Pritam Concert

 Hi friends, my name is Keith and I’m a born again Christian and I’d like to share the Gospel message with you.   The word “Gospel” literally means “good news” or “good message”.   The Gospel is a message of true freedom from the weight of guilt.   The Gospel is a message of real hope, in God’s faithfulness to release us from our bondage to sin.   The Gospel is the message of how to be made right with God; how to be reconciled to God.   Literally, it’s the message of God reconciling the sinning, sinful, sinners; human people to Himself.   It is the message of eternal life.   In other words, how to survive death.   You can receive the gift of eternal life not by just hearing, not by just understanding, but by receiving the Gospel.  The Bible says we must obey the Gospel.   And it talks about that obedience being an obedience of faith.   You can have peace with God by putting your faith and trust in Him, the only wise God Jesus Christ.

You can rest from your work… trying to achieve favor with God.
You can cease from your toil… trying to earn your way to heaven.
You can stop struggling and striving… trying to redeem yourself from sin.
You can receive forgiveness, righteousness as a gift.

Matthew 11:28, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”

There is only one true and living God.   There are not many gods.   There are NOT many gods!   There’s only one.   There are not many manifestations of God.   There are not many emanations from God.   You are not god.   You are not a god.   You are a creation of God.   You are created in His image.   You bear the image of your maker.   In some small way, you have a nature that reflects characteristics of your creator.   Now, the creator, the true and living God; the only God that exists has revealed himself in His Word.   He himself entered into time and space in the person of Jesus Christ.   God became a man.   He took on flesh.   God at his essence is spirit.   God is a person, not a force.   There are NOT many ways to God!   There’s only one way to God, Jesus said, “I am the way the truth and the life and no one comes to the Father except through me.   God is father, son and spirit.
Galatians 3:20 Now a mediator is not a mediator of one, but God is one.
1 Timothy 2:4-6 Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.  For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; Who gave himself a ransom for all.

All gods other than the true and living God, who is revealed in the scriptures are but idols.   Avoid creating a false god.   Don’t make a god to suit yourself.   Don’t be deceived, the gods of Hinduism can’t help you or save you.   It’s quite a coincidence that the gods dreamed up by the authors of Hinduism, bear a resemblance to traces of various aspects of the ONE TRUE GOD.


        - Brahma the creator


        - Vishnu the preserver


        - Shiva the destroyer


        - Ganapati, the remover of obstacles


        - Saraswati, who is the goddess of learning


        - Lakshmi, who is goddess of good fortune


These so-called gods are mere idols.   The creations of men.   From the minds and imaginations of men.   Whatever spiritual experiences you may have had with these so-called gods are deceptions from the spiritual entities behind these idols.   They’re evil.   Any spiritual encounters you’ve had with any of these idols came from demons.

Don’t be deceived.   There is an enemy who would seek to deceive you.   To lead you away from the true and living God.   The Bible calls him the prince of the power of the air.   That is satan, the devil; who was an angel of God, but fell; he sinned; he was lifted up with pride and fell, and took with him one third of the angels of heaven. The bible says he's able to transform himself into an angel of light. Don't fall for it.  First Corinthians 8:4-6 says we know that “an idol has no real existence,” and that “there is no God but one.” For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”— yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

#2 But Jesus the Christ has been from all eternity.   He is without beginning or end.   Again, there is one and only one true and living God.   The Bible, God's Word knows of only one true God and he is triune in nature and being.  He is one God in three persons and God the Son, Jesus Christ is himself God eternally.  All other so-called gods are false, inanimate, lifeless.

#3 This Jesus; the Son of God who is over all, God blessed forever.   He is the creator.  He made all things, and without him was nothing made that has been made.

#4 Life; true life; eternal life can only be found in Jesus the Christ, the Son of God. You can receive not only the gift of eternal life, but new life for the here and now.

#5 Jesus said I am the light of the world, and whoever believes in me will not walk in darkness, but will abide in the light of life. You can have illumination on your life. Light will expose the wrong motives, the misdeeds, the false statements. Christ can wash that away and cleanse your conscience.

