Understanding Angels in the Bible. Part 9 Are Angels Sexless Invisible Spiritual Beings?

(Ver 1.2)  This is Part 9 of a series of advanced lessons on the subject of the reality of angels found in the Bible.  I have already covered a lot of information on the subject so if you have not read this series from the beginning I would recommend that you go back and start with “Part 1”.  Today’s Bible lesson is directed at and designed for spiritually mature Christian believers.  If you are not one of these, please just go read somebody else’s Bible lessons for today.  I will be discussing some mature subject matter and some things that I do not wish to offend anyone with.  Please evaluate your heart and be led to know if you are strong enough not to be offended and only then continue reading this lesson.    This Bible lesson will also no doubt be very long since I will attempt to answer 4 or more complex questions in one Bible lesson.  I probably should have broken it down into smaller chunks but you can do that on your own if you want.  The information specified is divided into chunks with the subject headings given.  So take them slowly and read them all at your own pace.   Learn everything you can about each subject given and have fun doing it.

I recently got a comment from someone on one of my angel series Bible lessons that raised some direct points about angels which require further explanation, scriptural clarification and reemphasis.  I did a Bible lesson on how the Bible says that some of the angels that fell with Satan came to the earth and physically had sex with the women of the earth to produce a race of giants.  This lesson came directly from the information contained in Genesis chapter 6 as well as several supporting scriptures in other parts of the Bible.   My commenter suggested that my lesson on Genesis 6 was in error because he believed that this was impossible for angels to accomplish.  He presented what he thought were three or four primary conflicts found in the Bible with what I taught.  First he said angels were sexless spiritual beings that do not marry or are given in marriage therefore it is impossible for them to have sexual intercourse with a human female like I was teaching.  Second he said that angels could not be physically seen by humans because of Balaam’s experience while riding on the donkey in Numbers 22.  Finally he emphasized that the Bible says that angels are “ministering spirits” so therefore they have no physical presence to even have natural sex.   He uses approximately 3 or 4 verses to help prove his point and we will review them all plus many new ones that he did not include or mention.  My commenter has basically raised four points or questions which require in-depth answers:

  1. Are ALL angels called genderless, sexless, nonsexual or asexual beings anywhere in the Bible?
  2. Are ALL angels defined as being only spirits anywhere in the Bible?
  3. Are ALL angels consistently invisible and never able to manifest in the physical world to be seen?
  4. Who are the “sons of God” mentioned in Genesis chapter 6 according to the Bible if NOT angels?

These are the basic questions that I will attempt to focus in on from the facts given to us in the Bible.  There are over 280 verses in the Bible that directly mention angels by a form of that word title.  There are probably at least that many verses in the Bible that speak of angels indirectly by calling them by some other name, title, symbolic description or other hidden reference.  If we include titles, names and descriptions for Lucifer, Satan, demons, unclean spirits, Michael and Gabriel in the Bible the number of references to angels probably doubles again.  So we have the potential for over 1000 verses to research.    That is just too many Bible verses about angels for us to review them all in this lesson, but that does not mean they are not all important to know or learn.  What I want to do is to emphasize that there is more than one truth on the subject of angels found in the Bible.  We cannot take any one isolated truth and try to make it the entire truth or we will become confused.  We must therefore take into account every verse that we can find on the subject to observe and accumulate as many of the facts as we can.  Only by balancing every fact can we even come close to the knowledge of the actual complete truth.

Let me give you an example of what I am saying.  If I said that I bought a new car that is a single truth, but that is certainly not all of the truth that you may need to know in order to have a complete understanding of my car.  Was it a brand new car from a dealership or just a new car for me?  Was it a little car or a big car?  Who was the manufacturer of the car?  What was the model of the car?  What was the year of the car’s manufacture?    What color was the car that I got?  What options or features did it have?  What kind of motor did it have?  Was it a hybrid?  Was it fuel efficient?  On and on I could go to get more and more of the details by asking the right questions.  This is what people need to do when they study the Bible.  Observe the facts given to us in one verse as established truths, but then ask more detailed questions to expand our knowledge of the subject under discussion.  Only by digging deep in the Bible can we resolve the questions and fully understand the subjects.

Getting Back to the Basics!  What is an Angel?

Let’s review some of the basic facts about angels.  This is called getting back to the basics on the subject.  Ezekiel 28:14-15 describes Lucifer as being the anointed cherub and God informs us that Lucifer was a created being.  We can learn from this verse that an angel can be anointed by God just like a natural man can be anointed.  We can also easily conclude that every angel was a created being by a universal group association.  Nehemiah 9:6 seems to say that the hosts of heaven were made by God.  We also know from reading in Hebrews 1:5 that angels are not physically born beings exactly like humans are.  We can easily learn that angels can never die by reading Luke 20:36.  We also can understand that the reason that angels cannot die is because according to Hebrews 1:14 and Psalm 104:4 that angels are first and foremost spirit beings.  The angel’s spiritual domain or home is stated to be in heaven (Mat 24:36, Heb 12:22).  We can also surmise that angels have freewill according to Isaiah 14:12-14 and Jude 1:6.  Based upon this information we can conclude that angels are now divided into two general groups that I will call the faithful and the fallen.  We further have learned that angels are not omnipresent beings (Job 1:7, Dan 10:13).  We can also ascribe that angels are not omniscient beings (1 Cor 2:8, 1 Peter 1:12).  Finally we can see that angels are not omnipotent beings according to Daniel 10:12-13 and Rev 12:7.  However, we can also see that angels have great supernatural power (Gen 19:11, 19:13, 2 Kings 19:35).  These are just some of the basic truths surrounding angels but that is not the entire truth about angels found in the Bible. 

What we begin to realize is that angels possess many qualities that are similar to humans.  We also can see many qualities that are different than humans.  Two of the main words translated as “angel” are the Hebrew “H4397” and the Greek “G32” and their word meaning is “someone sent as a messenger”.  Clearly the Bible definitions of these words translated as angel immediately contradicts with my commenter’s point that angels cannot manifest in the natural realm to bring a message from God to the natural people on the earth.  If angels are the designated messengers of God they must be able to communicate with any of the natural people on the earth at any time in one of the following ways:

  1. Angels must manifest in the natural realm to be seen or heard through the natural senses.
  2. The voice of angels must be heard internally by the human spirit or the human mind as a thought.
  3. Angels must be seen and heard in a dream while sleeping.
  4. Angels must be seen and heard in a spiritual vision either closed or open.

I do not have the time to explain every angelic speaking option and all of their details in this lesson.  If you do not understand everything, I have several other Bible lessons that explore them in more depth.  We can find so many examples of angels in the Bible performing these types of communications with natural people and that is where we will go next.

Can Angels Manifest to be Seen by the Natural People on the Earth?

Num 22:23  And the ass saw the angel of the LORD standing in the way, and his sword drawn in his hand: and the ass turned aside out of the way, and went into the field: and Balaam smote the ass, to turn her into the way.

According to my commenter NO angel can be seen by humans because Balaam could not see the angel that was standing directly in front of him.  I actually find this verse fascinating because the animal that Balaam is riding upon is said to see the angel but not Balaam.  I believe that this is very informative about the supernatural ability of angels to selectively appear.  But, according to my commenter this story proves that angels are spirits that cannot ever be seen by the natural human eye.  The only problem with that assertion is that there are too many other Bible examples that are being ignored to establish an independent unproven truth.  I want to see if the Bible says that angels have appeared to anyone on the earth in any form, method or fashion.  I want to be open to find what the Bible directly says about the circumstances, the surroundings, the timings, the context, the reason for the appearance and the individual participants named.  I have gone through the Bible in some depth to discover a sequence of occurrences and I will list some of the examples in the following table.   

Manifestation Type

Being Sent/Reason

Appeared To

Bible Reference

Physical Presence on the Earth Angel sent from God with a message to Hagar Genesis 16
Physical Presence on the Earth Two Angels sent to Sodom to deliver Lot’s Family but not recognized as angels Lot, his family and the city Genesis 19
Dream Angels appear to Jacob Genesis 28:12
Dream Angel appears to Jacob Genesis 31:11
Physical Presence on the Earth Angels seen by Jacob Genesis 32:1
Physical Presence on the Earth Angel appears as a flame of fire Moses Exo 3:2
Vision Angel sent to stop Balaam Balaam Num 22:31
Physical Presence on the Earth Angel seen by David 2 Samuel 24:17
Physical Presence on the Earth Angel brings food to the prophet touching him to awaken Elijah 1 Kings 19:5-7
Physical Presence on the Earth Angel catches away the physical man Elijah observed by Elijah and Elisha 2 Kings 2:11
Vision Chariots and horses of fire seen by Elisha and the servant 2 Kings 6:17
Physical Presence on the Earth Angel sent with message from God to Israel Judge 2:1
Physical Presence on the Earth Angel with a message from God appears face to face to Gideon Judge 6:11-22
Physical Presence on the Earth Angel appears to Barren Woman Judge 13:3
Physical Presence on the Earth Angel appears but is not recognized to be an angel Manoah Judges 13:16
Vision Angel appears to Daniel Daniel 12:7
Dream Angel appears to Joseph Mat 1:20
Dream Angel appears to Joseph Mat 2:13-19
Physical Presence on the Earth Angel appears sitting in the tomb of Jesus to Mary and Mary Magdalene Mark 16:5
Vision Angel Gabriel appears to Zacharias Luke 1:11
Physical Presence on the Earth Angel Gabriel appears to Mary Luke 1:26-28
Physical Presence on the Earth Angel appears to strengthen Jesus Luke 22:43
Vision Angel appears in a vision to Cornelius Acts 10:1-3
Physical Presence on the Earth Angel delivers Peter from prison physically touching Peter Acts 12:7

 I would recommend that you go through the entire chapters given and read all of the surrounding verses to get the complete message specified about angels. Also these are certainly not every occurrence of the manifestation of angels found in the Bible.  I only showed you these to prove that angels can be seen in various forms and ways by people in the natural realm.  If you read every example closely you can see that the angels also interact physically with the people on the earth at times by touching them, speaking to them, and many other things.  The method of appearance may vary and the form that they take may also vary.  But, that is the demonstrated power of God and angels working together for good.  It also reveals that evil can be equally accomplished by the angels that are not faithfully obedient to God.  What I try to do is to teach people that we must not put God or other spiritual beings in our little box and try to place limitations to what we think that they can accomplish in the natural realm.  Notice that I have given you over 20 examples of angels being seen by natural people directly on the earth.  These displayed manifestations of angels prove that they can be seen both spiritually and physically.  What we have just learned is a basic reality that angels are at times invisible and at other times completely visible and that helps us to ask some new questions about how this is possible.

What we are doing is expanding our knowledge of the spiritual realm.  What we are learning is how easy it is that sometimes people can draw wrong conclusions using only a small number of limited known facts.   What is required is the acquisition of more facts that will help us to increase our understanding on the subject being studied.  This is actually a very important concept while studying any subject in the Bible.  Do not draw or leap to conclusions until you have all of the facts.  Keep your mind fluid and open filling it with more and more facts.  Then do not guess, presume or assume anything.  To be presumptive is one of the greatest dangers in achieving erroneous Bible interpretations.  What is a presumptive assertion?  A presumptive conclusion of error is always based upon human ignorance with no supporting facts or evidence from God.  This erroneous position is an un-provable declaration with limited information being promoted as the complete information. 

Presumptive behavior is very much like when people today say that God does not exist because they have never seen God.  Whether you have personally seen God or not, never proves God’s existence for anyone nor does it prove that God cannot be seen by anyone else.  People who have never seen God could have never looked for Him.  People who have never seen God could have looked in the wrong places for Him.  People that have never seen God probably have never considered the fact that God may not want to be seen right now at this moment.  It is like looking for your child if they do not want to be found by you and that simply means they are hiding until they decide to jump out an suddenly reveal themselves.  People who have never seen God have not been everywhere on the earth or in the universe, or even into the unknown spiritual dimension so there is no way that anyone can prove there is no God by their limited knowledge and experiences.  Therefore their word of assertion that there is no God is simply presumptive foolishness.

There are just too many reasons why some things cannot be proven without facts. There is a great illogical presupposition that occurs when people try to use their limited human knowledge to proclaim something about a subject that is as all-encompassing and complex as the existence of God or angels, what they are capable of and what they can or cannot do in either the natural realm or the spiritual realm.  Here is the basis of the illogical problem, just because I have not seen an angel does not prove that no one has ever seen an angel.  That would be entirely ignorant of me to make that assumption.  The same is true when we read the story about Balaam in the Bible, just because Balaam did not see the angel at first does not prove that anyone else in the Bible never saw an angel.  It would be illogical and ignorant to attempt to stretch the story of Balaam to say that.  Now if we can find a verse of truth that says that angels cannot be seen, then that verse would change the situation of factual knowledge.   But, just because we read about one man that could not see the angel it does not prove that no one can see an angel and the Bible proves this repeatedly as I have already demonstrated.   Do not make a wrong assumption based upon one man’s experience, base your beliefs only upon all of the facts presented.  

Can Spirits Have Bodies?

We have proven conclusively that angelic spiritual beings can manifest in the physical world and be seen and even be touched.  So they have physical presence at certain given times and situations.  Now I’m going to talk about a new concept that is very important.  Do any angelic spirits have bodies?  I can speak using me as an example and say from a human perspective my eternal and internal spirit has a mortal body.  This truth is also true for you.  We know that Paul writes to the church “to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord” (2 Cor 5:8).  Christian spirits will depart their body to be in heaven after the death of the body.  So we must then ask ourselves, do eternal angelic spirits have eternal spiritual bodies or are they like the spirits of people after they die?  Here is the complexity of a new subject called the resurrection.  People on the earth die and leave their bodies behind on the earth, but this is only a temporary situation until the redemption of our bodies is accomplished (Rom 8:23).  The subject of the resurrection will be the focus of this section of the lesson.  Here is a verse that my commenter tried to confirm his conclusion that angels have no bodies:

Heb 1:14  Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?

I have to agree that if this was the only verse that I studied about angels that it appears to say that they are spiritual beings like when the people on the earth after they have died and left their bodies.   As we can all see angels are called “ministering spirits” and we can all just automatically know or more precisely again “assume” that spirits have no bodies either spiritual or physical.  Do you understand yet, the problem in making that kind of assumption based upon no confirming knowledge or stated facts in this verse?  Did you read anywhere in this verse where it says that an angel has no body?  I did not see it; the emphasis was clearly on the spiritual part of the angel, but that does not mean they do not have a physical part.  Therefore to say angels do not have a body is an assumption at this point of time with the given information. 

We cannot make assumptions about things that we do not yet have any facts to confirm or we will just come up with a new baseless theory, like scientists have done with evolution.  Do you know what a theory is?  A theory is any stated position that is based upon human ignorance of the subject under discussion.  Theories whether educated, reasoned or purely invented are never based upon all of the facts since all of the facts are not known.  If all of the facts were known, theories would be unnecessary.  Facts will always trump theories, but facts must first be discovered.  Theories will always have to bow their knees to the facts of truth found in discovery.  Since none of us on the earth have ever lived in the spiritual realm we are at the mercy of learning about the spiritual realm from the facts that are presented to us in the Word of God.  I want you to understand that just because we think we might know a handful of the facts, does not mean that there are not still hundreds of other new facts that are still left to be discovered.  I will introduce you to a scripture that my commenter did not mention but it is relevant none-the-less.  Jesus while speaking of His resurrected body said to us that spirits do not have flesh and bone in Luke:

Luk 24:39  Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.

Wow, am I trying to make this more complicated on purpose?  This appears on the surface to be further confirmation to what my commenter was saying.  Jesus clearly says that “spirits do not have flesh and bone”.  However, that is not exactly all that Jesus said.  You see you have to pay very close attention to every word spoken and not just a select few that you want to see to make your point.  Jesus does not say that a spirit has no flesh or no bones; He said they do not have flesh and bones like mine and that is a completely different statement and changes the meaning entirely.  If I said, “you do not have a car like mine”, does that mean that you do not have a car, or does that mean that your car is different than my car?  I firmly believe that it means that Jesus’ resurrected body was not like their body.  It is very clear to me that angels must have a spiritual body, but that it is just not a body exactly like the resurrected body of Jesus with nail prints and scars.  Do you understand that logic?  This will lead me to my next set of points that we need to grasp fully.  Here is another verse that my commenter thought was his best reason for why angels are sexless spiritual beings:

Mat 22:30  For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.

According to my commenter he has concluded that since God says that angels do not marry and we all know that people do marry, that people can therefore have sex and angels therefore cannot have sex.  Again this is an example of making a verse say what it does not say and actually ignoring what it does say.  All of these scriptures that my commenter gave me sounded like really good arguments until we actually study them in more depth and read the rest of the Bible on the subject of angels.  Let’s talk about what this verse in Matthew is about within the stated context and then determine what facts are presented and what conclusions we can logically learn from them.  If you read the verses that precede this one you will see some Jewish men asking Jesus a question concerning the Law of Moses.  If a man married a woman and had no children and dies, the man’s brother was required to marry the woman to “raise up seed” for his brother.  In their story this occurs repeatedly for seven brothers and one wife and they then ask Jesus after the resurrection in the eternal spiritual realm, whose wife will this woman be since she was married to each brother in the natural realm?  Technically speaking the subject context is the resurrection and not the marriage or the sex, but the marriage and the sex was where their mind was focused and Jesus’ answer is greater than their thoughtless reasoning.  That is the context of the verse concerning marriage.  What did Jesus say in response?  Jesus told these men they did err not knowing the scriptures or the power of God and then He goes on to tell them that people on the earth will be resurrected to become like the angels and that they will neither marry or be given in marriage.  Here is where we need to stop and think and ask some new questions. 

  1. Does that mean resurrected people will all have sexless bodies? 
  2. Does that mean resurrected people will no longer have the ability to have sex? 
  3. Or the best question to start with is; do resurrected people have bodies at all?

These are some really tough questions.  They however will reveal much if we dig to find the answers.  Before we try to answer the questions, let’s examine what exactly was stated in Matthew 22:30 and what does it mean without stretching it to say anything it does not say?  I want to list what the verse says and then I will list what it does not say.  Here are the stated facts that I can see being presented to us in this lesson from Jesus:

  1. Marriage is not an option after the resurrection.
  2. People on the earth that were married here will not be married to each other in the spiritual eternal realm.
  3. People on the earth will no longer have a mortal body that will die.
  4. People on the earth after the resurrection will be like the angels.

Here is what the verse does not say:

  1. It does not say that angels do not have sex.
  2. It does not say that angels cannot have sex.
  3. It does not say that resurrected people do not have the ability to have sex.
  4. It also does not say that angels do not have bodies.

These are simply all of the facts that I could come up with off the top of my head.  If I try to make this verse in Matthew say anything else then I would be stepping into the realm of theoretical speculation and that be a wrong action to take.  What we need to do is to learn what else the Bible reveals on the subject of the resurrection in order to determine the factual truths to answer the questions that we have developed.  Here is a very relevant verse about the resurrection that we need to apply to what we have just learned:

1Co 15:44  It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.

If you read the entire chapter you will clearly see that this verse is about the resurrection from the dead that will occur very soon.  Further it answers the question do resurrected people have bodies.  It also reveals the factual existence of “spiritual bodies” and the potential that spirits might have one.  Therefore God reveals there are two different kinds of bodies in existence today.   Sowing and reaping of seeds is one of the primary subjects of this verse and God informs us that the seed that is sown is our natural human body and the crop that is reaped is our new spiritual body.  This verse is very informative and profound using created concepts to explain how spiritual things will work.  It states that one seed produces one crop.  It also reveals the crop to be greater than the seed sown. 

In the natural realm the seed sown always determines the crop produced.  This law of self-sustaining propagation must also apply to this lesson of the resurrection or God would not have mentioned it.  In other words the unique seed that was sown (our body) in the natural realm must also determine the unique crop produced in the spiritual realm.  In the natural realm no two humans are exactly alike.  Each has unique fingerprints, DNA, spirits and other characteristics that make us all different seeds to God.  So let me ask you this, if I am a human natural male seed, will I produce an eternal spiritual male body or a new sexless spiritual crop?  If I produced a sexless crop the seed would have had to have mutated, been altered or changed.  If I was a sexless seed here on the earth I would have to say I would become a sexless crop in the resurrection, but since I am not sexless and neither are you, I have to conclude that what is produced in the spiritual body must directly resemble the natural body seed that was planted to produce it.  I mean come on, a corn seed does not produce broccoli.  Here are some more very relevant verses on the subject of the resurrection:

2Co 5:1  For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

2Co 5:2  For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven:

2Co 5:3  If so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked.

2Co 5:4  For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life.

 I pray that these verses are not too complex for you.  God is not describing two housing projects; He is describing your body before the resurrection and after the resurrection.  God says that when this earthly body is taken away, it will be replaced with a new heavenly body that will remain forever.  The mortal will be swallowed up by the immortal.  Both are bodies that clothe, covers, or cloak our spirits.  Our spirits will forever be housed inside of a body.  One body was mortal and one will be eternal.  This really is not that complicated, but people miss it every day.   These are verses that apply to us becoming like the angels that we read about in Matthew 22:30.  These verses say our resurrected bodies will be like the bodies of the angels in heaven that also never die.  These verses practically prove the existence of angelic bodies.  If angels did not have eternal spiritual bodies then the Bible becomes a lie.

After Jesus was resurrected from the dead was He a sexless being?  You see you cannot find that lie in the Bible.  Jesus was the risen Son of God and not a sexless child of God.  Jesus is still called the Bridegroom a male dominated reality and He did not change or transform from His naturally sown seed body that He possessed.  Therefore, I have concluded that it is only logical to believe that both males and females will exist after the resurrection from the dead.  If this is true then males and females must have existed before the resurrection from the dead in the angelic realm because Jesus said that we will all become as the angels of God.  Uh oh that makes the existence of female angels a required reality.  If female angels do not exist then resurrected female humans cannot exist in order to be like them.  It also dictates that every angel has a spiritual body that does not die like the ones that we will possess soon.  Therefore, we must conclude that there exists spiritual bodies and that they are comprised of spiritual male and female bodies and that they are no different in features and characteristics from the sown seed natural bodies that produced them.  Let’s continue to study by searching to see if angels are called sexless in the Bible.

Are Angels Sexless Beings?

We clearly know that angels are spirit beings based upon what we read about them in Hebrews 1:14.  But we also learned that even spiritual angels have spiritual bodies by reading 1 Corinthians 15:44.  What is a spiritual body?  Is a spiritual body one that we cannot see, one we cannot touch or one that does not have sexual organs?  I believe that it would be an inconsistent definition and one that cannot be confirmed with the rest of the Bible if we try to we tried to extend the definition of the angelic spiritual body to be anything other than a body that will never die.  Also I believe that a spiritual body cannot be a body that does not have any physical substance or the disciples would not have been able to see and to touch Jesus after He was raised from the dead.  Further the Bible says that the resurrected Jesus ate with the disciples after being raised from the dead proving He still had internal organs that could process natural food. Therefore, a spiritual body by definition can only be a body that does not ever experience death.   

We should know from reading the Bible that God is a Spirit according to John 4:24.  But we also know that humans are called spiritual beings in verses like 1 Thessalonians 5:23.  We further understand by casual observation that people on the earth come in two basic varieties with many individual examples or each, either male or female.  Now, let me ask you this very basic question: Was our God ever referred to as a sexless spiritual being in the Bible?  Has our God ever been referred to as a female spiritual being in the Bible?  If you do the research you will have to answer NO to both of those questions.  God is always referred to in the masculine male perspective when referenced, described or named.  If God is a male spirit, then can there exist a female spiritual being?  If you do not think so, why would God bother to call himself a Male if it does not matter or if no female spirits did exist?  You only label or qualify a noun with an adjective in order to differentiate one type of the noun from another noun of like variety.  I am called a husband to distinguish me as being different from my wife.  I believe that it definitely matters how we view our God.  If you view Him as a sexless spirit God you have perverted His word and made it a lie.  If you view your Spirit of God as a female God you have perverted His word and again made it a lie.  

I logically believe that I cannot begin to define what a male is or even understand the concept of spiritual maleness without the existence of a counterpart female spiritual being.  Do me a favor and go to the dictionary and see how they define the word male.  A male is always defined by the distinctive human physical characteristics that are different from a female.  So how do you understand what a male is without a female existence?  It would be like trying to describe to someone what the direction east was if no west direction existed.  How could you do that?   One of the only ways that you understand the direction of east is by the existence of the antithesis west direction.  Why would God call Himself a male if He is not one?  Go through your Bible and find me one scripture that says that God is either a stated female or a sexless spirit.  I do not believe that you can find it and if you did it would contradict with the many other verses that say He is a male spirit.  God is always called by masculine titles, names and descriptions.  God is only called our “Father” and never our mother in over 200 verses in the Bible.  A “Father” is always a male procreator and never the female recipient.  God is also called the “Husband” and the “Bridegroom” and never the female bride in His Word.  God is always called King and never a queen.  Jesus Christ is called a man and the Son of Man consistently in the Bible.  These are all male titles of leadership, headship and authority.  That is very clear to me that it matters what we think and how we think on the subject of God’s sex and His position in the spirit world.  If God is not sexless and calls Himself a male spirit, then there has to exist both male and female spirits by implied definition and direct antithesis association.  Let’s examine a short list of Bible verses that reveal angels are also not sexless spiritual beings either:

Male/Female

Description

Reference

Male Angels are called men by the men in Sodom and by God in the chapter Genesis 19:5, 19:10, 19:12
Male Angel called a man of God Judges 13:6-8
Male Lucifer called a son Isaiah 14:12
Male Angel described appearing as a man Daniel 8:15
Male Angel Gabriel called a man Daniel 9:21
Male Michael called a chief prince Daniel 10:13, 21
Male Angel appears to Mary in the tomb of Jesus as a man Mark 16:5
Male Satan called the prince of the world John 12:31, 14:30, 16:11
Male Angels on the earth called prince the male rulers 1 Cor 2:8
Male Satan called the prince of the power of the air a male ruler Ephesians 2:2

 I just gave you 10 very good witnesses that say angels exist in the form of males.  These are all very clear references that demonstrate angels are not sexless beings.  You never call any being either natural or spiritual a man, a prince or a son if they are not one.  These are all self-evident scriptures that directly reveal the existence at minimum of male angels and by implication the existence of female angels.  Since the existence of female angels is not the main issue of my commenter I do not need to prove the existence of female angels.  I believe that female angels must exist by God’s stated usage of the male adjectives and pronouns that are used to describe some of them and the implied antithesis that these convey. My goal today is to prove the existence of angels as males in order to confirm that they can have sexual relationships with the natural female women on the earth if they choose to do so.   What I have done is shown you more than verses that describe some angels as being males.  A male is what?  Did you look up the word in the dictionary?  A male is a being spiritual or natural with male sexual organs and ONLY this differentiates them from females.  So far we have addressed the reality that angels can be seen, that they have a spiritual body, they are not sexless and that their body must resemble our resurrected body.  These are the stated facts so far that confirm my Bible lesson but I have a lot more that needs to be addressed.

Who are the Sons of God in Genesis 6, Angels or Men?

6:2  That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.

Gen 6:4  There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.

