Blog Archives

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 6.1” 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!

If you would like to continue and read the next lesson in this series you can jump to “Part 6.2“.

 

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 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“.

Understanding How to Be Led By the Spirit of God! Hearing from the Spirit of God Today! Part 6

(ver 1.2) This is Part 6 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 speaks to those who will listen.  Knowing that God speaks begins the process that allows you to hear from God.  But, also knowing how God speaks plays a key role that can change your level of expectation and your ability to find God speaking.  Too often people look for the spectacular and miss the simple supernatural.  What this means is that you may have already heard from God but since you did not know it was God you wrote it off as not being important.  A friend of mine that was a new born baby Christian thought he heard God speaking to him through his car radio and a commercial on the radio.  While I do not discount God’s ability to do that, you have to be very careful with that natural approach to communicating with a God who is a Spirit.  Expecting to hear God speak to you in a thunderous spectacular voice from heaven will usually leave you very disappointed when He does not do this.  Of course you could be like my friend and think that you heard something that was not really there.  Since I was not there I did not tell him it was not God.  I would have believed it more if it was a Christian radio station and it was a spirit-filled preacher who was speaking, but since it was a secular station I knew God does not speak thru unsaved people who are not led by God to speak.  This would make God someone who takes control of a human to make them do or say something and this is not the nature or character of a loving God.  I have found that God has many ways of getting you the answer and just when you think you have Him all figured out He will show you a new one to keep you on your toes and help you to grow up spiritually.  I’ll start today by reviewing the list of 12 divine methods recorded in the Bible that God has used to communicate with the people on the earth.  I have been using this list to teach on this subject and we are getting closer to the end.

  1. The Audible Voice of God
  2. The Finger of God
  3. Angels Sent by God
  4. Prophets, Teachers, Pastors, Evangelists, Apostles or other Men/Women (disciples) of God
  5. The Inward Still Small Voice of God
  6. The Written Word of God
  7. External Visible Signs from God
  8. Visions from God
  9. Dreams from God
  10. Prayer of an Individual
  11. The Inward Witness of God / Moral Conscience / Intuition / Internal Knowledge / Spiritual Insight
  12. Patterns found within God’s Creation

From this list I have introduced you to God’s methods 12, 9, 8, 7, 6, 4, 3, 2 and 1 so far using many personal and Bible examples.   I will tell you that every method of God that He has recorded in His Word is important to learn, but some are certainly more prevalently used by God than others in the Bible and in the world today.  You see you will probably not see God writing in the tablets of stone for a message to the world today.  This was an example of a spectacular display of the power of God and He does not normally do things like this to prove His existence to anyone in the world.  In the previous lesson I showed you that God uses people to speak to other people on the earth.  This is a great revealed truth in the Bible found in almost every book.  This method of using a mediator with a message permits God to remain hidden behind the scenes.  This method allows all of the people on the earth to have a freewill choice to what they believe.  This method also forces everyone to have faith in a God that they have never seen before and to believe in the words of God that were sent.  You see if God suddenly appeared in the natural realm everyone would have no choice but to know that God is real.  Even if God sent a 12 foot tall angel into the world that suddenly was broadcasted to every TV on the planet, people on the earth would suddenly have an opportunity to see that the supernatural realm was real.  However with the advent of movies and entertainment computer graphics, nothing that you see on TV or the internet can be considered to be real anymore.  Photoshop and other programs permit creative creations of fiction that are very hard to detect to the untrained computer expert.  If a massive angel suddenly appeared in Jerusalem on international TV with a message that the end is tomorrow you would have the majority of the planet laugh and scoff at the creative ways of Hollywood to sensationalize fiction.  The book of Revelation teaches us that angels will preach the Gospel during the tribulation, but this proves that they will need to do this because the church is not there to do it.  In my opinion it is getting much more difficult to reach the majority of the people in the world because of the growing hardness of their hearts.

Here is another potential complication to the last lesson on God’s usage of men and women that I did not get into.  How do you recognize a true man of God?  Just because a man says that he is a prophet does not make him a prophet.  There is a Bible concept of false that I have not addressed. Everything that God has done that can be considered to be true has been countered with a contradictory opposite called the false that has been authored by Satan.  Satan purposefully sends many false speakers and teachers that are designed to cause confusion.  The Bible informs us that there are and will be false Christs in the world in the last days.  There have been and will be false prophets in the world.  There have been and continue to be false teachers in the world.  That complicates our lives tremendously doesn’t it?   Not only do you have to hear from God you have to weed through all of the false to find the truth.  Who you trust and who you place your confidence in will determine if you are deceived into destruction or led into the correct paths of life.  This is why you need to learn the Word of God extensively and ask Him for the understanding.  Like I told you before God will never contradict His word in anything that He tells you by His Spirit.  God’s words are forever established and will never pass away.  So how do you recognize the true man of God?  You verify what he says by you looking it up in your Bible and seeing if that is really what God says.  If you do not see it for yourself, then refuse to believe it.  This is a principle taught to us by the early church and Paul.  You can read about it in Acts 17:11 and see what the early church did to confirm what Paul was teaching by searching their Bibles.  What they did is what you should be doing today as I teach.

PRAYER THE KEY TO HEARING FROM GOD

Today I’m going to continue teaching with number 10 the personal prayer life of the individual.  I believe that God hears and responds to the prayers of the people on the earth.  There are many people who would disagree with me because they believe God is sovereign and that God predetermines everything that happens in the world and this philosophy is popularly called Predestination, Selection or Election.  While you can find scriptures to support this position, what these teachers do not realize is that there is more than one truth in the Bible and they have abandoned all of the others to exalt their one truth to be the complete truth.   If those concepts of selection were all the complete truth then why are there so many other things in the Bible recorded that contradict that belief?  For example, the recorded prayers of the people on the earth are clearly contradictory to a sovereign God making every decision for man.  Why is it necessary for anyone to ever pray if God has already predetermined what will happen?  Why did Jesus ever pray on the earth and why did He teach his disciples to pray?  Those are tough questions that Predestination teachers ignore.

We are going to talk about the subject of prayer in conjunction with being led by Spirit of God.  I believe that prayer is an essential part of a Christian’s relationship with their Father God.  You can read over and over where people needed God and they fell on their face to seek Him and He was found.  Prayer is certainly more than just asking God for things, but this is certainly a valid part of prayer since God is the giver of all things that are valuable.  You can find more examples of men and women asking God for things than you can for any other type of prayer.  If I possess anything of value it is only by the grace of God that I have it.  You can read about the positive effects of prayer in Genesis 20:17, Numbers 11:2, Numbers 21:7, 1 Samuel 1:12 to name a very few places where men and women prayed and God responded.  What would have happened if no one prayed in these examples?  Do you think the same outcome would have resulted?  I certainly do not believe that at all.   I know I oversimplified this introduction, but you should at least begin to see that prayer was a key part of any success that anyone had in the Bible.  Let me show you another example in more detail:

Dan 9:17  Now therefore, O our God, hear the prayer of thy servant, and his supplications, and cause thy face to shine upon thy sanctuary that is desolate, for the Lord’s sake.

One thing I noticed about reading the book of Daniel is that he liked to pray to his God.  Could this be one of the key reasons that God gave him the visions of the end times and the understanding of so much?  Prayer has to be a major contributing positive factor for hearing from God based upon only learning about the experiences of Daniel.  I personally believe that most people do not hear from God because they do not give God an opportunity to speak to them.  Prayer should always be a two way conversation and it never should be a one way directional speech from you only.   Think of it this way, what can you ever tell God that He does not already know?  Knowing that alone should shorten your prayers considerably when you think about that.  However, what can God tell you that you had no clue that you even needed to know?  Could it be everything?  Yes, God is all knowing (omniscient) and He is the one that we should learn to listen to for everything.  But there is a hidden factor that determines if God will tell you anything.  The Bible says “You have not because you ask not” (James 4:2).  What does that mean?  That means God will not force His knowledge upon anyone.  If you don’t want to know don’t ask.  If you want to know something from God then you must ask Him for it.  The Bible also says “If any man lacks wisdom let Him ask from God who gives to every man liberally” (James 1:5).   The Bible also says “seek you will find, knock and it will be opened, ask and you will be answered” (Mat 7:7).  I know these were my paraphrased versions of these scriptures, but you can go and read them for yourself and see that is basically what they are teaching.  The key factor to receiving anything begins by you asking for it.  People like to assume God is in control, but according to what I just read if you do not give God control then you are in control.  Assuming God to be in control does not make God in control of your destiny.  God is going to expect you to ask for His guidance if you want to hear what He has to say.  So Daniel 9:17 says Daniel is praying to God and then read down and see what happens:

Dan 9:21  Yea, whiles I was speaking in prayer, even the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, being caused to fly swiftly, touched me about the time of the evening oblation.

We can clearly see that the angel Gabriel came from God and shows up while Daniel is still speaking to God in prayer.  This is very conclusive evidence that you can hear from God while you pray.  It is also direct evidence that it was the prayer of Daniel that was the initiating factor to him hearing from God.  If you read in this chapter you can never find where Daniel tells God how to speak to him.  Clearly God chose the method of communication and not Daniel.  That is a very important point that I wish to drive home again.  I also find it fascinating that the angel shows up while Daniel is still praying and not after Daniel is finished praying.  The answer from God to what you are praying for can come either during your prayer or after your prayer.  There is a major factor that is different today from Daniel’s prayer back in the Old Covenant.  In Daniel’s day God was in heaven and heard the prayer and sent the angel Gabriel with the answer from heaven.  But, today in the church, the Spirit of God abides within me and you and our prayers do not need to reach to heaven to be heard anymore.  Many times Christians believe that they have to bombard heaven with a prayer request and they forget God is inside of them and can speak immediately back to them internally.  Today’s prayer conversations with God should always come with replies from inside of us instead of how Daniel prayed and God sent the answer back to the earth from heaven using an angel.  Do not misunderstand what I just said.  God can still use an angel, but normally He will just speak to you Himself if you are quiet enough and listening.

Dan 9:22  And he informed me, and talked with me, and said, O Daniel, I am now come forth to give thee skill and understanding.

