Author: davebunnell

Dave Bunnell, American pastor serving in Romania. Walk of Faith: free grace devotionals, Bible teaching, sermon vids, & evangelism

The Whole Bible in a nutshell?


So what is the Bible really all about? Is there a single theme—a major message—that can be worded concisely, to help someone quickly understand the point of God’s message for us?
Perhaps the point is: “Be good. God is watching.” Or maybe, “Be unselfish to please others, and you’ll be happy.” Or something like, “It will all work out in the end. Justice will prevail, with bad people punished like they deserve, and good people rewarded the same.”
Well, those are some ideas of what people might think the Bible is about, but they all miss the real point.
The good news is we don’t have to guess. Because the Bible already provides an accurate summary description of itself. Calling itself “the Scriptures,” in a passage Paul wrote, the Bible has this to say about just what God’s most important truth is: “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.” (1 Cor. 15:3-4)
That’s the bottom line. That Christ died for our sins, and rose from the dead. It was prophesied in the part of the Bible written before it happened, and it is the banner theme of the part of the Bible written afterward. Christ died for our sins, and rose again.
Notice that it doesn’t just say He died and arose. A lot of nice, religious people know He did that, but still don’t get the point of the Bible, and still don’t have a relationship with God. You need to understand WHY Jesus died to know what God is saying. He died “for our sins.” He didn’t die to found a religion. He didn’t die to set an example of sacrificial living that will please God. He didn’t die for “original sin” or for “the sins of Adam.” He didn’t die to show you how to live, and He didn’t die to show you how to die.
He died for your sins.
He died in your place.
Now, whether you’ve ever read the Bible or not, you already knew all about sin. It’s the reason you lock your doors before going to bed at night. And you already knew that you are a sinner. It’s the reason you wouldn’t want anyone to know about a lot of the secrets you keep.
And when you stand before God, God wants you to know that He isn’t okay with the fact that you have sinned. He isn’t willing to overlook even one of your sins, much less the whole load of them you’ve built up over a lifetime. God is holy. He is perfect. He is totally righteous in all He does. And He will not accept even a little bit of sinfulness into heaven under any circumstances.
But He loves you and me, and wants us to live with Him forever, even though we can’t if there are any sins on our record.
So He did what was necessary to satisfy both His righteous justice and His merciful love. He became a Man—the Man Christ Jesus. He lived a perfect life in our place. And then, even though there was no guilt in Him, He died on the cross. He died for our sins. The Bible had said He would hundreds of years before He came. And in accordance with the Scriptures, He did just what He had promised. He died for our sins.
That means He absorbed all of the punishment of God that we deserve for our sins. So that God could justly punish all of our wrongs, big and small, and still forgive us. Even though we can’t earn the forgiveness for ourselves. He earned it for us by not sinning and by taking the punishment in our place.
But He didn’t just die for our sins—He also came back to life. Because of that, He can be our Savior today, and give to us the eternal life in heaven that He earned in our place by living a perfect life.
You already knew you have sinned. You already knew sin deserves punishment. Now, thanks to God’s word in the Bible, you also know that you can escape the punishment you deserve because of what Christ has done for you.
That’s the message of the Bible for you, in a nutshell. And you must respond to it by personally trusting Christ as your Savior, in order to receive the benefits of Christ’s death in your place. Just knowing about it isn’t enough. You have to make the decision to trust in Christ alone to save you, and commit yourself to that belief. Those who don’t trust in Christ alone as their Savior will die with their sins unforgiven, and they will go to hell for eternal punishment.
Come to Jesus today for salvation. Tell Him you believe you have sinned and deserve punishment. Tell Him you believe that He loves you and died in your place on the cross. Tell Him you are trusting in Him alone to forgive you, cleanse you of sin, and give you eternal life in heaven, just as He promised.
Indeed He does promise that to everyone who comes to Him believing that message. The message God wrote for you in His word. “Christ died for our sins… and He was raised.”