Two times here in Genesis chapter 6 I believe that angels are called the “sons of God”.  These are of course the controversial verses that are in dispute that people like to try to explain away.   Clearly we can see that some beings are called the “sons” of God and that is what we need to determine next.  Who are these “sons of God”?   What I want you to understand is the reason that my commenter is disputing these verses to be angels.  Since the noun “sons’ is used that designates the existence of male attributes and because of the implied marriage and the sexual relationship mentioned that conflicted with his interpretation of Matthew 22:30 that angels cannot have sex because they do not marry.  I can see how that can become a potential problem for someone who does not know the facts.  However, we have already seen in the Bible repeatedly that angels are called men and by other male titles.  So angels definitely qualify to be the stated “sons of God” in these verses by direct definition and association.  My commenter wrote these verses off because they designate that angels are not sexless, that they can marry and that they have to be more than spirits.  What I want you to do is to understand that just because God says that angels are not supposed to marry does that mean that they cannot marry?  Let me ask you this question, was Lucifer supposed to sin or was Lucifer created to be sinless and to remain sinless but he decided to sin?  Those are excellent questions to consider.  I believe that just because a being is created not to do something does not mean that they cannot do it if they choose to rebel.  It is like in the natural world when people pass laws for people not to speed, but yet people speed every day.  This is where the freewill of men and angels becomes a factor.  We see that reality demonstrated and repeated in the life of Adam and what he chose for us all.  We must be able to conclude that because angels are not supposed to marry, that it does not mean they cannot marry.

So because my commenter rejected my interpretation of Genesis 6, he had to come up with an alternative explanation for the reality of who the “sons of God” were.  He basically told me that the only difference between the “sons of God” and the “daughters of men” were that the sons were the human descendants of Seth and that the daughters of men were the human descendants of Cain.  However that is just very poor unfounded human reasoning that cannot be substantiated with any confirming scriptures and it basically tries to teach us that one human race cannot legally marry into another race.  People creatively change the words in the Bible to create explanations that fit what they want to believe.  Notice that the “daughter’s of men are not the daughters of Seth anywhere.  “Daughters of men” are always generic for every female descenant from Adam.  One of the main problems with this assertion is that it sounds like racism and I’m not going to go there because it is based upon ignorance.  In order to confirm his theory we would first need to find some scriptures that says the “sons of God” were any of the human males from Seth but that is not found anywhere in the Old Testament.  Humans are never called the sons of God until after Jesus is raised from the dead and the church is born from above to become the spiritual sons of God.  Next we would have to find where it says that Seth had only males and that Cain had only female children, since that was the reason for the separate title distinctions given to us according to my commenter.  What we can see developing is an implied philosophy of prohibited interracial marriage where one race cannot marry another race of human descendants of the family of Adam.  We can clearly see that this is an unfounded teaching in the New Testament.  If the race of Seth cannot marry the race of Cain we have several major new problems and still no explanations to why this would have cause giants on the earth.  God does not say that any race should not marry any other race anywhere until after Israel became a nation and God only commanded them not to intermarry with other nations to keep them from the idols of those other godless nations.  However even Jesus’ genealogy teaches us that Gentiles were included in the nation of Israel with the addition of Rahab and Ruth.  Both of these women were faithful to God and they helped to bring His messiah into the world.  So God permitted such exceptions of inter-racial marriages depending upon circumstances and the conditions of the hearts of the women. 

When we start deviating from the Word of God it is easy to find contradictions to shoot them down.  Genesis 5:7 informs us that Seth had both sons and daughters and in Genesis 4:17 God says that Cain also had sons.  Therefore, both of these verses are conflicting with my commenter’s wrong interpretation that the sons of Seth wrongly married the daughters of Cain to produce the giant race.  The sons of God (males) can only be associated to be angels and the daughters (females) of man can only be associated with all human women from every descendant of Adam’s family.  No other interpretation can be confirmed using the Bible.  Only the unity of the angels with human females could have produced the perverted race of giants that existed in the days prior to the flood.  No other explanation can produce the stated result or explain how this occurred.  What we need to do is to research where else in the Bible the term “sons of God” is mentioned and then interpret them all together the same way to be consistently correct in all of our of interpretations.  This is called letting the Bible interpret itself and it is critical to getting the truth.  The term “sons of God” are the Hebrew words “ben Elohiym”.  This specific combination of Hebrew words together only appears in 5 verses in the entire O.T.  So God must be revealing something by their limited usage.  Let’ go to the only other references to “sons of God” and see what God reveals to us about them:

Job 1:6  Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them.

Job 2:1  Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them to present himself before the LORD.

Job 38:7  When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

I cannot read any of these three verses and see anything but angles being the “sons of God”.  It is impossible to say that they are the sons of Seth.  It is impossible to call them human at all.  If you read them all in context you will see that these sons of God appeared in heaven (a spiritual realm) before the very throne of God and they have returned there to be in the presence of God only after coming back from the earth.  Had any human ever done that before Jesus died?  I do not believe that you can find where a human in the Bible came from the earth to present themselves before the throne of God only to then returns back to the earth and then to again return back to heaven one chapter later.  This can only describe an angelic being that is capable of coming and going from both realms of dimension.   The key to understanding what is happening here in Job is found in the dream that Jacob had of the spiral stair case that went from the earth up into the heavens where he also saw the angels ascending and descending.  This is exactly what is happening in the book of Job.  Let’s review this verse to make sure you don’t miss it because it is very important to the interpretation of Job:

Gen 28:12  And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.

If the angels ascended and then came back descending from heaven this perfectly describes and matches what is happening in the book of Job to the letter.  If you do not see that then you are clearly very blind.  In this verse in Genesis the angels of God are the described beings that go back and forth.  No human has ever done that in the Bible except for the Lord Jesus Christ who was the first.  Do you recall when Jesus arose from the dead and He appeared at the tomb to Mary and He told her not to touch Him because He had not yet ascended to His Father in heaven?  So Jesus was the first man that ascended into heaven from the earth to cleanse the temple in heaven with His shed blood (John 20:17, Col 1:20, Heb 9:11:14) and then to return physically to appear to His disciples.  We can therefore conclude that the “sons of God” referred to in Job are the angels of heaven and based upon this knowledge we must conclude that the “son of God” in Genesis 6 are also the same types of angels by direct named association.  Also, if you go back and reread the context of Job 38:7 you will see God speaking of the creation of the earth.  In the context three verse later the “sons of God” are shouting for joy about the works of God hands.  We have to say that these “sons of God” that shouted are the angels in heaven since man did not yet exist on the earth when this was accomplished.  This is really not rocket science and it is not that hard to grasp, but you do have to be open to receive it.   There can really be no other valid Bible interpretation based upon what God said in His Word; the “sons of God’ are angels of God.

Can Angels Physically Manifest on the Earth?

I believe that I have already shown you multiple verses that angels are called by male dominant titles and descriptions and that they can physically appear on the earth.  Therefore, do not think that because angels are described as spiritual beings that they are not also sexual beings. I have already taught you generally speaking that angels have spiritual bodies that we will obtain to after the resurrection.  Now I want to reemphasize the fact that these spiritual heavenly beings can have a physical presence on the earth to do many things and even natural things that human do everyday.  Let me help to prove that to you from the Bible.  You may have forgotten that the N.T. says for us to do the following to angels:

Heb 13:2  Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.

How are we (the natural people of the earth) supposed to entertain spiritual angels if we cannot see them, touch them or feed them with our own natural foods?  How do you entertain an invisible spiritual being?  This verse is not requesting us to be Broadway show performers or Vaudeville stage comedians to angels.  It is simply telling us to treat angels with kindness and hospitality like we should do with every human.  People that believe that angels cannot become visible and that angels do not have bodies that we can touch would make this verse impossible for us to perform.  You see it would not be possible for me to interact physically with a stranger and for me to not know they were an angel if they did not look exactly like me, sound exactly like me and act exactly like me.  If they have no physical attributes like mine that are visibly displayed I cannot venture to entertain them unaware.  Do you understand this?  As soon as any angel refused to eat what I gave them it might prove that they were unable to be entertained like a common stranger.  If I invited a stranger to spend the night at my house and I offered for them to sleep in my quest room and they refused and disappeared they would immediately become not like a stranger that I could entertain.  They only way for an angel to be here unaware is for them to appear and respond exactly like a courteous polite human would to an offer of kindness.  If all angels were 12 feet tall with wings on their backs then that would be an instant give away that they were an angel and thus my awareness would be alerted instantly and they would not be found unaware.  Therefore some angels must have spiritual bodies that look and functions exactly like mine or I would be able to instantly recognize them to be angels.  There is an example of this entertaining of angels in the Bible that is also very relevant to this study.  Read these verses very carefully:

Gen 19:1  And there came two angels to Sodom at even; and Lot sat in the gate of Sodom: and Lot seeing them rose up to meet them; and he bowed himself with his face toward the ground;

Obviously Lot could see the angels physically with his natural eyes that were sent to Sodom.  However, did they look like angels or did they look like men to Lot?  That is what we need to figure out in this story and then we need to determine what they did and what they didn’t do in the natural realm.  Keep in mind that Lot did not write the book of Genesis it was written down by Moses.  The Bible does not say that Lot knew that they were angels.  The Bible implies that Lot sees two strangers entering the city and that Lot is gracious, considerate and hospitable to them.  Nevertheless the angels are physically seen by Lot proving to us all again that angels can be seen and this dispels the myth that angels are always invisible.   

Gen 19:2  And he said, Behold now, my lords, turn in, I pray you, into your servant’s house, and tarry all night, and wash your feet, and ye shall rise up early, and go on your ways. And they said, Nay; but we will abide in the street all night.

I want you to notice what is occurring here.  The angels are clearly visible to Lot with Lot speaking directly to them and they are invited to come to Lot’s house to spend the night and to even wash their feet at his house.  If Lot thought they were angels why would Lot offer these services to angels?  Uh oh?  Are these not problems for my commenter?  Angels have natural looking features like feet that can be washed with natural water.  That does not sound like invisible spirits to me.  So far this is an example of Lot entertaining two strangers like Hebrews 13:2 said for us to do.  Since Hebrews 13:2 was not yet written I don’t know how Lot decided to do this, it must have been in his heart to do.  Keep reading in this chapter and notice that at no time does Lot acknowledged them as supernatural beings even though that is clearly what they are and the story only gets better from here:

Gen 19:3  And he pressed upon them greatly; and they turned in unto him, and entered into his house; and he made them a feast, and did bake unleavened bread, and they did eat.

Here is where it really starts to get much more interesting.  You see Lot convinces the angels to come to his house and it even implies that he touches them to help convince them.  You could view this as verbal persuasion or physical persuasion or even a combination of both of these human actions.  The angels come to Lot’s house and he fixed them a huge dinner feast and they did eat it.  Uh Oh, Again!  CAN YOU READ what this says?  If angels can eat our natural food with their spiritual mouths then they also have the stomach and digestive like organs to process that food and even the natural orifices to expel the waste.  What we can clearly observe is the human like features that we all possess being found present in the realm of angels.  We must therefore conclude that if angels have a mouth, then they also have an implied stomach and digestive system, an implied waste disposal system and we have already seen that they have direct literal feet mentioned.  Therefore, where do we stop to say that they do not have sexual organs to go with all of the rest of the male package?   At least three times in this chapter the angels are called “men” in the inspired Word of God.  Is God a liar?  Men are only men if they have the male sexual organs present.  I really do not want to get any more graphic than this, you either see it or you don’t.  But, in light of what else is revealed to us about these angels in this chapter we will see that the people of Sodom saw it:

Gen 19:4  But before they lay down, the men of the city, even the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both old and young, all the people from every quarter:

Before the angels lay down in a natural physical bed to sleep and after eating the dinner feast with Lot, the men of the city surrounded the house because they have also seen the strangers come into the house with Lot and they want what from them?  This next bit of information is going to rock your religious boat a bit, so get ready to sink or swim:

Gen 19:5  And they called unto Lot, and said unto him, Where are the men which came in to thee this night? bring them out unto us, that we may know them.

Here is where it gets really deep.  The men of the city think the angels are men just like they are.  These are more examples of angels being unaware that we just read about in the N.T.  However these men of Sodom do not want to entertain the strangers in the same way that Lot did or even in a sane human right way.  These men of Sodom are all homosexual men and they want the angels to have sex with them.  If the angels have no anus or sexual organs this would have been impossible for these men of Sodom to accomplish.  All the angels would have had to do is to step outside and show the men they were sexless and the problem is over, but the angels did not do that, did they.  You might be wondering how I got from “Know” them to “Have sex” with them and that is why you don’t understand what the Bible says.  The Hebrew word translated as “know” is “yada” and it means to have sexual intercourse.  Adam we are told “Knew” (yada) his wife Eve in Genesis 4 and she had a son.  So to KNOW is a sexual reference to having intercourse.  Clearly the men of the city could see that the angels were sexual beings or they would not have desired this sexual experience with them.  These verses are self-evident that angels have the ability to have sex.  However these were not Satan’s angels these were God’s angels sent from heaven and they did not want to have sex with the Sodomites.  After all they were there for that reason to destroy the city because of the homosexuality that was present.  What we learn in this story is that at least some angels have spiritual bodies that look very natural to us humans.  They can sleep in beds, they can eat natural food, and they can even wash their feet.  These concepts are just too radical for many people to grasp.  But we are about to learn that this is a two way street that goes both ways from heaven to earth and from earth to heaven:

Psa 78:24  And had rained down manna upon them to eat, and had given them of the corn of heaven.

Psa 78:25  Man did eat angels’ food: he sent them meat to the full.

These two verses reveal that people on the earth were eating the same food that angels ate in heaven and we have already clearly seen in Genesis 19 that angels physically ate the natural food that people eat.  I have now shown you too many verses that at the least say some angels are no different than people physically speaking on the earth.  What God is demonstrating is that physical things parallel the pre-existing spiritual things and those things can even be interchanged or exchanged from one dimension to the other.  From my Bible studies the only difference that I can find between the spiritual realm and the natural realm is one is called temporary and the other is called eternal.  That is a very radical concept to consider.  Could God have created the natural world as a pattern of the spiritual world?  Will the coming eternal new heaven and new earth also still be a pattern of what we see today, without the presence of evil?  I believe that it will.  I could give you many more verses but I have spent too much time on this response and I do not even know if my commenter or anyone else will receive it.  If anyone does receive it then it was worth the time that I spent.

My commenter raised some good scriptural points, but simply misapplied the limited information that was contained in the verses to draw some wrong conclusions.   We explored a lot of verses about angels in today’s lesson.  I hope I balanced them so that you could see that angels are spiritual beings like us with eternal bodies.  All of these Bible verses about angels should be factored into the complete knowledge of the subject. Out of all of these verses people have chosen to focus on a select few of them, ignoring the rest.  I believe that I have given you overwhelming evidence that angels are real and that angels have great ability and power both spiritually and physically on the earth.  I have given more than enough witnesses that angels are not sexless, that angels can be seen physically, and that angels had to have been the “sons of God” in Genesis 6.   Until next time I thank you for studying the Bible with me and I will try to continue the other subjects that left hanging in the next lesson.  For now I’m done with the subject of angels.  The only factor that I wish I could have gotten to is why the angels had sex with the daughters of men.  I believe the reasons why they were doing this, is extremely important to understand, but that will have to be another Bible lesson in the future.  God Bless.


Understanding Hard Sayings in the Bible! Jacob Have I Loved and Esau Have I Hated! Part 6

(Ver 1.2) This is now “Part 6” in the series of very advanced Bible lessons on “Understanding Hard Sayings” found in the Bible.  Today’s lesson is technically Part 1 of a 2 part lesson on the subject part 6 of Hard Sayings.  This is also the beginning of an independent lesson in the series, meaning you do not have to read all of the other lessons to understand what I will discuss today in this lesson.  But, of course this does not mean that you will automatically understand all of the complex subjects being covered in this lesson either.  If you are interested in studying any of the other “Hard Sayings” that I have covered in the Bible you may want to start your reading with the first lesson in the series called “Part 1”.  What is a hard saying?  The Bible contains many statements that I labeled “Hard Sayings”.  I was not the inventor of this name for these types of scriptures.  The disciples actually coined the phrase “Hard Saying” in the Gospel of John 6:60 and I just took it from what they said to Jesus.  Hard Sayings are any words of declaration that when taken literally as they were spoken or written are very difficult for us to accept because they appears to conflict with many other verses that we also know to be true.  This is what the disciples struggled with when they heard Jesus speaking about drinking His blood and eating His flesh.  These words that they heard, they knew had to be the truth, but they also knew that they caused them great difficulty because they did not first fully understand what they meant and they knew that they directly conflicted with many verses found in the Old Testament that taught them not to eat flesh with the blood still in it.  That is exactly the same problem that many people in the world today still face.  They still see the verses but do not understand what they mean and thus they stumble over them and do not know how to resolve the conflicts.  The root cause of the problem occurs when men think carnally or naturally and God is usually speaking of spiritual things. There are so many of these types of hard saying verses found in the Bible. 

Introduction to Today’s Bible Hard Saying

I am going to talk about another VERY hard saying found in the New Testament.  I will warn you up front that this lesson will get into some very deep and new subjects that may be over your head right now.  Therefore, please make sure that you are a spiritually strong swimmer before you jump into the really deep waters found in this Bible lesson.  This lesson is an attempt to answer a very tough question that I got from someone on Facebook.  I have spent a lot of time in writing the response to this question and I discovered that it was so long that I needed to split it into two lessons.  So today I acknowledge my God and I am using my faith to answer another hard saying found in the Bible.   In the book of Romans God declares something that is extremely difficult for us to comprehend and this statement from God potentially conflicts with many of the other scriptures that most Christians should already know and believe.  Here is the basic hard saying that we will be dealing with today that comes from the mouth of God:

Rom 9:13  As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.

Let’s briefly talk about the framework of this verse in order to understand where it was written and to who it was written to insure that we are not studying the verse in isolation or taking it out of context.  We should first realize that this book of Romans was written directly to us in the church.   These are words inspired by God and written down by Paul for ONLY us in the church who are believers.  In other words these verses were not written to anyone outside of the church.  Do you understand that?  Therefore everything that was written in this book must either have some application to us or be useful for us to learn something that we need to know.  In this ninth chapter there are literally several very hard sayings to understand and I am only to concentrate on this one in verse 13.  These verses in chapter 9 of Romans are almost entirely spiritual concepts that are easily taken the wrong way or misapplied to speak of things that that they do not apply to.  This chapter of Romans speaks several times about the natural nation of Israel.  These natural people are called the children of the flesh in verse 8 and God clearly says that they are not my children and many Christians ignore these types of verses because they do not wish to see them.  However, the Apostle Paul begins the chapter with an important statement that sets the tone for the rest of the chapter about his great heaviness of heart and great sorrow for the natural nation of Israel in verse 2.  Paul the writer wished that he could do something to save them all.  Therefore understand what is happening in the context of verse 13.  There are two groups of people being spoken of, one is the church and one is the natural people of Israel.  One group is saved and one group is not.

There are at the least 4 O.T. direct quotes in this chapter.  One is the prophet Hosea saying “those that were not my people have become my people” in verse 25.  Then from the prophet Isaiah God quotes “Though the number of the natural people of Israel have been as the sands of the sea, only a remnant will be saved” in verse 27.   Then in verse 15 the prophet Moses is quoted “God will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy”.  Finally in the verse 13 God quotes the prophet Malachi about “Jacob I have loved and Esau I have hated”.  I personally believe that all of these verses are connected together for us to see and to learn something new.  I can see in this chapter that God is bringing in certain information from 4 different prophets written in the Old Testament linking them together into a new clearer perspective while shedding fresh light upon our relationship to God in the New Covenant.  I also believe that one of the main themes found within this chapter of Romans is a division between those that are saved and those that are not saved.  A division occurs when one person is separated from another.  You could view it like a divorce from the natural marriage perspective where those that were once one, have now split to become two separate individuals.  I see the emphasis of this chapter to be between two different opposing groups, those that are saved and those that are not saved.   I really do not have time to teach you that part of the subject fully, but that is how I view what I read in the chapter and I believe that this information will eventually help us to understand the meaning of the reason why God says that He hates a man named Esau who died approximately 4000 years ago.  

What Are the Bible Conflicts With Romans 9:13?

What are the controversies and scriptural conflicts found within this single reportedly simple verse in Romans 9:13?  When I read this I knew immediately that this verse disagreed with the revealed nature and the character of God demonstrated to us by the physical appearing of God in the flesh in Jesus.  In John 14:9 Jesus told Phillip “When you have seen me you have seen the Father”.  Jesus claimed to be the previously hidden Father God now revealed to man for the first time.  Therefore show me any verse in the Gospels that reveals Jesus to be a hater of any man living or dead.  I looked and I could not find one, therefore this information of the revealed God in the Gospels directly conflicts with this information stated in Romans 9:13.   Romans 9:13 also seems to imply that our God is a potential Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde type of God.  A shifting God of either love or hate depending on something not revealed in this verse.  Is God theoretically good to one man while being inconsistently evil to another man?  I do not believe that He is.  How can a God who loved me, died for me and saved me also be a God that hates me?  I do not believe that He can.  You might try to say “I’m not Esau” and therefore God does not hate me.  But, that is the beginning of another conflicting problem to think that you are any better than Esau who was also a mere man, a lost unsaved son of Adam.  The Bible says “ALL have sinned and come short of the GLORY of GOD”! (Rom 3:23)  Then again in Romans 5:12 God repeats “ALL have sinned”.  “ALL” is an inclusive statement that excludes no one (me, you, Jacob or Esau).  That means you and I are sinners also.  We are each guilty of sin if we are judged upon our own personal state of righteousness.  Therefore according to Romans 3:23 and 5:13, there is no difference between me as a man before I was saved as to what Esau was in the book of Genesis.  If you think you were better than Esau then you are deceived.  Notice what Paul wrote to Timothy:

1Ti 1:15  This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.

As you can see Paul did not consider himself better than Esau and he was the one that wrote God hates Esau in Romans.  Paul calls himself a chief among all sinners.  That means that he thought that he was no better than any other man.  Paul had the correct perspective and view of himself and many Christians today would benefit if they would learn the example that Paul set as the humble standard.  Whenever a man or a woman believes themselves to be better than anyone else, it is a root of pride and self-righteousness. Therefore we have another conflict brewing that there is no stated difference between someone like me or a Paul, a Jacob or even an Esau in the natural realm of view.  We are just all sinners by God’s high standards.

What other scriptural conflicts arise from this verse in Romans 9:13?  The Bible declares in 1 John 4:16 that “God is Love”.  How then could a God that is Love also hate?  I believe that reveals a new problem. Then we read in John 3:16 “that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son” to save us.  So how can a loving God simultaneously hate someone still to this day after coming to die for them to save them?  Is not love the opposite of hate and vice versa?   John 3:16 did NOT say that “God so hated the world that He gave Jesus”.  Didn’t Jesus come into the world in His great love to die for every man?  Did this world declaration in John 3:16, not also include the natural man Esau?  Did Jesus die to save Esau?  I believe that Esau was a part of the exact same world that you and I were a part of.  Therefore, John 3:16 directly conflicts with the statement that God hates the natural man named Esau of this world.   Doesn’t God say in 1 Corinthians 15:22 “that in Christ ALL are made alive”?  Isn’t Esau a man forgiven by the shed blood of God the same as Jacob?  Did the shed blood of Jesus not include the sins of Esau?    I believe that these are major theological problems that we have encountered with the statement that God hates Esau.  Here is another interesting perspective on the subject of if God hates Esau:

1Jn 3:15  Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.

Let me explain again about who Jesus was.  I already told you that Jesus when born into the world was God in the flesh.  However it is much more complicated than that.  Jesus Christ was the only man that was ever born the Son of God and the Son of Man simultaneously.  In other words God joined His Word and His Spirit to the physical egg of a woman on the earth and the these two together became the body of the man Jesus Christ with the Spirit of God on the inside of Him.  God the creator in heaven literally came down to the earth and became an intimate part of His creation.  The Bible says in John 1:14, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” and then in verse 1 it says God is the Word.  So Jesus was God made a man and if He ever hated anyone I can’t find it.  Then there is a deeper problem revealed here in 1 John 3:15 when the Bible says if any man hates his brother, then He has no life everlasting in Him.  Since Jesus was raised from the dead and is eternally alive now we know that it is impossible for Him to hate any of His natural brothers.  Uh oh?  What I am trying to say is that Jesus was a natural brother of Esau because they were both direct descendants of Adam.  If a human hates another human on the earth they in effect hate their own brother.  People do not see it this way because they did not share the same exact mothers, they think, but that is not true at all.  All people on the earth originated from the woman Eve and the man Adam so there is no one on the earth other than a human from this one family.  Do you see the problem that I am teaching you?    There is also another very deep and complex reality found in the Bible that directly applies to Jesus and to you and me.  Read these next two verses very carefully:

Heb 7:9  And as I may so say, Levi also, who receiveth tithes, payed tithes in Abraham.

Heb 7:10  For he was yet in the loins of his father, when Melchisedec met him.

God says Levi paid tithes because He was in his father Abraham when Abraham paid the titles.  Levi was not a direct son of Abraham.  Abraham had a son Isaac and Isaac had a son Jacob and Jacob had a son Levi.   Do you understand the far reaching concepts that these verses reveal?  God says anything that your father did, you did because you were in your father.  Therefore Jesus and Esau were both in their father Adam and therefore Jesus was a direct brother to Esau.  What we see are some natural things that teach us about some very complex principles that cannot be ignored.  If God hates Esau, then He hates His own brother and there is no eternal life in Him.  I find that to be a major problem with a literal interpretation of Romans 9:13.

Then there is this conflicting verse found in Acts 10:34 where God declares “that He is no respecter of persons”.   A respecter of persons is revealed when anyone treats one man differently from another man based upon what they do, what they say, how they look, what they own, etc.  Partiality is when a person is given special or favored status over another individual based upon any selective criteria either known or unknown.  According to verses like Acts 10:34 and Ephesians 6:9, God does not respect one person differently than another person.    Therefore, how could God NOT show any favoritism to one man over another while hating one man and loving the other?  Since that is not possible, then I have a problem with the statement that God hates Esau.  There are just too many verses in the Bible that conflict with the statement that God hates any single man.  Surely you can see that these truths that I just gave you are all incompatible verses in the Bible with the stated truth that God hates Esau.  Therefore we have a great theological issue that needs immediate resolution.  These issues can only be overcome by digging deeper to increase our spiritual knowledge and understanding on the given subjects and that is what I will attempt to do in the rest of this lesson.   Here again are some of the key conflicts revealed in the Bible:

  1. Esau is no different than me because Romans 3:23 says all have sinned.
  2. John 3:16 says God so loved Esau that He gave His only begotten son to save Esau.
  3. Acts 10:34 God is no respecter of any Esau or Jacob.
  4. Jesus said when you have seen me you have seen the father and Jesus never hated any man even asking God to forgive those that killed Him on the cross.
  5. Jesus was born a physical brother of Esau and therefore cannot hate His own brother or He has no eternal life.

These are five very good reasons why we should not take the verse in Romans 9:13 literally.  What we begin to see is the formation of certain specific central Bible truths that are apparently in direct opposition to a another misunderstood Bible truth which needs to be either re-balanced with the others or reinterpreted using the Bible in order to be correctly understood all together to eliminate all of the conflicts.  One very important rule of correct Bible interpretation is simply stated that in the true meaning of two verses, no one verse of the Bible will ever contradict with any other verse of the Bible because God is the same Author of both verses and He is a constant and a NEVER CHANGING being.  These are all complex statements and reasons that I just made.  But if we continue surely you will begin to see that our understanding of at least one of the truths need to be changed or adjusted so that our view of the entire truth is increased by allowing God to shine a new light on it that will help to show us that God is a consistently good and loving God to every human.  The mistake some fall into is to take one isolated Bible truth like God hates Esau and then try to exalt it to make it THE ENTIRE TRUTH that God hates homosexuals, murderers, rapists or whatever.   This is the common error of what some Christians try to teach using the misapplication of one verse based upon their own human interpretation.  Therefore the correct interpretation of every verse is absolutely essential to keep us from falling into error. 