I want you to notice what God gives to Daniel based upon his original prayer.  Believe it or not this is what you should be seeking from God also.  Skill is of course ability to do something.  Understanding is one of the greatest benefits of knowing God that He can share with you.  We are all in need of God’s understanding and wisdom to do anything in the world.   These are things that God is looking to give.  You can go back and read the story of Solomon and see how he prayed and you will see that because Solomon asked God for wisdom and understanding, Solomon was blessed to be one of the richest men in the world at that time.  What I learned from reading Daniel 9 is that prayer is an initiating request for the responses of God.  You can clearly see that God sends an angel with the message because of Daniels’s prayers.  These are simple but yet profound concepts found in the Bible.  Let me give you another example from the prayer life of Daniel.

Dan 10:12  Then said he unto me, Fear not, Daniel: for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words.

The angel Gabriel is speaking these words to Daniel and they are very deep.  The angel tells Daniel I am sent because of your words.  This verse teaches us several things.  First, prayer is always based upon words spoken and never your silence.  There is no such thing as a silent prayer.  Next, God heard the words of Daniel and sent an angel with the answer.  Whenever you pray if you do not believe God heard, you will pray again and again and again and this is not scriptural.  This is the acts of a desperate man who lacks faith and let’s doubts and fears take away what God has already sent the answer to.  God does not answer for your much repetition and constant prayer request needs.  God hears you the first time and after that if you want to pray it is not for God’s benefit, but for your doubts that God did not hear you the first time.  This is another divine example of the sovereign will of God in response to the request of a man on the earth.  Daniel did not ask for an angel, he asked God for the answer and God sent the angel.  Learning how prayer works and how faith works are key factors to being led by the Spirit of God.

Daniel 10:12 implies that you do not have to be praying in order to speak words that get God’s response.  You see there is another Hebrew word in the O.T. that is often translated as “prayer” and it is not this word that the angel said I am here for.  Do not misunderstand what I am saying; I’m not saying not to pray I just think we need to expand our definition of what prayer is sometimes to include every word that we speak.  You see sometimes people pray and ask God for a job and then look at the economy and circumstances and say “I’ll never get a job” to their friends.  When you do that you have in effect canceled your prayer with your words of unbelief that God did not hear and answer you already.  If you do not think your words matter then you are highly deceived.  After you pray and ask God for the answer it is time to praise God for the answer until the answer arrives.  Everything that you do matters in this world and I could give you Bible verses that teach these last statements, but I’ll try to teach on prayer in more depth in other future lessons.

THE STILL SMALL VOICE FROM A VERY BIG GOD!

Prayer and hearing from God is a very simple linked dependent concept taught to us in the Bible.  I could give you many more examples of prayer in the Bible, but they are fairly easy to find so I’m going to move on to another method that God uses to communicate with man called the “Still small voice”.  Here is why many people in the world do not believe that they ever hear from God.  Many times they expect God to speak in a miraculous spectacular strong way and they miss the very basic supernatural soft voice of the Almighty God.  God constantly manifests Himself using a very insignificant small voice and this is not what people expect.  Why does the Almighty God do this?  I guess you should also ask why the creator of the universe washed the feet of His own disciples.  For God to make Himself a subordinate intentionally is a sovereign divine sign of exhibited humility.  Humility is the ultimate sign of true greatness.  Humility is the opposed force of pride.  Did you know that no one who is anyone can ever exhibit true humility?  Humility is only possible for anyone with greatness.  Since God is the greatest of them all, God exhibits true humility in everything that He does.  If you are at the bottom of the spiritual food chain you cannot lower yourself beyond where you are any further so you can only attempt to raise yourself and that is called pride.  But if you are at the top of the spiritual food chain then you can display great character by being humble.  To exalt yourself above where you are is a sign of pride and this is what Satan did and God is the direct opposite to Satan.  Not understanding the character and the nature of God will cause you to miss God many times.  How you expect God to answer will affect your ability to hear and recognize His voice.  Did you know that this is one of the main reasons that the Jews did not recognize the manifestation of their Messiah?  Jesus appeared to be a normal man like everyone else and this confounded the wisdom of the religious men that was expecting a powerful King to rule over them and set them free from the oppression of man.  Jesus came as the humble servant to earth and He did not fit the picture of the conquering King that the Jews had in their mind for their Messiah.  What I am trying to teach you is that it matters how you expect God to come to you to give you the answer also.  If you are not open to a still small very quiet voice then you are probably going to miss out on God’s directions for your life.

1Ki 19:11  And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the LORD. And, behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the LORD was not in the earthquake:

Here is one of the most awesome verses in the Bible followed by an even greater verse in the next coming one that I’m about to give you.  This verse is about the prophet Elijah but it also has direct applications to me and you today.  The prophet must be seeking God and God is said to pass by on the mountain.  Here is a great lesson about God and His character.  It just so happens that a very strong wind comes and tears up the mountain as the Lord passed by, but God says in His word that He was not in the wind.  Why is that important?  God gets blamed for the winds of adversity like hurricanes and tornados constantly and I want to scream at preachers who accuse my God of killing, stealing and destroying things when God clearly says it was not me in this verse.  Next you can see an earthquake also takes place and again God is not found in the earthquake either.  Are you beginning to see a pattern here?  Why are you looking at the hugely spectacular expecting to find a God that is clearly not to be found there?  That is probably one the most important questions you can learn from this lesson.  Here is the verse that I want to focus in on today:

1Ki 19:12  And after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.

After the earthquake a fire came, but again the Lord is not found in the fire.  Here in the U.S. we have had a major hurricane flood the east coast recently and we have had earthquakes and now we have had major fires in Texas and Oregon and God says I’m not in any of these.  Please do not claim these are the judgments of God trying to get America to change or get saved because that Gospel conflicts with the God of the Bible.  Look at how this verse ends.  A still small voice came to Elijah and guess what, that was God!  If you read the next couple of verses you will see that Elijah is finally able to hold a conversation with the Almighty God of Israel.  The Hebrew word translated as “still” means quiet and implies a peaceful atmosphere like a very gentle stream of water.  The Hebrew word translated as “small” means low or thin as in something crushed.  It is technically implying that it can be easily missed or ignored.  Finally the Hebrew word for “voice” means audible spoken words. This still small voice from God asks Elijah a direct question to start the conversation.  Did you know that you can learn a lot from God asking you a question if you are paying attention?  How God asks the question and what is said in the question is almost always much greater than you can imagine.  God’s intelligence is so far beyond your intelligence that all God has to do is ask you a simple question and suddenly you know many things that you needed to know.  Go through the Bible and see how many times you can find God asking people questions to start a conversation.  It might surprise you.  God asked Adam two questions in Genesis 3 to start the conversation with the man.  God then asks Eve a question in Genesis 3 next to continue the conversation with her.  When He got to Satan suddenly the questions stopped.  Why is that?  I guess I won’t go there today, but it is very amazing to understand.

While I have been reading the Bible and studying a chapter I have had the Spirit of God in His still small voice ask me direct questions like “Did you notice that didn’t say…”.  This simple question from the Spirit of God opened my eyes to the hidden meaning of the verses.  God was teaching me and God taught me by asking me very simple questions.  That is extreme wisdom to follow when you need to try to teach people something.  When you ask the right questions, the light bulbs can be turned on in someone’s mind to bring illumination.  I want you to learn two things from the example of Elijah that God speaks to him using a very quiet insignificant sound inside of him and that this can be a question that will bring great information to us.  Finally I also want you to see that in the book of James written to us in the church, God says Elijah was a man just like us.  In other words God is saying what Elijah did you can do and what I did for Elijah I will do for you.   That is some amazing facts that God is still the same today as He was with the men in the Bible.  Expect to hear God speak to you in a very faint quiet voice and this is usually for your benefit to help you possibly to help someone else.

Today’s lesson has been about two key methods of communication that God has taught us in His Word.   Your prayer life will always initiate God’s response.  Then your ability to learn to hear the still small voice of God inside of you is another key factor for your spiritual education to hearing from God’s Spirit.  I’ll try to wrap this series up in the next lesson by giving you the last method that God uses to communicate with people on the earth that I have found in the Bible.  This method is probably the most prevalent method and it could be the most important one also for you to know.  Sorry to leave the most important to last.  I will be discussing some more relevant examples of God’s communication methods found in the Bible in the next lesson.  Finally, in the next Bible lesson on this subject I will explore some related topics that are also very important to learn about in being led by the Spirit of God.  I hope and pray that you are learning something new and that this information is helping you to grow to be a better man or woman of God.  If you have any questions or comments please do not hesitate to ask me, for it is as God says “you have not because you ask not”.  Thanks for sharing your time in reading my Bible studies and I will bring you another one soon.  God Bless.

To continue readin in this series you may go to “Part 7“.

What You Don’t Know Can’t Hurt You? Why is it Important to Know the Word of God?

(ver 1.4) Are there any modern benefits for knowing the Bible?  Are there any consequences for not knowing the Bible today?  Being independent from the Bible is where many people reside currently in the world.  These people choose to establish their own definitions of good, evil, normal, abnormal, morality and immorality and they continually push the envelope and cross the line of common decency repeatedly.  The prisons of the United States are unable to hold everyone like this so they let them out to do it again and again without understanding the problem or the solution.  Even in many churches you can find people who call themselves Christians and they do not demonstrate any proof in their external behavior as being different than everyone else in the world.  It is like when I heard one minister say “If some Christians were tried by the world there would not be enough evidence to convict them of being a Christian”.  These types of Christians exist in a vacuum of ignorance being dominated by the people in the world and their godless influences.  There is a modern belief rising of tolerance and an all-inclusive acceptance that is leading people to a new coming one world religion apart from God.  Why is this so dangerous?  What are the consequences for being ignorant of the truth?  You do realize that everything you do in life has consequences?  Ignorance is not bliss, it is a destructive lifestyle that will cause far greater hurt and harm than you can ever imagine.  There is a popular saying of the world that says “What you don’t know can’t hurt you”.  But that is a satanically inspired philosophy designed to deceive people that there are no consequences for not learning the truth.  If you would like to read Part 1 of this lesson series first, you may go and read “Understanding the Value of the Word of God” and then come back and continue reading here for Part 2.

There has been a news report recently in the U.S. about a woman who went to Aruba with a man that she apparently did not know and she has been missing for a long time now.  Does it matter now if she made a decision to go to Aruba with a man that she really did not know?  The news said the man took out a million dollar insurance policy on her and even tried to collect on it without there being any proof she was dead yet.  If this man killed this woman for the insurance money do you think this woman thinks this trip was still worth going on now?  Since we cannot ask her, it would seem very obvious to me that her ignorance mattered, but there is always room for your doubt.   I think you can learn from stories found in modern times that what you don’t know can cause you great trouble, harm, hurt and even death.  To think otherwise is to ignore the facts and live in a fantasy make believe world.  I could give you hundreds of other examples found in the news of people being in the wrong place at the wrong time where someone  tried to kill them, rape them, steal from them or other negative things.  Truly what you don’t know is much more important than you can comprehend fully right now.  There is another popular saying that I like to quote that says “People do not know what they do not know”.  This saying is a comprehensive description of the missing lady in Aruba and it describes everyone who does not know the Word of God also.

