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The Spiritual New Birth! The Importance of Learning Spiritual Things in the Bible!
(Ver 1.3) This is Part 1 in an essential basic Bible study series on the subject of Savlation and the Spiritual New Birth of God.. So many bloggers on the internet want to ignore the real important eternal spiritual things of God and want to only focus on the temporary natural things that mean very little. Because they think carnally they have been blinded spiritually to the things that God wants to teach them. I hope that I am not talking about you. Today I want to discuss a Bible Basic Truth that every Christian should already know a little bit about. This is the subject of the New Birth, a subject that totally revolves around spiritual actions of God and not the natural thoughts of men. What you should see when you study the Bible is that God gives us natural things as patterns for us to understand the hidden spiritual things. Of course if you do not understand these natural things, you will not understand the spiritual things either. Here is the challenge that God throws down to us in 1 Corinthians:
1Co 2:14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
How natural are you? We are all a little bit natural and many are more natural than they are spiritual. God is very clear when He states the problem we are faced with in the church today. We have many people teaching spiritual things and many people that are just not able to grasp it because they are not able to understand it without getting the knowledge past their flesh and minds and into their spirits. People want to figure out God using only their natural human minds and reasoning and God says your mind is incapable of understanding anything about His spiritual things. The more natural thinking you are the more difficulty you will have with understanding anything that is spiritual.
1Co 3:1 And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ.
Every new Christian starts as a spiritual baby in Christ. Just as natural babies cannot eat steak and the food that grownups eat, baby Christians have trouble digesting anything that has great substance and meaning to it. Have you ever noticed that kids and children often times think they know more than they do? They like to pretend that they are highly intelligent, even teenagers tend to think they know more than their parents.
Joh 3:3 Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
This is why many people even in churches today are unable to understand anything about the spiritual things that other people teach. Jesus made a definite requirement to enter into the Kingdom of God. What does it mean to be born again?
Joh 3:4 Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?
This is a classic example of a spiritual teacher trying to teach something to a natural thinking man. Jesus is attempting to discuss spiritual things and this man in John 3 wants to ask a natural question. Nicodemus asks Jesus how a man when he is old can enter back into the stomach of his mother. To Nicodemus it was a good question, but to Jesus it was just a clear indication that this man did not understand what he said.
Joh 3:5 Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
Jesus tries with another statement to explain the process. I would doubt that you fully understand this scripture either. Jesus is not speaking of Water Baptism in this verse and I would bet that most people think that is what He is talking about. Jesus is comparing two different births, one natural and one spiritual. When you are in your mother’s womb, you are surrounded by water. When her water breaks, she knows it is time to deliver. Jesus is comparing this natural event to the spiritual birth process. Again Jesus tells us that unless a man is born naturally and spiritually you will never make it into the Kingdom of God.
Joh 3:6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
We can again see the comparison being confirmed in this next verse in John. Jesus tells us very clearly that being born again has nothing to do with the flesh. To be born again is a spiritual birth process and something that happens inside of you. No one can observe it when it happens, but they can observe the changes that it makes in you externally. This verse represents a spiritual law being revealed to us. Whoever is born of the flesh is just that, flesh! But, whoever is born of the Spirit, they are now a new spirit.
1Pe 1:23 Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.
You see the spiritual birth process dramatically resembles the natural birth process, but yet it is completely different at the same time. Both birth processes were initiated by planting seed. The natural seed of a man is called sperm and it impregnates a woman and a natural child is born. This natural seed is called corruptible seed and this is directly compared to the incorruptible seed of the Word of God. Everyone that becomes a Christian does so as a result of hearing God’s Word.
1Co 3:6 I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase.
You see these people in Corinth were disputing among themselves, again thinking naturally and carnally and missing the spiritual things of God that Paul was trying to get them to see. This is the same chapter that Paul said earlier that he could not talk to them about spiritual things because they were still baby Christians. Paul reveals a part of the spiritual birth process in this verse. Paul planted the incorruptible seed of the Word of God into the hearts of the people and Apollos came along and watered it to get it to grow. If the people understood any of it, it would eventually begin to grow and produce fruit unto God.
Rom 10:14 How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?
You may not fully understand the process of being born again, but yet you can still participate in it and learn about the process later. God designed a specific plan and a specific process for getting men and women born again. This process is actually outlined in this verse in Romans. It seems to start with a preacher being sent to the people. The preacher tells the people about Jesus, what He has done for them and the people can choose to believe it and to accept Jesus as their Savior. It is not a long or complicated process, but yet it is also very profound. Salvation is a system based upon Words and Faith. If you have ever read any of my other blogs you know that I say some pretty new things about these two subjects from the verses found in Bible. God’s Word System of Salvation is vastly criticized and ridiculed by those who think naturally and do not understand it.
