Cheated by
religion!
Does payment of money to your church or religion make you
become more acceptable to God? Often people are encouraged to think
and to hope that it will!
Let us find out what price God puts on our sin and then we
will know who can afford salvation!
When Jesus entered the temple area and saw the stalls set up by
religious traders He was angry. Immediately He "began driving out
those who were selling. 'It is written,' He said to them, 'My house
will be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers.'"
1*.
God never asks for, or accepts, money as a way of the sinner
getting right with Him. No amount of money could ever pay for even
one sin! God has said "The wages of sin is death",
2*. so the only
payment for sin that will satisfy Him is DEATH!
But why had God taught that sacrifices should be made in the
temple? Because God was willing to accept the death of a substitute
to pay for a sinner. 3*.
Jesus had not come to change the teaching about the need for a
priest to offer a sacrifice for the sinner: but He had come
to provide us with a better Priest and a better
Sacrifice! 4*.
The religious leaders, and those who were making a profitable
business by cheating the churchgoers, were very annoyed by Jesus'
words and actions. "Every day He was teaching at the temple. But
the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the leaders among
the people were trying to kill Him. Yet they could not find any way
to do it, because all the people hung on His words." 5*.
As they secretly plotted to have Jesus killed they did not realise
that their actions would bring about God's wonderful plan of
salvation for the world. 6*. It was all in the plan of God that Jesus would
die at the hands of sinful men, and for sinful mankind, once and
for all. 7*. But
the wicked people who would dare to sacrifice the Son of God did
not understand the wonderful thing God would accomplish through
their awful crime! 8*. God would allow evil men to kill Jesus Christ
ONE TIME ONLY - but what they didn't realise was that Jesus was
willingly offering Himself as the substitute to die for
our sins. 6*.
Today there are those who twist the teachings of Jesus and want you
to think they have the power to take Jesus' body again
and again and offer it repeatedly to God! They expect God to be
pleased with their wicked intent of thinking they can repeatedly
sacrifice His Son!! Jesus will never again be given over into
the hands of wicked men to be sacrificed! 9*.
Don't you be cheated by religion into
thinking your salvation is in their hands and that religion can
secure forgiveness of sins for you. Only Jesus can forgive
you because He paid the full price God demanded for you sins
when He died and rose again.4 By faith, put your trust in Him now!
10*.
Read about Jesus' anger with those who were cheating the people
from the truth about God in Luke chapter 19, verses 45-48.
Bye for now,
John Nixon, Ballincollig, Cork, Ireland. P31HD98. Contact: jnixonj@gmail.com
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Bible quotations from
N.I.V.
1 Luke
19:45-46.
2 Romans 6:23. Ezekiel
18:4,20.
3 See Genesis 22:7-13. 2nd
Corinthians 5:21. 1st Peter 3:18.
4 Hebrews 10:7-14. Romans
3:21-26.
5 Luke 19:47-48.
6 Acts 2:22-24. 13:27.
Luke 24:25-27, 44-48.
7 Hebrews 7:23-27.
8 John 11:49-53.
9 Romans 6:9-10.
10 John
3:16-19.