I am going to go through the Bible and give you an overview of some of the verses that reveal what God says about people who intentionally or unintentionally ignore His Word.  If you go through and look these verses up and study them for yourselves you should better understand the importance of learning everything that you can about the God’s truth as fast you can possibly go to get it.  I also want you to see that sometimes scriptures are self-declaring and direct and other times the truth has to be indirectly observed by determining the opposite counterparts of the words being discussed.  For example, if the Bible says “They (my words) are life to all that find them and health to all of their flesh” you can learn from that verse there are clearly benefits of health and life for knowing the Word of God.   But we can also surmise the inverse truth as being “ignoring God’s word can result in sickness and death”.  There is a major difference between just reading the words on the page and actually seeing what the words on the page declare.  I hope you understand that!  Let’s go through the Bible and learn what God says on the subject of living in ignorance of His Word.

Living Independent from the Word of God will Result in:

  1. Not Knowing the Messiah (Jo 5:46, Acts 18:28)
  2. A Lack of Understanding of What God has already Accomplished (Mat 26:56, Luke 4:21)
  3. Being Ignored by God (Pro 28:9)
  4. You being Rebellious (Isa 30:9)
  5. No Happiness (Pro 29:18)
  6. Sickness or Ill Health (Ps 107:20, Pro 4:22)
  7. A Shorter Life on the Earth (Deu 6:2, 1 Kings 3:14, Pro 3:1-2)
  8. A Life in Spiritual Darkness (Ps 119:130, Pro 4:19)
  9. You Being Lost (Ps 119:67)
  10. Grief (Ps 119:158)
  11. Ignorance of the Truth (John 20:31, Rom 15:4)
  12. Easy Acceptance of Lies (Proverbs 7, 1 John 2:21)
  13. Unrighteousness (Ps 119:172)
  14. Sin (Ps 119:11, Jo 7:19)
  15. Lack of Wisdom ( Pro 2:6, Pro 28:7, Jer 8:9, 2 Tim 3:15)
  16. No Faith (Jo 20:31, Romans 10:17, 1 John 5:13)
  17. No Spiritual Fruit; love, joy peace… (Luke 8:11-15)
  18. Error (Ps 119:21, Ps 119:110, Ps 119:118, Mat 22:29, Gal 2:14)
  19. Crime, Mischief, Wickedness, Evil (Ps 119:101, Ps 119:150)
  20. Being Cursed (Gen 22:18, Ps 94:12, Ps 119:21, John 7:49, Gal 3:10-13)
  21. Missing God (John 5:39, Acts 18:28)
  22. Missing God’s Promises (Rom 1:2)
  23. Missing God’s Power (Luke 4:32, 1 Th 1:5, Heb 1:3, Heb 4:12)
  24. Not Knowing what will Happen in the Future (Gen 49:1, Isa 42:9, Eze 12:25-28)
  25. Missing God’s Blessing (Rev 1:3)
  26. Missing Salvation (Ps 119:155, Eph 1:13, 2 Tim 3:15)
  27. No Hope (Rom 15:4, Col 1:5)
  28. Confusion (Jer 3:25)
  29. Self-Destruction (Ps 107:20, Hosea 4:6, 2 Peter 3:16)
  30. Defeat by Satan (1 John 2:14)
  31. Death (Pro 4:22, Pro 7:1-27, Pro 13:14, 2 Tim 1:10)

I could not find anything positive in the Bible that can result from not knowing God’s Word.  Maybe you can search your Bible and see if you can find it.  Truly from these verses we discover that what you do not know can be very destructive.  I know I did not give you every verse that I could have.  I limited myself to only a few things that I could find easily and I stopped.  But, I believe that the evidence is overwhelming that knowing God’s Word is of the utmost importance for having anything positive occur in your life.  After the United States Supreme court disallowed the Bible being taught in our public schools to our children, the end result was a new generation of people who did not know anything about the Word of God and thus we have an immoral society that lacks any redeeming qualities.  In the last 40 years the shows on television have digressed into a sewer of what is referred to now as reality TV, but in actuality they are godless fantasy shows without any truth.  These are the blind leading the blind into new paths of deception and destruction.  If you do not know the truth, then everything looks good at first.  It is like the old saying “When you do not know where you are going, any road will take you”.  Sin always has an attractive allure attached to it for a season (Heb 11:25).

Mat 15:9  But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.


I have seen many people who call themselves Christians that simply ignore the Bible to establish their own independent version of Christianity.  Their teachings usually sound very religious and even pious on the surface but yet they deny the power of God and they are actually teaching the doctrines of devils (1 Tim 4:1).  Did you know that Satan had doctrines?  I personally believe he has more doctrines than God does.  The variations of his deceptions are vast. To not correctly balance the Bible using ALL related passages causes errors in doctrines.  For example, when you ignore the verse that says God is Love and teach only a God of Judgment and Condemnation you are teaching the selective doctrine of devils that promotes confusion using a man-made picture of a God filled with inaccuracies.   The natural reasoning of man is a slippery slope of deception that can cause you to fall into places of deep theological error that you should not even be near.  The naturally thinking mind of man is an enemy to the Spirit of God (Rom 8:7).  Matthew 15:9 is Jesus warning us that people worship God in vain.  The word translated as “vain” in Matthew 15:9 means “vanity” or becoming “vain” and is defined to be a man’s unsuccessful search for the truth.  The word also means they have no purpose and follow no plan of God.  You see there are many people in the world that seek truth, but yet are looking for it all the wrong places.  The Bible is the only trustworthy source for ALL truth.   To ignore the truth according to God has severe negative consequences and I hope you understand that now.

If you know of other verses in the Bible that speak of things we should know about the consequences of people not knowing God’s Word please share them with me.  Thanks for reading my short Bible lesson today about “What You Don’ Know Can Kill You” and I hope it helped someone to grow spiritually.  God Bless until next time!

Understanding How to Be Led By the Spirit of God! Being Led by the Written Word of God! Part 4



(ver 1.2) This is Part 4 in a series of basic Christian Bible lessons on the subject of Being Led by the Spirit of God.   If you have not read this series from the beginning I would suggest that you go and start reading with “Part 1“.   The spiritual importance of this series will be significantly greater than most other lessons that I have done if you can grasp them.  Learning this series intimately will build a strong foundation for further spiritual growth.  Why did Jesus constantly say, “Let him who has ears to hear, hear”? (Mat 11:15, Mat 13:9, Mat 13:43)    Jesus understood that when anyone teaches spiritual things the human mind is so cluttered with natural thingsand  that these natural things are used by Satan to block or blind the hearer so they do not understand the truth.  I am currently going through a list in random order of the recorded methods in the Bible that God has used to communicate with the human race in an attempt to lead them into the paths that they should go.  I have attempted to emphasize that whenever God leads an individual, it is always intended to cause them a positive outcome.  God will never lead you into harm, hurt or the paths of destruction.  I based this belief upon a scripture found in Jeremiah 29:11 that says God has thoughts of peace towards us and not evil and that God desires us to have a positive outcome.    Therefore I have concluded that God speaks to people in order to cause an expected specific greater outcome than one that may have occurred without this divine impartation of information.  I completely believe that the leading of the Lord will benefit all those who have selected to listen.  There are many other types of people in the earth today that believe God is sitting in heaven just waiting for us to do wrong so that He can strike us down with His iron fist of judgment.  However, that is not the loving God that I know who wants us to listen to His Word to have good success (Joshua 1:8).  Let’s review my list of 12 methods that I gave you in the last three lessons:

  1. The Audible Voice of God
  2. The Finger of God
  3. Angels Sent by God
  4. Prophets, Teachers, Pastors, Evangelists, Apostles or other Men/Women (disciples) of God
  5. The inward Still Small Voice of God
  6. The Written Word of God
  7. External Visible Signs from God
  8. Visions from God
  9. Dreams from God
  10. Prayer of an Individual
  11. The Inward Witness of God / Moral Conscience / Intuition / Internal Knowledge / Spiritual Insight
  12. Patterns found within God’s Creation

These are the 12 methods that I have discovered while reading and studying the Bible.  Some I have experienced personally and others I have learned about from people that have experienced them and all of them can be found in the Bible to establish their importance.  From this list I have introduced you to methods 12, 9, 8, 3, 2 and 1 so far.  I also briefly talked about number 7 in conjunction with other methods that God has used to lead people primarily in the Old Testament.  For example, the burning bush that Moses encountered was clearly an external visible sign that was designed to get his attention.  We also know that the children of Israel were led in the wilderness with a visible pillar of fire by night and the visible clouds by day and I taught you these were Old Testament typologies of how God will also lead the church today by His Spirit.  I think today I’m going to teach on only number 6, the written word of God.  The importance of the Word of God is so obvious to me yet to others it is the last place they look to find out what they should be doing in the present situations of their life.  That is a dangerous attitude that will result in their eventual doomed failure.  I’m going to start by talking about why the Bible is so important for us to know:

2Ti 3:16  All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:

If “all scripture” (notice that it does not say some)  was given to us by the inspiration of God why, is the Bible disrespected, treated as unimportant and even trivialized by so many on the earth today?  Clearly the Bible is the most well-read book in the world.  Clearly the Bible is the besting selling book in the world.  Yet these facts are ignored by the media and the press and that attitude has even crept into the church.  I have heard ministers of God (?) get up and speak and they never opened the Bible to teach from it and that is a grave mistake.  This verse claims that all of the scriptures on the pages of the Bible have been God breathed.  The English word “inspiration” is built upon a fascinating concept.  To “inspire” someone is to build them up in confidence and to cause them to potentially do something they would have or could have never done otherwise.  A good sport’s coach will always give great inspiring words to the team to help motivate them to success and to build their confidence.  The coach’s words are success seeds planted in the player’s minds and hearts.  This is how the Word of God also works.  The Greek word here translated as “inspiration” is a compound word meaning “divine breath”.  It could literally be stated as the wind of God; thus Wind of God = Word of God!  Meaning the Words written on the pages of the Bible came from the mouth of God and they were only given to a man to write down by the Spirit of God for everyone else to read.  This is just like getting a personal letter or an email from God today.  The Words were all carefully selected and designed by God to build us up in confidence, to educate us spiritually, then to give to us the knowledge, understanding and wisdom of God so that we would know what to do at the right times in our life.