Refreshing the Heart of God


“Like the cold of snow in the time of harvest is a faithful messenger to those who send him; he refreshes the soul of his masters.”
–Proverbs 25:13

In the oppressive heat of late summer, work in the fields under the sweltering sun can become all but unbearable. If you’ve experienced that before, you’ve probably known moments of daydreaming about how wonderful it would feel if for a moment you could have a breeze as cold as the winter air that brings snow. How refreshing that would be!
Solomon’s proverb above describes that refreshing as what it feels like to be a sender of a message, and to find the messenger was faithful to get the message through in a timely manner, accurately presented, to the people you have sent him.
So think about this: As followers of Christ, we have been sent by God with His message of reconciliation to the world of people who need Him.
Let’s be faithful messengers. Let’s make it our priority to go where He sends us, without delay or distraction. Let’s show up where He sends us in the time of His open door. Let’s be faithful to walk with Him in a way that makes us effective proclaimers of His word. Let’s be careful to proclaim it clearly, accurately, boldly, and in love. And let’s be faithful to open our lips to share the gospel every time He wants us to do so.
A faithful messenger refreshes the soul of the one who sent him. If you and I are faithful in the task we’ve been given to deliver His message, we can please God that way. Ask God today to make it the deepest desire of your heart to please Him so.

We won’t just disappear at the rapture


“For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. Then the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.” –1 Thessalonians 4:15-17

With Bible prophecies beginning to unfold right before our eyes this month (if you’re watching what Russia and Iran are up to in regard to Iran’s plans for Jerusalem), it is apparent that more than ever before, we seem to be close to the coming of the Day of the Lord.
As the Body of Christ, for us that means looking forward to what is going to happen to us as God begins to bring that Day upon the world: the event we call the Rapture of the church.
(Speaking of that, if you’ve had conversations with Christians who don’t believe Bible prophecy is literally true, they may have tried to prove their point at some time by saying, “The word ‘rapture’ doesn’t even appear in the Bible.” Well, actually, it does. You see the word rapture is derived into English from the Latin word that means ‘catching up’ or ‘snatching up.’ When we say, “the rapture,” we are literally saying “the catching up.” Which is the exact terminology the Bible uses in 1 Thessalonians 4 to describe the event we usually entitle “The Rapture.” In fact, if you get a Bible in a Latin-based language like Romanian, the actual word “raptured” will be used, where your English Bible says we will be “caught up” in that passage.)
Anyway, though, as we look forward to being raptured, let’s take a moment just to imagine what it will be like. Sometimes in books and movies the event is shown as people just suddenly vanishing, unexpectedly even to them. Suddenly driverless cars crashing and mass mayhem, and the like. (The Left Behind series even had them disappearing from their clothes which fell to the ground.) But is that what is described in the Bible passage above? Hardly.
Now, the Bible does describe our being changed in an instant and being made like Him instantaneously when we see Him, so that our mortal bodies become clothed in the immortal. But that instant is just one piece of the event of the rapture. The event itself isn’t instantaneous, and has a chronology described in the Bible.
Look at the chronology in the passage above of what will really take place. The first thing you’ll notice is that Christ will come for us, and we will be aware of His arrival. He will shout, and we will hear Him, along with the sound of a trumpet and the archangel’s voice announcing Him in some way. And even if the lost world doesn’t hear Him, too, we will still realize He is here and have time in our minds to understand that He has come to call us to Himself. We won’t just suddenly be gone.
Then, after we hear His coming, and perhaps see Him with our eyes, too, before we are caught up, the dead in Christ will rise. All those who have gone to the grave in faith in Christ whose souls have returned with Him in the skies, will receive their resurrection bodies first, before our uprising. Perhaps we will visibly see their resurrections, since it will be a bodily resurrection, just like Christ’s, who was the first to experience this permanent resurrection from the dead. At any rate, some interval of time, brief as it may be, will pass between our realization that He is here for us, and our rapture.
Then, we who are alive in Christ and remain on the earth will be caught up to be with them in the air. We won’t just disappear; we will physically rise up into the sky—the literal sky above the earth, complete with clouds for us to touch. And perhaps the lost people around us being left behind will actually see us rise, not just see us vanish. Because we will, whenever we are changed, still have a physical resurrection body. And it will probably rise in just the way Christ ascended into heaven, when His disciples watched Him flying up, up, and away, and actually saw Him go into a cloud so that He was then hidden from their vision.
The way the Bible tells the event, it is so much more glorious and exciting than the way internet videos portray it, where we’re suddenly just gone. We won’t just disappear. We’ll hear the voice of our precious Savior calling. We’ll stop whatever we’re doing. We’ll hear the celebratory trumpet call. We’ll hear the archangel’s proclamation. We’ll see loved ones who have died in Christ rise again. Then we will be picked up, changed, and fly into the skies to be with the Precious One for whom our hearts beat forever. It will be the most thrilling and fulfilling experience we’ve ever had, and one we should look forward to with eager anticipation.
Maranatha!
“Behold I am coming soon!”

