THE HOUSE OF THE SCARLET CORD
“THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD”
Sunday, March 09, 2008
“THE CHURCH” is supposed to be a place of restoration.
I believe the answer to people’s life begins within an environment that is dedicated to restoration. The restoration process may include a lot of understanding and mercy, but a true commitment to restoration is a commitment to a restored life.
And we all know there is a huge difference between "tossing out the bruised apple" and being dedicated to a person’s restoration and recovery.
So how do the elders and leadership of a church staff walk the fine line of simultaneously maintaining the high standards of biblical leadership and embrace the equally biblical ideals of restoration?
That’s up to the way the church body is taught.
We will be a church of restoration!
Joshua 2:1-24
The two spies stayed at Rahab the harlot’s house.
Even though the Bible names her as a harlot, she is later named in the honor role of faith in Hebrews 11.
In the best of us there is some bad; in the worst of us there is some good.
David, Solomon, and Samson all were greatly used by God for good but also committed terrible wrongs. If doesn’t matter how bad you’ve been – God can make you good. Where sin abounds, grace does much more abound.
The story of Rahab the harlot. What a wonderful story of redemption.
1 Pet 1:18-19
Col 1:20
Rom 3:25
Rev 1:5-6
Rev 5:9
Rev 7:14
Joshua 2:8-18. Get into the house with the scarlet cord.
The color schemes of God are wonderful. His scarlet blood can take a black heart and wash it white as snow.
Thank God that we are in the house with the scarlet cord – the blood of Jesus Christ.
Joshua 5 and 6. The walls of Jericho represent the walls of grace that exist around the church – the bride of Christ.
In Luke 4:18-19, Jesus quoted Isaiah 61:1-2 but stopped with the first-half of verse two. He did not read “…and the day of vengeance of our God.”
This is because He was setting up His bride who would not be subject to His vengeance.
But the walls of grace around the church are about to fall, and then the day of vengeance – judgment – will come.
This election year is very strange. Campaigning has begun much earlier, and an unknown has risen to whom the people are flocking.
We are now a one-world system, and all that is needed is a leader.
We are so close to judgment, only 10 days before the walls fall.
The church-age is supposed to last 2000 years, and we are right at the end of the age.
You better get into the house with the scarlet cord and stay there. How? Obey Acts 2:38:
1. Repent.
2. Be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of your sins. Baptism is necessary, not optional.
It is the mark of the new covenant just as circumcision for the Jews was the mark of the old covenant.
Col 2:11-12
11 In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ:
12 Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead.
(KJV)
3. Receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. Hunger for it.
Rahab became a soul-winner making sure that all her family was in her house when Israel came to defeat Jericho.