What Does God Hate?

We must attempt to balance all of the truths that we know in order to resolve and completely remove any potential conflicts that have arisen.  Also understand that God is not the one that is confused; therefore it is only people that are currently experiencing the difficulty because of our current lack of complete knowledge and understanding.  We do not know everything that God knows and that is why we still struggle.  I think in order to begin to understand how to resolve these conflicts that we will first need to research in the Bible to see what it is that God says that He actually hates.  Does God hate people or is it stated to be something else?  If God hates people then that is where we need confirmation in the scriptures to establish a new truth.  However, If God does hate people like Esau, then we will establish that God is confused since He clearly told us that “He so loved the world to die for Esau”.  Let us discuss the subject of hate and find the stated things that God says that He hates.  I’ll give you some quick examples of what I found in the Bible that God hates: 

Zec 8:17  And let none of you imagine evil in your hearts against his neighbour; and love no false oath: for all these are things that I hate, saith the LORD.

You can clearly see that God still hates both an evil imagination and lies.  These are two specific descriptive actions that we will see as repeated patterns of the behavior types of people that do not know or love God or His Word.  From this one verse, I can begin to see that it is the evil thoughts and the evil actions of the people that are hated and not specifically the people.  I still believe that God so loved us that He provided a way out of our certain death and eternal separation from God, if we would only accept this free gift of salvation.  Even Christians are still capable of thinking evil and doing evil, but simultaneously God’s shed blood is sufficiently powerful to cover all of our transgressions, past, present and future.  But, this does not mean as we know that we are free to intentionally sin all we want to after we become saved, it only means if we do accidently that we are not automatically lost.   Let me show you another verse in the Bible that speaks of God hating something:

Deu 12:31  Thou shalt not do so unto the LORD thy God: for every abomination to the LORD, which he hateth, have they done unto their gods; for even their sons and their daughters they have burnt in the fire to their gods.

I think you can again see God’s stated hatred is directed at the evil actions of people killing their children.  This is clearly a parallel to the modern actions of abortionists today.  But, yet God does not say that He hates the people it only says that He hates the actions of the people killing their children.  There is a huge difference between those two stated positions and it causes much confusion in the church.  How can God love the sinner but still hate the sin?  That is because they are not the same things.  What you do is not necessarily always who you are.  If it was we would all be in prison right now.  There are churches in America that picket sinners and try to tell them that God hates them because of their sin, but that is foolishness and ignorance gone to seed.  God is not a hater of people that He died to save.  I keep saying that because I want to make sure that you get it and apply it to Esau.  That is a ludicrous thing to ascribe to a God who is called Love.   People just seem to forget that if God hates sinners then He must also hate them since God clearly says “all have sinned and come short of the His glory”.  It is only a person’s deceived state of self-righteousness that makes them believe that they are better than anyone else.  I’m only going to give you one more example of things that God hates since this could be a Bible lessons series all by itself:

Pro 6:16  These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him:

Pro 6:17  A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood,

Pro 6:18  An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief,

Pro 6:19  A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.

There are seven direct things listed that God still hates, but none of them are directly named as people even though some can easily try to say that they represent people by the descriptive terms used like the tongue and the feet features that all people possess.  Read through the list and see if you can see where the emphasis is placed.  Is it on the people or on the actions of people?  So I believe that again we have confirmation that people can do these hated things but yet I believe that God will still loves them consistently even while hating their wrong actions.  Here is the list of the seven hated things that I saw: 

  1. Proud Look
  2. Lying Tongue
  3. Murder
  4. Wicked Imagination
  5. Mischief
  6. False Witness
  7. Sower of Discord

Wow, that is a tough list of things that people in the world and even in the church still do every day.   Speaking lies is mentioned twice and that makes it even more serious to me.  Thinking evil is again repeated as a hated action.  Being proud and sowing discord are two incredible things that speak volumes to me and helps to identify who God is speaking of using Esau.  We’ll get more to that soon.  I personally believe that God is trying to teach us something new about what we should hate.  If you go through your Bible God tells us to hate evil and to love good repeatedly (Psalm 34:14, 37:27, Isa 7:15, Amos 5:15).  This would appear to me to be the lesson learned from reading about what God hates in the Bible.  So I believe that God is trying to teach us to become more like Him in our thoughts and our actions.   There is an established Bible pattern that teaches us that if we think good Godly things we will do good things, if we think evil demonic things then we will do evil things.  Therefore, set your minds on the greater higher things above and God will direct you into the paths of life.

What I am trying to do is to show you that love and hate can coexist together simply because good and evil still coexist today in the world because of what Adam chose for us in Genesis 3.  Therefore, it is only important to learn and to know what it is that God hates and what it is that He loves to correctly understand what we should love and hate.  If God hates people we should hate people, but we clearly see that is not true.  If God hates sin, then we should hate sin and that is certainly true.  Go through your Bible and study the word “hate” and it’s forms.  There are approximately 179 verses that contain a form of this word.  Search them all and see what we are to hate and I believe you will conclude as I have that we should hate evil and not the evil doers.

We should love the good and we should hate the evil just like the God that never changes.  I believe that this principal is what God is teaching using the Jacob and Esau examples.  Based upon what we have just learned about hating evil and loving good, we would be forced to conclude that Esau was evil and that Jacob was good.  But, since God does not hate people I have to adjust my interpretation in Romans 9:13 to say Esau must be a symbolic representation for these evil thoughts and actions that are present in the world.  Any literal interpretation would force us to say that God hated Esau as a man and then God changed His mind and died to save this man.  Since God is not a being that changes that is impossible.  

Do you understand Bible symbolism?  Symbolism occurs when God calls one thing by a name, title or description that we have heard about, can see and we can know and understand, but He is actually speaking figuratively of another hidden thing that we have not heard of, cannot see and do not know or understand.  This is what I believe is happening in Romans 9:13 when God is speaking of two men that we can read about in Genesis, but have long since died and gone away from this physical reality.  Therefore the verse in Romans 9:13 must be a symbolic representation of something unknown and much greater in meaning.  If this is true, why was Esau used symbolically to represent evil deeds and why was Jacob used to represent what is done that is good?  What is God trying to reveal to us using this story?  That is why we need to go and read to find this out next.

What Does God Reveal About Jacob and Esau in Genesis?

Let’s go back to the story of the two brothers in Genesis quickly and go through the descriptive time before they were born to learn what God reveals about them.  In learning about the boys we should begin to formulate what God is doing using them to represent what He hates and what He loves:

Gen 25:21  And Isaac intreated the LORD for his wife, because she was barren: and the LORD was intreated of him, and Rebekah his wife conceived.

This story in Genesis is very interesting.  Let’s just first begin to look and observe at what is stated and then figure out what it all means later.  What we are interested in these verses are the facts that God presented to help us to better understand things we do not know yet.  You see there is nothing written in the Bible that is there by chance or accident.  Every word has a designed purpose and a meaning for being included.  Even the obscure stories of the people in Genesis contain more than just a history lesson for us to learn from.  Here in this verse, Isaac’s wife Rebekah is barren and Isaac prays to God and she becomes pregnant.  There is a lot of meaning behind this verse, but I cannot teach everything in one Bible lesson so let’s continue to the next verse:

Gen 25:22  And the children struggled together within her; and she said, If it be so, why am I thus? And she went to enquire of the LORD.

While still in the womb there appears to be a great conflict arising between brothers even while they are still developing and growing.  We could call it the beginning of an internal war between brothers that continues on the external after their birth.  Wow that was a really important point that I just made, remember it.  Put these concepts into your mind; 1). these boys are siblings, 2). they are fighting brothers and 3). the battle started before they were physically born on the earth.  I will tell you that all of this information is symbolic and represents another spiritual battle and that this natural information appears to represent a much greater conflict than just a casual disagreement between natural brothers.  But, we will get to that more soon.  Notice that Rebekah the mother observes the fight occurring on the inside of her and prays to God to ask for the answer to what is happening and here is God’s reply that was given to her: 

Gen 25:23  And the LORD said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.

God looks down into the realm of time to view the boys as two future nations.  God is not prophesying God is simply telling her of the future using His infinite foreknowledge.  Many times God sees things in a big picture simultaneously even while speaking or describing specific details.  Actually what God is doing is telling her of spiritual things to come, but we have not discovered that yet.  While describing this internal physical turmoil of the two brothers fighting each other, they are literally labeled using the future terms of being two nations of people.  Interesting concept isn’t it?  Knowing verses like these dispel the rights of a woman to abort her future child/nation.  Today how many nations of future children have been eliminated by ignorant mothers?  While a woman may see the fetus as only one insignificant future potential being, God clearly saw each child as being a different nation of people.  God combines every child with their descendants and speaks of them all collectively.   God describes that these brothers represent not only two nations, but two different kinds of people and that they will be separated from the womb.  God is revealing more than the obvious that they will be born and come out from their mother; He is saying they will not be the same people and even implies them to be opposed to each other and we can go further to call them opposing enemies.  The Hebrew word translated as “separated” means to divide yourself one from another.  This is a very important hidden Bible lesson subject to learn about division.  This is the second time I have mentioned this subject so far, but I still do not have the time to teach it to you fully today.  Just keep in mind, because it is very important.  I will do an individual Bible study on this subject soon. 

God also says that the older son will serve the younger son which completely reverses the normal course of inheritance where the first born son would always obtain the greater family blessing revealed in the O.T. Law of God.  God further implies that the younger son will become the stronger child than the older and gain preeminence over his elder brother.  These are all very key points to learn to associate with a greater hidden message than what is being presented from the surface historical story.  What have we learned about Jacob and Esau so far?  Here is my Top 10 List of things you should have learned: 

  1. There are two brothers in direct opposition to each other
  2. The opposition begins before they are born into the natural world
  3. The opposition continues after they are born into the natural world
  4. One brother will be divided against the other brother
  5. The younger son is stronger but is not born first
  6. The younger son becomes ruler of the older son
  7. The elder son is born first but does not inherit from the father
  8. Therefore the older son loses his stated birthright
  9. The younger son is born second but does inherit from the father
  10. Even though they are brothers from one father, they are two separate nations of people

The Hidden Allegory Aspect of Jacob and Esau

Let me introduce you to a potentially new hidden concept found in the Bible.  I briefly already mentioned that I believed that God was using Esau and Jacob as symbolism.  Symbolism is very prevalent in the Bible where God uses a natural object to convey a spiritual truth, like a field, a pearl, a seed, etc.  Allegory is like symbolism but it uses real people to introduce us to hidden spiritual beings we do not yet know fully.  Allegory is a concept that just takes symbolism a step further in the Bible.  Both allegory and symbolism use natural representations for spiritual realities.  I will attempt to briefly discuss this concept called “Allegory” or “Allegorical” information to help you better understand what God has written to us in the Bible.   If you have not already learned by now that not all of the information in the Bible is obviously presented then you have not studied the Bible for very long.  Allegory is always a hidden technique of God and it is used to conceal spiritual information in the Bible using real natural stories found within the course of human/Bible history.  Allegory is a technique that is actually very prevalent in the Bible but yet it is also well hidden at the same time.  What I have started to realize is that almost every Old Testament story written in the Bible has a greater hidden story behind it of something else that is not clearly known, obviously presented or even directly taught.  I have had people try to tell me that allegory was a manmade concept invented by people in the dark ages to try to dispel the things that I am trying to teach you about today.  These types of people are usually just naturally thinking or carnally minded categories of people who do not wish to see the spiritual things of God.  It is really not their entire fault because I believe that it is clearly Satan’s attempt at trying to keep them from knowing the truth.  Allegory is easily found in the Bible if you look for it.  Let me give you a dictionary definition of the word allegory: 

Allegory

a representation of an abstract or spiritual meaning through concrete or material forms; figurative treatment of one subject under the guise of another.

Hopefully you can clearly see what is described in this definition of the word allegory.  Two key points need to be fully grasped from this definition.  Within an allegory, there is always a story that is given which is a figurative representation of another truer story that is not given.  The given allegorical information is always a symbolic treatment of a greater hidden story with transferring identical characters, characteristics, features, relationships and actions.  The only thing that is not relevant in an allegory is the timing of the physical occurrence.  In other words the order of events is important but not the time when they occurred.  I think I’m not saying that exactly correct.  You see everything certainly matters in the Bible.  However the allegorical story given to us in the Bible is always a past historical event and the hidden spiritual story that it contains may be a representative type of an event that is a past, present or even a future event and possibly all three at the same time since God lives outside of the dimension of time.   Allegory is an absolutely amazing way used by God to hide spiritual information in plain sight using easily understood words and stories.  God tells us one true natural story about Jacob and Esau and in that story is another hidden story of information about two beings that are not named.  Modern writers like C.S. Lewis in his books often used this technique or style of writing.  In the Narnia book, the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe there was a hidden story of Jesus, the devil and a door to salvation with our continuing spiritual battle resulting in of final victory.  Therefore, C.S. Lewis understood the concepts of symbolism and allegory and he used it to tell a fictional child’s story that had a much greater hidden spiritual meaning for adults.  That is exactly what God is doing with the story of Jacob and Esau.  God writes a historical story that has direct meaning written to carnal men while hiding the real story that was written to spiritual men.  The spiritual story clearly has the greater precedence and meaning than the natural story.  But also it is impossible to understand the spiritual story without first understanding the natural story.  Therefore the two stories (natural and spiritual) are eternally married together.  This is the demonstrated wisdom of God and He invented this technique to teach us. 

The first time that I really learned about the concept of allegory, I was reading the Bible and the Spirit of God spoke to me in my spirit for me to notice what He said in Galatians chapter 4 about Abraham, Sarah and Hagar.  If you have never seen this you should stop and read this chapter right now.  In this chapter God explains in great detail that this real historical story of Abraham is actually an allegorical picture of His own spiritual family and family members.  There are five people mentioned in this story; one father, two mothers and two sons.  God reveals to us that these two women (Sarah and Hagar) represent two different covenants with God.  Since God is the initiator of these covenants, we can understand that God is the representative figure of the man Abraham in the story and Sarah as you can read in this chapter was the figurative representation of God’ first wife and she is revealed to be the “Jerusalem Above” (Gal 4:26).  Hagar the Egyptian slave woman is used as a figurative symbolic representation of God’s second younger slave wife and she is revealed to be the “Jerusalem that now is” (Gal 4:25).   That is an awesome revelation that God taught me so do not let it slip away from you.   Therefore Hagar the slave girl represents the present earthly natural nation of Israel that was in covenant with God the Father in the Old Testament.  What God does in this chapter is to reveal the existence of two spiritual women that were simultaneously in covenant with the Almighty God in the Old Testament.  The Heavenly Jerusalem was the older first covenant wife and she is called the mature barren woman that gives birth to us the church (Gal 4:26).  The second covenant wife of God is revealed to be the natural people of Israel and they are still in bondage to the law that God had given to them on Mt. Sinai until this very day.  What I want you to do is to start putting the puzzle pieces together that I am presenting to you today.  Did you notice in this allegory described in Galatians 4 that the story was about two sons and two separate nations?  There was one nation in heaven and one nation here on the earth.  Was that not what God said about Esau and Jacob?  The Bible is repeated patterns and these patterns teach us some amazing things. I do not have the time to fully elaborate on this entire allegory to teach you everything that is revealed in great detail.  What I want to do is to teach you the concepts that are revealed in this allegory to help you to transfer this knowledge to the allegorical information revealed in Rebekah’s two children Esau and Jacob. 

In every allegorical story found in the Bible (and there are many of them) there is always a real historical story containing real people with real relationships, doing real things, in real important ways, with a specific order of events and all of these recorded words reflect a hidden aspect of something in the spiritual dimension that you would normally not even know existed.  It is an absolutely masterful way of hiding the truth in plain sight used by God.  This method presents valid truthful natural information while simultaneously concealing the greater valid spiritual information.  So if you are reading in the Old Testament and only seeing the natural things that were written you are virtually missing the most important spiritual messages that God was trying to reveal to you.    I hope you understand the concept of allegory because I can see the story of Jacob and Esau to be highly allegorical with vast hidden spiritual information in everything written in the story.

I believe that I have gone long enough in this lesson.  I have introduced you to many new things to think about.  I have taught you that there are conflicts in the Bible that we need to resolve.  I showed you five conflicting scriptural points that contradict what God says about hating Esau.  Therefore, I have concluded that God was not speaking literally but figuratively when using these two brothers to describe what He loves and hates.  I showed you multiple verses and asked you to go through the other verses searching for what God hates in the Bible.  I believe I showed you enough verses that show that God hates sin while still loving the sinner.  I also went through a part of the birth of Esau and Jacob in Genesis to show what God reveals about them before they were born and then shortly after.  Finally I introduced you to the new concept of allegory and how God uses natural Bible stories to describe to us spiritual stories that we have never seen or heard before.  In the next lesson I will attempt to expand what the Bible says about whom Jacob and Esau represent figuratively.  These symbolic natural brothers are representative types of spiritual brothers.  These are really deep complex subjects found in the Bible.  If you understand what I am trying to say please let me know.  If you have questions about anything already stated, please let me know that also.  This is probably one of the most advanced Bible lessons on my whole website.  It will probably overwhelm many baby or carnal Christians.  I have worked a long time on trying to simplify the message, but that is truly very difficult.  In the next lesson we will continue to talk about more specifically who Jacob and Esau can represent.  I pray that you will hang in there and continue trying to learn even if you do not fully get every point yet.   Until next time may God enlighten the eyes of your spiritual understanding to see all that He has done.  God Bless!


2011 Merry Christmas to my Friends

Thank You to all of my 2011 readers.  I pray that you have a blessed Christmas season as we celebrate the birth of the King of Kings on the earth.  We owe our existence to our Lord and Savior Jesus.  Without His shed blood we would all be lost in our sin.  We depend upon our Lord for our future.  And we continue to look up knowing His coming is so near.  We will always be eternally grateful for all that He has given to us.  So to all of my friends in Christ I bless you with all of the Love that I can share in a note.  Keep Jesus in the forefront of your mind and think only of His goodness.  Have a blessed season and if I never meet you in person here on the earth I will look forwward to meeting you in eternity and I will have more Bible studies soon. 

Ron

 


Understanding Bible Faith! The Hidden Aspect of Authority for Having Great Faith! Part 15

(ver 1.0) This is now Part 15 in a series of very important advanced Christian Bible lessons on the subject of Understanding Bible Faith.  I have covered a tremendous amount of information in this series that will not be repeated so if you have not read it from the beginning I would suggest that you go and start with “Part 1” first.  I dealt with the subject of Great Faith in one other lesson directly and several other lessons indirectly.  In the direct lesson on Great Faith about the woman from Canaan we discovered the importance of how we view the problem versus how we view the power of God to solve the problem matters.  I attempted to teach you that no matter how big the problem may appear, the power of God to solve it is so much significantly greater that it only takes a crumb of His power to change it.  This principle was an awesome revelation that combines two stated truths found in the Bible concerning faith.  First there is “All things are possible with God” and second that “all things are possible to those that believe” (Mat 19:26, Mark 9:23).   You see many Christians have no problem believing that God can do anything because He is omnipotent, but then they fail to realize that they have any part to play in getting this reality from God to occur in the natural realm.  It is a combined effort of agreement between God and you and you cannot ignore the fact Jesus taught that people must believe in order for the humanly impossible to transpire.  This is why Jesus told us that all things are possible to us “IF WE CAN BELIEVE”.  So our faith is again mentioned as the final determining factor for what is possible for us or what happens to us.  I hope that you understand what faith is by now.  Faith is a belief based spiritual system that comes from hearing His written Word about what God has already accomplished in the Spiritual realm.  It is this Bible faith that becomes the literal substance of those things that we cannot or have not seen in the natural realm (Heb 11:1).

Today I am going to focus in on the only other illustrated example given to us in the Bible of explicitly stated great faith.  Jesus only looked at two different Gentiles and said that they had great faith beyond what he could find in all of Israel.  Jesus revealed to us that he was looking for people with faith in this statement and He marveled at only two things; those in Israel that had no faith and those outside of Israel that had great over the top faith.  So I have already addressed the woman of Canaan that was rewarded for her great faith by Jesus casting the devils out of her daughter.  Today I am going to look at the story of the Roman Centurion that introduces us to a brand new perspective on the subject of faith.  How did this non-Jewish man obtain such great faith when Jesus was not even sent to anyone except to those in Israel?  I believe that this is an excellent question to answer and that will be my goal.   We will start reading in our Bibles in Matthew chapter 8 and verse 5:

Mat 8:5  And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came unto him a centurion, beseeching him,

Here is the beginning of the great faith story.  Notice how the story begins.  The Roman Centurion is coming to Jesus and it was not Jesus coming to the Roman Centurion.  Recognize today where the source of your answer will originate and then start out to get it from Him the same way.  I know today that Jesus is not physically on the earth, but He is here spiritually and His written word is ever present here for you to still seek out.  God, His Spirit and His Word are all inseparable realities called three in one (1 Jn 5:7).  So come to the Bible and start to learn what you are missing and then pray and He will answer.  Also recognize that if you are waiting on God to show up you are out of the designed process of God’s flow and you are doing it all wrong.  If you want an answer to a problem in the world today you are going to have to go and figure out how to receive it.  This is exactly what the Roman Centurion is doing in this example.  The Roman Centurion was not sitting back passively but was taking steps and being aggressively active to seek God for the answer.  I hope you have gotten that concept from the previous lessons, but I restated it again for those that need to hear it.

Mat 8:6  And saying, Lord, my servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, grievously tormented.

Here is the stated great problem that the Centurion is seeking Jesus to solve.  The servant of the Centurion appears to be too “grievously” sick to come to Jesus himself.  We can understand that the servant is suffering greatly and in tremendous pain.  The Centurion obviously has great compassion in his heart to do something for someone else to try to help them.  Having compassion is a Godly quality that is highly desirable.  Here we must stop and understand why is the Centurion coming to Jesus?  At this point he must have either seen Jesus heal personally before or at the very least heard of Jesus healing someone by word of mouth from a witness.  Hearing is a requirement to having Bible faith.  As we continue in this lesson you will definitely learn that it was the Centurion’s faith that causes the positive results to occur.

This also introduces us to an interesting concept and a fascinating question that comes up when discussing this subject of faith.  Can my faith or your faith be used to help someone else get their answer?  Clearly in this example given to us from God in Matthew 8 we are going to see that the Centurion’s individual faith definitely helped a servant without the servant’s faith being involved.  Part of the reasoning that needs to be taken into account is that a servant is a delegated household subordinate or individual.  In other words the servant was part of the household of the Centurion and under his roof.   However, it is more complicated than that statement.  You see in the example of the Centurion the fact that the servant is so sick that it would be impossible for him to seek out Jesus personally for himself must also be taken into account.  Plus the fact that the servant was the property of the Centurion means whatever happens to the servant is up to the owner in charge.  Both of these factors play a role in determining whether your faith can be used to help for others.   It is a great mistake to automatically assume that you can force your faith upon anyone or that you can override the will of another individual to get them saved, healed or delivered from anything that they do not want to be free from. 

Let me go into some examples of when your faith can and cannot work for others.  For example, if you have young children living at your home and they get sick, it is going to be your faith that gets them well until they get to the age of accountability to have faith for themselves.  This is the repeated reality found in the terms of the Roman Centurion who is the head of the house and the servant being a subordinate figure.  Children are always subordinate to the parent.  This same natural example crosses over into the spiritual realm also.  You see if a Christian is new to the faith, they are a spiritual child in the Lord too young and immature spiritually to have faith for most difficult things.  That is kind of an oxymoronic statement, since nothing is too hard for God and if they believed for their salvation that was probably the greatest obstacle that they will ever face.  Technically a saved person has already achieved great faith in one area for their salvation.  But, that is the problem it takes more faith in other areas like being filled with the Spirit, or healing, or finances to solve those different inadequacies.  I guess what I am trying to say is that your faith can be accessed to work for many new Christians at least once.  However, as they grow, spiritually mature and see how it works they will learn that they will be required by God to have faith for themselves.  Just like kids today in the natural are required to grow up and take responsibility for their own lives, so it is in the spiritual realm.

Next if a person is unconscious or unable to come or ask for their own healing then many times your faith can be used to help them also.  It is not always the case however.  For example, when my father was unconscious in a comma in the hospital after a stroke the entire local church body prayed and sought God for the answer in faith, but the answer did not come.  Was it our lack of faith that caused us to fail or were there other factors?  You see there were several other factors that hindered the healing.  The spiritual maturity of my father played a very significant role.  The previous actions of my father were also pivotal in determining whether our faith could work for him to be healed.  Also our will could not override his will and we do not actually know what he desired or thought about staying and being healed or going to see Jesus.  First off consider this; my father was not a baby Christian.  He had been a Christian for over 25 years.  Next consider that my father had been to two Bible schools and was a pastor of a church.  Then consider the fact that he ignored certain warnings from God about what was about to happen months earlier and the instructions given to him by God that showed him what he needed to do to fix the situation and it was all of these things that allowed death to dominate him and win.  Do you remember the story of the prophet coming to the king and telling him that he would surely die and to get his house in order (2 Kings 20:1)?   What did the king do and what result did it cause to change?  Surely you remember, the king repents before God and God sent the prophet back to tell him that God had lengthened the king’s days on the earth considerably.  So what people do on the earth, how they react to bad news, their ability to repent and change or not to change must matter if they want to live on the earth a long time.   Do you understand this?  What if the king did nothing?  God said that he would die and he would have died just as it was spoken.  This same thing happened to my father, God sent him a Prophet warning him of his death and he ignored it and guess what happened?  These are very powerful lessons to understand about when your faith will work for someone else and when it will not.  God says in the Bible “I am not mocked, whatever a man sows that will he also reap” (Gal 6:7).  This is a basic statement of truth that sometimes what we pray for some men may not matter if they have sown the wrong crop and refused to repent for it. 

Let me give you another example of when faith worked for an unconscious man.  A pastor of a small church in Texas once had a member of his church fall off of an oil well platform from a great distance and he was very near death.  He was unconscious in the hospital and the doctors said it was just a matter of time and he would be gone.  His pastor was a believer in faith and he did not accept that report.  This pastor went before God in faith and prayed and the man eventually fully recovered and came back to church well.  So what is the difference here?  The man was a member of the church of the pastor.  This means the member was under the jurisdiction of the pastor being a spiritual subordinate and I’m going to talk about this more in a little while.  What I am saying is that the pastor had a right to pray for his own member because he was not a fully grown mature Christian and the fact that the member could not pray for himself and ask God for healing since he was totally unconscious.  The church member had not been warned by God of impending disaster and he just fell into it.  Thus the factors were dramatically different between this man and my father’s example.  So the subject of faith and healing is a very complex one that has many factors involved in it and sometimes it is extremely difficult to determine when your faith will work for someone and when it will not.  Let’s continue with the Centurion:

Mat 8:7  And Jesus saith unto him, I will come and heal him.