2Co 5:17 Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
This verse found in 2 Corinthians speaks about the new birth. God informs us that we have become a new creation. This of course is a creation within the spiritual realm of God. The term “new creation”, means we are now something that has never existed before. We are something “fresh” and “brand new”. Being born again spiritually, gives us a new start, a new beginning as this verse says. The old things, the old ways, the old behavior and the things we use to do have now passed away or vanished. You could say the old you was buried and the new you has been raised to life. The Old Man was natural and carnal with a self centered focus. The New Man is a person that sees things differently and has a new spiritual perspective on life and others around them.
When God says “All” things have become new, you have to understand what the term “All” means in this context. It does not mean everything as in an all inclusive new you. While the inside spirit part of you is new, the outside physical parts of you are still the same. The body still wants the same foods you ate before you were born again. The flesh still wants to do the same things that it has always done. Then there is the mind and you have the same mind that you always had. You still have the same memories, the same experiences, the same way of thinking and all of these things are part of a spiritual growth process that begins when you are “Born Again”. God tells us in Romans 12:2 that “we should not conform to this world’s ways”. He then tells us “to be transformed by the renewing of our minds”. To renew your mind is a lengthy process that involves you learning spiritual things that will allow you to grow and mature in Christ. Just as children take many years to mature physically, so it is with spiritual babies. They need time to learn and understand the new spiritual things that God wants them to learn.
1Pe 2:2 As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby:
What we learn by reading the Bible is that there is a growth process. It starts with the Word of God and will end with the Word of God. The milk of the Word represents the basic concepts, ideas, facts and information that provide you with the foundation for your spiritual beliefs. Most of the time, these concepts are not as simple as you would like them to be, however you keep drinking them in until you grow enough to mature. As you mature you will be able to grasp more complex and advanced topics in the Bible. These are not always easy to digest either, but yet if God gave them to us, then they have a purpose for us to know and to understand.
This has been a comprehensive overview of the New Birth process. This is a spiritual reality that occurs when you accept Jesus as your Savior. What God has done in the natural is a direct pattern for what God has done in the spiritual realm. If you can learn and understand this process, it might help you to share it with others.
If you would like to contiue reading in this series of lessons you may go directly to “Part 2“.
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If you want to know how to get saved and know that you are with confidence you can go to: How to know that I am saved?
The Hidden Jesus in Genesis! Jesus Revealed in the Hidden Patterns of Genesis!
(Ver 1.5) Jesus makes a very profound and awesome statement in the Gospels while He was speaking to the people of the natural nation of Israel. These are such tremendously important words that we (Christians) need to grasp and fully understand what they say and what they mean. Please read with me this statement spoken by the Almighty God personally to humans:
Joh 5:39 Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.
A witness is someone who testifies in court of law. A witness in a court of law is someone who comes in and testifies about what they know, what they have seen or for something as an expert that is relevant and pertains to the case in question. An expert witness in a court case is someone who can speak with a certain level of authority on the specific related subject about the case. So God’s claim in this verse appears to indicate that the Bible is an expert witness for God’s case that He is presenting to us about the existence of Jesus Christ and His true identity. We should be able to clearly see what God is saying about the purpose of the Bible. God claims that the Old Testament contained hidden information about who Jesus was and what He is going to accomplish before He was done. 
Jesus also clearly informed us that we needed to search the scriptures to find this information. If we are required to become a “Sherlock Holmes” type of Christian doing a search of the written word in order to find these facts, that would mean that this information is not always clearly presented on the initial surface reading. This would also indicate that the information about Jesus was purposely hidden either from someone or for someone like us to find. For example, why do parents hide Easter eggs for their young children? Is it to protect the candy from being discovered? No actually it is more for the fun of seeing their children search for them with eager expectations of finding them. The purpose of hiding eggs is not to keep the children from ever finding the candy but it does simply create a challenge for them that provides the parents the pleasure of seeing the excitement derived from their discovery. This is a key concept that is needed to fully grasp about the words found in the Old Testament. The Bible contains literally many hidden secrets about Jesus and these concealed clues were placed there by our Heavenly Father for us (His children) to search and discover.
The Law of Moses was given to Israel on Mt Sinai and they carried these words for many hundreds of years. The Jewish people preserved them and cared for them and then when the author of the book appeared before them in the flesh they killed him. Why is this, I asked myself? I can see Jesus in the Old Testament, why couldn’t they see Jesus in the same way? That of course is a really good question to consider. I would guess that it is extremely more difficult to see what you do not know personally exists. For Christians who know Jesus personally, they have a much greater advantage over the people in Jesus’ days on the earth. They did not know Him like we can know Him so it is much easier for us to discover Jesus in the hidden verses in O.T. books like Genesis. The rest of this lesson will be about something that I have blogged on before, but maybe not in this direct context and under this specific title. This lesson will focus on the hidden Jesus in Genesis and I will give you at least three really good examples of Him that maybe you have not seen before. I will focus only on the first two chapters of Genesis and you will certainly be amazed if you can see it. Before, we start, I pray that the eyes of your understanding be opened and enlightened to see God’s truth.
