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Vanity, Not Pride
Isaiah 14:12-15 Authorized (King James) Version
{Paraphrased} 12 How are you fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How are you cut down to the ground, Which did weaken the nations! 13 For you have said in your heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, In the sides of the north: 14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. 15 Yet you shall be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.
Ezekiel 28:11-19
Authorized (King James) Version
{Paraphrased} 11 Moreover the word of the Lord came to me, saying,
12 Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus, and say to him, Thus says the Lord God; You seal up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty. 13 You have been in Eden the Garden of God; Every precious stone was your covering, The sardius, topaz, and the diamond, The beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, The sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: The workmanship of your tabrets and of your pipes Was prepared in you in the day that you were created. 14 You are the Anointed Cherub that covers {the Throne of God}; and I have set you so: You were upon the Holy Mountain of God; You have walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. 15 You were perfect in your ways from the day that you were created, Till iniquity was found in you. 16 By the multitude of your merchandise They have filled the midst of you with violence, and you have sinned: Therefore I will cast you as profane out of the Mountain of God: And I will destroy you, O Covering Cherub, From the midst of the Stones of Fire. 17 Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty, You have corrupted your wisdom by reason of your brightness: I will cast you to the ground, I will lay you before kings, that they may behold you. 18 You have defiled your sanctuaries by the multitude of your iniquities, By the iniquity of your traffic; Therefore, will I bring forth a fire from the midst of you, It shall devour you, And I will bring you to ashes upon the earth In the sight of all them that behold you. 19 All they that know you among the people shall be astonished at you: You shall be a terror, and never shall you be anymore.
Satan's great self-love, or, vanity (Eze. 28:17), makes him want to be like God (Isa. 14:14). But isn't being like God the goal of the Christian? (Ps. 17:15/ Rom. 8:29/ Eph. 4:22-24; 5:1/ 2 Cor. 3:18/Phil 3:10, 11/ 1 Jn. 3:2, 3). Christians want to be like God in a Father to child capacity (Mt. 18:1-6/ Mk. 10:13-16). To listen to God as child does its parent. A child admires and wants to be like his/ her father. A Christian wants to be like his/ her Father-God. This is how a Christian wants to be like God (Eph. 5:1, 2).
God showed me that He uses Lucifer's rebellion to show all creation that it is impossible to be like God without the Holy Spirit. In the beginning, God called the angels "the sons of God (Job chs. 1, 2/ Gen 6:1, 2). Among us humans, God's children are the born again (Rom. 8:9). In Lk. 15, God calls lost humanity His children, as in the Prodigal son (vv. 11-32). But makes it clear that God's children are those who have a part of Him inside their bodies. That would be referring to the baptism into the Holy Spirit (Acts chs. 1, 2/ Ti. 3:4-7/ Eze. 36:25-27/ Dt. 30:6).
God created angels and humans. Both sinned against God. So, God redeemed us humans showing us by rejecting the devil that only when God is inside someone, can they be like God. So, look at the devil and see that this is what people are like without the Holy Spirit.
Here are scriptures showing that the Holy Spirit is the one that makes us listen to Jesus, makes us obey the Bible. To obey God and pray, read the Bible, go to church and to witness to others about Jesus.
Philippians 1:6 Authorized (King James) Version
{Paraphrased}
6 Being confident of this very thing, that He which has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day Jesus Christ {returns}.
Philippians 2:12-13 Authorized (King James) Version
{Paraphrased}
12 Wherefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. 13 For it is God which works in you both to will and to do {His will, the Word} of His good pleasure.
2 Corinthians 1:21-22 Living Bible 21 It is this God who has made you and me into faithful Christians and commissioned us apostles to preach the Good News. 22 He has put his brand upon us—His mark of ownership—and given us His Holy Spirit in our hearts as guarantee that we belong to Him and as the first installment of all that He is going to give us.
Deuteronomy 30:6 Authorized (King James) Version
{Paraphrased} 6 And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart, and the heart of your seed, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, that you may live.
The Seal of our Salvation
The Holy Spirit is the Seal of our Salvation
"I'm the Seal",
Said the Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit seals our salvation with obedience. This means that He is who makes us pray and listen to God. We seal our salvation by obeying God (Rev. 22:14). The Holy Spirit works in us to obey God. The Lord uses the devil to show us that we need the Holy Spirit to be like God. That without the Holy Spirit, we will not be like God. The Holy Spirit doesn't work in the devil or his people like He does in us, the born-again believer.
To understand that the Holy Spirit is the seal of our salvation, read 2 Cor. 1:21, 22 in the King James Version and then the Living Bible Version. It says that the Holy Spirit is our seal because He makes us faithful to God. This means that the seal of our salvation is obedience to God in the Holy Spirit.
2 Corinthians 1:21-22 Authorized (King James) Version
{Paraphrased}
21 Now He which stablishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, is God; 22 Who has also sealed us, and given the earnest of the {Holy} Spirit in our hearts.
2 Corinthians 1:21-22 Living Bible 21 It is this God who has made you and me into faithful Christians and commissioned us apostles to preach the Good News. 22 He has put his brand upon us—His mark of ownership—and given us His Holy Spirit in our hearts as guarantee that we belong to Him and as the first installment of all that He is going to give us.
