GOSPEL NUGGET #512

Werewolves and Villagers

The game Werewolves and Villagers is fun. The villagers must identify and hunt for the werewolves before it will kill all of them. The werewolves only come out under the cover of night when everybody goes to sleep. In the daytime, they look pretty normal, they don't show their fangs, they pretend like they are ordinary folks in the village.

This is a picture of us all. There is a werewolf in all of us. In God's sight, none of us is a villager. We know that we are spiritual werewolves deep within. We know what we did in secret under the cover of night when no one was looking no matter how we deny or cover it. We are "...brute beasts...to be caught and destroyed. " 2 Peter 2:12.

We may ascend the stairs of respectability in the village or in society. We may be voted as the Most Outstanding Villager Of The Year but at the core of our being we are all sinners. We have devoured someone at least at one point in our lives either in outward behavior or in our hearts and minds.

What we need is a new nature. We need to be transformed. And that can only take place if we are transformed into a new creature by faith in Christ. Come to Christ in faith and be born again into a new creature, yes, into a true villager in the community of God's people and village.

GOSPEL NUGGET #511

EX 28:40 “For Aaron’s sons you shall make tunics; you shall also make sashes for them, and you shall make caps for them, for glory and for beauty.

Let's apply this verse to salvation:

The purpose of the tunics or coats, sashes and caps is for glory and for beauty. They are all a picture of Christ. In ourselves, as sinners, we are dishonorable and ugly, spiritually speaking. In God's sight, we can only weave for ourselves "filthy rags" with the righteous deeds that we do.

ISA 64:6 ...all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment...

But once, we put on Christ, by faith in Him, He becomes our glorious and beautiful garment. He becomes our glory and our beauty before God. And so, put on Christ! Trust in Him for salvation and be gloriously and beautifully arrayed in Him in God's sight.

GOSPEL NUGGET #510

Joh 5:6 When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he already had been in that condition a long time, He said to him, "Do you want to be made well?"

Let's apply this to spiritual salvation:

Before a sinner is saved, he must first see his need for salvation. In a lot of cases, this requires a long time. It takes us, fallen creatures of pride, a long time to come to the end of ourselves. That we are helpless and incapacitated to save ourselves is the last thing that we will ever realize, if ever.

We'd love to think that we are okay, when the truth of the matter is that we have been "lying there" for a long time in that condition. Not until we humbly acknowledge our condition that God, in His mercy and grace, through the Lord Jesus Christ, will come with His salvation.

Are you one who, in pride, is constantly resisting His conviction? Or are you one who has been brought to acknowledge your sinful and helpless condition before God?

Have you realized that that you are not well in the eyes of God that you can readily say a humble "Yes" when He comes and says: "Do you want to be made well by faith in Me and in what I did on the cross for you?"

GOSPEL NUGGET #509

Mr 4:26 And He said, "The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground,

27 "and should sleep by night and rise by day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he himself does not know how.


Let's apply this to saving faith. This is a good illustration saving faith. 

We read here of a man casting seed upon the soil. He goes to bed at night and gets up by day and the seed grows without his help. You know, saving faith is like that.

It was an act of faith on the part of the man to cast his seed upon the soil not knowing exactly the how of the process of growth of the seed. All he had was the confidence that the soil could make it grow. You see, saving faith is casting ourselves upon the Savior.

Our condition is bad, because, unlike the seed in this parable, we have no life in ourselves. We are spiritually dead. We can’t save ourselves. We can’t transform ourselves.

But when we cast ourselves upon the ground of the Savior and what He did on the cross, leaving our flourishing entirely to Him, behold, like the man who went to sleep and did nothing to make the seed grow, all he did was cast the seed; we become alive and are transformed by the Savior.

My friend, if you are still unsaved right now, come now to the Savior, cast yourself upon Him for salvation.