DON’T LET THE TRUTH OF THE WORD OF GOD GET IN THE WAY OF YOUR BELIEFS!

I recently had a man tell me what I wrote about homosexuality offended him.  He told me his life style was not his choice and God loved him just like he was.  He went on to say that homosexuality was not a sin.  This is a classic example of self-righteous blindness.  To exalt yourself to a place or to a level beyond where you actually are is clearly an act of prideful ignorance.  Satan failed in this same way first as the anointed cherub Lucifer and now he causes men to be deceived in the same way to cause them to fall into this same flattering trap of pride.  Satan has said “I will be like the Most High” (Isa 14:14).  You can see that Satan is attempting to exalt himself to a level that he was clearly not at.  Can you see the parallels to my homosexual commenter?  I do not isolate any sin to exclude all of the rest intentionally.  I only have done this because they are ignoring the Bible to try to proclaim a new reality outside of the Bible.  It is very obvious to me that the Bible teaches against homosexuality.  To ignore the Bible and continue the way you are going is like ignoring the highway warning signs and going against the traffic the wrong way.  Then there is this fact also that the Bible clearly says “ALL have sinned” (Rom 3:23).  Another Bible verse says “if anyone says they have no sin, they have deceived themselves (1 John 1:8)  Therefore my homosexual commenter has self-deceived himself into believing he has no sin.  To not be humble enough to admit you have done wrong, is a dangerous cliff to stand on or even near.  Ignorance of the Word of God is the same as ignoring the Word of God.  Both will result in the same self-desructive end.

I AM THE LORD AND I CHANGE NOT!

What I am teaching you right now, is that God is not going to tell you anything on Judgment day that is not already written in His word today.  You will have no excuse if you did not read His Word and try to find out what God has already said on the subject when you are standing to be judged.  To ignore the Bible and to live the life you want to in full disregard of the God breathed words will cause the eventual judgment of God to fall.  God does love sinners but He died for their sins in order to permit them to repent and come out of their sin.  I’m trying to tell you that reading the Bible deserves the same level of respect and reverential treatment as if you were standing before God right now.  If you go into reading the Bible with this attitude you will be approaching the throne of His knowledge, grace, mercy, wisdom and counsel with the right attitude.  I’ll tell you this also, the Spirit of God will speak to you while you are reading His word if you ask Him to and if you ask the right questions and you are reading with this humble attitude.  If you ask the Spirit of God to prove your doctrinal theology do not expect to hear from God.  But, if you ask God to show you the truth this is a Biblical request that is founded on the Word of God and I’ll talk more about that in a bit.  I have had the Spirit of God speak to me while I was studying the Bible so plainly that it opened up the verses so that I could understand them very clearly.  It was like turning a spiritual light on and suddenly I could see what the words on the page said.  People in the world read the Bible with their limited natural light and ignore the spiritual light and thus they never see the words on the page and they remain in their spiritual darkness.

A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE OF BEING LED BY THE WORD OF GOD!

When I was first filled with the Spirit of God I was a new born babe in Christ and I did not understand how God leads us.  So I had a major problem in my life at that time and I was praying and seeking God for direction and help.  I had recently lost my job because the software company that I was working for in California went bankrupt and we were all let go rather abruptly with no further income.  The job market back then was not as bad as it is now, but it was also not great either.  I needed God’s help desperately.  One evening I asked the Lord to speak to me and I opened my Bible randomly and put my finger on a verse and read it and saw that God was speaking through what was written there and it said that He had a job for me.  I do not recommend this approach unless you are a new born baby Christian like I was.  This is technically like playing Russian roulette with the Word of God.  I know it worked out for me and encouraged me, but what if I had landed on a verse that said something about someone’s death or destruction would that mean that is what will happen to me?  I hope you see the problem with this approach of hearing God speak from His Word about a specific personal job problem.  I do not know how to explain to you why it worked for me, but somehow the Spirit of God understood my situation and directed me to the right book, the right chapter and the right verse and there it was, God speaking to me.  From this early Christian experience I have concluded that any verse in the Bible has the potential to be a right now Word from God that is applicable to the current situation in your life.  If God’s words are inspired like the Bible teaches us, then these are the Words that He wrote thousands of years ago for you and I today.  I will also say I do not do this anymore, nor did I do it again.  I learned and grew in spiritual things over the years and now God uses other methods of communication that I will teach on later.

YOU CANNOT SEPARATE GOD FROM HIS WORD!

The Word of God is directly connected to the Spirit of God.  According to the Bible, they are technically one in the same.  John 1:1 says “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God”.  Jesus said in John “The Words that I speak they are Spirit…” (John 6:63).  The Bible also says that “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word will never pass away” (Mat 24:35).  Therefore the Word of God is infinitely eternal like the Spirit of God is infinitely eternal.  From these verses I have learned a lot about God and God’s Word.  They have also brought new emphasis to me knowing the Word of God.  Remember that the Bible contains the general knowledge of God and the historical account of God’s coming to the earth in the flesh, His covenants, His purpose and His prophesied plans for us.  But also understand that it contains far greater advanced spiritual information of how He works, what He thinks, His character and many other hidden qualities of our God.  The knowledge of this information should inspire you greatly to rise above the evils of this present world and to achieve the great plan that He has laid out for you to follow.

BEING A DISCIPLE OF THE WORD OF GOD!

To be a disciple is to be a student.  Jesus was called a Rabbi and a teacher (John 3:2).  As we read in 2 Timothy 3:16, the Bible was given to us for instruction and this means it can teach us spiritual things that we would never have learned from anywhere else.  The Word of God is also a place to find correction.  If you feel you do not need correction you are deceived in a state of self-righteousness.  If you have ever steered a sailboat in the ocean or piloted an airplane on a trip, then you understand that course corrections are always necessary.  When I learned to sail a boat in San Diego I quickly learned that you can never sail directly into the wind.  Uh oh?  I was talking about the Word of God being the Wind of God earlier.  Did you know if the wind is coming out of the north and you want to go north that you have to zigzag between going northwest and northeast to eventually get north?   I actually believe that this applies to Bible study.  Constant course corrections are required to arrive at the true north of God’s word.  Everyone needs correction, including me and especially me.  So while we read the Bible we need to look to hear God speak in the areas that fit these descriptive terms of instruction and correction.  While the Bible does not have any place written in it that tells you who to marry, where to work or where to live, you can learn character and establish basic moral standards that will help to guide you into making the right choices in these other areas of life.  Later I will teach you that the Spirit of God will lead you in those other more personal areas also.

Joh 16:12  I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.

Joh 16:13  Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.

I want you to see one aspect of the guidance of the Holy Spirit that is absolutely essential to know and understand.  Jesus is speaking to the His disciples and He tells them they have a problem.  Wow, this is so amazing if you can see it.  What can’t Jesus say now that He can wait and say later that will be understood at that time?  I run across people like this on the internet constantly.  They are not able to receive spiritual things so they become offended and never speak to me again.   I had one commenter that I recently tried to help and they shut down the conversation and I never heard from the again.  Spiritual things are tough to handle if you are a naturally dominated being.  Paul calls this being a spiritual child trying to eat spiritual meat when they can only handle spiritual milk ( 1 Cor 3;2). Since I do not know people on the internet always at first, I find out very quickly and sometimes too late when they cannot handle spiritual meat.  This is a major challenge to teaching on the internet an advanced Bible study that wants to focus on the deep meaty subjects and when children come in and try to read the lessons and they begin to spiritually choke and what do I do?  This is probably the greatest challenge that I face.  If I only teach milk lessons nobody will grow to learn to eat meat.  If I only teach meat lessons the baby Christians are easily offended and never come back.  Wow, it is tough to be me sometimes; that was just a joke!

What I want you to focus in on in John 16:13, is where Jesus says the Spirit of Truth is responsible to be our guide into us knowing the truth.  A guide is someone who will lead you, yes? Being led is the main subject of this series so this verse is of central importance to knowing God’s responsibility and your responsibility.  In every leader and follower relationship it is always important to not get the roles reversed in your mind.  You need to remember who you are and who God is!  Following a leader who knows where they are going is also essential for success.  Since God is omniscient, He is the best qualified to be our guide to the truth.   If the Spirit of God leads those that are His children, John 16:13 states Him to be our Spiritual Truth Guide.  So technically being led by the Spirit of God is a multi-layered partnership between man and God with each holding equal responsibilities.  Actually I’m going to modify that last statement somewhat.  The responsibility of being led falls more on us than it does God.  God leading us is a very easy task for Him to do, even if He is leading a billion people simultaneously.  No, the majority of the effort of being led by the Spirit of God is placed directly upon our shoulders.  We are responsible to know how God leads.  We are responsible for hearing God lead us.  We are then responsible to being willing and obedient to be led.  Finally we are responsible to follow the instructions.   That makes the life of following infinitely more complex than the Spirit of God leading us.  I hope you understand that concept?

Knowing you do not know the truth is the first step to being led into the paths of truth.  I’m not sure if you heard what I just said, but it was important.  I meet people on the internet monthly who believe they already know everything and I can see that they know nothing of any spiritual value of how things work.  I want you to remember a verse that Jesus taught us in the book of John:

Joh 8:32  And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

There are too many Christians who like to misquote this verse and take it out of context to say Jesus is the truth and He has set us free, but that is not what this verse says.  That would be really great if that was true, but what is the rest of the truth?  Did you know that truth is relative based upon your current level of knowledge of it?  Doctors today are a prime example of an ever changing truth.  Doctors are said to be “practicing” medicine and this is based only on the truth that they currently know today.  Everyday new research, new studies and new information shines forth that changes the reality of the truth in the field of medicine.  Knowing the truth is a moving target in the medical field and this is exactly how it is in the Bible world also.  This is another example of constant course corrections.  Since none of us are God and we do not know everything we must always be in a state of ever increasing truth.  If you read the context of this verse you discover knowing the truth is conditional and dependent upon you continuing to be a disciple of the Word of God.  This means you must continue learning everything that you can while you have the chance.

Rom 15:4  For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.