Let's have a look at the truth about each of our lives; would you consider yourself to be a good person?  I'm going to ask you a few questions based on the Ten Commandments. Think of the Ten Commandments like a mirror ; a mirror will show you where there is filth and dirt, but a mirror does nothing to make you clean. I'll ask you a few questions based on the Ten Commandments. You don’t have to answer to me but answer to yourself and listen to your conscience.

The Sovereignty of God

There are some foundational things we all know and believe about God; what He’s like; His nature.  Things we trust, things we're sure of, things that'll don't change.

1. God is good. He's absolutely pure, holy, righteous, clean, without spot, blemish or defect. There is no evil in Him, no shadow of darkness, no iniquity or impurity.   There is no part of Him that is filthy or dirty.

2. God is Love.   He can hate what's wrong, but He is love.

3. God is Just. In other words, God, at his nature is Just.   He must execute Justice. What that means is God would give us what we deserve.  He is fair. He can only be fair. He is always right in what He doles out. It says that "God is impartial"; He won't favor one over the other.   It says Justice and Judgement are the foundation of His throne.

4. God is Merciful.   This character trait seems to be at odds with His trait of Justice.   He desires Mercy, in other words, not giving us what we deserve. An expression of His mercy is that He’s patient with us, longsuffering. He goes the extra mile to withhold judgement, condemnation, punishment.

5. Lastly, God is Gracious.   This is kinda the converse of Mercy.   With Mercy, God withholds judgement that is deserved.   With Grace, God gives gifts that are not deserved.

There’s lots more to God's nature; we get to spend all eternity getting to know God, but those are some pretty good foundational things.   Kinda like baselines about God's nature.

Put everything I just said in your back pocket for a moment.   Don't forget about those aspects of God's nature, we'll come back to them...

An illustration:   I have a condition with my vision that I experience occasionally.   It doesn't happen very often, and happens even less frequently than it used to (before I got my heart blockage fixed).   Every once in a while, I have a temporary spell where my vision gets affected; it’s called a scintillating scotoma. Basically, I get this blind spot in my eye sight, that looks like a blank hole.   Around the edge of the hole, it's kinda sparkly. It goes away after a few minutes, I don't know it might take up to 15 minutes to go away. So, for that amount of time, I'm on break. I can kinda sorta work; barely, slowly, with difficulty.   It usually happens at work, and if I'm going to get anything done during that time, I have to try real hard to see what's on the computer screen, but I definitely can't see the whole picture, so-to-speak. So, during that period of time, I'm impaired.

I want to ask the question; do we have a blind-spot in our thinking about God. Is there an aspect to God’s nature that we miss.   There’s an aspect to God’s nature that we might even begrudge him. In other words, we want take away from Him. So here’s another aspect to God’s nature, I want us to examine, and apply our lives.

6. God is sovereign.  Like many other theological concepts, that word is not necessarily scriptural, but it does explain a scriptural concept. In other words, God is in control.   God is ruling and reigning over His creation. It may not seem like it sometimes. It may seem like things are spinning out of control, but in reality, things are falling into place.

Psalm 115:3
3 Our God is in the heavens;
   he does all that he pleases

Psalm 135:5 For I know that the LORD is great, and that our Lord is above all gods.   6 Whatsoever the LORD pleased, that did he in heaven, and in earth, in the seas, and all deep places.

Proverbs 16:9
9 The heart of man plans his way,
   but the Lord establishes his steps.

Job 42:2
2 “I know that you can do all things,
   and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.

Daniel 4:17…  that the living may know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will and sets over it the lowliest of men.’

Romans 8:28
28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

When we pray, “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”, we aren’t saying God can’t (or won’t) accomplish His will without us being willing.  We aren't saying unless we're involved in performing God’s will, his ultimate will, shall not come to pass. We are in essence saying, “help me Lord, to surrender and submit my will to conformity with yours. Help me to get in step with your program.  I want to participate in what you're doing.

What about the bad things that happen?   Think about all the bad things that happened to Joseph ( son of Jacob).   Genesis 50:20 But as for you, you thought evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save many people alive.

My goal for telling you this is two fold:

1. That you'd rest in Him
2. That you'd be bold in Him

God bless...