On a side note, the “one will be taken and the other left” passage about Jesus, if you read it in context, isn’t talking about the rapture, but His return to the earth to judge the earth, which will happen later. In that passage, the “taken” ones are taken away to be condemned. That passage, then, shouldn’t be confused with a description of the rapture of the church, leading to a misunderstanding that we’ll just “disappear.”

Watch Your Mouth!

The message from the church this morning was on Ephesians 4:25-5:2, and it looked at how God requires us as followers of Christ to treat one another and speak to one another, as well as how He enables us to obey the high standards of behavior He requires of us. The audio, in English and Romanian, is available for your listening here.

Repentance Defined

Repentance unto salvation is a turning, but not a turning from sin per se. Repentance unto salvation is turning from your self-righteousness and self-justification to come to Christ, confessing that you are a sinner deserving judgment. It is ceasing to believe in the worth of yourself, your goodness, your good works, or your religious activities, and turning instead to trust only in what Christ has done on your behalf to save you. It is acknowledging that faith in Christ alone is really the only thing you have that you can offer to Christ, and the only thing from you He would accept.
It is not turning from sins to receive forgiveness for your past. It is admitting your utter inability to do so, and trusting God to be as merciful as He says He is, so that He will forgive you, even though in your own strength you absolutely cannot turn yourself away from your sins or your sinful nature to follow Him.
And, of course, the only basis upon which God can grant that unearned forgiveness, is that Christ actually did earn it for you, by living a perfectly sinless life in your place, and then dying in your place on the cross, absorbing the punishment you earned, and rising from the grave alive again to save you forever.

What is repentance? “Turning from sins”? No

To many preachers of what is supposed to be the gospel today, repentance means a change in behavior rather than a change in beliefs that allows God to save someone and then Himself cause a change in the heart and the behavior of the redeemed one. When Paul was called upon to summarize the gospel, though, he didn’t even mention the behavior of those being saved, except to say that their behavior was inherently bad, but that Christ died for our sins and rose from the dead. He determined to focus on nothing in his preaching to us except Jesus Christ and Him crucified, because that is the source–the sole source, in fact– of our righteousness.
But when the preachers of today fundamentally misunderstand the meaning of repentance, they wind up defining the gospel’s invitation, not in terms of the cross or of responding to God’s grace in belief, but instead summarize their invitation with something like, God “loves those who turn to Him in repentance, and loves those who cleanse themselves.” Problem is, that isn’t just a random quote. It’s a quote from the muslim Koran, and devout muslims believe it and live by it. But it doesn’t save them. They deny Jesus even died on the cross, which is why they view God’s grace as unnecessary for salvation.
Today, though, there are too many Christian preachers who are truly saved, but who for others change the rules on how to be saved, because of their unwillingness to understand what it means to repent, making it mean something that they can evaluate about the person’s behavior, instead of just a change of heart and belief and trust in Christ.
Perhaps what we need is to hear the words of someone who came out of that “turn away from sin and be good and God will accept you” mentality, into true saving faith in the true and living God.
Ergun Mehmet Caner is such a man. Born and raised a Sunni Muslim in the middle east, he was a believer in that religion not just by birth, but by choice, and he firmly believed in it, even willingly coming to America with his family in the hopes of turning it into a muslim nation submitted to Allah. But after years of trying to persuade him, a Christian friend finally convinced him that Jesus is the true Son of God and the true road to salvation. Caner describes the night of his salvation in a way that will help those who think repentance means “turn from your sins and God will forgive” to understand what it really means. Here are his words:
“For the first time in my life, I came to God with nothing in my hands to try to please Him. I brought nothing but my own repentance and my faith in Christ. Repentance itself is not a ‘good work’ that earns God’s approval. It is surrender–throwing oneself on the mercy of the court. Repentance for me was the end of works. It was an admission that everything I’d ever attempted in an effort to please God had failed. I finally saw that all my works, my best days, my righteousness, were as filthy rags. I threw myself on the mercy of the court. And Jesus declared me righteous, He declared me justified, and He saved me forever.”