There is so much that I could say about the Word of God.  It is designed to hide information from those who are perishing while simultaneously giving us the comfort of the knowledge of this hope being described to us in Romans 15:4.   If you read the lessons that I did on Understanding Bible Faith you should have learned that Bible hope is different than hope found in the world.  Bible hope is based upon our confidence in the Word of God coming to pass in our lives.  The world’s hope is based upon “I wish it would happen” and this Bible hope is more like when you order a package off of the internet and you look daily out your window to see if it is being delivered.  In other words you are in full expecting mode believing in or having faith in the place you purchased the package the delivery company bringing you the package.  Bible hope is like a pregnant woman awaiting the delivery of her child.  This is the basis of Bible hope.  Knowing that there is a set outcome before the outcome arrives is faith and hope in God’s Word.  This verse in Romans 15:4 declares God Word to be for our place of learning.  This is where I just stated that your knowledge is an ever increasing moving target.  To learn means you don’t know it already.  Just because you read the Bible from cover to cover does not mean you have arrived at knowing it all.  Learning should never cease.  It must be a continual process of information gathering from the Bible.  That should describe you in detail especially if you are reading my Bible lessons.

IT’S TIME NOW TO LEARN THE WORD OF GOD!

When Jesus described the rich man and Lazarus after death in Luke 16 there is a realty that is presented that is very important to understand.  The moral to the story is timing is everything! The rich man asks Abraham to send Lazarus back to the earth so neither the rich man nor Lazarus was on the earth at this time of the story.  The rich man asks for Lazarus to warn his brothers not to come to this place of torment.  The rich man obviously understands in his mind that the consequences of his past decisions have determined his current eternal situation.  The rich man however was hoping to change the destiny of someone who had not died yet.  Here is where we clearly learn that the choice has been made for the rich man and it is too late for him to be saved.   But, what does Abraham tell the rich man about his five brother’s future choices?

Luk 16:29  Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.

Luk 16:30  And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent.

Abraham says the brothers have the written words of Moses and the Prophets and they need to listen to them.  Of course this is another clear reference to the importance of the written Word of God given to all men and it indicates the effective timing factor for being accepted is a narrow window of life on this planet.  There is a very clear emphasis given to us that if you want to be saved and not go to hell it is based upon you hearing and believing in the Word of God.  This is why I teach so much on the importance of the Bible.  Hearing the Bible and believing in the Bible is your only chance at a positive outcome spiritually, naturally, mentally and eternally.  If you want to ignore the Bible and make your own path of salvation, you will find yourself in hell with the rich man who regretted his choice.

ARE YOU LIVING IN THE SPECTATOR WORLD?

I’m going to end this lesson with this last point.  Reading the Word of God is not the complete answer to your every problem.  We live in a modern spectator society.  Those who sit and watch those who actually do.  I hope I have have shocked some people with that statement, but I alluded to this fact earlier that it takes multiple steps of personal responsibility to be led by the Spirit of God and your participation is certainly one of the keys to your success.  Watching a race is incredibly different than being in the race and we are told to run in the race of life in Hebrews 12:1.  Now read this verse in James and see if you can determine which part you are fulfilling?

Jas 1:22  But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.

You should be able to see that there is a major difference between hearing the Word of God and doing the word of God.  People hear the spirit of God many times and ignore Him and continue down their own paths.  God gave us examples of this negative behavior in the Bible so we could learn from them.  The man Balaam in Numbers 22 is a prime example of someone failing to be led by the Spirit of God.    A king comes to Balaam and offers him things to curse the children of Israel so they do not defeat him and take his kingdom from him.  Balaam is told by God not to do it repeatedly.  However, Balaam still gets on his ass and goes to do what God said not to do.  An angel of God stands in the path and is about to kill Balaam but the ass sees the angel and does not move forward.  Balaam beats the ass and still refuses to be obedient to God.  You can obviously see that Balaam was a hearer of the Word of God but not a Doer of the Word of God and he is not spoken of positively in the rest of the Bible.  This is a key lesson for everyone today.

THEREFORE DOES IT MATTER WHAT YOU DO?

You bet it matters.  If God says not to marry that man and you marry him anyway the evil that God had tried to help you avoid will now come upon you and then when you may cry out for God’s help later when you realize the mistake you have made and He might just tell you I tried to tell you and you wouldn’t listen to me.  There are always major consequences to not being obedient to the Spirit of God.  Frequently when something negative happens to a Christian, they can look back and determine a time that they knew they should not have done that and that was God trying to lead them.  I’ll end this lesson with these verses:

Mat 7:24  Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock:

Mat 7:25  And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.

Mat 7:26  And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand:

Mat 7:27  And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.

Jesus is teaching us about spiritual houses and not about physical houses!  Both of these houses are people who we call Christians.  There are two types of Christians being contrasted; the hearers only versus the hearers and the doers.  Which one are you?  God is giving you an example that states the storms of life are inevitable to every Christian.  We could call these storms types of symbolic physical troubles and the calamities of this world.  But, Jesus tells us how to overcome these negatives by introducing a greater positive called the Word of God.  However both houses heard the same Word of God so hearing was not the determining factor for the successful outlasting of the storm, was it?  Only the house that understood what was said, believed what was written and finally did what was written overcame the storm and emerged victorious.  This is very much like the children’s story of the three little pigs and their enemy the big bad wolf.  The wise Christian is always the one that Satan cannot blow his house down, because it is founded on the Word of God.  The other house fell and Jesus said great was the destruction of that house.  I’ll ask you again, is it important to know the Word of God?  Is it important to understand the Word of God?  Is it important to believe the Word of God?  Finally, is it important to actually do the Word of God?  According to God Himself it is most certainly VERY IMPORTANT to be led by the Word of God!  Thanks for reading and studying about being led by the Spirit of God and we will continue this lesson series soon.  God Bless!

If you would like to continue learning in this series, you may continue with “Part 5“.

Did Jesus Have NO Money and Set an Example of Poverty for Us to Follow?

(Ver 1.3)  According to a recent video I saw on Facebook from a preacher, he claimed that Jesus must have taken a vow of poverty and set a humble example that we should all follow.  Using only his religious philosophy he portrayed a Jesus who suffered physical pain and therefore we should tolerate pain with the same level of humility.  He further went on to say that my Jesus was born into a poor family and implied this is where we all should be also.  Then He went on to say that Jesus was homeless, often hungry and could not even pay His own taxes.  I’ll start this discussion by asking you a simple question, why was it necessary for a homeless poverty stricken hungry man to even pay taxes?  Does your government tax people when they have nothing or does your government give the poor people food stamps, housing subsidies and welfare to help them?  Was Jesus dependent upon the generosity of people to survive or was Jesus a blessing to others as a man of means?  I guess how you see your goverment depends upon who your government is.  Giving to the poor is certainly a descriptive view of the U.S. democratic government.  Maybe things are different now than they were back then, I do not know for sure, since I was not there.  I do know what the Bible says on this subject however so let’s find out if Jesus was a poor Jesus example for us to follow.  We’ll begin with His childhood:

Mat 2:11  And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.

Poor people did not live in houses even in Jesus’ day.  Joseph and Mary must have owned a house and lived in it in order for the wise men to find them there.  Then the wise men from the east come to their house and what did they bring with them to the house?  Are they not gifts to give to the child Jesus?  If some men from one country come to another country to visit a new born king, what kind of gifts do they bring?  You have to understand that these men were bringing gifts to a king in their mind and not just gifts for a baby shower.  These were no little nothing gifts of insignificant value.  These were great gifts fit for royalty in large enough quantities so they would not offend the king or the family of the king.  Examine the key word in this verse and research the definition.  The key word in this verse in Matthew 2:11 is “treasures”.  The wisemen are said to be bringing their treasures to Jesus.  If you look up the word “treasures” it means “wealth”.  What does wealth mean to you?  Are you wealthy physically?  If you are not then you are not like Jesus was.  Understand based upon this information Joseph and Mary were now set for life after this encounter and this meant Jesus was never poor either.  Gold, frankincense and myrrh were the three types of gifts that were given and they all had great value and wealth attached them by definition.  If they rode to the house on camels they could have had saddle bags full of the stuff.  We are not told how much was presented, but logically speaking it had to be the size of a gift that would not be laughed at by the royal recipient.  What if these men wer bringing their gifts to Ceasar in Rome?  What type of gifts would they have brought that would not have gotten them thrown into prison or killed?  What would have impressed Ceasar?  You see if you change your perspective you will begin to see a different type of Jesus and the men that came to honor Him.  How do you get a poor Jesus out of this information?  I cannot fathom the blindness or the creativity that it takes to write this off to come up with that type of religious philosophy that preaches a poor Jesus.  You are still welcome to ignore Bible verses like these or attempt to explain them away to make your own private independent views work apart from God’s Word, but that does not make your views true, it only leaves you locked into a wrong interpretation of the Bible.

Let’s back up in the story to Bethlehem before the wise men show up with their gifts of wealth.  Did Joseph have money before this?   Before Jesus was born, the couple was going to Bethlehem to do what?  Did you know that they were going to pay taxes and participate in the nationwide census according to Luke 2:1-3?  I’ll say this again that poor people do not pay taxes.  It takes money to pay taxes.  Joseph is called the carpenter in Matthew 13:55, so he was obviously employed and was a trade worker and that information implies that he was never poor.  Carpenters were skilled laborers and not house builders like we think today.  Houses were not framed by carpenters in those days when Jesus was born.  Carpenters built more furniture and things out of the wood for the inside of the house.  Houses were made of clay or brick normally.  Anyway Jesus is born in a manger in Bethlehem because why?  That is the million dollar question being presented for the prize of knowledge and truth:

Luk 2:7  And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

Apparently Joseph tried to stay at the inn but they were full?  Do you know you have to have money to stay at any Inn?  Did you know a nine month pregnant woman does not travel very fast?  By the time Joseph and Mary arrive at Bethlehem the inn is full of people and there is nowhere else for them to stay so they stay in the manger.  Better than outside, but not what they had in mind either.  Jesus was only born in the manger because the INN was FULL!  It is very clear to me based upon Bible evidence that the family of Jesus was NOT poor if they had to go to their home city to pay taxes and they had money to stay at an inn.  So why do people say they were poor?  I have no clue!

Now, let’s examine the ministry of Jesus as a grown up.  I’ll skip to the mature life of Jesus as a grown man now being 30 years old and see what is being told to us about Him.  Did you know that the ministry of Jesus had a treasurer?  Why is it necessary to have a treasurer?  The treasurer is always held responsible to manage and control the money of the organization.  This is the normal duties of a treasurer.  Who was this treasurer?  It was Judas who would betray Him:

Joh 13:29  For some of them thought, because Judas had the bag, that Jesus had said unto him, Buy those things that we have need of against the feast; or, that he should give something to the poor.