Jesus replies to the Centurion that He will come with him so that his servant will be healed.  However, I want you to think and understand why Jesus said that He would do this.  It has to be the man’s faith being visibly seen that causes Jesus to go where he was needed.  I can find no other reason that caused Jesus ever to do anything for anyone just because they asked.  I guess I should qualify that statement, because there were times when Jesus did things through a manifested gift of the Holy Spirit’s working.   A gift of healing or a gift of miracles is a different type of the work of God that takes place by God’s divine choice and does not involve the faith of the individual to receive it.  God will sometimes heal someone as a sign or as a confirmation of the Word preached that will not involve a man’s faith as a great gift.  Just do not count on the gifts of God to heal you, this is a great mistake.  You do not control the gift giver; gifts are only given according to God the administrator by His divine sovereign choice.  This would be like if you heard of me giving away a present to someone that you really liked or needed.  Even if you came to me personally and asked me for one, does not mean I will give it to you?  That is presumptive thinking to assume someone will give you anything when you do not know the circumstances to why the other one got what they received.  Conversely your faith can be used to take hold of God’s power at any time as we discovered studying about the woman with the issue of blood that just came and took her healing without praying or asking God for it.  Next, I want to explore the scriptures that record the Centurion’s response to Jesus’ confirmation that He will come and heal.  Here is the beginning of the statement:

Mat 8:8  The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof: but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed.

One of the first factors that I notice about the Centurion is that this man of great human power in the Roman army has great humility.  It takes great humility to even ask anyone for help.  Do you understand that?  The soldier could have demanded Jesus to come, but instead tells Jesus he is not even worthy for Him to come under his roof.  If you feel like you are worthy of Jesus coming to do anything for you then you are not in the right attitude of respect and humility for the all-powerful God.  You do not deserve the answer and there is nothing that you can do or to offer to make yourself deserving.  Anything that you obtain from God is solely based upon God’s Grace to give it.  Your position of wealth, fame, power and influence on the earth will not cause you to receive anything from God.  Then the next thing that I want to point out is the Centurion’s ability to perceive spiritual things.  This Centurion could see when Jesus spoke that things happened.  He simply asks Jesus to speak the Word and his servant would be healed/saved.  Wow, that is an awesome display of ultimate faith.  I can see why Jesus was so focused on this Gentile man entirely.  You see if the Centurion had no faith he would have not come to Jesus at all.  If the Centurion had only average faith he would have been very glad for Jesus to come to his house.  But because he understood spiritual things greater than any other, he asked Jesus to just give the command and it will be done.   You may not yet understand what is happening in this story and why this man has this kind of faith, but you are about to learn the key found in the Centurion’s next statement:

Mat 8:9  For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it.

The Centurion says “I am a man under authority”.  Wow again and double wow!   The Centurion just revealed one secret to having great faith and this is where we are going to spend the rest of the lesson.  The Centurion tells Jesus, “I speak commands and they are obeyed”.  The centurion says “I tell this one to go and he goes, I tell this other one to do this and it is done”.  In other words this is a military man who understands authority.  Everyone in an army has an assigned rank of authority.  Anyone new to the army is at the bottom of the authority food chain.  Anyone with extended experience and maturity is at the upper echelons of the authority ladder by their years of experience and wisdom.  There is literally no one in the army that is not under the authority of someone else.  Even the chief leader is under the lordship of the ruler of the country.  There are vast numbers of lessons to learn from the military but I will not attempt to give you very many.  Just understand that orders are given and orders are obeyed.  If orders are not given, nothing is done.  If orders are not obeyed then severe consequences are delivered.  All of the army is a word based command structure system of authorities.  No one shoots their gun without someone in charge telling them to shot, where to shoot and how often to shoot.  If you don’t understand this I’m sorry, but that is generally how life works in the army.

Mat 8:10  When Jesus heard it, he marvelled, and said to them that followed, Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.

Jesus’ responses to the Centurion’s words are very revealing.  As you can see Jesus is clearly looking for faith in Israel and has found it to be a scarcity.   If you do not understand that Jesus is still looking for faith today then you are not in touch with reality.  God has not changed, is not changing and will not change.  So this is the key factor for what is happening in this story.  Jesus stood in astonishment with the words spoken to Him by a man outside of the Old Covenant.  This wisdom that came from the Centurion’s mouth demonstrated his ability to recognize things that others ignored around him.  Do not think that Jesus did things in isolation or in private always.  When Jesus cast out a demon with His Word, the demon was gone and people could see the result immediately.  Many people in Israel recognized this to be authority in demonstration, but only the centurion used this knowledge of spiritual authority to set his servant free from his pain, torment and impending death.  Let me show you some other scriptures found in the Gospel about Jesus’ authority quickly:

Mat 7:29  For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.

Mar 1:27  And they were all amazed, insomuch that they questioned among themselves, saying, What thing is this? what new doctrine is this? for with authority commandeth he even the unclean spirits, and they do obey him.

You see the authority that Jesus carried with Him on the earth was clearly evident so that everyone could see it to be different than all the other teachers in Israel.  This is what the Centurion also observed and only he understood how it worked.  You can clearly see that men of Israel questioned Jesus in Mark 1:27 saying He speaks and the demons obey Him.  These are military realities.  They were very self-evident but yet some saw them and questioned them, others saw them and accepted them.  Where are you today on this authority revelation?  That is exactly why I am teaching on this subject to help your faith.  Let me show you another verse on this subject of Jesus’ authority:

Mat 21:23  And when he was come into the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came unto him as he was teaching, and said, By what authority doest thou these things? and who gave thee this authority?

Here we have the Jewish leaders in the synagogue questioning the obvious display of authority from Jesus to teach, to heal or to do anything.  You can tell these leaders recognized what authority was, but yet they did not accept it to be a legitimate authority since it was not given to Him by them or by any other established human organization, government, etc.  The things in their minds were not right.  They saw Jesus as a mere man from an insignificant city called Nazareth and not the God man sent from heaven born in Bethlehem.  Uh Oh?  That was a major stumbling block of offense to them and they allowed their ignorance of the truth to stop them from seeking the truth.  That was not very good news for any of them at all.  You see these men were very closed minded locked into a false knowledge of the truth.  When confronted with truth they closed their eyes because of His overwhelming brightness, even though truth was standing right in front of them.   To be closed minded is a state of mental and spiritual blindness that is used by Satan to keep people from knowing the truth (2 Cor 4:4).  I pray that you will always be open to learning more from God, because He certainly has more that He can teach you.

In Matthew 8 we have discovered a new factor for having great faith.  This factor for having great faith is called “authority”.  Both the Centurion and Jesus walked in authority, understood authority, recognized authority and used authority to produce positive results.  The Centurion’s authority was natural and Jesus’ authority was clearly spiritual.  Both men knew what authority was and both men understood how authority worked completely.  Both men recognized the power of spoken words and this is the basis of ALL authority.  That is where we are in this lesson.  Perhaps we need to research what authority is and how it affects our faith next?  We still have a lot to learn on the subject of authority so let’s explore deeper.

People today in the modern world still question authority and do not understand the importance of its existence.  They typically disrespect those that are in authority and they do not understand the chaos that would exist without any organized structural authority.  We like to live in a free country and enjoy all of these freedoms offered, but these are only made possible because there are established laws under authority.  In this country that I live in we have an organized system of hierarchical layers of authorities.  Let’s quickly look at a definition that I found on the internet for the word authority:

  1. The power or right to give orders, make decisions, and enforce obedience:
  2. The right to act in a specified way, delegated from one person or organization to another.

Authority involves power, but authority does not mean you are all powerful.  Being the strongest man in the world does not make you the one in charge.  This is true in every realm of government, sports, corporations, organizations, families, etc.  Many times the shortest weakest men or women are the ones with the most authority.  Understand the difference between power and authority.  For example, a policeman carries a gun that gives him power, but he also has been given delegated rights of authority by the badge that he wears.  Both of these are separate distinct factors that combine for either positive or negative results.  Look at the definition of authority; this word means a delegated right to give orders and to enforce their obedience.  These orders given are expected to be carried out or there are major consequences.  Having rights is a key part of the definition to having legitimate authority.  This is why Jesus was questioned by Satan asking what right do you have to do these things on the earth?  Satan did not realize how smart God was and that God does not do anything that is illegal.  God certainly had a right by all of His past previous divine acts.  But, I do not have time to fully elaborate on all of these today.

Using these definitions of authority we can easily understand that our God holds all authority by preeminence and power.  But, can we also find the transference of rights and authority from the most High God to us or anyone else here on the earth?  You must realize that God is sovereign and being sovereign God has the explicit right to delegate authority to whoever He wishes.  Does God do that and why would God do that?  Certainly God has the right to do that, but many do not understand why God would do anything to relinquish any control.  To surrender control would violate their idea of an omnipotent God in sovereign control of everything that occurs.  Delegation of authority would allow others to make independent choices, laws, rules and commands and thus things on the earth would no longer be in God’s full control.  That concept boggles the mind of many religious people endlessly.  That is really very unfortunate that people do not just read their Bibles and actually see what God has said in His word and then believe that.  Read this verse carefully and observe the transfer of authority from God to man:

Gen 1:26  And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

Man being made in the image and likeness of God dictates “that what God is capable of man is also capable of” on a lesser scale.  You see I once had an educated seminary man try to tell me this verse does not mean what it literally says.  If that was true then no verse in the Bible could be taken as truth either.  Anyone could easily dismiss the virgin birth, the existence of the man Jesus Christ or His death on the cross and his subsequent resurrection from the dead as all being invalid occurrences.  This verse in Genesis clearly from God says man/Adam has been given “dominion” over all of the earth.  Did God have the right to do this, certainly He did.  Perhaps it is the word dominion that you are having problem with.  This word has a very different meaning than what may come to your mind at first.  Let me give you the Strong’s definition of the word to investigate what God intended to happen with His created man Adam:

A primitive root; to tread down, that is, subjugate; specifically to crumble off: – (come to, make to) have dominion, prevail against, reign, (bear, make to) rule, (-r, over), take.

Interesting Hebrew word definition, isn’t it?  To “tread down” is a very familiar term if you have read many of my other Bible studies.  You see this word “dominion” corresponds to an impending prophecy after the fall of man found in Genesis 3:15 where Gods says that the “seed of the woman” would bruise the head of the serpent.  The confusion arises because people do not understand who the woman is or what the seed is either.  Genesis 3:15 has not been fulfilled yet even though many teach that it has.  To those that teach that it has been fulfilled show me the Bible verses that declares this.  You are going to have to show me where Jesus is called the seed of the woman and then show me where he bruised the head of the serpent.  Since you cannot find these verses, you have to make other verses try to fit your beliefs and that is a dangerous approach to Bible interpretation. What we must first understand is that “dominion” to God means to “tread under foot”.  Then we can try to figure out why Adam did not do this and what the consequences were for not following God’s orders.

What God is teaching us is that how the world began with man in authority will be how the world will end.  This word definition for “dominion” conveys delegated authority and at the very least the right of man to have limited human sovereignty over the earth.  This would give Adam the right to make independent decisions apart from God.  For Adam to rule and to reign on the earth represents the delegated right of power and authority given from the highest authority in the universe and that was God.  Was Adam the strongest and most powerful being on the earth at this point of assignment?  As of Genesis 1, he probably was, but as of Genesis 3 we see the entry of another spiritual being called the serpent coming onto the scene that at the very least God says in the Bible also has great power but yet no authority on the earth.  Let me ask you at the point of the entry of the serpent on the earth, who had authority?  Was it God, Adam or Satan?  Adam of course had been given full authority by God to kick Satan out.  Therefore, God did not have the responsibility to do it.  Satan comes into the world and causes sin and death to reign.  Now authority has been transferred to Satan.  God gave it to man and the man gave it to Satan.  Probably not the best choice Adam could have made.  But nevertheless all of this was legally transferred authority based upon God’s Word.   

You see when Jesus came into the world Satan took Him up to a high place and showed Him all of the kingdoms of the world and said I will give these to you if you worship me (Mat 4:8-9).  Satan declared with this statement that the rights and authority of the world had been given to him.   Where did Satan get this if not from Adam since it was first given to Adam by God in Genesis 1:26?    I find things like this written in the Bible to be fascinating.  Why would God put such detailed information of events if they were not significant things that we needed to know about and to understand?  Also these related subjects would not be understood if they were not properly connected in some way.  God is teaching us that authority matters and that was one reason that Jesus came into the world to reverse the works of Satan (1 Jn 3:8).   You see after the resurrection of Jesus from the dead He makes another radical statement about a transfer of authority that is often ignored:

Mat 28:18  And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.

Do you see what Jesus the risen Savior has just declared?  Is Jesus a liar?  Is this not omnipotent God in the flesh?  What a new radical statement.  Here God is telling us of another transfer of all authority that has just taken place.  Jesus Christ informs us clearly that not all power was His before, but now is in two different dimensional realms.  Power in both the spiritual dimension and the natural dimension has again been transferred back into the hands of God.  Wow, is that a tough concept to comprehend?   Do not forget these words, because they are very important.  This Greek Word translated as “power” does not mean God lost His omnipotent ability of force at any time.  This Greek word translated as power actually means “Authority” has been transferred again back from Satan and returned to God on the earth.   Uh oh?  That means Satan no longer has any authority again on the earth as before Adam sinned.  Do not confuse power and authority.  Satan still has power, but he has no authority to use his power unless a Christian gives him the ability to use it.  Let me show you the very next statement that Jesus makes to the church after saying all authority has been returned to Him:

Mat 28:19  Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:

Can you see that Jesus after saying that all authority has just been transferred to Him, immediately He transfers that authority back to the church, His body on the earth?  That is why this verse 19 starts with the conjunctive “therefore” which connects the previous statement to the current statement.  You see Jesus immediately delegates responsibility again to His people on the earth to do something in the power of His name.  Do you understand this?  These concepts are very important to embrace as a Christian.  You again have delegated rights and authority from the Most High God to do things.  What Satan took from Adam and lost, you have gained back from God through Jesus Christ.  The only difference is we are not working independently from God because God is joined with us working together in us to bring about the final victory over Satan.  Now we need to go back and determine what do all of these transfers of authority have to do with faith and more correctly us having great faith? 

This is where the rubber meets the road so to speak.  We are going to make a practical application of how to possess the greatest kind of faith using our newly found knowledge of how authority was transferred from God to Adam, Adam to Satan, back to Jesus and finally to the church and how this type of authority works from a military perspective.  Recall what the Centurion said to Jesus.  He told Jesus to “Speak the Word” only and my servant will be healed.  Did Jesus do this and what happened to the Centurion’s servant after Jesus spoke?

Mat 8:13  And Jesus said unto the centurion, Go thy way; and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee. And his servant was healed in the selfsame hour.

Jesus speaks several things but I skipped down to verse 13 to shorten the lesson for now.  Jesus says to the Centurion to go your way and that as you have believed (past tense) it has been done to you exactly that way.  Ok, that was my paraphrase of the words of Jesus, but surely you can see what Jesus has declared.  Why did Jesus emphasize that the Centurion had already believed and did not currently believe (present tense)?  Do you think this make any difference?  I believe that it does make a huge difference.  If you believe that God will heal you someday in the future then that is not real great faith.  Maybe it will help if we review what just happened to the Centurion and the servant.  Here is a synopsis of what the Centurion did and what happened:

  1. The Centurion heard of Jesus and had faith in His Word.
  2. The Centurion initiates the exchange and does not wait passively for Jesus.
  3. The Centurion was very humble in his approach to God.
  4. The Centurion had great compassion for another to seek God to help.
  5. The Centurion recognized the Authority that Jesus possessed.
  6. The Centurion understood Authority involved only Giving Orders.
  7. The Centurion believed that he only needed Jesus to Give the Order.
  8. And finally the Centurion believed it was done when the Order was given.
  9. The Bible then said after the word was spoken, the servant was healed.
  10. Therefore, by the time everyone was back at home everything was back to normal.
  11. Understand that at no time on the way home did the Centurion doubt that it was not done.
  12. Therefore, the Centurion had great confidence in the Word of God that was spoken to him.

These are all factors of having great faith today.  In other words all of this happened exactly like it was previously believed and spoken by the Centurion first.  Did you notice I did not say spoken by Jesus first?  Yes I did mean it that way.   Yes Jesus did say it was done according to the way the Centurion believed, but Jesus didn’t tell the Centurion to believe this way or what to say.  The Centurion made the choice what to believe and knew based upon his knowledge of authority that it would be done if Jesus would agree.  This was the greatest faith example in the entire Bible of an unsaved Gentile man that was never in covenant with the almighty God because he understood authority.  Clearly we can see that it was only because the Centurion believed in authority and spoke humbly with authority that caused him to have such noted declared great faith that caused even God to stand in awe and marvel.  Do you want to amaze God?  Here is how you do it.  You believe He has given you the same authority that He possessed “to tread on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy” (Luke 10:19) and you speak with this delegated authority of God’s Word in your mouth declaring what has been already established in the spiritual realm and God will then say to you “be it unto even as you have believed today”.  You see I just quoted you a part of Luke 10:19 and you need to go and read this verse closely and study it:

Luk 10:19  Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.

This verse confirms your authority over Satan.  God says that you will “tread on” the power of serpents.  Isn’t that a full circle back to what God said to you in Genesis 1:26 and Genesis 3:15?  To “tread on” again means that you have been given transferred rights of authority to demonstrate Satan’s defeat on the earth personally.   You will need to look up the definitions of the words “power” in this verse in Luke 10:19 in order to fully confirm what I am telling you.  The first word translated as power in this verse means “Authority” and the second word translated as “power” means force.  So they are two different Greek words concerning two different spiritual beings.  We have God’s “Authority” over Satan’s force of power.  Both of us are in the world but light overcomes darkness every time.   However, if we do not exercise our authority, Satan will dominate us with his illegal power.

I guess I have been going a long time in this lesson.  I have many more things that we could talk about concerning using your authority.  Perhaps I need to do a series of lessons just on the subject of authority.   This is truly a great revelation that every Christian needs to understand.  Jesus has come into the world to restore the right order to man and has given to us His newly transferred authority for a purpose.  We are going out of this world a victorious church and not a defeated church.  We can only be victorious if we learn that we have authority and then learn how to use it with our faith.  This information will change your life and your attitude.  When Satan attacks with his power, you can fight back with your authority and he will flee in terror.  Satan will not like me teaching you this authority, but that is just too bad.  If you will grasp these concepts and take hold of them firmly and believe what God has told me to tell you, you too will become an over comer for God.  God bless you until next time and please leave me a comment about how this is helping you to learn and grow in the knowledge Jesus Christ.

If you would like to continue to read in this series you may now go to “Part 6“.

 


Understanding How to Be Led By the Spirit of God! How the Holy Spirit Led the Early Church in Acts 10! Part 11

(ver 1.2) This is now Part 11 in a series of very important basic Christian Bible lessons on the subject of Being Led by the Spirit of God.  These lessons contain critical spiritual information necessary for the spiritual growth of every Christian and they directly apply to us in the modern world because we are the same church body serving the same God as those in the book of Acts.  My foundational scripture verse for the series is “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God” (Rom 8:14). That verse makes it sound essential to be led by God or you cannot be called His child.  Therefore, I believe that it is essential to know this subject.  We have covered a tremendous amount of information that will not be repeated so if you have not read this from the beginning I would suggest that you go and start with “Part 1” first.   In recent lessons, I have been moving through the book of Acts and observing the recorded (direct and indirect stated) methods used by God to lead the early church.  We are beginning to see a set of repeated pattern of the same methods being used by God to build up and grow the Body of Christ.  We are also beginning to understand an emphasis of certain methods of God over others that I have mentioned of how God leads His people.  In the last lesson I introduced you to some new concepts when I described the contributing factors of peace and joy to be necessary for hearing from the Spirit of God.  If you are depressed then you are not hearing from God.  If you are not in peace you are not hearing from God.  We have also seen repeatedly that those in the church that are being led by God are always those that are in unity with the other believers surrounding them.  This means they were not arguing, fighting or debating over what anyone wanted to do individually, but that they were more concerned with what God was doing corporately for the greater plan and purpose of the church.  Those being led today in the Church should be no different.  God is not going to lead one part of a group of believers differently apart from another group of believers so that they fight over who is right and who is wrong.  This is another important key to being led by the Spirit of God.   Hearing from God should always cause love to flow which generates a spirit of oneness, agreement, harmony and unity. 

Today I am only going to teach in chapter 10 of Acts.  It has just been making my lessons too long by me trying to teach on multiple chapters in one lesson.  Acts chapter 10 is only 48 verses long but it is so rich with new information on my subject of being led by the Spirit of God, that this again will probably be a long lesson and I will probably only get approximately half way through the chapter today.  I apologize in advance for the length of the lesson, but I believe this information is really important on the subject of being led by the Spirit of God.   Acts 10 is probably one of my favorite chapters in the book of Acts and hopefully as we go through it today, you will see why I say that and maybe it will become one of your new favorite chapters also.   Let’s start at the beginning with verse 1 and read down to verse 3.

ACTS CHAPTER 10

Act 10:1  There was a certain man in Caesarea called Cornelius, a centurion of the band called the Italian band,

Act 10:2  A devout man, and one that feared God with all his house, which gave much alms to the people, and prayed to God alway.

Act 10:3  He saw in a vision evidently about the ninth hour of the day an angel of God coming in to him, and saying unto him, Cornelius.

It is very interesting for me to see the connecting and developing factors being tied together in these verses.  It is also clear to me that God gives us many new clues and details like the hour of the day that these events occurred in this chapter.  These details certainly have direct meaning and are not there by chance.  There is nothing found in the Bible that occurs there by accident.  Every word has a designed purpose of God.  In the first verse, God is speaking about an Italian man, a Gentile by the flesh.  Up until this point in time, the church was widely a Jewish set of believers that have accepted Jesus.  But, Cornelius is clearly described as a Christian man; he is being labeled as someone who feared God.  To fear God is not an indication of being afraid or terrified of God, but it is more the concept of being in an attitude of awe for God with a great reverential respect for His position, His power, His knowledge and His ability.  This same Greek word is used in Ephesians 5 when God talks about a wife’s attitude towards her husband.  This is clearly not the type of fear that she is to be afraid that her husband will hurt her.  You see the risen Savior Jesus is the husband in this relationship with the church and the church is supposed to treat God with awe and respect.  However, God’s attitude of love was first demonstrated towards us and He treats us with great tender kindness like the very valuable wife that He has given His all to find. 

You can learn this concept of God giving His all by listening to what Jesus said about the kingdom of God when He teaches the parable of a merchant man seeking valuable pearls.  This merchant man goes and sells all that he has in order to buy the pearl of great value that he has searched for and found (Mat 13:45-46).  The merchant man in this parable is a type of Jesus and the pearl of great value is a type of us, the church.  The great purchase price paid for us was the payment of His blood and His life.  This was God giving everything that He possessed to buy us out of our major predicament of sin.    What we learn as the symbolic pearl from this information is that how we view God will determine if God will be able to guide us with His Spirit.  If we view Him as a God that will hurt us if we do not obey or make a mistake, then that is going to affect what we can hear and how we can hear Him.   If someone obeys God out of terror then that someone becomes a slave to that fear.  If someone obeys willingly out of their love for their God then that person actions are founded upon His love knowing if they do make a mistake that He is there to help them.  You see you do not understand how much God values you if you believe that God will hurt you if you do wrong.   One of the most important verses in the entire Bible is the one that states “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8)!   Not God has love for us, but He is that Love for us.  God has not given to us the spirit of fear.  Fear is being afraid or terrified which is really an opposing force to love.  This is why I wanted to briefly try to explain the type of fear being mentioned in Acts that Cornelius possessed that allowed him to hear from God.

In the first three verses in Acts 10, Cornelius is also described to be a giver and this is a characteristic of most real Christians.  Most Christians love to give to others.  The United States gets accused of many things, but the majority of the charity poured out on the world comes from this Christian nation.  Giving may or may not be a factor for what you think about God, the Bible and being a Christian, but giving is a huge factor for if you desire to receive anything from God.  I’m not preaching works based giving; I’m teaching Spirit led giving.  Obeying the law will not justify you, but obeying God will cause great benefits and blessings to occur.  You see giving is tied to receiving everywhere in the Bible.  You can see this as a stated spiritual law of God.  It is called the law of sowing and reaping and it occurs everywhere in the Bible as a predominant theme from Genesis to Revelation. Sowing and reaping is not usually a popular subject and frequently ignored because people teach it only in regards to money, but this subject is found ever present in many areas other than money.  There are over 10 things in the Bible referred to as seeds and if you don’t know them, then your ignorance causes you to potentially miss them.  I have a series of Bible lessons on this subject so I will not repeat them in this lesson.  If you want to read them you can go and see “Understanding Seeds in the Bible”. 

As you can see in verse 2 of Acts 10, Cornelius is praying.  What happens when we pray?  I think I tried to teach you that God hears and will respond.  Here is another very clear example of that in Acts 10.  Cornelius has a vision, but this time it is of a spiritual angel.  So we have the spiritual realm becoming visible to a man in the natural realm through God’s use of a vision.  This is an example of a combined method approach of spiritual communication.  God used both a spiritual vision and a spiritual being or an angel simultaneously.  This is certainly different, but it does happen.  Other times in the Bible, God sends an angel into the natural realm and people see them physically and God can do either.  This is also another example of an open type of vision.  The man Cornelius is wide awake and his eyes are wide open.   These are amazing confirmations that God will still use visions and angels directly in the modern church to give to us a specific message. 

I want you to see the stated order of occurrence in this manifestation of God.  It is stated that Cornelius did three things first before God sent the angel and gave the vision.  Cornelius feared God, gave to others and prayed before God gave him a vision and sent the angel with the message.  Is that not God responding or giving back based upon what Cornelius gave and did first?  Most of the time, I believe that this is the way that things have happened in Acts.  Saul was the only example that I have observed in Acts to be different so far.  Jesus appeared to Saul an unsaved man the first time without Saul asking or doing anything, but notice after that, it was only when Saul prayed to God that God said that He had given to him another vision.  The Spirit of God can do things progressively different as you continue to learn to grow up spiritually.  For, example when I was first filled with the Spirit of God, God spoke to me in an audible voice one time.  He has never done that again since then.  However, that does not mean that I do not hear from the voice of God daily.  It only means that I have grown enough spiritually to discern how else He speaks.  God treats unsaved and baby Christians a little bit differently than the mature Christians because He expects the mature Christians to know more.  This is true for babies in the natural realm and this is true for babies in the spiritual realm.   Let’s now see what God’s response was to what we have seen so far from Cornelius:

Act 10:4  And when he looked on him, he was afraid, and said, What is it, Lord? And he said unto him, Thy prayers and thine alms are come up for a memorial before God.

God declares that He has heard the prayers of Cornelius and has seen his giving and it sounds like God sees both of these as being positive things.  Why else are they mentioned?  One key word in this verse is the term “memorial”.  A memorial in the natural is a way to remember someone or something”.  This is what this word means, but it is easily taken the wrong way since God does know everything. What you do or say cannot cause God to suddenly remember you.  God does not step back and say “Oh yea, I forgot about Jim, I guess I better do something.  However, it is clear to me from these verses that God says the angel was sent and the message delivered because of his actions.  What I want you to discover is that Cornelius’ actions and his words were observed by God and thus your words and actions are also viewed by God since God is no respecter of persons.  I also want you to understand that if anything is pleasing in the eyes of God we need to remember clearly what it is that pleases God.  It is not your giving and it is not your praying, but it is only your faith when doing both of these.  You see the Bible says without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb 11:6).  So if you are giving without faith, you are still not pleasing to God and you do it in vain.  If you are praying without faith then you are again not going to be pleasing to God and your words will fall empty.  God places certain priorities on certain things and His Word is first and foremost above everything else and then your faith in His Word allows the connection to take place to access His Power.   If you do things without learning about God’s priorities then you are more than likely doing them out of order.  I do not have time to teach you about faith, but I have a series of lessons that will help you understand this critical subject called “Understanding Bible Faith”.  I bring up faith because it is clearly Cornelius’ faith that played a role in hearing from God even though it was never directly mentioned.  This is just another example of using the Bible to explain the Bible.  If God is pleased with anyone, then God says that they have faith while doing what they have done.  Let’s continue with the angel’s instructions from God:

Act 10:5  And now send men to Joppa, and call for one Simon, whose surname is Peter:

Act 10:6  He lodgeth with one Simon a tanner, whose house is by the sea side: he shall tell thee what thou oughtest to do.

