In time, what’s in your heart will come out in your speech and  behavior.

If we ‘act’ like Christians but don’t have God in our heart, then we are hypocrites.

The hypocrite is the one who takes on religious behavior to gain attention, approval, acceptance, or admiration from others.

But if we try to live and do God’s work (even though we will at times fail), we aren’t hypocrites.

If you follow Christ, you have faith in him, love him, and are obedient to him.  And you give love to others.

If you call upon God to help you but you don’t do as he asks of you, what then are you?

Read the Entire Chapter:
Luke Chapter 6

There’s A Mansion for You in Heaven

Sermon: Take My Yoke Upon You (God Prepares A Place for You in His House)

Part Three (Final): John 14: 2

In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.

Many of us have seen our parents, friends, and family members pass away.  Those who had accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior are now in God’s mansion.  Those who had not accepted Christ are not in his kingdom.

John 3: 16

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Jesus is telling us to put ourselves in his hands and he will lighten our burden.  Accept him and he will prepare a place for us in his Father’s mansion.

We are here only for a brief moment.

The next minute isn’t promised; tomorrow is not promised.  Accept Christ while you have time.  Time is passing by.

Ask God to forgive you of your sins.

Tell him you accept him as your Lord and Savior, and the load/burden you carry will lighten.  Only God can lift this from you.  The problem may still be with you but now you’ll have Christ to help you with it.

When you give your burdens to him, he will show you that it’s not as bad as you thought.

He will help carry your burdens.  But to do that you must accept him and believe he died for you and rose on the third day.

Accept him and watch your life change as Christ becomes part of it.

Read the Full Chapters of the Scriptures Referenced:
John Chapter 14
John Chapter 3

Read the first and second parts of the Sermon, Take My Yoke Upon You

Take My Yoke Upon You
God’s Grace Is Sufficient For Your Needs

 

God’s Grace Is Sufficient For Your Needs

Sermon: Take My Yoke Upon You (My grace is sufficient for you)

Part Two: 2 Corinthians 12: 9

And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

God did not remove Paul’s affliction, and he may not remove ours but God will always be there for us.  When people look at us, they may see what we are going through and see how God’s grace is giving us the power to carry the load.  And by seeing that, they may be encouraged.

Our weakness not only helps our Christian life but it also deepens our worship.  In admitting our weakness, we affirm God’s strength.

Without Christ’s grace in our life, we are lost.

When we are without Christ, we don’t know where we are going.  If you don’t know Christ when death comes (and believe me, death is coming for each of us), where will you go?

Will you be living eternally with God or are you going to be living in eternity with Satan?  It will be with one or the other.  There is no middle place.

Read your Bible.  God tells us what awaits after our earthly life is over.  Earth is not our permanent home!

Read the Full Chapter of the Scripture Referenced:
2 Corinthians Chapter 12

Read the entire sermon, Take My Yoke Upon You
Take My Yoke Upon You (Part 1)
There’s A Mansion for You In Heaven (Part 3)

 

 

Take My Yoke Upon You

Sermon: Take My Yoke Upon You

Part One: Matthew 11: 28-30

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

God is inviting us to come to him.  When Christ died on the cross and rose on the third day, he gave us direct access to God, the Father.  In accepting Jesus Christ as God’s only Begotten Son and placing ourselves in his hands, we realize that our earthly problems are not important anymore.

1 John 5: 3

For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.

We are to keep God’s commandments, and his commandments are not grievous.  Christ never promised that obeying him would be easy.  But the hard work and self discipline of serving Christ is no burden to those who love him.  When we love someone, we do things for them because we want to.

God will never give you more than you can handle.

God created you so he knows you better than you know yourself.  Jesus mentioned two kinds of people in his prayer.  The “wise” person is arrogant in his own knowledge.  He is full of his own self importance.

The other person is like the “little child” who is humbly open to receive the truth of God’s Word.  If we are like a child, we are open and willing to learn.  We care, we love, and we realize that only God has the answer.

To know God is to accept God as our Savior, and to know God is to know his voice when he talks to us.

I’ll tell you this: God talks to me and he talks to you even if you ignore him.  God says to give him your burden.  He will help you.  God wants to lighten your yoke.

Read the full chapters of the scriptures referenced:
Matthew Chapter 11
1 John Chapter 5

Read parts 2 and 3 of this sermon

God’s Grace Is Sufficient For Your Needs (Part 2)
There’s A Mansion for You in Heaven (Part 3)

The Father’s House Is for Worship

Scripture: Mark 11: 15-17

And they come to Jerusalem: and Jesus went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves;  And would not suffer that any man should carry any vessel through the temple.  And he taught, saying unto them, Is it not written, My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer? but ye have made it a den of thieves.

Scripture Commentary: How would Jesus  react if he entered His Father’s House today?

Would he say this is a house of prayer or that it’s more like a bazaar?

The church does the work of the Father.   Would Jesus see the church operated more like a business?  Or is it acting as a house of God that is bringing many to salvation for the Savior?

Are we in a store selling things or are we in God’s House worshipping him?

Mark 11: 15-17 tells what reaction Jesus had when he entered his Father’s House of Worship and saw the people more interested in selling things.  So the question now is would Jesus react the same way today?

Read the Entire Chapter:
Mark Chapter 11

The Seed Is the Word of God

Scripture: Luke 8: 11-14

Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God.  Those by the way side are they that hear; then cometh the devil, and taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved.

They on the rock are they, which, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away.  And that which fell among thorns are they, which, when they have heard, go forth, and are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to perfection.

Scripture Commentary: Have you let the seed of God germinate in your heart and life?

The seed is God’s Word and you are the soil.  In what type of soil is God’s seed being planted?  Are you one who points to others and does nothing?  Do you read or hear the Word but have not changed your lifestyle?

God has given His Word through the Bible.  The Word is for us to live by but we do not always listen to what we are told.

Is God’s seed planted in good soil, bearing solid fruit?

Is the seed on a “path” where it is being trampled down by you living for yourself, refusing to believe God’s message?  Or are you a “rock” who believes but does nothing?  Or are you a “thorn patch” overcome by the materialism of the world and therefore has no room for God?

If you believe that Our Lord Christ and Savior Jesus gave his life for your sins, giving you the way to eternal life, then bring forth good fruit.

God has planted the seed but what type of soil are you?

Read the Entire Chapter:
Luke Chapter 8