August quote of the month

“Man requires God, whether He exists or not, because in His absence Man becomes a devil.”
–Vox Day
The line is the closing of a chapter from the book “The Irrational Atheist,” in which chapter the author very convincingly shows that both in our modern world and throughout history, atheistic morality in government produces oppression, violence, and mayhem greater than that produced by the adherents of any religion, (even Islam, which is intentionally violent and oppressive).

A connoisseur of good preaching

I once heard a Presbyterian pastor in Pennsylvania give his congregation some good advice. He told them to become “connoisseurs of good preaching” recognizing when things are biblically sound, and not to be afraid to discern what is false and reject it.
Well, tonight, rather than “good preaching,” I got to hear what I think was the worst preaching I’ve ever heard. And it was done by an American pastor who came 8,000 miles to bring the message to our fair city. It would take a post longer than his actual message to correct the errors in it, but it was appalling to say the least. He was to preach the gospel. Yet the cross of Christ was not just downplayed, but ignored, earning no mention or allusion whatsoever in the message. He did mention the grace of God three times, but not as an endorsement of it. He mocked what he considered the false idea that “God’s grace is sufficient” for salvation, and further claimed that people who believe God’s grace is sufficient are “on the broad road that leads to hell.” Then He said, “God’s grace only works when you are trying really hard to be good,” His grace helping you to succeed in obtaining said goodness. He then proclaimed that “Jesus demands that we all be legalists.” I’m not kidding. I know that you’ve never heard an outright endorsement of legalism before, but this is what this pastor did tonight. He then equated not being legalistic with committing adultery and said if we love Jesus we will be legalists, having a married couple stand up, proclaiming that if we aren’t legalistic, it is the same thing as if the husband standing there “decides to start dating other women.”
He claimed to have once been on “the broad road to hell, back when I believed God’s grace was sufficient.”
Then, he said, he had an epiphany when he was in Africa and “learned what it really means to be a follower of Christ.” The people he claimed to have worked with there, he said, have had 15 resurrections from the dead in their church, and he said that they are incapable of even having a thought that isn’t about the kingdom of heaven.
Then he gave a heads-bowed, eyes-closed invitation, which consisted of telling these youths, who were mostly Christian because they had come to see a very biblically sound Christian band, that if they have ever had doubts or fears, it is because they are on the wrong road. “And if you want to be a follower of Christ, then you have to stand with me,” he said, also telling them Jesus is ashamed of them if they don’t.
Thankfully, after the unspeakable heresy was over, the band got back up and spent 45 minutes un-preaching his message for him. Each song, including a metal version of Amazing Grace, proclaimed the cross of Christ, and the grace of God that saves us, and is, in fact, all-sufficient. The kids were literally jumping up and down, dancing and singing “Sunt liber!” (I’m free). It was a glorious celebration of the fact that this California pastor’s message was not true. Allelujah, and praise God for redeeming the night from the hands of the enemy.

Does God Really Hear & Answer?


Today’s message at the church was from Acts 12, and looked at how we need not just to pray, but to trust and expect God to hear our prayers and be our help in time of need. You can listen to the audio message here.

The Spirit and the Bride Say “Come”

Here’s the devotional video for the Dallas Sunday at Five that took place July 18. It looks at what the church really has to offer the lost world, and how we should keep our focus on offering it.