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Dawsonville, GA  30534
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Having the Right Slant on the Gospel
 
 
Message Transcribed and Edited
From Audio Tape #883
Preached on June 16, 2002
By Brother Ben Howard
Dawsonville, GA


   First of all I’d like to say, “Happy Father’s Day,” to all the fathers.  I thank God for all the good fathers.  We just had a Mother’s Day, now we have a Father’s Day.  Those are days to honor our parents, and it’s good.  Like I said not to long ago in a message; the father is the head of the house, but the mother is the heart of the house.  It takes both.  You can have a good head, but you need a good heart.  God looked at Adam and said that it wasn’t good for man to be alone, so He made him a helpmeet.  It’s the same with Christ.  He is the head of the Church; but we are to have the feelings of the Church - to edify one another.  We’re the wife of Christ, the heart of the Church.  Therefore, Jesus said, “By this shall all men know that you’re my disciples…, because you love one another.” 
   The Word of God talks about edifying one another, lifting one another up; the body having the same care one member for another.  It also makes good and clear who the head of the Church is.  Christ is the head of all things which pertaineth to the Church; and so is it in a home.  A father can have a good head on him and know how to make a living, but if a splinter gets into a little ones finger, the mother is the one the child runs to, because she is the heart of the house.  Having said that, I would like to take a thought and title it, “Having the Right Slant on the Gospel.”  I looked up the word “slant.”  It’s an amazing little word, even in Webster’s Dictionary.  You can use that word in a lot of different conversations.  You can use it as being bias.  When you look up the word bias, it points you to slant.  Sometimes you have to be a little bit “bias” in this world, don’t you?  I believe Jesus was.  I believe Paul was, as well as the other true Saints of God were.  They had the right slant on the Word.  This thought came to me this week.  
    When looking at what the apostle Paul taught, I believe he had a specific goal in mind; the things that he said pointed you in a certain direction.  We can read in the Word of God and we can find in there about how the flood came, how Enoch walked with God, how Moses delivered the Children of Israel, and all these different things - everything in there is true and is good; but when we come to the gospel, Paul said, “The gospel of YOUR Salvation.” (Ephesians one) We find out that when the gospel went to Israel there were twelve apostles, but when it came to the Gentiles there was one that was a little different from the rest, and the other apostles didn’t associate much with him.  He was one born out of due season.  Well, he had a certain slant on the gospel which made it just right for the Gentiles.  In other words, he didn’t get up and just quote scripture; he wasn’t neutral.  He pointed us in a certain direction; as you will learn as you read this book.
   You can read the Bible and be a neutral person as to which way you’re going.  There’s hardly anyone today that won’t say they believe the Bible.   If you’d ask them if they believe the Bible they would say, “Yes.”  And most of the people would say, “Yes” if you’d ask them if they believe that Jesus Christ was born the Savior and walked around here in the flesh.  Now the point to this is that most everybody says they believe the Bible.  If you asked if they believe that Jesus had twelve apostles, they’d say, “Yes.”  If you would ask if they believe there was a man named John the Baptist; they would say, “Yes.”  But there is no certain slant to it.  There is no certain direction to it.  They believe it in a neutral sense.  Now Paul had a gospel that got him in trouble; because it challenged people.  You could say that Paul was “bias.”  Well, I believe he was when it came to the Gentiles, because he was the apostle to the Gentiles.  Even Peter and the others didn’t want a whole lot to do with Paul.  He was bias on the Word of God as far as what Jesus came to do, what God did through Jesus Christ, and what God was doing then.  He wasn’t happy just going along with the status quo.  They thought, “Paul is bias.  He’s slanting it another way.”  Paul had to slant the gospel toward the Gentiles with a revelation of grace for them, and in doing so, his gospel angered the Jews.  Now that being said; then it is true that Paul was bias, and I’m so glad he was.
    Well, I want to preach this in relationship to a dream that I had recently.  You know how we were talking about Father’s Day earlier, and I brought in the point that the  man is the head of the house, and the woman is the heart.  It kind of works together to make it like the two wings of an eagle; it’ll fly.  Fly little eagle fly.  You’ve got to have it all put together for it to work right.  The masculine part of the body (the ministry) and the feminine part of the body has to come together by revelation…, just like Christ and the Bride - each doing their part…, the head and the heart coming together.


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