Once we get saved, we seal our salvation in the Holy Ghost, or, by obeying God
Revelation 22:14 Authorized (King James) Version
{Paraphrased} 14 Blessed are they that do {God's} commandments, that they may have right to the tree of {eternal} life and may enter in through the gates into the city {the New Jerusalem}.
What Satan Means By being Like God
Bear in mind this message that God uses the devil to show creation that without the Holy Spirit that no one, angel nor man, can obey God, look at Gen 3:5 to see what the devil means by being like God in Isa. 14:14.
Genesis 3:5 Authorized (King James) Version
{Paraphrased} 5 For God does know that in the day you {sin}, then your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
What the Holy Spirit is showing us here, is that the devil is not God's child due to this statement. He is outside of God's Presence and does not think like God nor know God or His word. What the devil means by being like God, is to be another god by knowing good and evil. The devil is outside of God and thinks that being like God means to be a god like Him. He thinks that it is possible to be another god besides God (Isa. 44:8).
Christians want to imitate God as a child wants to be like his/ her dad. Satan doesn't want to imitate God. he wants to dethrone God. Satan wants to be God. He wants to be supreme ruler over all creation. When, in Isa. 14:14, Satan says, "I will be like the Most-High", it's a threat to God as supreme ruler over all creation.
Point taken, let's move on briefly. Adam & Eve were told by the enemy that they would become like God knowing good from evil. But this was not their purpose for living. Their purpose for living is the same as it is today for us Christians: to obey God's Word. Not to illuminate self. God's word is our food (Mt. 4:4). God feeds us with what He says (Jer. 3:15). We are created to listen to God. The only thing that resulted from sin, was death because man is not designed to be a god knowing good from evil. We are designed to do God's Word. There is one path in life. It is the narrow way of the Word of God (Mt. 7:13, 14). There are not two roads that we can go by. There is only life and death (Dt. 30). Not eternal life as another god. So, when Adam & Eve, and we by them, sinned against the Lord, they died instead of became gods.
The devil made the grass look greener on the other side, which means an illusion. He made knowing good and evil look better than their avowed purpose which is to obey God because they were still kids, not knowing the value of God's Presence and the value of listening to God. Obeying God gives eternal life, as Rev 22:14 declares.
The death they experienced was going from obeying God to knowing good from evil. That was a mental regression and spiritual death. That mindset, to know good and evil, is a lesser mindset than the ability inside of the Holy Spirit to be able to listen to God. To be able to listen to God is better than knowing good from evil. Only when people put their faith in Christ will we get the baptism into the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38, 39), the seal of our salvation (2 Cor. 1:22), who does the works of God in us.
Adam & Eve, the human race, was God's special creation because they, unlike the devil and the angels, were created with the ability to obey God in them in the day that they were created. This means that they were God's Housing. This means that we are God's House, the redeemed of the Lamb, Jesus (Rev. 7:9-17). For only in the Holy Spirit can we make it to the New Jerusalem because He is the one that burns in us the fire to obey God (Jer. 20:9).
God has seen that without Him, His creations will not listen to Him. His children, both angel and human, need to be anointed to listen to Him. Both angel and man, our purpose for living is to do the Word of God, or, to listen to God because God's power is His word (Ps. 103:20/ Ecc. 12:12/ Rev. 22:14).
Without the Holy Spirit, we will not have the will to listen to God. Phil. 2:12, 13 says that God works in us both to will and to do His word. The will to do something means the feeling to do it. Without feeling a desire to do something for God, most people will not serve God.
But not only does the Holy Spirit give us the will to do it, He also works in us to do the obeying in us. In reality, this means that we have to decide to do it. But with the will to do something for God, to do whatever God says, serving God is a pleasure and so deciding to do something for God is easy to be done because people do what they like to do, what pleases them. I please myself by pleasing the Lord. We didn't used to be like that before we got born-again.
Being a Christian is a possession by a Ghost, the Holy Spirit (Dt. 7:6). God creates both motives and production of His word in us. But He does not override our will power. He can and does when we need it, when He needs to save us from our own ways. When we don't listen to God, He'll take over and move our body members to do His will so that we don't stray.
The devil overrides our will with force. With a possession, the devil will force us to sin against God. Coercion is torture. As I said, God and His angels can force us to obey but they're good. They respect our freewill and this nourishes instead of tortures us.
What Jesus wants us to do with our will is to choose His word over what we want. God can change all our evil desires at once when we get born again. But He leaves some for us to sanctify and mortify progressively over our lifetime with our love & devotion to Him. As born-again Christians, we are free to do what God says (Gal. 5:1). We are no longer slaves to iniquity (Gal. 5:13). Iniquity is that feeling to pleasure self instead of please God (Gal. 5:24).
Jesus wants us to show Him what He means to us by choosing to listen to Him, to please Him, instead of do what pleases us. For example, someone hits on us for sex. We crucify the self-pleasure, pleasing ourselves, to listen to God. To want God more than this life is the work of the Holy Spirit (Lk. 14:25-33). This means that the reason that we choose to please God is because that is the desire that we want to satisfy in us. Not fornication, or, sinful orgasm. This is what it's like to be born-again. The world will hate us for being like this because we are not their own (Jn. 15:19).
The Holy Spirit wants to close this message with a word,
"You know how to obey Me, and you will be with Me forever!"
World without end. Amen.