The angel tells Cornelius to send men to Joppa for a man named Peter.  Notice that Cornelius does not know Peter.  Why didn’t the angel just show up where Peter was and tell Peter to go and see Cornelius?  I find it very interesting how God does things in this chapter and that is why I’m spending so much time in talking about it.  Here we have an angel sent by God with a message to tell Cornelius where to go and get another message from God.  Wow, that is just mind blowing, to many Christians.   God tells Cornelius to go find a man named Peter because Peter has a message for him but as we read down in the chapter we are going to find out that Peter doesn’t know this yet.  Why is that?  Do you see what is happening here?  The man Cornelius has a vision and sees an angel but does not get the message from the angel but is told where to go to get the message from a very certain man named Peter.  In other words if Cornelius tried to get the message from the apostle John, he would have missed it  Was it only because the angel did not know the message or was it that God was teaching these people involved some new spiritual lessons on guidance, helping them all to grow?  Both men of God are required to walk by faith and not by their sight.  Cornelius had specific steps of instructions to get Peter and Peter will be given specific words of instruction for Cornelius.  Using this information you should begin to understand how God is going to potentially lead you?  He is not going to tell you everything personally all at once.  Sometimes He will just tell others what to tell you.  Sometimes I am used by God to speak to people and sometimes God uses other people to speak to me.  Sometimes I hear directly from God and other times He does things differently with me reading His word or hearing a preacher or a teacher.  There are so many ways that God can speak that you just need to be observant and attentive enough to hear Him when He does.  That is just the way He does it.  I just try to learn the best that I can to flow with Him and that is all that I can do by faith.

Act 10:9  On the morrow, as they went on their journey, and drew nigh unto the city, Peter went up upon the housetop to pray about the sixth hour:

Act 10:10  And he became very hungry, and would have eaten: but while they made ready, he fell into a trance,

Ok, we are about to learn several new things in these verses.  First, Cornelius sends men to get Peter and while they are traveling Peter is described to go up on top of the roof to pray.  So again we see prayer as a major contributing factor for hearing from God.  But, we should soon notice that it is not just the fact that Peter prays, but it becomes more significant that Peter prayed at just the right time that makes all of this really work together.  This is why God is revealing the time factor in this chapter and teaching you that timing is everything with God.  You can be told by God to do something and then do it too early or too late and miss what God wanted you to learn.  During this prayer, Peter falls into a trance.  That is the beginning of a very different manifestation of the Spirit of God.  This is what I call a closed vision.  A closed vision is one where the individual is not necessarily asleep, but not necessarily awake either.  A vision during sleep is called a dream and this is not a dream.  In other words, if you were observing Peter praying you might seem to think that he looked like a statue because he appeared motionless and fixed in one place.  The condition of his eyes could be either shut or open, but they will definitely not be blinking.  It might look like that he was sleeping if was not for the fact that he might be standing up or even kneeling down.  Nowhere in the chapter does it say that Peter was directly lying down.  It does say later in verse 20 that Peter is told to arise and this implies that he was not standing.  But there are a lot of positions other than standing that it could be.  What you need to observe is if God does not tell us the position then the position is not important.  Too many Christians get focused on external things and totally miss the really important spiritual things.  There is an unnamed church denomination that is highly ritualistic.  They think that they will be heard by God by their faithful acts and works.  However, that is just not the truth.  During prayer what is important is the inward position of your heart and not your outward external posture or stance.  Saul saw a vision while he was traveling.  Stephen saw a vision while standing and being stoned.  Here in Acts 10 we now have seen the third and fourth mentioned direct occurrence of someone having a vision and both of these times it was while they were praying.

Act 10:13  And there came a voice to him, Rise, Peter; kill, and eat. 

I’m not going to go through every verse, but this one is very good because it tells you directly that Peter heard a voice and we will find out in the next verse that Peter recognized that it was the voice of God speaking to him immediately.  Remember what Jesus said to the Apostles?  Jesus taught them about Him being the Shepherd and them being the sheep in John 10.  Jesus also said that He knew His sheep and that His sheep knew Him (John 10:14).  All of this information in that chapter teaches us that God’s children will recognize His voice.  So God does not have to say “Thus saith the Great I Am”, He just speaks and Peters knows who is speaking.  This is the same way with you and I.  I hear His voice and I recognized Him to be my God and the voice of a stranger I do not follow because the stranger I do not recognize.  That is called spiritual discernment.  The more you understand about the Bible the more recognizable His voice becomes to you.  God will never speak in opposition to His Word, but Satan will. You see in the Bible voices are always spirits and spirits are always voices.   You will either know it or you will be deceived to follow another voice and that is usually fatal.

Act 10:14  But Peter said, Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean.

As you can tell Peter understands who is speaking to Him because He calls Him his Lord.  You may recall earlier that Cornelius had this same response calling the voice Lord.  This was the Spirit of Jesus, the Great Shepherd the familiar known voice that was speaking to Peter.  Here is where Peter’s problem begins, because he knows who is speaking and he thinks that his God is telling him to do something that was unlawful.  Peter is greatly struggling with these instructions from God.  What we learn from this is that God knows what He is doing and you don’t so you should not question, but should be obedient.  As long you know the voice is from Him, you just need to do what He says.  If you read down in the chapter God repeats these instructions 3 times, so Peter is on the verge of rebellion because of his lack of understanding of the purpose of the law.  God says my people are destroyed for a lack of knowing (Hosea 4:6).  So Peter must learn quickly or get left out.  Why didn’t Peter just ask God to explain what was happening?  Did you know that you cannot ask God any questions that are too hard to be answered?  You can ask God a dumb question, but as long as it is not a question of doubt or unbelief then it is a valid question.

Let’s discuss briefly the vision of Peter.  Did you notice that the vision was about food and in verse 10 it said that Peter was already hungry?  Do you think that God can give you any physical feelings?  I know the Bible says that God is a Spirit, but I’ll ask you again, do you think that the Spirit of God can give you a physical feeling like that of natural hunger?  I know for a fact that God can manifest in these ways if He so desires.  After all God invented natural feelings so it is not difficult to manifest them.  Again I will tell you that this is God’s choice and not our choice.  But, God can come into the natural realm to make Himself known for any purpose and in any way that helps to teach us. 

When I was first filled with the Holy Spirit, I felt a strong heat like a fire from the Spirit of God inside of my chest and sometimes it was so strong that it was very distracting.  I feel this heat of the Spirit of God in my chest right now as I type this lesson.  This is clearly a physical feeling in my flesh caused by the Spirit of God residing in my spirit.  If you do not believe me I’m sorry, I can’t prove it to you; this is for my benefit and not for yours.  However, I do know that what I feel physically is scripturally based.  Have you read the recorded words of John the Baptist?  He said of Jesus that “I baptize you with water, but there will come one after me that is greater than I and He will baptize you with the Holy Ghost and fire” (Mat 3:11, Luke 3:16).   I can tell you about this fire from God, but I can’t make it happen for you and neither can you.  However, there is a difference, you can pray in faith and ask God for this experience since it is a recorded promise found in His Word for you.  If you want the fire of God ask for it now. 

Let’s go back to Peter’s vision.  What I found significant about Peter’s vision was the fact that he was feeling very hungry and suddenly God gives him a closed vision about food that needed an interpretation in order to be understood.  Visions and dreams that required interpretations were given by God many times in the Old Testament.  But, this is the first time we can see that God is doing this again in Acts.  Realize that God is still the same God today as He was back then, and He can do whatever He likes.  Just learn to flow and then learn that God still uses dreams and visions that need interpretation.  Verses 11-16 in Acts 10 describe the vision of Peter and since this is not my direct subject I’m going to skip it.  They basically give several symbols, a sheet carrying many wild animals of the earth that are lowered down from heaven.  God tells Peter to kill and eat and Peter tells God I have never eaten what is common or unclean.  God then tells Peter “Don’t call common what I have made clean”.  Uh, oh?  God is definitely teaching Peter something new.  This was God teaching Peter to get out of his box because He was doing a new thing on the earth.

Act 10:17  Now while Peter doubted in himself what this vision which he had seen should mean, behold, the men which were sent from Cornelius had made enquiry for Simon’s house, and stood before the gate,

Here is what I have been trying to say about Peter’s view of what was happening; that he did not understand what the vision meant yet even though God had just given it to him.  This is what happens to Christians in the church still.  Just because God gives you something does not mean you will understand it immediately.  Peter had a conflict in his mind because he was attempting to interpret and judge the vision by his old knowledge of the law of God.  God declares many things in the law to be unclean for human consumption but, now God has said to Peter to kill one of these and to eat it.   This was a common problem for many converted Jews when they first become Christians.  They tried to hold on to their old traditional understanding of the laws of God too tightly when God was clearly saying “those were only shadows of new coming spiritual things”.  Paul taught this problem in Romans and Galatians and other places.  There was a constant struggle for man to try to keep the law and God is teaching them to be led by the Spirit instead.   However, what God was doing was using Peter’s knowledge of the scriptures in the Old Covenant to bring him a new revelation of what God was doing in the New Covenant.  Go back and reread this chapter again very closely.  It is actually a great lesson to learn many things.  First see what timing plays in everything that occurs.  Then realize that God must be guiding multiple people simultaneously to get all of these things to happen at just the right times.  God gives multiple limited step directions using two types of visions, an angel and a voice directly from the Spirit of God and everything occurs at just exactly the right time.  It is pretty amazing to me.

Act 10:19  While Peter thought on the vision, the Spirit said unto him, Behold, three men seek thee.

 

I want you to realize that the Spirit of God is directly attributed with speaking to Peter and that this is the second recorded direct example of God doing this in the book of Acts so far.  I’m not sure if I pointed out the first occurrence, but there was one recorded in Acts 8:29 that said the Lord spoke to Phillip directly.  I really do not believe that these are all of the times that God speaks directly, but I do believe that these are mentioned to teach us that God still does this.  I want you to understand also that it does not say what kind of voice these men heard.  It could have been an external audible voice or more than likely it was the internal still small voice of God within them.  Again, how God speaks is not as important as what God says.  I hope you understand that.  You should not really focus or care about the method, but you should care greatly what God said.  Also notice that God speaks while Peter is using his God given mental reasoning faculty to try to determine what the vision means.  In other words Peter was focused in on the very important content of the vision and not the fact that he had just had a great vision from Almighty God.   Wow, what a lesson to learn today.  Don’t stand in awe if God gives you a vision and miss the message!

Act 10:20  Arise therefore, and get thee down, and go with them, doubting nothing: for I have sent them. 

While all of this is happening to Peter, the men from Cornelius’ house just so happen to show up and the Spirit of God says they are here and to go down to see them because I have sent them.  Notice God claims responsibility for what is transpiring.  So is God doing it or are the men doing it, or is everyone doing it together?  Take a look at what God is doing.  God is teaching them all spiritual lessons by giving them many different limited steps to follow.  These are examples of God teaching them using tiny baby steps of divine guidance.   Things are beginning to fit together as each part of God’s designed plan is revealed and fulfilled.   The men of God are definitely participating and this demonstrates clearly that they are all being led by the Spirit of God.  What we are observing is men working with the Holy Spirit’s guidance to achieve a greater purpose.  Without the participation of each man and the direction of the Spirit of God, we may not have any Gentiles in the church today. 

Pay attention to the fact in verse 20 that God is directing Peter to not doubt and also to be obedient.  Why is God doing this?  What is doubt?  Doubt is the opposite of having faith.  If you have doubts then you are not fully in faith.  I keep going back to faith, because this is the key factor for following God, being led by God and for being pleasing to God.  Jesus taught Peter about doubt when Peter left the boat to walk on the water with Jesus.  Because of Peter’s doubts God says Peter began to sink (Mat 14:31).  So how does this knowledge that Peter possessed apply to his current situation?  To me it is obvious that doubt causes people to go down or fail.  That would mean the opposite truth would be that not to doubt would cause people to have a successful outcome.  You have to understand that God has not told Peter who was at the door to see him.  God only said, “Men are here and I sent them”.  Here is the opportunity for Peter to doubt.  These men sent by God were all Gentiles and that causes a problem of potential doubt in the mind of a man who feels special for being a natural born Jew.  Peter could have looked at the circumstances and thought that these men can’t be from God.  There was a great revelation coming that everyone is welcome in the New Covenant and not just the natural Jews and that was the plan of God to bless all nations in order to grow the church beyond the borders of natural Israel.  But, Peter didn’t know this yet.  Peter was about to learn a revelation that was hidden in God’s covenant with Abraham and this was how God chose to reveal it to him.  I hope you understand the concept of revelation, I will do a separate Bible study on this subject soon.

Act 10:21  Then Peter went down to the men which were sent unto him from Cornelius; and said, Behold, I am he whom ye seek: what is the cause wherefore ye are come?

Peter still does not know why they are here even though God had just given him a vision to why they are there.  God even told Peter that He had sent them but, Peter has just not put all of the pieces of the puzzle together yet.  Have you ever realized that God gives us many things using a puzzle format in the Bible?  If you do not understand this then you do not understand the joys found when solving a divine puzzle.   There is great satisfaction gained from solving the complex puzzles given to us by God.  Maybe only computer programmers, like me understand this.  It causes a sense of accomplishment and God uses it to promote your morale, confidence and self-esteem.  God is interested in teaching you how to do things.  It is an error to think that God wants to do everything for you.  God wants you to grow in spiritual things so that you can come up to a higher level.  Did you know that?  I think that is a little bit controversial to many and it sounds like I’m contradicting what I said in an earlier lesson that without God we labor in vain if we do things independent from God.  There is a huge difference from doing your own things in independence and doing specific God kind of things by faith expecting Him to work with you and guide you.  A guide will never come to you and carry you; that would be them doing everything and you watching.  A guide should give directions and show you the way to go and you should make the effort to obey and to follow them.  Wow, that is unity and harmony of God working with you and you following God.

You see when I write Bible studies for you to read, I do it, but I am expecting God to show me what to do using my faith in Him.  This is what is happening in this chapter of Acts also.  If that was not true then God would not be doing what He is doing, the way He is doing it in this chapter.  If God simply wanted to get new information into the hands of the church the fastest way possible, He could have done things in a much more simplistic direct manner with both Cornelius and Peter.  They could have all immediately known everything instead of having to walk by their faith.  However, walking by sight is just not what is happening here in this chapter.  Everyone is working through the process and learning and this is God’s hidden plan.  I pray that I am describing these things in a way that teaches you how God will deal with you.

Act 10:22  And they said, Cornelius the centurion, a just man, and one that feareth God, and of good report among all the nation of the Jews, was warned from God by an holy angel to send for thee into his house, and to hear words of thee.

I want to reemphasize that Peter still has no clue what is going on or what he is supposed to say to Cornelius.  God has never told Peter that he was to go directly to see Cornelius either.  God has only told Peter I sent these men to you.  So what these men tell Peter is totally new to him and they bring words sent from God through a Gentile man.  Peter is required to believe a message came from God from a Gentilie man.  Cornelius is also required to beleive a message came from God from Peter.  Do you really understand what is happening?  God had just gotten through speaking to Peter directly but never gives any details to what is happening or why.  Peter still does not have a clue what words he is supposed to share when he goes to Cornelius’ house to speak.  Are you learning now what is happening?  Do you see how everyone is required to walk by faith and not by their sight?  I know I keep repeating myself, but that is so very important that I want you to really understand it.  God purposely provides limited instructions in phases and stages of development that all will fit together eventually.

Act 10:22  And they said, Cornelius the centurion, a just man, and one that feareth God, and of good report among all the nation of the Jews, was warned from God by an holy angel to send for thee into his house, and to hear words of thee.

So this is all news to Peter.  Peter hears about an angel appearing to Cornelius the Italian.  Peter has just had a vision from God that explains the whole situation, but the vision needs interpretation to be understood.  I think I‘ll end this lesson with this discussion.   Let’s review the key points given today:

  1. Cornelius’ giving was mentioned as a key factor for getting God’s attention.
  2. Prayer mentioned as a connecting reason twice for having a vision from God.
  3. Faith is always a key to being Led by the Spirit of God.
  4. An open vision was given to Cornelius and he sees an angel with a limited message from God to go get Peter to hear the real message from God.
  5. Peter experiences physical hunger and is given a closed vision about food and eating that needs an interpretation in order to be understood.
  6. A clear vision was given to Cornelius that needed no interpretation.
  7. God gives Peter a symbolic cloaked vision that needs interpretation.
  8. The interpretation of the vision required Peter’s knowledge of the Word of God.
  9. God spoke directly to the spirit of Peter with a very clear voice but with limited details being given and Peter was required to believe the words of the men sent to him.
  10. Timing in every event mentioned is a key to the success of the whole purpose of God.
  11. Every man involved heard from God, obeyed and cooperated with the Spirit of God to accomplish God’s plan.
  12. The purposed outcome of the plan will be a new revelation from God and the continued growth of the church.

This is what is happening today in the church whether you realize it or not.  God is revealing the Bible, the knowledge of His people is greatly increasing and the church will grow until Jesus returns very soon.  Get into the plan or you will be left behind.  Be in unity, hear His voice and be led and we will exit as the victorious church body of Christ.  Thanks for taking the time to study the Bible today.  I will continue this series soon, but please leave me a comment about how you have heard from God.  I guarantee that He is speaking, just be attentive, pray and listen.  God Bless you and thank you for your time.


Understanding How to Be Led By the Spirit of God! How the Holy Spirit Led the Early Church in Acts 8 – 9! Part 10

(ver 1.1) This is now Part 10 in a series of very important basic Christian Bible lessons on the subject of Being Led by the Spirit of God.  These lessons contain critical spiritual information necessary for the spiritual growth of every Christian and they directly apply to us in the modern world because we are the same church body serving the same God as those in the book of Acts.  We have covered a tremendous amount of information that will not be repeated so if you have not read this from the beginning I would suggest that you go and start with “Part 1” first.   I have been moving through the book of Acts and observing the recorded (direct and indirecly statedt) methods used by God to lead the early church.  We have already observed at least 7 different direct methods either being observed in action or described in words.  These methods will be the same ones that God will use to lead us in these last days.  I believe that the church today requires the Holy Spirit’s involvement just as much and even possibly more than the early church.  The early church certainly encountered great physical opposition and persecution, jail, beatings and even death and these are beginning to emerge on the earth again today as Christians continue to proclaim the same Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Living here in the United States it is often too easy to ignore what is going on in the other parts of the world and in other countries.  But, Christians are being murdered, imprisoned and persecuted for doing nothing but claiming to be a Christian.  The Muslim populations of many countries kill people for them just looking or acting like Christians and doing nothing but giving humanitarian aid to their people.  Christians in Egypt are now under attack from the Muslim Brotherhood and they have burned churches and killed several Christians in the streets in name of their new laws.  A recent Christian in Iran was jailed and sentenced to death for not denouncing his faith in Jesus.  These are the types of things that the Holy Spirit’s guidance can be very beneficial to us to help us avoid.  God already knows the end from the beginning but that does not mean everything that happens is set in concrete.  It means we need to learn to hear from God and be obedient to allow us to be in the right places at the right times to help the right people.  If God knows which flights will crash, it would be best just to not be on that flight, do you agree?  I believe that persecution will increase in these last days as we get nearer to the return of Christ.  Let’s continue to go through the book of Acts to study God’s spiritual leading of the early Church:

ACTS CHAPTER 8

Act 8:1  And Saul was consenting unto his death. And at that time there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem; and they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judaea and Samaria, except the apostles.

We should recognize what is happening in this chapter because it goes along with many other verses in the New Testament that are pivotal to your spiritual understanding.  The religious Jewish leadership in Jerusalem came down very hard on the rapid expansion of the church of Jesus Christ because they did not believe in the God of their father Abraham anymore.  That statement probably shocks many Christians today that still view Israel as God’s chosen people, but they obviously ignore who it was that hung Jesus on the cross when the God of Abraham came to them personally in the flesh.  This was a clear failure to recognize their God and a direct rejection of their God.  You should learn many things from that reality.  First don’t put your God in a box that limits what He can do.  Because the Jews believed that God was not a man, they failed to see Him when He purposefully chose to come to the earth in the form of a man.  There is a great deal of difference between being a man and appearing to us in the form of a man.  This was God thinking outside of the box and it was a radical approach to take.  The Jews at this time of God’s visitation had replaced the worship of the God of Abraham with a manmade religion full of rules, ignorance and unbelief.  During this time, the church becomes highly motivated to widely disperse from Jerusalem to flee the Jewish persecution and the certain death as we witnessed with the loss of the life of Stephen in chapter 7.  This is a very essential part of my lesson to why it is important to be led by the Spirit of God today.  If you do not see the growing persecution of the church in the modern world then you are living in an ostrich like isolated false reality with your head buried in the proverbial sand. 

Do you believe that these people in the church in Acts fled Jerusalem out of fear or by the guidance of the Holy Spirit?  What was their motivation?  I personally believe that they were led by God to safer places to carry on the spread of the church’s growth in other regions. You of course can believe whatever you like, but only this interpretation fits with my verse that says “those who are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God’ (Rom 8:14).  So if God was not leading them to flee Jerusalem then they are no longer the children of God.  Yes I know they still had free wills and that they could have been doing things independently from God, but why would God write about their independent actions in a book about the acts of the Holy Spirit?  It just doesn’t make sense to me.  This is the book of Acts written about God’s work in the church and for the church.  Therefore, pay attention to what the church is doing and you should be able to see what God is doing for them.

Act 8:4  Therefore they that were scattered abroad went every where preaching the word.

Here is an obviously brilliant strategy move that was missed by Satan.  If Satan would have not persecuted the church they may have remained only in Jerusalem and probably never have grown into the rest of the world.  But, since they were being persecuted relentlessly by the Jews, this verse says they went preaching the Gospel everywhere that they traveled.  If someone is preaching Jesus, is this not God working through them to get others saved?  If they were running away from Jerusalem to hide, this would indicate “fear” based actions, but since they are going and preaching this demonstrates “faith” based actions.   Sometimes Satan is just not that entirely smart in what he does and how he does it.  He never should have killed Jesus on the cross and now Satan should have never persecuted the church and helped them to spread the Gospel to the rest of the world.  Probably the church would have been led by God to go to the rest of the world eventually, but this attack by Satan certainly sped up the process tremendously.  I believe Satan is making the same mistake today in persecuting the church.  I believe this persecution will help motivate the people of God to get the message out before it is too late for all of the other people that have not heard about Jesus.

Act 8:6  And the people with one accord gave heed unto those things which Philip spake, hearing and seeing the miracles which he did.

Here we again see the church in unity.  It would definitely appear to me that being led by the Spirit of God will promote the spirit of oneness and agreement.  This is the seventh time in the first 8 chapters of the book of Acts that the church is described to be in unity.  I believe that this is a coming sign of maturity for the body of Christ to go out on.  We must begin to unify and become one harmonious group of believers as the Spirit of God continues to teach us and to guide us.   Expect this to happen or do not expect it to happen, but it will happen either way and you might be left on the outside looking in like the natural Jews.  It is better to be in agreement than to be left out, being offended or not in agreement with God.  I just cannot see the church being raptured as a divided body of believers, if we are not ONE BODY in complete harmony then Satan has won.  You see in the Bible Jesus said a HOUSE DIVIDED will not stand (Mk 3:25).  If we are God’s house and we are divided we will also not stand and that only leaves us defeated.  Do you think the church ends this age defeated?  If not, then you better start praying with me for unity and harmony.  Of course what I am saying is that we should pray what Jesus prayed to get in agreement with His prayer.  Go and read it in John 17 and see what Jesus prayed and then see if you can agree and pray with Him.

Act 8:8  And there was great joy in that city.

If you notice this verse says that the church is filled with joy even in the face of all of the persecution that has recently occurred.  This has to be the work of the Holy Spirit!  Joy must be a sign that God is doing great things, like healing the sick, casting out devils, setting the captives free through His saving grace and doing many other miraculous signs and wonders.  Joy is said to be one of the fruits of the spirit (Gal 5:22).  So Joy should be a fruit present in those being led by the Spirit of God today.  I believe that God will lead His people to help others to spread this same joy.  These are the benefits of being led by the Spirit of God.  If you are in despair and in gloom, downcast, looking down at the circumstances around you, then you are not being led by the Spirit of the Almighty God.  Do you understand that?  There are many other examples of men and women being led by the Spirit of God in this chapter but I’ll end the chapter 8 discussion with one more example of the repeated involvement of angels:

Act 8:26  And the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise, and go toward the south unto the way that goeth down from Jerusalem unto Gaza, which is desert.

An angel again appears to Phillip and gives him exact directions from God.  This is clearly an external manifestation of the Spirit of God helping to guide the early church.  This is at least the third time that angels were directly used by God in just the first 8 chapters of Acts.  Always expect the involvement of angels and God will use them today as needed.  Let’s move on quickly to chapter 9 and I’ll end this lesson with what we find in this chapter.

ACTS CHAPTER 9

Act 9:3  And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven:

In chapter 9 of Acts we can see the manifestation of spiritual guidance through God’s use of visions that were first mentioned by Peter in Acts chapter 2.   You may recall that Stephen while being stoned had a vision so this is not God’s first usage of visions in the book of Acts, but we are about to see a new emphasis placed on this subject as a very direct selected method of God to communicate with men on the earth.  Take note of this fact as this chapter begins; Saul is an unsaved man on the road to Damascus. Saul is not born again when this vision occurs and he doesn’t even believe in Jesus yet.  Saul is traveling on the road to Damascus to persecute the church and then Jesus suddenly appears to him in a vision as a bright shining light from heaven.  Spiritual visions are a very legal communication method recorded in the Bible for Christians and non-Christians and these will continue to occur as the Lord desires to get a message to those as He wills.  There are different categories of visions, but this vision was an open type of vision.  Meaning Saul was wide awake and his eyes were wide open while it was happening.  Jesus basically tells Saul in this vision to go into the city and wait there for further directions.  This is clearly an example of Saul being led by God directly using certain limited instructions for guidance.  This is a very important part of learning to be led by the Spirit of God.  God will rarely tell you everything that you need to know and He will normally lead you using a step by step instruction methodology or process.  This method insures your faithfulness and your obedience and forces you to walk by faith and not by your sight (2 Cor 5:7).  This was not a pun that I intended to make but, since Saul was struck blind during this encounter it does apply.  Saul is learning some things from God the hard way because of his past actions.  As you read down in this chapter you will see Jesus also appearing to a disciple in Damascus named Ananias and Jesus tells him what to do and where to go to see Saul.  This proves that God can give a vision to even a lowly disciple as well as a future apostle.  This informs me that even I am qualified to be have a vision if God chooses to do that.   Let’s read about the vision of Ananias:

Act 9:11  And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the street which is called Straight, and enquire in the house of Judas for one called Saul, of Tarsus: for, behold, he prayeth,

Act 9:12  And hath seen in a vision a man named Ananias coming in, and putting his hand on him, that he might receive his sight.