Judas we are told was the money carrier for the ministry of Jesus.  The “bag” that is referred to in this text contained money.  When things needed to be bought with money, then it was taken from the bag and they bought it.  You can clearly see in this verse that the disciples thought that Jesus was speaking to Judas and saying for him to take some of the money in their possession and either spend it to buy some things that they needed or to give it to the poor.  Uh oh?  That is a problem for a poor Jesus philosophy, isn’t it?  We are given two direct reasons for Jesus having money and they are very clear.  You either need stuff or you give stuff to others.  Let’s look at another example in the Gospels of Jesus’ ministry.  What happened one day when Jesus was ministering to a group of 5000 on a hillside?  After everyone was there for a long time Jesus makes a request to the disciples and the disciple’s reaction is absolutely priceless:

Mar 6:37  He answered and said unto them, Give ye them to eat. And they say unto him, Shall we go and buy two hundred pennyworth of bread, and give them to eat?

Jesus tells the disciples to feed the people and the disciples said we don’t have any money to do this?  No that is not what the disciples said, is it?  Why would a poor Jesus even make that kind of ridiculous statement if it was impossible for them to do it?  Jesus is clearly confused or He was not poor.  The disciples estimated that it will cost them nearly 200 pennies worth of bread to buy enough food for this many people and this is clearly almost a year’s wages to them.  Do they have that much money on them in their possession when they made this statement?  They must have it in their possession or this would be a very stupid response to make to Jesus’ command.  I do not believe that Jesus was poor; if they had enough money with them to feed the 5000 they had a lot of money on them.  How many peopl have you ever fed?  Ever been to resturaunt and paid the bill for everyone?  This is what Jesus was telling them to do.   However, the problem was that they were in the middle of nowhere and there wwere no stores to buy anything anywhere near them, so Jesus was making a point, but they were asking if He meant for them to go away to buy the bread and then come back to give it to the people?  I’m telling you verses like these reveal volumes of information to me that are ignored by many Christians.   Read what Jesus tells His disciples in another place in the Gospels:

Mar 6:7  And he called unto him the twelve, and began to send them forth by two and two; and gave them power over unclean spirits;

Mar 6:8  And commanded them that they should take nothing for their journey, save a staff only; no scrip, no bread, no money in their purse:

Did you know that you do not have to tell men that have no money not to take their money with them?  This is not rocket science.  Here we have it recorded in plain sight that Jesus is telling His disciples to leave their money at home with their wives and to go out in faith and the disciples heard it and obeyed.  It is very obvious to me that all of these men had money to leave and it implies that they all had personal purses that they carried with them normally.  This means their money was separate from the money in the bag that Judas carried.  Do you understand this?  Do you think this is a trick question?  Does Jesus tell men with no money not to take any money?  That would be very stupid for God to do.  All the men would have to do is to confront Jesus and say Master we have no money and this would tell us of their poor condition, but that is not recorded in the Bible so therefore it did not occur.  Here is another lesson that Jesus taught on money:

Mar 10:25  It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

Mar 10:26  And they were astonished out of measure, saying among themselves, Who then can be saved?

When you read the Gospels you find that Jesus taught more on money than probably any other subject.  If poor people came to learn a teaching about money from a poorer man than they were, they would be very stupid.  What would the reaction to that be today?  In today’s world a poor homeless man would be laughed out of the city.  If Jesus was a homeless destitute man as this preacher claimed he is not qualified to teach on the subject of money since he could not obviously manage it properly.  You never take advice from a man who has nothing to teach you about how to manage your money.  Today, I would rather listen to Warren Buffet or Bill Gates on the subject of money than to listen to any homeless poverty stricken man on the street.  If you think this is different today than back when Jesus was on the earth you are very foolish in your beliefs.   Here in Mark 10 Jesus is teaching on the subject of money and His disciple’s reaction to this teaching is what is important for you to see.  In these verses Jesus said it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to be saved.  Then the disciples were full of excitement because they were all saved poor men?  No, they said with great astonishment “who then can be saved”?  This is not the common or even logical reaction of a poor man; it is more the reaction of a rich man with money.  If you can’t see this, then someone needs to pray for your eyes to be opened.  The disciples did not exhibit a proper reaction for poor men, they clearly demonstrated the opposite.  Does this matter, you bet it does!  Let’s go back to the treasurer in the ministry:

Joh 12:5  Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor?

Joh 12:6  This he said, not that he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein.

Again we see a reference in context that Judas held the money bag.  This verse says that money was placed in the bag and that it must have been enough money that Judas was able to steal from it without being easily observed or caught by all of the others that were with him.  Do you understand this?  Is that what the Bible says?  Does the Bible say that Jesus had no money?  You have to be totally blind or totally ignorant to remain in the doctrinal state of poverty to be like Jesus after reading Bible verses like these.  If you do not have a personal treasurer handling your money and your finances, then you are obviously not being like Jesus’ example in the Gospel.   If you do not have a personal accountant to manage your money then you are not following Jesus’ example that He gave to us to follow.  Therefore, you are failing to follow the illustration of Jesus Christ.  I’ll probably get a lot of negative hate mail because of this lesson today and probably lose some friends on Facebook.  But I’m not going to ignore the Bible to satisfy their ignorant beliefs of a poverty stricken Jesus.

One statement that the preacher made was that Jesus was often hungry and this proved He was poor by his reasoning.  I wonder how some people can be so selective in their Bible reading and ignore verses that are clearly right in front of them?  Was Jesus ever hungry?  We saw Him turn water into wine once and we can see Him taking 5 loaves and some fishes and feeding 5000 at one time and 4000 at another time in the Gospels.  This does not sound like a hungry man to me.

Luk 5:30  But their scribes and Pharisees murmured against his disciples, saying, Why do ye eat and drink with publicans and sinners?

It is very obvious to me that if the religious people of Jesus’ day criticized Him for eating and drinking with sinners and publicans that Jesus Christ did not go hungry.  Where do you get a hungry Jesus in the Bible?  Do you make it up and fabricate it or do you see where Jesus fasted for 40 days and misapply those verses to apply them to a poor hungry Jesus.  The ideas of a poor Jesus do not hold up when analyzed accurately with what is recorded in the Bible.  I never saw where Jesus could not eat, did not eat or could not afford to eat.  If you know of those verses, then tell me where they are.

Why do people have the idea that Jesus was poor?  I really do not have a clue other than the fact that the Bible makes some rare statements that can be easily taken incorrectly and misapplied to make Jesus sound like He was poor.  Too often people just jump to wrong conclusions and make wrong assumptions without researching the truth.  We have been given a narrow window view into the life of Jesus in the Bible.  John says if everything was written about Jesus and what He did on the earth, the world could not contain the volumes of information (John 21:25).  Therefore we are required to read the words that have been selected by God and rightly divide them in order to understand the examples that Jesus has set before us to follow.  Let’s review a few scriptures that have been classically misunderstood about Jesus and see what they are saying.  For example:

Mat 8:20  And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.

You see I have heard so many people quote me this verse and try to tell me that this proves that Jesus was homeless and destitute and that interpretation is amusing to me now in the light of balancing this information with the other scriptures about Jesus.   This verse is Jesus’ response to a question and a temporary personal situation and people try to apply it to areas that they are not applicable to.  Jesus had a traveling ministry and went from city to city and even to far away regions to minister to the people.  Jesus would travel a long ways some times and then reach a place by faith and yes need a place to stay.  Here is Jesus telling a man, I have no place to stay tonight.  It is like when I travel and I go to another state and drive into a town without a reservation.  I can look for a hotel to see if they have a room and this is sometimes what I do.  We will often go to places without a reservation or a place to stay and expect to find something.  We did this once when we went to the British Virgin Islands.  We tried to find a place on the internet and got a reservation, but when we got there it was not as good as it sounded so we went driving around the island looking for another place.  We found a great place on the beach and it was awesome. Let’s get back to Jesus.  Read the Gospels and realize that things are not always written in literal and obvious terms.  Nowhere in the Bible does it ever say that Jesus went to the bathroom, but it does tell us that He ate so we know by simple logic that He did this.  To believe that Jesus slept on the ground outside all of His adult life as a homeless man is a fallacy that neglects the fact that Jesus obviously had money from His birth.  Understand that a traveling Jesus does not have to reflect a poor homeless Jesus.  It only means that He left his home and went other places some times and when He did this He needed places to stay the night occasionally.  Let me try to explain another classic verse:

2Co 8:9  For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich.

You see people like to take a part of a verse and ignore the entire verse to make a point that fits with their religious philosophy.  Here it clearly says Jesus was poor.  But, being poor is a relative term based upon two things; who Jesus was and where Jesus came from.  It is just like I’m poor in the eyes of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet.  But, to many people in Africa and Asia I’m very rich because I have house, a car, a cell phone and money in the bank.  Jesus as you know left heaven where the streets we are told are paved with solid gold to come to the earth where I have never seen a gold paved street.  Using this information we know that even Bill Gates one of the richest men in this world could be called poor by heaven’s standards.  Do not pretend that Jesus lived on the earth in poverty to justify your poverty.  See things in the Bible from God’s perspective first.  Know that Jesus (God in the flesh) left the extreme riches of heaven to come to the earth and this He did so that we could come up to His level and standard of reality of being rich like Him.  Here we have a future promise of being made rich that most would gladly agree with.  But I read in the Bible that much of the reality of what Christ did for us came into effect when He rose from the dead and we accepted Him as our Lord and Savior.  You have to understand the difference between what was given to us already and what we are still waiting on to be given to us. The only thing that I can see that we are still awaiting for is the redemption of our bodies to be made immortal.  Other than that the Bible seems to say that everything God has done has already been given to us in the past tense wording found in the New Testament.

