Bless the Lord, O My Soul! (Part 2)

Our text:
Hebrews 1:3 "Who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,"
The key phrase out of this text is "upholding all things by the word of His power."

Jesus Christ upholds all things by the word of His power. The Greek here is "the Universe" (Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown's Commentary on the Whole Bible, Kindle Ed)

"When, on the fall of man, the world was breaking to pieces under the wrath and curse of God, the Son of God, undertaking the work of redemption, sustained it by His almighty power and goodness." (Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary, Kindle Ed)

So we are upheld by Jesus Christ Himself, and to stay up, we need to stay in cooperation with His Spirit. We say here that the universe is upheld by Jesus Christ but bound up in there is the warning to us as individuals, that should we cooperate with Him, we will escape the judgement that is to come and should we refuse to cooperate with Him, we will be swept away in the judgement that is to come.

The prophet, Ezekiel, was sent to the children of Israel to warn them in such manner. See Ezekiel 33. So, while He is upholding the entire universe, individuals within said universe still have responsibilities which will determine the outcome of their lives. This upholding being done by Jesus Christ is not a "blanket policy" as people like to think.

What am I saying? As long as we strive with God, we will have struggles that may be insurmountable. In this life, everybody will have troubles but those who cooperate with the Lord will, in the midst of the troubles, operate with the peace of God. He said "my peace I give unto you." His peace, that's what we get to ride on. The same peace that causes God, in the face of all the mayhem, to be calm and collected, to be able to continue to advance His Kingdom and build His Church, that's the peace we get!

Why am I saying all this? Anything built outside of Christ cannot be sustained. Anything obtained or achieved using our "bound up" soul powers will not remain for any length of time. Only that which is built by the cooperation of our spirits with the Holy Spirit, will abide. only the fruit from the vine will remain.

We do all kinds of things and pray all kinds of prayers releasing and exercising our soul powers and when we get results, in defiance to the Word of God, we boast that our prayers "worked!"

We are taught by the Lord Himself to pray to the Father in His name for whatever we have need of. We pray to whoever else we want to, get results, and boast about the results! All prayer should go to God, for man, and against the enemy of God and man, which is the devil.

Nowhere in the Word of God are we told to engage the devil in direct warfare, but we like to do that, not understanding that at such times, we are rebelling against God and playing into the devils hands. And why do we do this? I think it's pride in us that makes us do this. We're not satisfied with the work Jesus has done, we want to know that we have something to do in our salvation and so we begin to delve into realms we are not allowed or equipped to go into.

Let us repent of this action and return to God so we can hide under the finished work of Christ, our Savior.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, please forgive me for discounting the work Jesus did for me at Calvary. Forgive me also for my rebellion against, and disobedience to you. Please cleanse me of all ill effects which I brought upon myself and restore to me, the joy of your salvation, in Jesus name, Amen.

#momomily2013