Jesus appears to Ananias in another open vision and tells him where to go, what to do, who he is going to see and what to say to Saul.  Jesus also reveals that Saul is praying and has seen another vision.  We can conclude from this information that visions can occur many times while you are praying in private since Ananias and Saul are both said to have had visions this way.  This is now God’s display of three different visions in this one chapter.  So visions must still be a significant way of leading people even in the modern church based upon the frequency of the usage in this chapter alone.  I knew one modern day preacher that gave his testimony of how God had given him several visions and in these he was also praying when they occurred.  Therefore, praying and seeing visions is a potential connecting manifestations of God.  But, I want to reemphasize that none of these men asked to see a vision in this chapter; this was clearly God’s choice and not theirs.  I’m just teaching that you should not be surprised if God still selects this method.  Ananias obeyed Jesus’ instructions and goes to the house where Saul is waiting and tells him the Lord has sent me to lay hands on you so that you might receive your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.   God is obviously working and leading the church to establish the greater purpose and plan of God and these are all examples of what God should be doing today in the church.  Can you see how God is leading every church member in this book?  I know some examples are only implied while others like Saul and Ananias are more plainly laid out.  But, surely you can see how God is working to help guide and grow the church.  Let’s move on to another manifestation of the Spirit of God at work in this chapter:

Act 9:24  But their laying await was known of Saul. And they watched the gates day and night to kill him.

Here is another indirect New Testament spiritual concept of the background work of the Holy Spirit.  The Jews were conspiring to kill Saul and Saul knew it.  How did Saul know this?  You could assume many possible explanations of the origination of this knowledge.  For example, Saul could have based this knowledge upon his past experience with the Jews using him to kill the new members in the church.  So this knowledge could have been based upon personal experience of the past.  Now that Saul was a new member of the same body, he may have concluded that he was next on the list to be killed.  However, this is still a mental thought process of reasoning and this could have still been God leading him.  I personally believe that Saul heard from God, but that this hearing from God could have been his intuition at work.  What is intuition?  Females are often attributed with this feature, but it really is more a God quality or a spiritual quality than it is a female only quality.  I really believe that females just normally have a greater sensitivity to listening to their intuition and this helps them more than males that ignore it and fall easily into troubles that God tried to get them out of.  An intuition is like an internal knowing about something that has not yet happened.  Of course an intuition does not mean that what you know will happen, it only means if you do nothing different then it will happen.  In other words I believe that an intuition is a spiritual warning of what might occur if you continue to do nothing to change it.  I have seen examples of this with mothers and their children many times.  Perhaps you have also.  I have seen this occur when one mother just has a sense that something is wrong and she goes and checks on a child and they needed her help.   What do the disciples do with this knowledge of potential danger given to them by the leading of the Holy Spirit?

Act 9:25  Then the disciples took him by night, and let him down by the wall in a basket.

You can clearly see they were led to avoid the danger and not to confront it.  This is actually a great lesson to learn from.  Danger and evil exists in the world.  It is often better to avoid these rather than to try to fight against them or to overcome them.   To be led by the Spirit of God to be in the right places at the right times is a very relevant method of avoiding danger, harm or even death as in this verse in Acts.  Learn to listen to your internal intuitions and this could potentially save your life.  Intuition is just an inner state of knowing or consciousness that occurs without any explanation and it could be very easily ignored.  There will usually be no voices heard by you, you just will know something and this is normally the Spirit of God giving you guidance and protection.  What occurred in this chapter based upon this knowing?  The disciples lowered Saul from the city in a basket in the middle of the night and Saul departs to go back to Jerusalem avoiding the eminent danger.  Clearly this was spiritual guidance to me, but yet it is not directly called that so it is easily explained away. 

You are going to have to lern how to read the Bible with your spiritual eyes open wide to see what is being stated at times.  Just learn what I am trying to teach you, that this method of guidance that I am calling intuition from God can be an internal knowing, awareness, consciousness or perception of a coming event in the world that you can avoid if you choose to listen and obey.  This is really not that strange if you think about it.  It happens in the wild animal kingdom every day.   Back before the giant tsunami hit the coasts of Asia and Africa in 2004 killing literally many thousands of people, the majority of the wild animals had already fled to higher ground.  How many people do you think had the same intuition as the wild animals and ignored it and died that day because they were too busy, distracted or occupied with other worldly things?  I think that is a very good question.

That might have been one of my most important points of the entire lesson today about intuition.  This method of spiritual guidance from God is used extensively in the lives of every believer.  It is only when believers ignore this spiritual knowledge that they find themselves regretting that they should have done something different.  Here is another example of this intuitive action of God and it occurs in the same chapter:

Act 9:30  Which when the brethren knew, they brought him down to Caesarea, and sent him forth to Tarsus.

Here are the disciples in the church being led by the Spirit of God again by an internal knowledge.  This is not well described and I understand that there are many ways to interpret this information as it is given.  But, that is just the way God wrote the Bible to give every man a choice in what they believe.  Seeing the spiritual things in the Bible is probably the most difficult part of understanding what God has written.  This Greek word in this verse translated as “knew” is an internal perception and awareness that I believe occurred by the work of the Spirit of God even thought this is not directly stated.  We are not clearly informed that this information came from God, nor are we taught directly that this was God leading His church in this verse alone.  That is why we use the Bible to help us interpret the Bible.  These are implied meanings that were hidden within the text.  After all if God would have written everything about every subject in every verse you would have nothing to search to find in the Bible.  Perhaps the next verse will help us to establish the context and the direct association of God’s leading to what is happening in this chapter:

Act 9:31  Then had the churches rest throughout all Judaea and Galilee and Samaria, and were edified; and walking in the fear of the Lord, and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost, were multiplied.

There is great deal of information in this single verse about my subject of being led by the Spirit of God.  It introduces you to two new radical concepts that I have not directly discussed.  It also shows the purpose or the reason for the leading of the Holy Spirit in this verse and I’ll talk more about that in a minute.  First, the Greek word translated “rest” means to be quiet and at peace.  Wow, that is an important part of my subject to grasp.  If you are not at peace then you are not being led by the God of peace (Col 3:15).  Being in peace and at peace is a major factor for hearing from God.  Remember what has happened to the church in the previous chapters.  The Jews in the synagogues are plotting to kill the disciples, beat them and put them all into prison.  Stephen was stoned to death by the Jews and Saul in chapter 7.  Then in one recent Acts 5 church service a man and his wife both fell down dead because they lied to the Holy Ghost.  How can anyone be “at rest” when these types of events are happening all around them?  I hope that you are getting the concepts that are being taught by God in these verses.  According to God it should not matter what is happening around you if you believe that God is guiding you.  According to God there should exist an atmosphere of being in peace regardless of the external circumstances.  Do you understand this concept of being in peace and its role in being led by the Spirit of God?  If not I may try to get into that in more depth in a future lesson or even later in this lesson.  Just don’t let the concept of “peace” get away from you.  You should be able to judge your heart and see if you are in peace right now.  This will help you to know if you are being led by the Spirit of God.  The other word in this verse that I want to focus in on is the Greek word translated as “comfort”.  Because this act of comforting is the stated work of the Spirit of God by direct association.  Do you recall what Jesus said about the Holy Spirit’s coming?

Joh 14:16  And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever;

The Holy Spirit is said to be another Comforter.  That implies Jesus was the first Comforter for the human race because Jesus brought a light into the world that would help alleviate darkness’s dominion over man.   So Jesus was a physical comfort to those that accepted Him while He was present upon the earth.  But, Jesus also left this earth physically and He told us that it was better for Him to go than to stay (John 16:7).  Why was that?  Clearly Jesus leaving us physically left a void or a vacuum that needed to be filled for the church to continue.  Jesus said that His departure was better for us because we would now have an even greater internal ever present comforter that was given called the indwelling Holy Spirit.  You see the problem with a physical Jesus was that He was only one man in a world of millions and now billions of people.  It would have been impossible for a physical Jesus to visit everyone personally and to listen to what each needed.  However, in a Spiritual form He is ever present within every believer and able to listen to and to speak to everyone simultaneously.  This was the wisdom of God being displayed:

Joh 14:26  But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.

Can you read these verses and see the intimate working of the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts?  This verse describes some of the behind the scene and seldom mentioned works of God in Acts.  The Spirit of God was poured out on the church in Acts 2 and this activity of God permits the words of Jesus in this verse to be fulfilled in every believer that participates.  The Holy Spirit will teach us all things and then the Holy Spirit will bring to our remembrance what Jesus has taught us.  Right here we have a major clue to how God led the early church in Acts and how He will lead us even today.  Do you remember that the very day the Holy Spirit was poured out in Jerusalem in Acts 2?  Peter stood up and spoke without being prepared to teach or preach anything?  Peter had no notes, no prepared script, no Bible in front of him and yet he declared the precise right things for the moment to get many saved.  How did Peter do this?  This was clearly the Holy Spirit giving Peter thoughts on verses and words to preach to those that were standing around observing.  This is clearly an example of the words of Jesus in John 14:26 being fulfilled.  You can observe this occurring throughout the book of Acts several times.  No one has any prepared notes; they just stand up and speak some very profound truths that came from within them.  I do this all of the time in my Bible lessons.  I start typing a lesson without a plan by faith and some of the lessons that I read after I have finished even I am amazed at what God has done and said.  This is the Holy Spirit bringing to our remembrance what we have learned from the Bible.  It is a mental process or a thought process, but yet it originates from the Spirit of God.  It is very difficult to describe if you have never experienced it, you are either going to have to take my word for it or you are going to have to learn to listen for Him inside of you to learn how it works.  Please note why this is so difficult to understand.  Where do thoughts originate?  They come from the soul realm which is also called your mind.  But, there are three possible originations for every thought that you have.  One possibility is you!  You can have a thought.  Two is God and God can give you a thought.  But, three is Satan and he can also give you many evil and contrary thoughts.  This is where discernment comes into play.  If you have a thought about God, the Bible, Jesus, or things that are good, it probably originated from God.  If you have a thought of lust, sin, or evil doing, then it probably came from the devil.  God teaches us in John 14:26 that He will cause us to remember Him and His Words and therefore any other type of thoughts are probably something you should ignore especially if they are evil.  I could talk a lot about thoughts but I do not want to get into that level of detail in this lesson today.

Let’s discuss briefly the term a “Comforter” or a “Counselor” and find the meaning of this word.  If you research it, you will find that it means “intercessor” or “advocate”.  Both of these are spoken word types of works.  Someone who intercedes will speak words of intercession for someone.  An advocate is a term many times associated with a lawyer.  This is an occupation that is performed by an individual with a specialized education and ability to speak for you.  Therefore, a comforter is always the spoken word based action of an individual to bring help to someone who is in need.  Is that you?  I know it is me; I would clearly have nothing to say without God’s help.  Let’s go back to Act 9:31 again and review the “comfort of the Holy Ghost”.  This Greek word is actually a different Greek word than what we found in John 14 when Jesus was describing the Holy Spirit to be our Comforter.  However it is merely the difference between a noun in one place and a verb in another place.  Let’s look at the definition of this word G3874 in Acts 9:31 found in the Strong’s:

G3874

From G3870; imploration, hortation, solace: – comfort, consolation, exhortation, intreaty.

Here is a word that is an awesome display of the divine character and nature of God.  God gets accused of orchestrating everything because of His sovereignty, but why would a sovereign God have to “implore” anyone if God was causing everything to occur?  Do you know what “imploration” means?  It is the extended effort of an individual to plead to someone, to beseech someone and to appeal to them to do something.   It is a calling out to come.  How did I teach you that the Spirit of God leads His people?  I tried to teach you that the Spirit of God uses the Shepherd and sheep method.  God calls His sheep to follow Him, and He does this, using His kind and loving soft words of imploration, beseeching them to come and for them to follow where He wants to lead them.  However, God does not ever force anyone to follow Him as I have already stated.  Neither does God yell and demand that you follow Him.  Both of those would violate the character and the definition of what the Bible says about God.  This Greek word as you can see comes from another root Greek word and it has the following meaning:

G3870

From G3844 and G2564; to call near, that is, invite, invoke (by imploration, hortation or consolation): – beseech, call for, (be of good) comfort, desire, (give) exhort (-ation), intreat, pray.

This word means “to call to be near”.  Wow, is that God or what?   These are clearly the words and the works of a loving Holy Spirit and not a forceful God.  These are clearly words of a spoken invitation, meaning people who hear the invitation have the choice to do what they want with it.  Anyone can ignore it to do their own thing.  But, by following the invitation, you can see that you will remain close to the one that you need to follow and this is the Spirit of God.  Finally why did God do all of this for the church in Acts 9:31?  I told you that this verse gave us the reason, but I did not tell you what that reason was yet.  The verse has another Greek word that was translated as “edified”.  Edified is a past tense declarative that teaches of a completed action.   Let’s review the Strong’s definition of this word for clarification:

G3618

From the same as G3619; to be a house builder, that is, construct or (figuratively) confirm: – (be in) build (-er, -ing, up), edify, embolden.

Do you see what this word means?  Is God building a house?  If you do not understand this, then you have not read all of my other Bible lessons on God’s Spiritual Family.  There is a new House of God being built in the spiritual realm and God is doing this with us His people.  We are the individual building blocks in this spiritual house of Jesus (1 Peter 2:5) and collectively we are called the New Jerusalem in Revelation.  I do not have time to explain all of that to you, so you will have to go and read and study the other Bible lessons on this subject in order to fully comprehend what I just said.  Just take note that edification is a building work of God.  God is building us up and growing the church and this is His purpose and His plan being fulfilled.  Therefore I have concluded that everything we have observed so far in the Book of Acts is our God doing things to help us, to grow us and to build us up together in unity.  I think I have gone long enough in this lesson so I’ll end it here.

I have been going through the book of Acts to find out how God lead the early church in order to see how God might lead us today.  I have covered a lot of information given to us in only 9 chapters out of 28.  So far we have only briefly looked at one fourth of the book and I’m not sure if I should continue going through every chapter yet.  If you feel this is beneficial let me know and this might help determine how I continue with this series.  Let’s review some of the key points from today so that you do not let them slip away.

God has used at least 7 different direct methods to guide the church in the first 9 chapters of Acts.

  1. Angels
  2. The Written Word of God
  3. Prayer
  4. Dreams and Visions
  5. Inward Witness (Intuition, thoughts)
  6. Still small voice of the Holy Spirit
  7. Preachers with a message from God

There were also five key related subjects that I either reviewed or introduced you to today about the subject of being led by the Spirit of God:

  1. The Church will be in united harmony when they are all led by the Spirit of God.
  2. The Church will be in a state of Joy if they are being led by the Spirit of God.
  3. The Peace of God/Rest will rule the church in order to hear from God.
  4. The Spirit of God is our eternal Comforter and
  5. God will bring to our remembrance what Jesus has taught us.

From these works of God, I said it was the peace that allowed us to hear God speak and direct us.  What I meant by that was if you are in a state of busy, fear, turmoil, or internal confusion, your mind is incapable of hearing anything that God says clearly.  There is a verse that is very applicable to my subject of you having peace and hearing from God and it says “Be still and know that I am God” (Ps 46:10).  This verse infers that it matters how and even when you can hear from God.  To be still is the opposite of being very busy.  To be still is a form of quietness that crosses into multiple realms of dimension.  There is the physical realm, the emotional realm, the mental realm and the spiritual realm and you can be busy moving around in each of these and miss out on God’s leading.   God is a perfect Gentleman.  Meaning God is not going to interrupt your thoughts to give you His.  That would be the ultimate sign of rudeness and disrespect and God is not that way.   If you want to hear from God you are going to have to be quiet and listen.  This is not always easy, I know.  But, you will be glad if you will try to develop it.  I’m not talking about Yoga, meditation or any other metaphysical type of demonic activity.   That is not what I am teaching you to do.  These are evil acts of Satan designed to attempt to get you off into another direction of spiritual evil guidance.  I guess I better stop here for now because I could talk a lot about the counterfeit that is intended to distract you from the real.  In conclusion I wanted to re-emphasize why the Holy Spirits guides anyone.  We learned today that it was for our edification.  To be edified is to be built up in the Lord.  It is a building process or a spiritual construction process that only God can accomplish.  This is why it is essential to hear from the Spirit of God before you do anything.  I’ll end with this scripture:

Psa 127:1  A Song of degrees for Solomon. Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.

Did you see what God said in this verse about what He is doing?  God is building a house and He even associates it to a city and this is not a physical house or city but it is rather a new spiritual house and city.  He also says if we try to build it independently from Him, then we are laboring, working, extending effort, exerting or struggling in vain.  This means that He must be directly involved in what we do or it is a worthless effort on our part.  Now are you beginning to make the connection to what is happening in the Book of Acts?  God is just doing a spiritual construction process and giving you some of the details to how it works in this lesson, but not every detail is clearly provided.  However, this is why we are studying this subject today.  Thanks for taking the time to read and to study the Bible with me and I pray that you were blessed with new spiritual insight and understanding.  Leave me a comment or press like on this post if you understood the lesson.  It will help me know that I am doing more than just casting God’s pearls before swine if someone actually acknowledges God’s work.  God Bless you until next time.

If you would like to continue reading in this series you may go now to “Part 11“.


Understanding Bible Faith! Real Faith Always Receives from God! Part 14

(Ver 1.2)  Today is Part 14 in a series of advanced lessons on Understanding Bible Faith.  If you have not been reading this series from the beginning I would recommend that you go back and start with “Part 1”.   Faith is by far one of the most significant subjects found in the Bible for every Christian to know.  This subject has far reaching applications that crosses into everything else found in the Bible.  The Bible says that without faith it is impossible to please God.  The Bible says that whatever is not of faith is sin.   Without faith it is impossible to be saved.  Without faith you will remain where you are today and fail to achieve what God has called you to do.  These are radical concepts that few Christians attempt to understand and they have therefore, failed to recognize why they are in the situations that have arisen in their lives.  God many times gets blamed in error for these conditions of mankind.  But, it is far more likely that it was the people’s own ignorance of the subject of faith that has caused them to be facing what they think that they are unable to overcome.

What have we learned from this series of Bible lessons on faith?  We should have learned that anything that happened to anyone in the Bible that was ever positive occurred only because someone had faith in God and His Word.  Even in the majority of the cases observed in the Gospels, Jesus only acknowledged a person’s faith as being the key factor for them being saved, healed or delivered.  At no time did Jesus take credit and say that it was His power alone that delivered anyone.  This is why this subject is so critical to learn about right now.  What applies to the people in the Bible applies directly to you and me today.   Faith is the human factor that causes God’s power to be made manifest in the natural world.  This could be the Power of God for spiritual salvation, physical healing, emotional restoration, marital reconciliation, child relationship and development or financial blessings.  God cares about every area in your life, but God is not going to get involved just because He can or just because you need Him to.   God will however, respond to your faith and move heaven and earth to get you the answer when you learn to do your part and believe.

I once heard a preacher man on TV say that faith does not move God.  His point was that faith moved you to be in the right place to receive and that is really my subject today.  But, I also wondered after hearing him, what Bible he was reading.  I just had to disagree with that statement whole heartedly.  You see I learned that the Bible says God is no respecter of people in the world (Acts 10:34, Rom 2:11).  However, reading in the Gospels I learned that if people had faith God would do some extraordinary things to help them and not having faith mostly caused people not to obtain what God wanted to give to them.  I read in the Matthew that when the centurion came to Jesus and asked for Jesus to heal his servant that Jesus said I will come (Mat 8:7).  Why would Jesus have made such an effort to go out of his way for a Gentile that was never in covenant with God in order to go to his house personally to heal his servant?  People really need to read the Gospels with more attention to the details.  The centurion tells Jesus you do not even need to come to my house, just speak the word only and my servant will be healed.  Jesus is again marveled and said I have not found so great a faith no not in Israel (Mat 8:10).  Why was Jesus willing to go?  Is this not an example of God in the flesh being moved?  According to Jesus it was the centurion’s faith that caused Him to even be willing to travel and go where He was needed to go.  Go read the story and see if it is not true.  Jesus was moved by faith to go many places and this is still true today, because the Bible clearly says that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever” (Heb 13:8).  Let’s talk about faith today and learn some new things on this very important subject.  Let me give you one of my foundational verses today:

Mat 11:5  The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them.

Who gave the blind their sight?  It was God of course.  Who caused the lame to walk?  Again it was God.  Who cleansed the lepers?  It could be no one else but God.  Who can only raise the dead?  No one but God can raise the dead.  Finally who preached Gospel to the poor?  It was Jesus.   But, notice the emphasis is not ever upon God or His power in this verse anywhere.  The emphasis is placed upon people receiving these things from God and that is a completely different perspective to that of God just giving them to everyone.  While faith is not directly mentioned in this verse, I understand that this is the implied subject that causes people to receive, but you may not know that yet and that is why I am teaching this new part of the subject today.  It is only because the blind has any faith that they are able to receive what God has given to them for free.  What is receiving and what does it mean to receive something?  Let’s do a quick review of the definition from the dictionary:

  1.  To take or acquire (something given, offered, or transmitted); get.

This is an interesting concept that is easily overlooked by Christians?  This word conveys personal responsibility to do something.  This something requires individual action in order to be made effective.  There are many things that come to my mind when reading this definition.  If someone takes something that was not given to them, this is called theft or stealing.  But, since we are talking about God’s gifts that have been given through His promised Word we are going to have to figure out how to reach into the spiritual realm to take what we cannot see or touch with our physical senses.  Think of it this way, what if God has given to us in the spiritual realm, but no one has come from the natural realm to take what He has offered to us all freely?  Is God going to come into the natural realm and force you to receive (take) it?  That would certainly change the definition of receive, wouldn’t it?  That is the religious idea of election or predestination and that is not in the Bible.  God will never force His will or His gift of salvation upon anyone who does not take it freely.  People in the natural realm are always required to take by Faith what God has given freely by Grace in the spiritual realm.  Think with me in terms of natural Israel as being our example.  They sat in the wilderness dying because they did not want to go into the Promised Land to take by faith what God had freely given to them by Grace.  The Promised Land represents the spiritual dimension of your faith fight and obtaining God’s blessings.  The wilderness represented the natural realm where if you remained you do without God’s blessings.  Do you understand the analogy that God has given to us from this very clear Bible example?

Let me give you some more Bible examples of receiving to help teach you that I am not making this stuff up.  Read with me in the book of Luke and see that Jesus is speaking to a blind man in another marvelous faith lesson:

Luk 18:41  Saying, What wilt thou that I shall do unto thee? And he said, Lord, that I may receive my sight.

Jesus asks the blind man what do you want from me and the blind man demonstrates his faith by his actions and his spoken words.  The answer given to Jesus question was “I want to receive my sight”.  Why didn’t the blind man just ask for Jesus to give him his sight?  Wow, that is a really great question.  Sight is definitely what the blind man was after from Jesus, yes?  Did you know that it matters what you ask for and how you answer when God comes to you?  If the blind man’s words did not matter then why did Jesus even ask the question?  Jesus is obviously well aware of the situation and the need and yet the man is not yet healed.  What is Jesus waiting for?  The problem was standing right in front of Jesus and Jesus could have just reached out and said “Be Healed” if it was all up to the power of God.  Please think when you read the Bible.  Jesus never does anything like you would do normally.  If you were God standing before a blind man you would have probably just said “Your healed” and kept walking.  But, Jesus stops and asks this man a question and that has meaning and his answer must matter.  Everything that Jesus did was on purpose.  I personally believe that it was only because of the blind man’s great answer that allows Jesus to continue.  Can Jesus just heal everyone in the Gospels?  Unfortunately, you do not find that is true if you observe what it really says.  We learned from the woman with the issue of blood that she was the only one that got healed in a massive crowd of people that were all trying to touch Jesus.   Jesus turned and looked at her and said your faith has saved you.  Getting back to the blind man’s answer, why does he ask to receive his sight from Jesus?  Do you understand that these words put the responsibility upon the blind man to receive and not Jesus to give?  Do you understand the difference?   That is a very new radical approach to take with an omnipotent God that is always capable of giving to us anything.  God is teaching you that the way you think and speak is going to matter if you want to get your answer from Him.

So I’m going to introduce you to a brand new concept about faith and this will be a little bit different than anything that I have said before.  True faith concludes that God is not only capable of giving, but that He has already given and I just need to learn how to receive it.  The blind man never asked for Jesus to give him anything or to heal him, he only asks to receive his sight.  Sight represents the answer to the man’s problem blindness.  It is clearly stated from the blind man’s perspective and his request that Jesus has already given this and he just needed to take it.  That is what faith is from a new Bible perspective.  Let me help you see something else new in the Bible:

2Pe 1:3  According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue:

God is stated to have power and through this power God has already given to us what?   Is this not “ALL THINGS” that pertain to life?   If God has given to you ALL THINGS that pertain to life why don’t you have it?   It comes back to you not knowing how to receive it again.  If you do not take from the spiritual realm what God has given, you will do without it in the natural realm.  That is just the way it is and that is why people do without in many cases.  What is your problem today, you only need to learn how to have faith to receive to get your answer also.  Faith reaches out to receive or take and that is the foundational basis for my entire Bible lesson today.  If you are receiving then you are in faith.  If you are not receiving then you are not in faith.  Your faith will receive the answer.  Wow, again that is great information to learn.  Notice the response of the creator God to this man’s request to receive:

Luk 18:42  And Jesus said unto him, Receive thy sight: thy faith hath saved thee.

Jesus clearly associates the blind man’s faith to be the determining factor for him being able to receive his sight and it was also his “receiving” that permitted the anointed power of God on Jesus to flow and to manifest in the natural realm.  You may recall that when the woman with the issue of blood touched Jesus, immediately Jesus felt virtue (power) flow from Him.  Jesus stops and turns to see who accessed this power to flow and then tells the woman your faith has saved you.  I always find it very interesting what Jesus says to people.  Jesus does not say I have healed you even though it was clearly the power that He was anointed with that did the work in everyone.  To the blind man, Jesus said “take your sight, your faith has saved you” and this caused power to be transferred from the spiritual dimension into the physical dimension.  I may have implied this before, but I want to reemphasize the fact that faith is a spiritual force that you possess and not a natural feeling that you can work or sense and we will talk about that more in second.   Clearly in Luke 18:42, Jesus again places the emphasis on the man’s taking with his faith and not upon God’s giving of the power.

Luk 18:43  And immediately he received his sight, and followed him, glorifying God: and all the people, when they saw it, gave praise unto God.