People like to look to the coming future spiritual kingdom of God that will change their current situation around someday in the next age and they forget the Kingdom of God is here now in you and me.   Rather than seeing the Kingdom has been established internally they are looking for a new external coming event.  Therefore we should just all be tolerant and patient to be like Jesus was so that when He comes and takes us away that He will give us a new mansion built in heaven.  That is a nice Bible truth, but that is also not the entire Bible truth.  My Bible says “I am seated with Him right now in the heavenly realm” (Eph 2:6).  Then in 1 John it says “As He is, so are we in this world” (1 John 4:17).  There is an implied state of being that however Christ Jesus is right now that we are supposed to be in the same state right now.  This of course could be a mental state or a spiritual state if that is all that you believe Jesus accomplished for us on this earth.  However when I looked up the word “salvation” in the Greek it appears to be more all-inclusive, meaning salvation of the spirit, the mind, the emotions as well as the healing for the physical body. When Jesus was teaching the people, He would read from the book of Isaiah and tell them “God has anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor” (Luke 4:18).  What is good news to a poor man?   To me it has to be that you do not have to be poor anymore.  Do the research and do not take my word for it.  Look up the Greek word “Sozo” and tell me what it means.   It is often translated as healed, delivered, and saved.  People like to criticize modern health and wealth preachers as not following Jesus’ example of poverty and suffering.  However if you read what Jesus said while quoting Isaiah you find Jesus was the first health and wealth preacher that ever existed and those that continue this tradition are only following what He has taught.   I guess I won’t go there in further.  People like to think that this is the coming future reality and I believe it applies now to me and to you if you also believe it.

1Ti 6:17  Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not highminded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy;

I want you to see that God does not write to people and tell them to take a vow of poverty in the New Testament.  God only tells them not to trust in their money.  You have to have money in order to trust in money.  If God writes a letter to rich people and says do not place your confidence in your money, then it is very obvious to me that it is permissible to have money if you do not place any confidence in it and become arrogant or “highminded” as this verse warns.  Do not seek money; seek God as He is the one that has given us “Richly” all things to enjoy.  This is really not that difficult to comprehend, yet there are Christians that will write me and tell me I’m teaching you things not found in the Bible.  They obviously cannot read nor see what God wanted them to have in this life, right now.  I do not fault them and I do not put them down either.  People are free to do whatever they like in this world regardless of what the Bible says.

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:

If God has given to us ALL THINGS that pertain to life (Past Tense), how can you exclude money from this statement?  It takes money to survive in the world today.  Without money you are not going to reach the world with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  If you are poorer than the people that you are trying to reach, why would they want to follow a man or a woman to become like them when they have nothing to offer?  Having nothing in the world reflects on a God who has given them nothing?  Your poverty is a direct reflection on your God’s character and ability to bless you.  I do not care if you disagree with that statement or not.  If your God cannot supply your needs, then how can He get His message of salvation, deliverance and healing to other people who are looking for the truth in all of the wrong places?  If you think you are going to impress people with your good looks or your clever words then you are clearly confused.  Reread the exodus of Israel from Egypt and see the types being repeated in the Exodus of the church from the earth.  The children of Israel went out with the vast wealth of the Egyptians.  They took all they could carry and then some and they exited Egypt in health very strong after eating the Passover lamb (a type of Christ).  The nation of Israel coming out of Egypt is a type of the church today about to be taken up out of this world.  If you do not believe that we are going out big in victory then you are probably staying here in Egypt and that is not good news for you.  I’m not trying to be a popular Bible teacher.  Because of some of the things that I teach like today’s lessons I am persecuted by my self-called brothers in Christ.   I’ll end this lesson today with another story about Jesus our example to follow.  If Jesus was so poor why does it say this?

Joh 19:23  Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments, and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and also his coat: now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout.

Joh 19:24  They said therefore among themselves, Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be: that the scripture might be fulfilled, which saith, They parted my raiment among them, and for my vesture they did cast lots. These things therefore the soldiers did.

Here we have the Roman soldiers who are crucifying Jesus dividing up the spoils of the man hanging on the cross.  The coat of Jesus is described to be made without a seam.  What does that mean?  A seamless garment is not one that was cheap or easy to make.  It was not a common type of garment worn by a poor man either.  It is made upon a special loom that creates a continuous piece of cloth.  This garment obviously had no patches, tears, rips or damage to it.  This type of garment was one worn by kings and only the wealthy people of the day and the nobility that could afford to purchase it.  In the terms of today’s clothing this was the upper end designer clothes of that day.  This was the best of the best and not the clothing of a homeless man.  It is very clear reading the Bible that the Roman soldiers decided to cast lots for this valuable piece of clothing and not to rip it up into pieces.  Someone tried to tell me that this great rich robe was placed upon by those that crucified so that they could mock him.  That is true that they take his clothes off and beat him and put a kingly scarlet robe on him.  But this robe was taken from him and his clothes were returned before they crucified him.  You can read this clearl in Matthew 27:31.  Therefore the Roman soldiers were gambling over Jesus own clothing.  So do people ever gamble over something that is worthless?  If they did this they were very stupid.  Do not get me wrong, I’m not saying the Roman soldiers were stupid, I think I’m saying the people who said Jesus was poor could possibly be called that, but I’m not going to go there.  I want you to see that Jesus wore the best clothes and they were desired to be owned even by a paid soldier.  It had to be very valuable so this information alone dispels the poverty Jesus philosophy.

There is overwhelming evidence in the Bible that Jesus was not poor if you choose to see it.  God gave us enough clues to see that He lived well for human standards even though it was far from where He came from in heaven.  Jesus was never sick anywhere in the Bible that I could find.  Therefore, Jesus exemplified the modern health and wealth Gospel that many are being criticized for teaching today.  Do you feel you are better than Jesus?  If you want to remain poor and sick on the earth, I am not going to deny that unique privilege to you.    Just do not criticize those that teach that we should be like Jesus and actually desire to live it out.  According to the Bible, Jesus had money from His birth until His death on the cross.  According to the Bible, Jesus had health from His birth until Satan killed Him on the cross.  If you attempt to say that because Jesus suffered on the cross and exemplified an example of suffering for us that we should do the same, then you do not understand that Jesus laid down His life voluntarily as our sacrificial lamb to shed His blood for our salvation and redemption and you do not have to do anything to accept this free gift of His Grace other than believe and have Faith in Him.  If you attempt to suffer like Jesus did for a few hours of His life on the earth then you have become a doer of the works of the law and are attempting to save yourself by making yourself worthy and fulfilling what only He could have accomplished hanging on the tree.  Nowhere does it say that we should be crucified like Him to pay for our sins.  I am going to stick with Jesus’ example of health and wealth the best that I can do to follow His example, and I will be happy following Him and you can do whatever you want.  Let’s review what we have learned today:

  1. Jesus was born into a family that owned a home.
  2. Jesus’ step-father worked as a skilled carpenter and was required to pay taxes in Bethlehem even trying to rent a room at the inn there.
  3. Jesus was born into the world and as a child was given gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.
  4. Jesus was not hungry and was criticized for eating with sinners and publicans.
  5. Jesus wore fine expensive clothes of the day that were gambled over when He was crucified proving their extreme value.
  6. When challenged by Jesus to feed the 5000, His disciples asked “do you want us to spend a year’s wages to buy bread for this crowd?” proving they had that much money in their pockets to do this.
  7. The disciple Judas was the appointed treasurer of the entire ministry and this is only necessary if you have enough money to manage.
  8. If Judas could steal money and it goes unnoticed, then there was a lot of money in his possession.

Where is the poor Jesus in these facts?  Are these easily ignored facts in the Bible?  Are these easily explained away facts found in the Bible?  They must both be true in order for people to teach a poor Jesus for us to follow.  Please wake up and see the real Jesus recorded in the Bible.  When I learned these verses in the Bible it totally changed my perspective.  I knew Jesus was a great example for us to follow and that is why I am like I am today.

If you want to read other lessons that I have about did Jesus own a house on the earth you better go and read them on my blog to learn the complete truth about His examples given.  I did not attempt to give you every verse in the Gospels in this lesson that I could have.  Jesus teaches a lot of stuff on money and I will probably talk more about that later.  However, I have given you enough witnesses to show you that there is more to the Bible than a modern man trying to say my Jesus was a homeless beggar who could not even pay His taxes.  Read your Bible very, very closely and see what it actually says and do not follow me or any other man who does not give you Bible verses to back up exactly what they are saying.  Even when a man appears very sincere and a dedicated Christian, he can be sincerely wrong.  Also do not criticize anyone where you have no complete knowledge on the subject under discussion and make yourself to look like a fool.  When God spoke to Job He said “Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge” (Job 38:2).  This is what probably people’s words sound like to God when they criticize the called and anointed preachers of God today who teach like Jesus did.  Base your beliefs only on the Bible and ignore the doctrines of men.  Who knows how many people I have offended today, but yet I did not name any names so I feel that I am justified in my Bible lesson.  I did not name the preacher who inspired my lesson today by His criticism of the well-known TV preacher Joel Osteen.  But, if you want to find it on YouTube I’m sure you can find it.  I do not listen to Joel Osteen, but I do not criticize Him either.  I will not base my beliefs on what any man teaches.  I will only base my beliefs on my knowledge of the Bible that God has taught me.  I would strongly recommend that you do the same and keep your mouth closed on what you do not know when you want to criticize me or anyone else.  God Bless!

A Christian’s Responsibility vs. the Sovereign God’s Responsibility! Part 1

Responsibility: the ability or authority to act or decide on one’s own, without supervision

(Ver 1.3)  This is Part 1 in a series of basic Bible studies about the Personal Responsibility of Every Christian versus the Divine Responsibility of the Sovereign God.  Responsibility is a word that implies authority and ability to make independent decisions.  This certainly applies to God, but what about men and women made in the image of God, how would this apply to humans?  I personally believe that the word responsibility is potentially more complex than this definition.  There are independent abilities of man and there are dependent abilities of man.   So responsibilities can be independently assigned or they can be jointly assigned or they can also be corporately assigned to many.  There is a popular Christian philosophy being taught in many churches that God is in complete and absolute control of everything that happens in the world.  This philosophy relieves all Christians of any personal responsibility, accountability or judgment for doing the wrong things in the world.  I truly believe that God in Heaven is sovereign meaning that He is all powerful and is perfectly capable of doing anything that He desires at any time.  However, is this the character of God that you know and understand and base your faith upon?  Does God force people to do what He desires them to always do?  Is God overriding human freewill to manipulate the outcome or destiny of individuals?  If a terrorist kills thousands of other people was that the perfect plan of God in action and full manifestation?  Does God really control everything that happens to every Christian and non-Christian alike?  Is God the Great Puppet Master in the Sky pulling all the strings?  I personally do not believe that God is in control of every event in human history.  If it was true, then God is the most evil God that I have heard described and that definition would contradict with a God who is named Love!

