MID-WEEK MANNA FROM PASTOR NAT’S DESK:
October 18, 2023
God’s Saving Enmity
Part 40
SATAN’S ENMITY WITH CHRIST, THE ANOINTED ONE
“He is despised and rejected of MEN; a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief: and WE hid as it were our faces from Him; He was despised, and WE esteemed Him not.” Isa. 53: 3, KJV (see vs 1-9; cf. Acts 8: 31-40).
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made [created] by Him [the Word]; and without Him was not anything made that was made. . . . He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the WORLD KNEW HIM NOT. He came to His own [the Jews and the Jewish nation], and His own RECEIVED HIM NOT.” John 1: 1-3, 10, 11, KJV.
“The ANTAGONISM [enmity, hatred, rejection] that exists between the spirit [character] of Christ and the spirit [character] of Satan was most strikingly displayed in the WORLD’S RECEPTION of Jesus. [Satan claims fallen earth and sinful mankind his own kingdom. He offered it to Christ in the wilderness of temptation, Matt. 4:1-11.“It was not so much because He appeared without worldly wealth, pomp, or grandeur [see Isa. 53], that the JEWS were led to reject Him. They saw that He possessed power which would MORE THAN COMPENSATE for the lack of these outward advantages [of wealth, pomp, grandeur]. But to the [sinless / PURITY AND HOLINESS of Christ called forth against Him the HATRED [enmity] of the ungodly.
His LIFE [not merely words and professions] of SELF-DENIAL and SINLESS DEVOTION was a perpetual reproof to a PROUD, SENSUAL PEOPLE. It was this the evoked ENMITY against the Son of God [the very promised Seed of the woman, the Messiah, the Lamb of God, Immanuel, God in the flesh].
SATAN and EVIL ANGELS joined with EVIL MEN [the deadly desperate confederacy of evil against truth and righteousness and defined by God’s law]. All the energies of APOSTASY conspired against the Champion [Author and Source] of truth.” -E. G. White, Spirit of Prophecy, Vol. 4, Great Controversy, original 1884 ed., pp. 325-6.
On whose side are you? Against whom and what are you directing and waging your enmity (hatred, animosity, war) against? “By their fruits ye shall know them.” The evidence is stark: either the “fruits of the Spirit” or the “works of the flesh.” (Gal. 5: 15-26).
To be continued next MWM, God willing. Bless all, NMF.