I like the term “immediately”.  This man is instantly healed by God and received what he requested without delay.  However, this is not the only blind man healed by Jesus in the Bible.  Why does God not treat every similar problem the exact same way?  Did you ever notice that?  There are several different blind men healed by Jesus in the Gospels and they are all different.  It is actually a great lesson to go and read them all to determine the differences, but I will not do that for them all to limit the size of this lesson.  I technically believe that God does treat every identical problem the same, but that it is the human contribution or factor that causes the variableness to occur.  It is only because every person does not have the same level of faith that things appear different in the natural realm.  For example, there is a blind man found in John chapter 9.  This man encounters Jesus in a much different setting.  If you do not recall this story please stop now and go read John 9 and then continue with this lesson so that we can compare the two similar problems and the healing examples.  In John 9, the disciples point the blind man out to Jesus and ask Him a question about who sinned to cause his blindness.  Let’s skip the answer to concentrate on what Jesus did different for the blind man and then let’s compare what this blind man did that was different to the blind man in Luke.  In John 9, Jesus spits on the ground and makes mud and puts it on the man’s eyes and then tells him to go and wash it off.  Why didn’t Jesus do this in Luke 18?  The blind man in John 9 goes and does what Jesus asked him to do and comes back seeing.  Why didn’t Jesus just look at the blind man in John 9 and say “Receive your sight your faith has saved you” like he did in Luke 18?   Both are clear miracles of receiving sight, but they are completely different examples of the variable of human faith required to receive.  It is clear to me that the blind man in John 9 had no faith at least at first.  Let’s back up in the story of the blind man in Luke 18 to learn a few new things that I did not include to compare the differences.

Luk 18:37  And they told him, that Jesus of Nazareth passeth by.

Notice that this verse says that Jesus was passing by.  Did you notice that?  Jesus was not there to heal, and He would have just passed by if no one had any faith to stop Him.  Do you understand that?  Jesus was also passing by the blind man in John 9, but this time the disciples stop Him.  Faith always gets God’s attention.  I have given you examples of this several times.  In the Gospels, clearly God was moved when He encountered the Faith of people and even at times marveled at their faith.  What caused almighty God to go out of His way to deliver the child of a gentile woman in Tyre that you read about in an earlier lesson?  Was it not her great faith?  If you want to get God’s attention so that He marvels at your great faith you are going to have to learn how that works.  This blind man in Luke 18 heard a commotion and demanded to know what was happening and he was told that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by.  Obviously this was at least a key part to him getting faith but it could not have been the entire story.  He must have heard at some time in the past who Jesus was and that Jesus had said that He was anointed by God to heal and to give the recovering of sight to the blind and he must have believed in Him because of what he did next:

Luk 18:38  And he cried, saying, Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me.

Who is the blind man in Luke calling for?   He had just heard that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by, but he calls out for Jesus the Son of David.  This was a covenant term of recognition or a covenant Title of respect and honor.  Clearly this blind man understood more than many that were in the Jewish temple.  The fact that the blind man calls Him the Son of David reflects that he knew who He was.  The Messiah was prophesied to come from the seed of David.  According to prophecy David’s son would forever sit on the throne of His father David.  These are natural descriptions as well as spiritual terms being related.  Take notice, who the blind man is calling out for.  Could it be these covenant words that got Jesus attention to stop and not to just pass him by?   Also note the man’s acknowledgment of God’s mercy.  Love, mercy and compassion are all spiritual partners of God’s Grace.   You can call them synonymous terms or you can see them as related intertwined subjects like a divine chord of character.  Grace, mercy, compassion and love caused God to give to the world what they did not deserve.  Nevertheless the blind man directly sought for Jesus and this must have been based upon him hearing His Word in order to already have faith when Jesus had not said anything to him up until this point.  Therefore the man had faith and chose to do something to receive.  Doing nothing would have resulted in Jesus passing by.  Doing nothing would have resulted in him not receiving.   The blind man could have had faith after hearing, but kept silent and not activated it and he would have done without.

Why is Luke 18 so much different than John 9?  Both are blind men.  The blind man in John 9 never calls out for Jesus to do anything.  The blind man in John 9 does not ask for mercy, does not call Jesus the son of David, does not ask to receive anything and therefore Jesus has do some things differently because this man had no faith at this time.  The John 9 blind man either does not know who Jesus is or has just never heard of him before now as being the anointed one sent from God.  Luke 18 clearly is radically different.  The blind mind initiates the contact after hearing the crowd passing.  The John 9 blind man is passive and the Luke 18 blind man is totally aggressive taking the initiative.  The blind man in John 9, Jesus initiates the conversation.  The blind man in Luke 18 even the people can’t shut him up.  One man has faith and corresponding works and the other man has neither at first.  Let me introduce another complex factor that I have addressed only in passing.  There is another faith factor or partner given to us in James that is applicable to what is occurring both in Luke and in John.  Please allow me to take a side trip into teaching you about faith and works and how they are displayed in each Bible story from Luke 18 and John 9.

Jas 2:26  For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.

Why are faith and works even mentioned together in the same verse?  These two forces are diametrically opposed to each other in many other verses found in the Bible.  For example, Galatians 2:16 says no man is justified by works, but by faith in Jesus Christ.  What we learn from studying this subject is that faith alone in Jesus does not save anyone.  Conversely works alone never saves anyone either.  However, these two factors working in harmony together cause’s salvation to manifest.  Why is faith dead without works?  You could also ask; why is works dead without faith?  Ok, why is that?   We are born into the natural world as hidden spiritual beings.  God is a Spirit, yet we do not come to know Him spiritually first except through hearing about Him in the natural realm and believing in Him by faith.  When we choose to hear and learn about God and decide to believe in Him that is the initial stages of having saving internal spiritual faith.  But, yet you are not saved until you acknowledge Him with your external works of your spoken words that He is your Lord.  Those two factors together are the external corresponding work based actions working in conjunction with your internal spiritual faith based believing to cause a union of the physical and the spiritual resulting in the manifestation or receiving of an already accomplished God given reality.  This is an example of faith and works coexisting and cooperating in harmony to produce salvation.  Let me show you in the Bible:

Rom 10:9  That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

Roman’s 10:9 demonstrates how faith and works go together and tells us that we must first believe that Jesus was raised from the dead.  The only way you are going to believe this is if someone comes and tells you about Him first.  How does faith come?  According to the Bible faith comes by hearing the Word of God, therefore believing comes by you first hearing.  Then Roman’s 10:9 tells you that if you confess Him as Lord with your mouth then you are saved.  This is the external works part of the internal spiritual faith belief.  This verse is actually given to us in reverse order of occurrence and it does not directly mention the preaching part of the process, but yet everything can be confirmed by reading the next verse.  Notice that true Bible believing only occurs in the heart of men and women on the earth in Romans 10:10.

Rom 10:10  For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

It is with the heart (spirit) that the Bible says that people believe anything.  What we discover is that there are two realms to the completed process of salvation.  The natural realm requires your works of confession while the spiritual realm requires your heartfelt beliefs to be established on God’s Words given to us by His Grace.  All of this is dependent upon you first hearing the truth of the Gospel and then receiving it like we saw in the story of the blind man in Luke 18 or the woman with the issue of blood In Mark 5.   Why did the blind man not ask Jesus to give him sight?  Why did the blind man only ask to receive?  This is the most important part of Bible faith.  God had already given Jesus and the Messiah was present in the flesh standing right before this blind man.  The blind man does not need to ask for Him to come and heal because God has already come and He was already anointed by God with healing power (Acts 10:38).  The Bible said in Psalms 107:20 “God sent his word and healed them and delivered them from their destructions”.  Do you suppose the man understood what the Bible said?   Jesus the Word of God made flesh was given and present.  God says in Psalms 107:20 that this sent Word “healed” them, as in past tense, done.  Why do you need to ask for anything that was already done?  That is the problem of most people’s prayer in the world today.  They pray for salvation for a friend and salvation was given already and the friend now just needs to receive what God has given.  Pray for your friend to receive, pray for God to send laborers across their path to preach but do not pray for God to save them.  God will simply say to you I have done that if you were truly listening when you read my word you would have seen where I told you that I saved them.  You can find this truth in many verses but one of these is where God says that we have been given the ministry of “reconciliation”.

2Co 5:19  To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.

This is a radical concept and this verse has some great information within it.  The statement that God was in Christ informs us that Jesus was much more than just an ordinary man.  He was God in the flesh and why did God come in the flesh?  This verse says that God came to reconcile us (the world) to Himself.  The world was everyone that was unsaved, an all inclusive scope of reality.  This is again past tense terminology given to us as the completed action of God.  These are specified things that God has already given and already accomplished.  This verse ends with a message of direction for us today.  We are to go and tell everyone what God has done.  This is called the ministry of reconciliation.  Reconciliation is the great exchange.  God has given to us His life and in exchange we are to receive this eternal life by giving to Him our lives.  What God has already given to us in the spiritual realm, we now must receive in the physical realm through our faith and works.

What we discover from understanding about faith and works in James is why there is such a difference between the Luke 18 and John 9 blind men.   The Luke 18 man had heard of Jesus, had faith and released his faith in his words and his actions to receive.  The John 9 man had not heard of Jesus, had no faith at this time and could not release his faith in anything to receive.  What does Jesus do for the man in John 9 to cause him to have faith?  If you read the chapter you know that Jesus is said to have made mud from the ground and He then “anointed” his eyes with it.  We can understand from reading Acts 10:38 that it was the anointing that healed those that were oppressed of the devil.  However, the blind man’s faith in John 9 was still required to receive.  The anointing still healed both men, but in John 9 God could not heal until the blind man in John 9 believed and did something first.  So Jesus speaks instructions for the blind man to believe and then tells him something for him to obey (do).  The man in John 9 had to go to a very specific pool and wash.  What if the man never went to the pool because he did not believe what was happening to him was real?  What if the man left Jesus but did not go to the right pool?  What if there was a closer pool and the man went to that one instead?  What if the man did not believe Jesus at all and he was not obedient and just went home?  Hasn’t Jesus already anointed his eyes with the Power of God?  I believe that he would not have received his sight.  Being obedient to the voice of God is the acknowledged action of your beliefs.  If God tells you to do something it is wise to do it no matter how crazy it sounds.  Both men from Luke 18 and John 9 exhibit faith and works in action working together to produce positive results.  One did not have to go and wash, the other did.  However, both received their sight in the end.  So that is more important than not receiving.  Let me teach you another factor that is also revealed in these lessons:

Luk 18:39  And they which went before rebuked him, that he should hold his peace: but he cried so much the more, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me.

Here is a man that is blind, he hears a commotion and asks what is happening and people tell him about Jesus of Nazareth passing by.  As the man calls out for the Son of David and for mercy others around him rebuked him to stay silent.  What spiritual application can we learn from this new information that applies to us today?  We learn that not everyone in the world is on your side and is willing to help you get your answer.  We learn about the concept of the opposing forces of evil that will try to stop you from receiving.   In other lessons I talked about these being like faith giants in the spiritual battle of your faith.  While you are seeking for God’s mercy, you will encounter a spiritual force of opposition that will attempt to shut you up and stop you.  Do not think that all of the things of God will be so easy to access?  Do you think that you have no enemies and that God has no enemies?  Where do you find that in the Bible?  Do not assume everyone is on your side.  Truly the opposition in Luke 18 came from ignorant people who knew not the heart of God to save this blind man.  These people understood little to nothing of how God worked and why.   These are examples of people that you will run into everywhere still today, on the internet, in your church, in your Christian book store and at your work or in your family.  These people will discourage you from seeking to be healed, saved and delivered.  Nowhere in the Bible does it say that you will not be persecuted for doing the right things and for seeking God’s help.  What made this blind man in Luke 18 ignore all of his critics and continue to shout louder for the Son of David’s mercy?   It is called the determination factor.  If you are determined to receive from God then you will receive from God no matter what comes against you to stop you.  Determination can mean when it looks like it is not working you remain confident that it is working.  Determination can mean that when someone tells you the Bible is full of lies and errors that you just ignore them.  The blind man in Luke 18 could have given up and given in to the opposition and then he would have remained blind.  The blind man in Luke 18 could have listened to fools and stayed blind.  If the woman with the issue of blood in Mark 5 had not been determined to fight through the large crowd of people to touch Jesus then she would have not been healed either.  She showed her determination by not giving up or quitting despite not feeling well and all of the people that were in her way.  The blind man in John 9 could have given up on the way to the pool.  He was still blind the whole way there.  Jesus didn’t go with him and encourage him the whole trip to make sure he did what he was told either.  Do you think that it was easy for him to get there?  Have you ever been blind?  I think it was not easy for him to do anything that Jesus said to do.  You are going to have to make a conscious decision to become determined after you learn about faith.  You will have many enemies both spiritually and naturally that will counter your beliefs to get you to fail.

Let me stop here and review the list of faith partners that I have been teaching on with the new additions to what you shoud have learned today on the subject.  So far today we have discussed two new faith examples of Jesus healing blind men from Luke 18 and John 9 and I also mentioned the famous faith lesson of the woman with the issue of blood in Mark 5.  God says let everything be established by the words of two or three witnesses and that is what I have done today.  I have given you three witnesses to faith.  I will now give you a list of faith characteristics that we have talked about in this series and you should be able to identify these in every story that I have included in some form of words or displayed actions:

The success of your faith depends upon:

  1. Your Humility.
  2. Your Will/Desire to Get the Answer.
  3. Your Aggressive Actions to Participate in the Process.
  4. Your Ability to Hear.
  5. Your Understanding of the Word Heard.
  6. Your View of the Importance of the Word of God Heard.
  7. Your Belief in His Anointing Power.
  8. Your Belief in the Truth of the Word of God.
  9. Your Confidence Level in God’s Ability to do what He has Promised.
  10. Your Confidence Level in God’s Willingness to do what He has Promised to do.
  11. Your Overall Trust in God.
  12. Your Continued Determination Level Despite Major Opposition.
  13. Your Reaction to the Opposition.
  14. Your Words Spoken.
  15. Your Positive Expectation Level.
  16. Your Actions of Obedience.
  17. Your Receiving the Answer.

You should be able to find these faith qualities demonstrated in the life examples of everyone to some extent.   Not everyone of them is obviously stated in every story, but yet they play a role in them receiving from God their answer to their problem.   Today’s lesson was primarily about Faith Receives in the natural realm what God Grace has given to us in the Spiritual Realm.  I then taught you that this was a combined effort of both the natural and the spiritual realms of man working in harmony.  The human spiritual realm is where we believe and the natural physical realm is where we do the corresponding works.  The realm of the human soul also plays a role in my list of factors but I have never spoken of this realm directly before just now.   The soul realm of man is where our mind is, where our will originates and where our emotions play major factors into the faith fight.  I talked about your will in other lessons being a factor to receiving.  Today I talked about your determination being a factor and again this comes from your soul or your will.  Your emotions will play a factor and cause you to want to give up.  These are some of the very complex factors involved in Bible faith.  We could probably add many more to the list and potentially we may do that in future lessons on this subject.  I hope and pray that you learned something today about faith that will help you in your relationship with God.  Until next time, may God bless you and keep you as you walk by faith.  God Bless.

If you would like to continue reading in this series on Bible Faith please go to “Part 15“.


Understanding How to Be Led By the Spirit of God! How the Holy Spirit Led the Early Church in Acts 5 – 7! Part 9

(ver 1.1) This is now Part 9 in a series of very important basic Christian Bible lessons on the subject of Being Led by the Spirit of God.  These lessons contain spiritual information and not natural formulas so they are easily misunderstood by Christians.  We have covered a tremendous amount of information that will not be repeated so if you have not read this from the beginning I would suggest that you go and start with “Part 1” first.  I am currently going through the book of Acts searching for the works of the Spirit of God to lead His people.  Just in the first 4 chapters of Acts, I showed you 7 of my 12 guidance methods either displayed in actions or referenced by words.  We are seeing God working through His church to guide them and direct them and by learning how God has done this in the past, it will help point us to how God will direct us in these last days.  Christians today are in the same church, the same body of Christ, in the same covenant, we read the same Bible, have the same Holy Spirit in us and are the same kind of believers in Jesus Christ as all of those mentioned in the early church that we are reading about in Acts.   The mistake many modern Christians make is thinking that God now does something different today than what He did with the early church or perhaps that those in the early church were superior and God did something special and different for them.  Somehow these types of Christians have missed the point that the Bible says that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever (Heb 13:8).   Not believing this Bible truth causes many today to believe God changed how He operates and what He does with His people.  That is clearly a misguided teaching that attempts to explain away what God did in Acts as not applying to the church today.  I refute that kind of teaching categorically and declare with boldness that I’m in the same Church as Peter, James and John.  What they did, I can do, what God did through them God can do through me.  But, you can choose to believe whatever you like.  Let’s move in the study to read in chapter 5.

ACTS CHAPTER 5

The fifth chapter of Acts is a difficult chapter to comprehend because of the many types of things that transpire.  In this chapter a man and his wife sold a piece of property and they brought some of the money to the church to give to others and they claimed that they gave it all, when in reality they withheld a portion for themselves.  Here is where it starts to get complicated.  This does not mean that they were supposed to give it all; it only means they were not supposed to lie to say that they did when they didn’t give it all.  Here is what Peter said to what was happening in verse 3:

Act 5:3  But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the price of the land?

Peter reveals things that are impossible for him to know personally.  Peter would have had to follow them around and to be invisible to know what they had done in private.  How did Peter know what was going on?  I think that is an excellent question and people ignore it because they do not understand God and spiritual guidance.  Peter knew that Ananias was lying because of the work of the Spirit of God within him and a spiritual gift of discernment called the “Word of Knowledge”.  This is a spiritual gift from God that causes people to know things in their spirits that they did not witness personally in the physical realm.  In other words this type of knowledge did not come from the sense realm.  Here is where we need to ask how then did Peter know this private intimate information if he did not observe what they did with his senses?   Let me give you another direct verse that speaks of this very special gift from God to help us understand what is being spoken of in this chapter:

1Co 12:8  For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit;

Clearly not everyone possesses these gifts.  It is God’s work that causes these gifts to come and never man’s desire just to have them.  Man cannot cause them to happen nor can he ask for them to happen.  I want you to notice what Peter was doing when this occurred.   He was in the middle of a church service and he was not praying but he was speaking to the people that were gathered.  Therefore, Peter was clearly not asking God for the gift when it was given.  You see that would be like me coming to you and asking you to give me a thousand dollars when I just saw you get 1000 dollars from the bank.  What right would I have to do that?  Why would you even consider giving me anything just because I asked for it?  You would be very foolish and become very poor rapidly if you gave to everyone that came along and wanted a free hand out.  The word would get around quickly that he is giving away free money and then you could never stop the onslaught of people that would knock on your door.  Think of children.  Children ask for many things constantly that they want.  As a parent are we supposed to give them everything they ask for?  I hope you can see that would not work.  They would want every toy and every sweet thing to eat and would sit around doing nothing but play games.  We are no different than children in the world to God.  God is not going to give you something just because you asked for it.  I guess that is getting too deep for this lesson, because there are promises in God’s word that He has already given to us many things and we still do not possess them because we have failed to learn how to receive things from a spiritual God.

Just as parents should not be foolish to give their children everything they ask for, God is not foolish either.  God is all knowing and all wise and He will decide when to give a spiritual gift.  Here in 1 Corinthians 12:8 God gives some the “word of wisdom” and others the “word of knowledge”.  Both are different gifts and manifestations of the Spirit of God to lead you and to guide you and to guide those that are being spoken about or to.  A “word of wisdom” occurs when you spiritually know what to do in a certain situation in your life when you would not have known otherwise.  A “word of wisdom” is a future knowledge of something to do, unlike the “word of knowledge” which is a past knowledge of something that was done.  The “word of knowledge” occurs when you know of something that has occurred in the past to someone other than you and you would have not known of it without God showing you what had occurred to them.  This is normally sin related, but not always.  One pastor said this happened to him many times while he was in charge of the church that God had sent him to.  God would bring a word of knowledge about someone doing wrong in the church like someone that was committing adultery or some other sin.  This was done to help bring correction to the situation.  But, the word of knowledge does not always have to be a sin.  Now the word of wisdom is slightly different.  Another pastor once said that he was in preparation at home doing something and God told him that this certain member of his flock was going to die today.  So this pastor went immediately to where the individual was to help him and to bring comfort.  Both examples were God’s Spirit giving gifts of guidance to help the church.  These gifts were examples of God leading His people by His Spirit.  I hope you understand them, because they happen every day to those that cooperate with them.  Let’s briefly go back and read the context of 1 Corinthians 12 and verify that God is speaking about spiritual guidance.

1Co 12:1  Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant.

God is writing concerning the spiritual.  The word “gifts” was added by the translators and it is not necessarily accurate but it is not necessarily bad either.  Anything you get from God is a gift of His grace.  But always remember that God is a Spirit (Jo 4:24).  Therefore, whatever God has given to anyone first came from the Spiritual realm.  Here in this verse God is declaring ignorance to be an evil.  If God does not want you to be ignorant then why are there so many ignorant people in the world?  Primarily they do not make the effort to learn about spiritual things so they remain in their natural thinking ignorant processes.  Let’s look at the next verse and eliminate some of our spiritual ignorance:

1Co 12:2  Ye know that ye were Gentiles, carried away unto these dumb idols, even as ye were led.

God is telling the church you use to be Gentiles that were previously led astray, but implies that the Holy Spirit is now leading them to know Grace.  What we learn from this verse is that every human on the planet is being led by some spirit.  Those that are in the world are being led by Satan and his demons, and those that are saved should be led by the Spirit of God.  This verse is a very direct statement concerning being led, but we have to add our reasoning to determine who was doing the leading of the unsaved because it is not directly mentioned in this verse.  If you read the next verse you will hopefully see that God is speaking and declaring that no one says Jesus is Lord except by the Spirit of God and the no one curses the Lord Jesus by the Holy Ghost either.  Here are two contrasting works that proceed from humans.  The Spirit of God says I do one but not the other.  This is simply another implied reference to Satan vs. God’s work on the earth.  Satan causes men to curse God and the Lord Jesus and God helps men to say Jesus is their Lord.  I’m not going to go through every verse but here are the next 4 vreses in 1 Corinthians 12:

1Co 12:4  Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit.

1Co 12:5  And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord.

1Co 12:6  And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all.

1Co 12:7  But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal.

What I wanted you to see in context is that God is speaking of leading the church and that He helps us to understand why He does this in these verses.  There are three unique descriptions that are interesting to take note of.  These are “diversities of gifts”, “differences of administrations” and “diversities of operations”.  What are these speaking of?  I personally believe they are simply informing us that God gives us different things at different times in different ways.  In other words you can never put God in a box or try to say that He will always do things one way.  The key words are diversities and differences.  You are not God and you are not in charge of anything.  Finally in verse 7, God tells us what it is that motivates Him to do things this way.  God directly says it is for the profit or benefit of the entire church.  That means God intends His leading to be a positive outcome for the church.  Keep this in mind as we continue to study in the fifth chapter of Acts about Ananias.

Act 5:5  And Ananias hearing these words fell down, and gave up the ghost: and great fear came on all them that heard these things.

Continuing in the fifth chapter of Acts Ananias falls down dead and is carried out by the church.  I guess the lesson and the word of knowledge on this day was not for the benefit of Ananias the dead man, but rather for those that were watching and listening to what was said and done and they all learned that lying to the Spirit of God was not a very smart thing to do.  They also learned that God knew when they were lying so it was impossible to get away it.  They also saw the demonstration of the Word of Knowledge.  This one act put the fear of God in the whole church and they got the message very quickly.  What I want you to notice was that this was God leading the church through a spiritual gift called the word of knowledge for what we read was the greater good of the church.  Even though we are never told this directly in the chapter, but that was what was happening.  The Spirit of God spoke to Peter and Peter spoke what God had shown him to the church.  I also want you to notice that Peter described Ananias as having Satan filling his heart and not God.  That is an example of another manifestation gift of the Spirit of God called the “discerning of spirits”.  It is also clear evidence that Satan was leading Ananias what to do and this was the wrong spirit to listen to.  There are so many lessons to learn in this chapter that I really cannot spend the time to speak to them all.   I do want you to understand that Ananias’ listening to Satan is why God did not correct Ananias, but allowed Satan to kill him and he fell dead immediately.  You’ll probably ask me why I said Satan killed him and this is because Paul writes about another incident in the N.T. that is related.

1Co 5:5  To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.

I do not have time to talk about this verse in full or the context of this verse.  But, I wanted you to see that a Christian was going to be turned over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh so that his spirit would be saved.  Wow, that is pretty revealing.  First you can see that Satan can cause physical death but not spiritual death.  Spiritual death is separation from God.  The sin of the Christian allowed Satan’s access to his physical body.  I have concluded that this is potentially what happened to Ananias and his wife also.  But, I’m not going to be able to go any further with this line of teaching today.  Let’s continue going through Acts 5:

Act 5:11  And great fear came upon all the church, and upon as many as heard these things.

Do you see the effect that this event had on the church?  What would happen today if things like this happened again when the church met?  I believe the effect would be the exact same.  It would promote an attitude of holiness where the church would see that doing right was a good thing and sin was a very bad thing.  I’m not predicting that this will happen again, but I would not be surprised if it did.

Act 5:12  And by the hands of the apostles were many signs and wonders wrought among the people; (and they were all with one accord in Solomon’s porch.

As you read in Acts chapter 5, the apostles continue to do many signs and wonders and preach the name of Jesus until they are thrown in prison in verse 18.  If you read Acts 5:12 in isolation, it will give you the impression that the disciples were in control of what was happening, but this is clearly a misunderstood application of God’s works being made manifest through natural men using spiritual guidance, direction and His anointing.  If the disciples do any great works they were done by the Gifts and the Grace of God’s power being made available to them and displayed through them.  It is only by God’s direct power and man’s faith in His power that anything positive occurred in the book of Acts.   I also want to point out that the church in this verse is again stated to be in one accord.  This means there was a spirit of church unity and harmony which abounded in everyone and I am convinced that this is how the church will leave this planet very soon.   Let me briefly describe the anointing of God and its role in what is happening in chapter 5.

2Co 1:21  Now he which stablisheth us with you in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God;

1Jn 2:27  But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.

Here are just two verses that speak of God giving the church an anointing.  Why the anointing was necessary and what the anointing is are two very valid questions?  If you do not understand the concepts behind the anointing of God then you will not understand the book of Acts.  In Acts 10:38 it tells us “How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and power who went about doing good and healing all those oppressed of the devil”.  The anointing of God was the power of God according to this verse and it makes available this miracle working substance to others that Jesus encountered.  If God had to anoint Jesus (God in the flesh) to heal people in the Gospels, then God must use the same anointing power in the lives of the disciples to heal also.   These are repeated patterns given from God to Jesus that was handed down to the members of the church.  We in the church are called the “Body of Christ”.  That title alone promotes the fact that the anointing is present upon us.  The Greek word translated as Christ means “anointed one”.  It corresponds to the Hebrew word for “Messiah”.  God is clearly saying that it is My Anointing on you that caused anything good to occur.   Let’s continue through chapter 5.  Verse 18 tells us that the disciples are thrown in prison, but then in verse 19:

Act 5:19  But the angel of the Lord by night opened the prison doors, and brought them forth, and said,

Act 5:20  Go, stand and speak in the temple to the people all the words of this life.

