God’s Essential Musts

5-25-05

Title: God’s Essential Musts

Introduction

This lesson is a very important one.

We are going to look at some of the things that God says “MUST.”

And when God says MUST we need to listen and do what He says.

God’s Word is absolute truth, and as such it is undeniable.

Folks, when God has spoken, we cease to speak.

Jesus told His disciples how He “MUST suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes,” and how “He MUST be KILLED.”

Peter began immediately to scold the Lord for saying such a thing.

He said: “Pity Thyself Lord, this shall not be to thee.”

Immediately, Jesus said to Peter: “Get behind Me, satan, thou art an offence unto Me.”

There are seven MUSTS in today’s message, and every one of them is God’s decree, and they MUST be just as He said.

Let’s believe what He will tell us today by His Word.

First-

WE MUST BE BORN AGAIN

Jesus said, “Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again” (John 3:7).

When God says “must,” we certainly can’t afford to use a word that’s less insistent.

There is nothing indefinite and nothing optional in “Ye must be born again.”

Everyone who wants to see heaven, and to enter into heaven, must be born again.

Salvation is not just patching up our old self, it is a new man created by God.

Salvation is not just cleaning up the outside of the platter, but instead, it is the cleansing of the inside of the platter.

Jesus said, “Cleanse first the inside of the cup and the platter, that the outside may be clean also.”

Salvation is a new creation.

That’s made clear in the Bible, where it says, “If any man be in Christ Jesus he is a new creature.”

And it also says, “For we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus.”

We should never speak of salvation as “a change of nature” or as a “change of heart.”

Salvation is not a change, but it is a birth, a new birth; it is a second birth.

“Ye must be born again.”

There is nothing about the old nature that God will accept, because it is corrupt.

And He doesn’t have any plans to improve it or to change it.

The old nature is too weak to follow Jesus.

Paul understood that and that’s why he said, “I want to do right, but I can’t.”

Those who are controlled by the old nature cannot please God, and therefore they can’t serve Him either.

Doesn’t it say in God’s Word, “Can a bitter spring give forth sweet water?” and “Can an evil tree bring forth good fruit?”

We are given a description of the old man in the Bible, where it talks about those controlled by their old nature.

It says, “Their throat is an open sepulcher; their tongue has used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; their feet are swift to shed blood: destruction and bitterness are in their ways: there is no fear of God before their eyes.”

How are you going to reform or patch up or change such throats and tongs and lips and feet and eyes as these?”

It is impossible!

Back of all these members there lies a nature which is “deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.”

“Ye must be born again.”

Churchianity, singing a pledge card, turning over a new leaf; none of these can be accepted as substitutes—“Ye must be born again.”

And the second essential must is—

CHRIST MUST DIE.

The apostle John wrote, “As man lifted up the serpent, in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up” (John 3:14).

This “must”, that Christ must die, stood before Jesus just as unavoidably, as “Ye must be born again” stands before every sinner.

Christ experienced the full force of this “must.”

In the city of Caesarea Philippi, Jesus began to show His disciples, “How that He must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day.”

There was an eternal must that faced Jesus every day of His life.

In fact, He faced it even before the foundation of the world; it was the “must’ of the Cross.

But what was this compelling must that drove Jesus to Calvary?

Did Jesus say, “The Son of Man must be killed,” because He saw the multitudes turning away from Him?

Once the common people were glad to hear what He had to say.

They had eaten His bread and His fishes; they had applauded the power of His miracles; they had applauded when He taught them about the things of God; but now they were leaving Him.