I saw a very ignorant movie last night from Hollywood called The Adjustment Bureau.  This movie portrayed a God who manipulated men and women to do what He wanted them to do.  It dictated a master plan of a sovereign type of God.  If a man or woman strayed from the sovereign plan, they were immediately sent a being to adjust them for change.  These adjustment beings would have to manipulate the circumstances surrounding the individual and they would have to change the persons’ mind or thoughts to get them to conform to the good plan of the chairman upstairs.  They would have to cause them to go down the right path that they were supposed to go into to be what God had planned for them to do on the earth.  This is a very popular religious philosophy taught in many churches.  However, any time Hollywood embraces a Christian philosophy it automatically causes me to suspect it is a fallacy of the grandest proportions.   But, we still have to balance the fact that after all God is sovereign and you cannot do anything to ever lose your free gift of salvation.  It is too bad that this is not what the Bible actually teaches us.  For example look at Hebrews:

Heb 6:4  For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost,

Heb 6:5  And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come,

Heb 6:6  If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.

There are many verses in the Bible that I could give you, but I will only speak about these today.  If a Christian can never be lost after being saved, then why did God write these verses of warning to all Christians?  To be a partaker of the Holy Ghost is clearly a sign that these people being spoken of were once Christians.  But, by the time you get to verse 6 it says that they have “fallen away” from Christ and the Holy Spirit.  Some Christian read the Bible without thinking about what is said.  They will see the word “if” and think that this is not possible.  But the Greek word translated as “If” in this verse could very easily have been translated as “When” so do not write it off and think that it cannot happen.  Therefore, God says there is no further salvation available for them because they would have to crucify the Lord of Glory again and put Him to shame.  If you do not understand these verses you better learn them very soon.  These are very powerful words of warning written to ONLY the Church and not to the world.  If you believe you cannot fall away after you are saved or that it is impossible for this to occur, you are already on the verge of being deceived.  Because of your ignorance your potential deception is more likely.  This is your first and greatest responsibility as a born again Christian and that is to stay a Christian.  Don’t stray away and get lost from the goodness of God.

These verses list three specific things that you need to remain committed to.  First, it says for you to partake of the Holy Ghost.  Define the Word “Partake”!  Is that God’s responsibility or your responsibility?  If I sat a piece of chocolate cake in front of you and said “partake”.  What am I telling you to do?  To partake is clearly a freewill choice of every Christian to receive the Spirit of Christ.  Once you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior the Holy Spirit comes inside and abides.  To accept and receive the Holy Ghost implies the responsibility of keeping the Holy Ghost resident.  I know that goes against what many people try to teach from other verses in the Bible.   However, if I gave you $100 today, you could throw it in the trash or you could put it in the bank and keep it safe.  The choice would always be yours to do with whatever you have been given freely.  Next it says to taste the word of God.  This is not a onetime meal.  This is a continual everyday action of eating God’s Word to make your spirit strong.  When you eat your natural meals, who is it that is responsible for you eating and tasting?  Does anyone feed you or do you pick up the fork and do it yourself? How many physical meals do you eat a day?  You better learn to eat the Word of God as much as you eat physical food.  The physical food of this world is important, but the spiritual food of God is more eternally beneficial.   Finally, this verse says to taste the powers of the world to come.  This means we can walk in the power of God now that we will possess then in that future world.  There is an old saying that goes, “with great power comes great responsibility”.  This saying goes along with the current state of many nations of the earth who are in possession of weapons of mass destruction that can cause many other people hurt or destruction.  God’s power is greater than nuclear power.   However, this is the kind of power and responsibility that God is relating to you that you have in the spiritual realm right now.  Taste and see that the Lord is good and that His mercy endures forever.  These are basic Christian responsibilities for you to live by today right now.

Rom 8:28  And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

This is a very popular verse of scripture quoted in many churches by many preachers.  It is read at funerals, it is read for divorces, it is read in hospitals after car accidents, it is read at every negative event that occurs in the lives of Christian believers as comfort to try to justify a greater unknown sovereign plan of God.  Because preachers cannot explain these negative evil events, they attribute them to a higher purpose to explain them away.  After all God is in ultimate control of everything that happens in the life of every believer so they want to think and believe.  It gives them religious comfort and relieves them from any personal responsibility.  It is what I call a No Fault Religion; whatever happens in my life, it was not my fault.  What Christians are attempting to do is to take a part of a verse and change it to say something that God does not say.  This is a major mistake of Bible interpretation that many make.  They take things out of context and they miss the conditions being given in order to qualify for God to cause everything to work out for their good.  They try to take a conditional promise of God and make it unconditional.  This verse says God only causes things to work together for your good if you love God and if you are called according to His purpose.  Again people take this as personally including them automatically, but then if you ask them what they were called to do by God; most of them could not tell you.   I am called to preach and teach the Word of God, and that is my calling and gifting.  So I have an answer to that question if you choose to ask me.  However, this verse is also in the context of the two previous verses that it goes along with.  These verses are often ignored because they are not understood.  The two previous verses are speaking about the personal prayer life of the believer.  Not just any type of prayer, it is a very specific type of prayer being mentioned, and even though it does not tell you what that type of prayer is you need to figure it out in order to qualify for verse 28.  If you do not understand what kind of prayer that is, I’m sorry I’m not going to teach it to you today.  Just realize if you do not understand it and cannot explain it to me, then you are not doing it and you do not qualify for verse 28 and I’ll leave it at that for now.

If Christians could automatically expect everything that happens to them to become a good thing from God, then why are there so many other verses in the Bible that instruct us to do something else?  It would seem to me that too many Christians are not using a balanced approach to understanding the Bible and that they are ignoring some very important verses in favor of other verses that they like better.   Let me give you a quick example of what God says for Christians to do that makes the Christian life conditional with personal responsibilities:

Jas 4:7  Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

My primary subject today is “Christian Responsibility vs. God’s Divine Responsibility”.  Here is God speaking to every Christian with two important instructions.  Where does it say that God will resist the devil for you?  Where does it say that God will chase the devil away from you regardless of what you choose to do?  Does this mean if you do not do these two things that God will still cause everything to work together for your good?  I assume that this is exactly what many Christians want to believe.  I personally do not believe that is the case!  I believe that all of God’s promises are always conditional and that you are required to follow His instructions in order to be successful in this life.   Is obedience a factor in this life?  Does obedience denote responsibility and consequences?

Isa 1:19  If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land:

Here is God giving you a clear conditional statement of promise.  God says “IF” you do this and that you will get to eat the good of the land.  Being obedient is one of the key determining factors to being successful in this life.  The other is being “willing” to be obedient.  In other words you can do what God says and be unwilling and God will tell you that you do not qualify because you failed in one key step.  This is how the things of God work and if you do not believe it you can do without the good of the land.  Here in James 4:7 God says first for you to submit your life to Him.  This is not that hard if you actually do it.  I get up every morning and try to pray, “Not my will but yours be done today”.  I tell God “I submit my will unto you this day”.  I believe that praying and committing your ways to the Lord is the beginning of submitting to Him.  Next, God says that you must resist the devil.  Uh oh?  That is a major problem for many Christians, isn’t it?  How do you resist the devil if you do not ever see the devil?  Have you ever seen the devil?  What happens if you do not resist the devil?  Are these words of warning with implied consequences?  I think that will be a better series by itself so I will not get into how you resist the devil today.  Just realize that these are two personal instructions that have attached responsibilities with them and implied consequences for not doing them.  God is not going to do them for you, so you better learn how to do them for yourself.   Also note that if you do not do them, then God cannot cause everything to work together for your good either.  Since I’m in James, I’m going to stay here and give you another verse with personal responsibilities attached to it:

Jas 1:22  But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.

You see the Bible after telling you to submit to God and to resist the devil says for you to also be a doer of the Word of God.  This implies that you must first read the Word of God, then that you study the Word of God, next you must understand the Word of God, and this is based upon the requirement that you remember the Word of God, then you must put the Word of God first place in your life and give it priority and then finally that you will actually do what the Word of God says to do.  If you think you automatically do all of this, you are probably already deceived.  There is nothing that I just mentioned to you that is automatic human behavior.  These are all learned behavioral modifications that you must do to renew your mind to God’s new ways of doing things.  God says you can deceive yourself simply by not being a doer of the Word, but you can see that being a doer of the Word requires a lot of effort on your part.  Effort implies personal responsibility and again consequences for not participating.  If you do not feel this way, then you are in trouble.  There is also no way that you can do what you do not know personally.  God says in Hosea 4:6, “My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge”.  This means your lack of knowing can cause many of the negative things to occur in your life that you could have avoided if you only knew how to avoid them.  God is saying that all things do not work together to those of His people who do not know the Word of God and do it.  Surely you can see why things have occurred in the lives of many people that were very negative and why.  Do not think that something negative happening to you is the perfect plan of God.  This is what Satan wants you to do.  If you do not fight it or resist it and you simply roll over and accept it, you are easily defeated.  Negative things can be caused by many things in this world.  You might have forgotten to submit yourself unto God.  You might have forgotten to resist the devil.  You might have not been a doer of the Word of God in the area that you needed to know how to avoid that negative situation.  There are really many more factors of Christian Responsibility but I have gone long enough for today.  Here is a short list of a Christian’s responsibilities that I have covered today:

  1. Make an effort to remain a Christian
  2. Partake of the Holy Spirit continually (Praying in the Spirit)
  3. Continually feed on the Word of God to strengthen your spirit
  4. Continually taste the Power of God
  5. Submit yourself unto God
  6. Resist the devil
  7. Read the Word of God
  8. Learn the Word of God
  9. Put the Word of God first place in your life
  10. Do the Word of God
  11. Be willing and obedient to God

These are some of the basic Christian Responsibilities for every one of us to do daily from today’s lesson to help us have positive outcomes in our life.  If you do not understand them, then you need to learn them and find out what they mean.  If you do not understand what these are, you are free to ask questions, because I at least believe that I understand enough to be a help to those who do not know them at all.  What I am attempting to do is to teach Christians that they have a personal responsibility for what happens to them.  It is not all up to God and God is not orchestrating everything that happens to you for His perfect plan.  If God was doing that, there would be no need for Him to tell you to do anything.  God gives us His word so that we can get to know Him personally, His ways, His character, His nature, His love, His grace, His Son Jesus Christ and His divine responsibility.  Then God gives us His Word so that we can learn who we are in Christ, what He has given to us and what we are still required to do with His free gifts of grace.  These are balanced Christian Responsibilities working with the Divine God Responsibilities in partnership.  I will try to continue this series in the future.  Thanks for taking the time to study the Bible with me today.  God Bless!

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 156 other followers