We can again see the involvement of angels at work for the church.  We are once more not told every detail.  We do not know if the disciples prayed or if the church prayed, but nonetheless the angels show up and release all of them from prison.  The angels come and shake the prison and release them to go back into the temple to continue to preach the name of Jesus.  You can clearly see that the angels give them a message from God and tell them what to do.  This is again very strong evidence that God is directing them and that they are being led by the Spirit of God.  You have to understand that the disciples were new born spiritual babies in Christ less than a few weeks old at this time.  They have much to learn about spiritual things and how God will lead them.  Many times Christians want to be led like someone who has been a Christian for 50 years and they do not realize that these people grew to that level of spiritual maturity and awareness and that this was not how they were led by God from the start of their Christian conversion.  Spiritual growth is a very basic principle to learning how to be led by the Spirit of God.  Just as a new born natural baby is not independent from their parents for many years, so a new born spiritual baby is not able to do what a Christian of mature age and experience can do.  That is just the way it works and you cannot sidestep the issue and jump beyond where you are right now just because you want to.  You are going to have to grow and continue to learn.  Let’s review briefly what we have observed and learned from chapter 5:

  1. God used Peter again to be a human messenger for other people to hear.
  2. The Holy Spirit gave Peter a word of knowledge concerning someone who was being influenced by Satan to sin.
  3. God also gave Peter the gift of discerning spirits to identify Satan’s involvement.
  4. All of this was done for the benefit of the church to teach them and guide them into holiness.
  5. Angels again are sent by God for deliverance of the church and for a message from God.
  6. Based upon other stories found in the Bible it is implied someone was praying but it is not mentioned directly in this chapter.
  7. Therefore, there are at the least three different direct methods of leading being taught in this chapter and a forth that was implied.
  8. We can observe the Holy Spirits involvement in this chapter, even though He is never directly mentioned.

ACTS CHAPTER 6 & 7

Act 6:1  And in those days, when the number of the disciples was multiplied, there arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews, because their widows were neglected in the daily ministration.

Act 6:2  Then the twelve called the multitude of the disciples unto them, and said, It is not reason that we should leave the word of God, and serve tables.

Here in this chapter, we are going to see another manifestation of the inward work of the Spirit of God.  I want you to notice that the number of the church has multiplied considerably and this is the first time that I know of in the book of Acts where the church is said NOT to be in complete harmony and unity.  Uh oh?  That is certainly not good.  I think this is an example of what happens in any church as they grow.  But what I want to do is to teach what God’s response to this disharmony was?  If you continue reading in the chapter you will see that the disciples are led by the Spirit of God to elect a church organization with structure assigning certain men jobs within the ministry of helps.  These men are selected, prayed over and hands were laid on them to also anoint them for their new roles of responsibility.  I want to teach you what is happening by showing you a verse in the New Testament that proves this was God working through the disciples and not the disciples acting independently from God.

1Co 12:28  And God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues.

Can we read?  Can we see what it says?  Who set up the ministry of helps and governments in the church?  The Bible said that God did this yet we see the disciples only mentioned in Acts 6 like they were acting independent from God.  Do you understand the dangers now of reading the Bible without using the Bible to interpret itself?  Clearly this is one of the most prevalent errors in the teachings that many people listen to today.  When the disciples set up an organized church structured government we were directly informed that God did this in Corinthians.  We must therefore conclude that they were being led by the Spirit of God to do what they are doing in this chapter even though the Holy Spirit is not mentioned directly.  Now notice the recorded reaction of the church to what is happening:

Act 6:5  And the saying pleased the whole multitude: and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolas a proselyte of Antioch:

Whenever you can get the whole church in attendance pleased over anything this has to be the Spirit of God’s direct involvement that is helping to influence the church.  Can you see the problem of disunity within in the church and the solution that God has implemented to fix it? What does the Greek word translated as “pleased” mean?   This Greek word means “to be agreeable”.  It also means to be emotionally excited.  Wow, here we go with more difficult spiritual concepts to relate with natural words and phrasings.  Believe it or not this had to be an example of God leading the early church and helping to guide them.  There is no mention of any angels, any voices, any external signs or any physical manifestations of God.  No, you see the Spirit of God was present, but He was present in every believer having filled each of them with the Spirit of God a short time earlier.   I want to show you something that Jesus said that is applicable to what is occurring in this chapter.

Mat 18:20  For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.

If the church was gathered in the name of Jesus, then Jesus declares “I will be there with you”.  Here we have another contradiction of information given verses information not directly mentioned in the book of Acts.  You can clearly read in Acts 6 that there is no direct mention of Jesus being present, yet clearly Jesus was a liar in Matthew if He is not present Acts 6.  Uh oh?  It is very obvious to me that they were conducting church business and since Jesus is the Head of the Church therefore, Jesus has to be present in a spiritual form to oversee this operation, administration and to give them guidance, direction and instruction.  Something is occurring internally within every believer that caused them to become excited and very agreeable together and I believe that both of these are signs of being led by the Spirit of that you can rely on today also.  If what the Spirit of God does is not exciting to you then you are probably not saved.  If you do not agree with what the Spirit of God is speaking to the church, then again you are probably not saved.  Two signs of being led by God are that you will agree and that you will be excited about what He says.  I am going to skip down to Stephen in verse 8 to continue:

Act 6:8  And Stephen, full of faith and power, did great wonders and miracles among the people.

We can again see a bad translation or at least an easily misunderstood translation of the Bible demonstrated in this verse.   It was not Stephen that was doing anything, but yet it was.  Because Stephen was full of faith, God’s power was able to flow through Stephen to cause many miracles to occur.  There is a clear connection that it was the partnership of a man’s faith and God’s power working together that causes the positive things to occur.  We can clearly understand this was the anointed power of God that permitted the miracles and wonders to be performed.  Stephen had no power in of himself to help anyone.  It was only because Stephen was being led by the Spirit of God that Stephen could be at the right place at the right time to do anything.  I do not know how to say that any more clearly and I hope you understand that God can and will use you the exact same way as He did Stephen if you cooperate, believe and expect Him to do it.  In chapter 7 of Acts Stephen preaches with boldness the truth of the Word of God and as a result he is stoned and killed.  It is very interesting to note that the Bible says that Jesus is seated at the right hand of majesty and in this chapter; Stephen sees a vision of Jesus standing up and watching the murder of a Spirit Filled church member by the ignorant overzealous misguided Jews.  If it was God in heaven watching this event on the earth, who was on the earth causing the death of Stephen?  It was definitely not God.  Who was leading the Jews spiritually to kill this man of God?  Based upon scripture it is Satan (Jo 10:10).   It is very clear to me that Jesus took this action of the Jews very personally.   I’ll think I’ll end here today since I have already gone too long.  Let’s review what has happened in chapter 6 and 7:

  1. The church was meeting and Jesus said whenever you meet in my name, there I am also.
  2. God sees disharmony in the church and moves to solve the problem through spiritual guidance.
  3. God leads the church to organize and to create delegated levels of administrations and responsibilities.
  4. All of the church is well pleased and church unity is restored.
  5. God was working through many different people and in chapter 5 we read about God using Stephen a man not of the original twelve.  Proving God can lead us and use us all mightily.
  6. In this information God has grown the church to some very large and significant numbers proving God’s involvement in what we are reading about.
  7. When disharmony breaks out God is involved in bringing correction proving God has our best interest at heart.

There are probably many other things to learn in these chapters but I believe we have covered many of the important ones that I wanted to emphasize on how and why God was leading His people.  I also introduced you to the concept of God’s guidance being a gift from God given to us by His Grace.  That is actually a very import concept to consider.  Anything we get from God is not something we earned or even deserved.  If God gave us direction, then it was His love that motivated Him to give it to us.  I hope you are enjoying these lessons and I’m sorry I did not cover as many chapters as I would have liked to have covered today.  We certainly learned several new concepts about spiritual guidance and I believe that was worth your time in reading and studying with me.  If you would like to share a comment on this subject, I would really love to hear it.  So feel free to be a blessing and share what is on your heart.  God Bless!

If you would like to continue reading in the series to learn how to be led by the Holy Spirit you may continue with “Part 10“.


Blog Site Address Change Announcement

As of Oct. 7, 2011, you can now go directly to my Bible studies by typing the new much shorter URL address:

AGAPEGEEK.COM

The old Word Press site will still direct you automatically to the new address, but this will simplify things considerably for people wanting to find me easily.  Also I am considering changing the look and feel of the site, but I have not made that decision because people usually do not like things to change.  You can see that by all of the fuss people have recently made with the massive Facebook changes.

This new name ought to be much easier to remember and considerably faster to access.  Share this new URL address with all of your friends, relatives and acquaintances and help me get the free Gospel to spread around the globe.   God Bless you as you continue to grow in His grace and His knowledge.


Understanding How to Be Led By the Spirit of God! How the Holy Spirit Led the Early Church in Acts 1 – 4! Part 8

(ver 1.2) This is now Part 8 in a series of very important basic Christian Bible lessons on the subject of Being Led by the Spirit of God.  We have covered a lot of information that will not be repeated so if you have not read this from the beginning I would suggest that you go and start with “Part 1”   first.  In this series I have been attempting to teach that God still speaks in the modern world to His children the same as He did in recorded Bible days.  Since the Bible teaches us that God does not change nor does He show any favoritism, what He did for others in the past is what He will do for those that wish to participate with Him today.  Today’s lesson will emphasize this reality by beginning to focus directly on how God led the early church in the book of Acts.  In today’s lesson we will explore the first 4 chapters and the major scriptures found in those chapters that deal with the documented methods that the Spirit of God provides for evidence for His involvement in guiding everything positive that occurred in this book.  By studying the book of Acts we should quickly come to understand that God was heavily involved in everything that takes place that causes men and women to be added to the church, for safety of the church, for deliverance from evil, the preservation of the Body of Christ and the spread of the Gospel.  God accomplished all of this by leading His people by His Spirit.  Many people today in error call the book of Acts the “Acts of the Apostles”, but this is a classic misnomer and the direct misapplication of the key importance of God working through man to accomplish His will and purpose on the earth.  The Apostles did not do anything in this book independent from God.  Nor could they have done anything without His guidance.  So we will begin to go through the book of Acts to discover how God accomplished these great feats through such ordinary men and women and we will learn in doing this how God will do the same with us today before Jesus returns.  I will probably warn you that this is going to be a long Bible lesson since I’m covering selective information from 4 chapters.

Let me tell you what I will be attempting to cover today in this lesson.  I hope by telling you what to expect you will learn how to study the book of Acts and the Bible for that matter with greater accuracy.  We will be reading the book of Acts looking for the leading of the Holy Spirit.  This sounds very simple, but if you read the whole book of Acts you will never see God say “Peter was led by the Spirit” or anyone else.  Therefore we are going to have to dig a little deeper to learn the truth other than looking for the obvious.  Many truths in the Bible are not obviously presented and this is certainly one of them.  Nevertheless we will be searching for explicit leadings of the Holy Spirit and implied leadings of the Holy Spirit.  What else can we learn about this subject?  Why does the Holy Spirit lead anyone?  What are the benefits of being led by the Spirit of God?  In order to answer these questions we are going to have to find examples that teach us the answers.  Therefore we are going to look for why the Spirit of God led the early church and what resulted from these leadings.   Here is my list of things to look for as you read the book of Acts with me:

  1. Explicit or Implied Leadings of the Holy Spirit.
  2. The Methods of God Leading Used.
  3. Reasons for the Leadings.
  4. Results of the Leadings.

Hopefully by studying these subjects and answering these questions we will learn how God will lead us and for what purpose.

ACTS CHAPTER 1

The Book of Acts begins with the brief description of the time period after the resurrection of Jesus prior to His ascension back into heaven where He now remains awaiting the time of His return to catch away the church.   In chapter 1 we are told that Jesus has met personally and physically with the disciples for 40 days teaching them.  This was the resurrected God in the flesh, the Lord Jesus Christ in bodily form and He could speak to each of them directly.  Jesus during this time must have taught them many things and no doubt He must have given them instructions like those recorded in this chapter when He told them to wait in Jerusalem until they received power from on high (Acts 1:8).   However, Jesus was taken up into heaven in verse 9 to await the soon coming end of the church age which will run for a time of approximately 2000 years.  In chapter 1 of Acts after Jesus is taken up into the clouds, two men appear to the disciples with a message, asking them “Why stand ye here gazing into heaven, this same Jesus that went up will return in like manner” (Acts 1:11).   These two men were dressed in all white and they were no doubt angels sent from God with a message to the early church.  This is the first recorded occurrence of divine direction being given to the church without the personal involvement of a physical Jesus being present.  Also, what these angels said to the apostles applies to us directly especially in these last days.  Understanding that any words spoken to the early church are still words that were spoken to us today is essential to learning that we are all the same growing Body of Christ.  Angels throughout the Bible have always been used by God as messengers for the people on the earth.   As we continue through the book of Acts we will see that angels will be used by God repeatedly when dealing with the church, so you can conclude that angels will also be used by God before Jesus returns.  It is further identified in Chapter 1 that Peter quotes David’s writings in Psalms concerning Judas (Acts 1:16, Psalms 109:8).  Peter uses the words of the Holy Ghost written in the Old Testament to justify the election of a new disciple to replace the traitor Judas.  Therefore we can further conclude that the early church was directly led by the written Word of God in what they did the same as we are to be led by our knowledge of the Bible today.   From reading chapter 1 of Acts we can see that it contains two directly named methods of my 12 methods previously listed that I taught from in this series.

Therefore just in chapter 1 of Acts, God has used three different directly mentioned methods to communicate with the early church to provide spiritual guidance.  There was God in the flesh, the angels and the written Word of God all specified as valid communication methods, but I would not expect Jesus to appear in the flesh to you today until you are raptured away from this earth.   You see there are other Bible verses that God is awaiting to be fulfilled before Jesus comes back to the earth in a physical form.  I know many people would disagree with that last statement, because of what they call the doctrine of eminence.  This church doctrine reports that there is nothing left to be fulfilled for the Lord Jesus Christ to return.  I wonder how many of these people have actually read the Bible and have seen what it says?  I have a lesson about this subject, so I will not repeat that here.  If you want to read about it, you can go and study the lesson called “What in the World is God Waiting For”.     I also want to point out that these three manifestations of guidance were all physical sense realm leadings as I have already tried to teach as being the primary methods used by God in the Old Testament.  The more carnal the Christian the more God has to come down to the human level to communicate with us.  What we will begin to see after chapter 2 is a transition into greater spiritual realm guidance methods as they become the primary methods of guidance from God.  However we will still see angels potentially at work at any time.

What have we learned from Chapter 1?

  1. Jesus taught the disciples for 40 days in the flesh to give them understanding.
  2. The angels appeared to the disciples to give them a message from God proving God is involved in the Book of Act leading His people.
  3. Peter used the Word of God to direct their actions to replace Judas, therefore God’s Word offers guidance in our everyday life as well as specific actions to take in specific situations.

ACTS CHAPTER  2

Chapter 2 of Acts begins with the promised outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the church and this was technically the beginning of God’s use of purer new spiritual communication methods to guide the church.   In this chapter the church started and consisted of the 120 believers in the upper room that were anxiously waiting the fulfillment of the promise made by Jesus of the outpouring of the Spirit of God.  This event occurred on the Jewish feast of Pentecost.  You can read this chapter carefully and see that when the Spirit of God was given, He was described as coming like a rushing mighty wind (Acts 2:2) from heaven.  As He fell on all that were present in the room in Jerusalem they began to speak with other tongues as they were each filled with the Spirit of God.  It is very interesting to note that the Greek word translated as “wind” can mean “breath”.  I personally believe that this wind was God breathing on them from Heaven.  When you speak words, do you breathe?  You bet people breathe when they speak.  This breath of God implies the beginning of a new spiritual ability and a way for God to lead His people.  To breathe on the church in this chapter is an amazing fact to consider, since Jesus had already personally breathed on every disciple that was present in the room and had already told each of them to receive the Holy Spirit (John 20:22).  You can read this very clearly in the book of John if you like, but realize that this occurs over 40 days prior to Acts 2.  Is God confused or are people confused to what this means?  We must conclude from this information that the Holy Spirit that they had previously received from Jesus directly could not have been the same manifestation or work of the Acts 2 Holy Spirit that they were now being filled with.  Uh oh?  Yes they were both from the same Holy Spirit from God, but in two different manifestations and demonstrations of the Spirit of God.  This fact obviously boggles the mind of many people in the church today who do not understand that the same God can do different things to the same people.  These Christians usually mistakenly believe that they were filled with the Spirit of God when they were born again and that this was the only spiritual experience that is required.  It is funny that God did not think that was all for the early church, so why have men changed today to believe differently?  What some Christians do today is to settle for less of what they could have had in this life and miss out on God’s fullness.  I’ll tell you very plainly, if you have never spoken in tongues, you have never been filled with the Spirit of God and you are missing out on the best of what Jesus commanded the church to receive.   You can ignore this command and still go to heaven potentially, but I would not want to be you in trying to explain why you thought it was important not to be obedient to God.  I am a firm believer that in John 20:22 the disciples were born of the Spirit of God when Jesus breathed on them and told them to receive the Holy Spirit, but in Acts 2 they were filled with the Spirit of God and that these were two separate spiritual experiences.  I believe this primarily because that is what the Bible says and it is also what I have experienced personally, so that is two witnesses that you can choose to believe or ignore.

Act 2:14  But Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and said unto them, Ye men of Judaea, and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto you, and hearken to my words:

After the church was filled with the Holy Ghost, Peter stands up to preach to those that have gathered in amazement at what was happening.  Read this chapter closely and remember that this is the same Peter that we can see in the Gospels who denied Jesus 3 times approximately 50 days earlier.  It is funny that this same man now has something boldly to say publically about His Lord Jesus.  Therefore, something obviously occurred to change him from a man who was a mess to a man with a message.  This transformation occurred when he was baptized and filled with the Spirit of God in this chapter, because Jesus said that you will receive power to be a witnesses (Acts 1:8) and that was what Peter demonstrated to us in this chapter.  Peter suddenly had the power to become this great witness for Jesus and when Peter denied Jesus, he lacked this power.  If you have trouble witnessing to people, then you probably need this same power today.  Here in chapter 2 Peter again quotes the Old Testament speaking of the words recorded by the prophet Joel.  Peter says “This is that which was spoken of by the prophet Joel that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh” (Acts 2:17, Joel 2:28).  This verse also informs us that God will use visions and dreams so these are two more relevant New Testament methods of God to guide His people.  What is happening in this chapter?  How did Peter suddenly having not prepared a sermon have a sermon to preach?  I think that is an excellent question which Jesus answered in the Gospels:

Luk 12:11  And when they bring you unto the synagogues, and unto magistrates, and powers, take ye no thought how or what thing ye shall answer, or what ye shall say:

Luk 12:12  For the Holy Ghost shall teach you in the same hour what ye ought to say.

Do you see what Jesus said?  Do you see how this applies to what Peter did?  Peter suddenly quotes scriptures out of nowhere without having a Bible in front of him, no notes or anything prepared ahead of time and he knows exactly what to say to get those standing around saved.  I would call this a miracle if I did not understand what Jesus was teaching us in Luke.  You see the Holy Spirit was inside of these men speaking through them.  Technically Peter was doing the speaking, but the Holy Spirit was giving the words to speak.  What is the lesson that we need to learn?  We need to learn to trust the Holy Spirit in us to give us the right words to speak when we run into people we have never seen before.  What God does in this chapter with Peter, He will do for you if you get filled with the Holy Spirit.  As we continue through the book of Acts, notice this is a repeated pattern that occurs many times for many different men of God.

Peter after being filled with the Spirit of God still hangs all of his beliefs and what was happening to them upon the written Word of God, further establishing and confirming the importance of the Bible to the modern believer.  Peter was justifying what they were doing and what God had done based upon what God had written about many hundreds of years before.  Make sure what you believe is only based upon God’s Word.  So far we have looked at two chapters and discovered God using 5 different methods of communication to lead His people being stated.  These are all very important so do not let them go or ignore them.  What were the methods of leading revealed in this chapter and what resulted from this chapter?

  1. God says people will be led by visions and dreams in the last days.
  2. The Holy Spirit gave Peter utterance and taught Him what to preach to get others saved.
  3. Peter declares that what was happening was prophesied by God through the prophet Joel thus confirming the importance of the written Word of God.
  4. Therefore God led those that were listening in the crowd by what was spoken by Peter so that they could believe.  This was a God’s use of a preaher a man with a message from God that was believed on and resulted in their salvation.
  5. The church was expanded greatly from 120 to over 3000 this day and so God was at work through the early church to save many others.

ACTS CHAPTER 3

Act 3:1  Now Peter and John went up together into the temple at the hour of prayer, being the ninth hour.

If you read the Bible in isolation you will be very confused to try to understand what is happening.  You see God does not tell you everything that happens in every verse or you would never be able to finish reading the Bible because it would be so huge that no library could contain it.  God writes the Bible using a technique of very incomplete information with random clues spread throughout the text to what is occurring.  All of the information given to you in any single verse is very important, but it is never all-inclusive.  This just means that it is the truth, but not the entire truth.  I try to teach that in every Bible lesson that I do to some degree either by stated rule or by example.  The name of my Bible study is “Using the Bible to Understand the Bible” and that is how I interpret the Word of God.  You are going to have to read and study the entire rest of the Bible to figure out what is going on and how things are working in what you are reading in this chapter because God is just not going to tell you everything in one verse that would be impossible to do.  If you read this verse and ignored the rest of the Bible you would be forced to conclude that Peter and John just randomly decide to go up to the temple by chance or by accident.  However, I do not believe that there are any random chances or accidents written about in the book of Acts.  If you read the Gospels closely you will discover that Jesus was always in the right place at the right time for a very specific given purpose and plan of God.  I believe that Jesus was the ultimate example of being led by the Spirit of God and perhaps I’ll do a lesson just on Jesus later.  But understand what the Bible says:

Rom 8:14  For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.

I have already used this verse in this lesson series, but I want to re-emphasize it again for clarity on its application to what the disciples are doing in this chapter.  Are these disciples the sons of God?  If you do not know it, they are definitely the foundations of the church and the New Jerusalem that all the other stones are built upon.  This is critical information then to apply to what Peter and John are doing.  If you read down in chapter 3 you will see that they come to the gate and see a lame man.  Was this an accident?  There is no way that this was accidental.  Peter grabs the lame man by the hand and says to him in the name of Jesus walk.  Did Peter heal the man or was it the Spirit of God working through Peter that healed the lame man?  That was not a trick question.  Peter could not heal a fly, so the Spirit of God was directly working through Peter to bring a miracle of healing and deliverance to a man in need.  Therefore I have concluded that Peter and John were being led by the Spirit of God even though we are not told directly how they were being led.  There are vast numbers of implied works of guidance in this chapter displayed in the recorded actions of the disciples.  However, nowhere does it say directly that God was involved.  Do you understand the challenge being presented?  We are told the external actions of the disciples, but we are not told the internal spiritual action s of God.  Peter and John could have been led by any of the 12 methods that I listed in this series, but since we are not told which one it was, I will not try to assume I know and I will just say based upon scripture, they were being led by the Spirit of God to be at the temple that very day, hour and minute.

  1. Peter and John were led by the Spirit of God to be at the right place and time where a lame man was sitting.
  2. The Spirit of God heals the lame man and this resulted in great attention being drawn to the church and God as well as the lame man could now walk about and testify for them.

ACTS CHAPTER 4

Act 4:8  Then Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost, said unto them, Ye rulers of the people, and elders of Israel,

In chapter 4 we are again told that Peter was filled with the Spirit of God and this implies that this is the reason for his new found boldness to declare Jesus Christ before those that he previously feared.  Being full of the Holy Ghost appears to be a key factor for being led by the Spirit of God for Peter at least in the first 4 chapters of Acts.  If you read chapter 4, you will see the disciples standing before the Jewish rulers being questioned.  These men of Israel obviously thought they were right and all others were wrong, but they were missing the greatest manifestation of a new work of God and did not realize it.  Peter is again directed by the Holy Ghost what to preach to these men.  Just as Peter and God had done in Acts 2 is being repeated in Acts 4.  If you read verse 4 you will see that the Church grows by another 5000 new believers.  Therefore God is at work causing the church to grow greatly even though some disciples spent the night in prison.   Let’s skip down to verse 24:

Act 4:24  And when they heard that, they lifted up their voice to God with one accord, and said, Lord, thou art God, which hast made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all that in them is:

In the latter part of chapter 4 we can see that the disciples and the early church were gathered together and that they prayed to God all in one accord.  Therefore, prayer as you may recall was one of my observable triggered methods that will get God to respond to give people guidance.  What we will observe as we continue to go through the book of Acts is that prayer always gets God to respond.  Therefore, prayer is still a valid trigger method for the modern church to communicate with God and to get God to give us guidance and direction.   The Bible says in James “You have not because you ask not”.  Informing us that guidance and direction is not a foregone conclusion.  If you want God to guide you today then you get up in the morning and you ask for His guidance.  Do not assume that He will guide you without you asking, or you might also totally miss out on the greatest display of God that you could have never imagined.  I do want you to notice that the church is stated more than once to be in total agreement.  I personally believe this is a sign of those that are being led by the Spirit of God.

Joh 17:22  And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one:

Being one is what Jesus prayed and asked God for in this chapter of John.  If you do not remember this prayer then go and reread it because it applies to our study of being led in the book of Acts extensively.  As we continue through this lesson I will try to point out how many times we encounter the term “one accord”.  This is clearly a sign of being led by the Spirit of God.   Why is the Christian church today not in one accord?  It is primarily because they are not all being led by the Spirit of God.  We have many people who think they are Christians who are going to be very surprised when the bridegroom comes in the middle of the night and they are left outside trying to get in.  Do you remember the parable of the 10 virgins?  Weren’t the 5 virgins that went in with Christ all in one accord?   Weren’t the 5 virgins that were left out also in one accord but just not with those that went in?  Uh oh?   I’ll talk more about this as we continue through the lesson on Acts and being led by the Spirit of God.

Act 4:31  And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with boldness.

Here in this verse is God’s response to their prayer; proving prayer gets God to respond.  The place where they were gathered was shaken and they were all filled with the Spirit of God again.  Wow, this is really getting good.  You see in this prayer they asked for the ability to speak the Word of God with boldness and this is what they received.  Let’s list the lessons learned from chapter 4:

  1. Being filled with the Spirit of God is a stated reason for what was happening in this chapter.
  2. Peter was again led by God what to say in the midst of the crowd and the leaders of Israel.
  3. Many new believers were added and the church again grew by great numbers.
  4. The church prayed and asked God for a specific request and God responded and granted the request.
  5. Therefore, prayer caused God to respond.

I think I have gone long enough in this lesson for today.  I was originally going to go through many more chapters, but I think the lessons are getting too long for some people.  So I’ll try not to write such long lessons in the future or at least to break them down into smaller chunks.  Hopefully you can see what is happening in just the first four chapters of the book of Acts.  God is causing the church to grow by leaps and bounds and adding many new people through the disciples who were being led by the Spirit of God to be in the right places at the right times.  There are several different methods of leading that God has used or referenced in these first four chapters of Acts and these are a follows:

  1. Angels sent by God with a message.
  2. The Written Word of God used to Direct Men.
  3. Inward Witness (Spirit of God shows Peter what to Preach).
  4. Prayer of the Church.
  5. Visions and Dreams (Not yet demonstrated but referenced by Peter in Acts 2).
  6. God’s use of preachers to bring a message from God to the people.

Believe it or not we have just gone through the first 4 chapters in Acts and found 7 of my 12 methods of communication listed or demonstrated by the words or the actions of the people recorded.   That is pretty significant if you ask me.  You can clearly understand based upon this information that God is intimately involved in guiding His people to cause them to be successful.  Of course success is a relative term that is highly subjective.  Too many people view success as monetary gain or wealth accumulation or even fame.  That is not what I am talking about.  God’s success may not be your success but many times the eternal rewards will far outweigh what you could have earned in this life.  If you get on God’s side He will cause you to be successful and He will reward you and that is all I should have to say about that.  Thanks for reading and studying the Bible with me and if you have any questions or comments please be as BOLD as the disciples were and share them, but also be led by the Spirit of God in you.  God Bless!

If you like to coninue to study in this series you may go to “Part 9“.