Genesis 1:1
Let’s start with Genesis 1:1, where it says “In the beginning God created, the heaven and the earth”. Did you know Jesus was Hidden in this verse in Genesis by the Author? However, unless you read and study it in the original Hebrew language you probably did not specifically know this. The 4th word of the original Hebrew text is a word that has been completely omitted from the English translation and this one word reveals Jesus in this verse in a very profound way. The Hebrew word omitted in this verse is actually not a real word at all and thus the reason for the omission of a translation to the English language. The translators simply did not understand what to do with it, so they omitted it. This omitted word consists of only two Hebrew letters. These two letters are the “alef” and the “tav”. These two Hebrew letters just so happen to be the very first and very last letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Does that help you to see Jesus better now? What I am saying is that Genesis 1:1 should have read “In the beginning the A-Z God created the heavens and the earth”. The translators did not understand the significance and they ignored the word being connected to the name of God.
Rev 1:8 I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.
This new information should start to illuminate many spiritual light bulbs inside your heart and mind. You see , here in the book of Revelation chapter 1 and verse 8 Jesus calls Himself the “Alpha and the Omega”. It just so happens that these are also the very first and very last letters of an alphabet, but here it is of the Greek Alphabet. If the translators would have converted these two Greek letters to English properly Jesus would have said “I am the A and the Z”. Now do you see the connection more clearly? Also consider the fact that Jesus was a Hebrew. He spoke predominately Hebrew to the Jewish people. Therefore, when spoken this verse in Revelation could have been written in Hebrew and said “I am the Alef and the Tav”. Since it was written in Greek the Apostle John did the inspired thing to convert into Greek letters from the original spoken Hebrew. The English translators could have followed His example and legally translated it as the A and the Z.
What God is doing is revealing who created the world that we live in. Jesus Christ was the Word of God and He created ALL things that we can see and observe. Without Him was nothing that was made, made (John 1:1-3). So Jesus is clearly identified as the creator God, the “A-Z God” who created everything that was created. This is a very profound and priceless conformation of the identity of the Messiah to be the man Jesus Christ. In the Beginning the A-Z God created the heavens and the earth. That is how this verse should have read, now let’s go find Jesus in some other verses in Genesis.
Genesis 1:15-19 Day 4 of Creation
Gen 1:14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
Gen 1:15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
Gen 1:16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
Gen 1:17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
Gen 1:18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
Gen 1:19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
I want to skip down in chapter 1 of Genesis to the described Day 4 of creation. This day is one of the most important hidden references to Jesus in all of Genesis. I do not profess to know every hidden reference to Jesus in Genesis, but I feel this one is one of the most important to see based upon my current understanding of the Bible. You see on Day 4 of the creation account, God tells us of two opposing lights. What God is doing is speaking symbolically and prophetically in these verses about Jesus Christ and what will be accomplished by His appearance on the earth.
In studying the days of creation I learned that every day of creation represented a prophetic day of man’s future on the earth. Since the beginning of Adam’s creation it has been approximately 6000 years. 6000 years can be divided evenly by 1000 giving us an answer of 6. These 6 equal periods of 1000 years represent a prophetic day in the definition of God’s timetable for man. We learn in 2 Peter 3:8 where God gives us a definition of a prophetic day that is a direct quote of a verse found in Psalm 90:4. God defines that a day to Him is exactly like 1000 years to humans. So the 6 days of creation plus the 7th day of God’s rest turn out to be prophetic days of all of man’s history on the earth. So what happens on the 4th day of creation? God assigns a greater light to rule the day and a lesser light to rule the night. The greater light is of course a synonymous title for the Sun and the lesser light is certainly the moon. But, God is not talking about only natural things, God is prophesying about two spiritual kingdoms to come. Jesus was born on the earth some 4000 years after Adam and this can be easily translated as during the time of the 4th day of creation. God is prophesying that Jesus will rule the kingdom of day and be the Sun light of our world. God is further stating that Satan (the symbolic moon) will rule the kingdom of the night and all those people that live in this darkness. There are so many scriptures that can be found in the Bible that speak of this profound revelation. I will not attempt to give you them all, but I will go through a few to get you started. You can read other blogs that I have written to find more information on this subject. Or just search your Bible on your phone or computer and look for words like night, day, darkness and light.
Mal 4:2 But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall.
In Malachi 4:2 Jesus Christ is prophesied as coming again in a very similar way that was being described in Genesis 1. Here Jesus is called the “Sun of Righteousness” that will “arise”. In this verse He is not spoken of as the “Son of God”, but here He is in direct connection to being the “Sun of God”. You can understand that God is speaking symbolically again about far greater spiritual truths. These are clues to knowing the truth but we are required to search and put them together correctly with the Lord’s help of course.
Joh 1:7 The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe.
Joh 1:8 He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.
Joh 1:9 That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
In John 1:7-9, the Bible talks about John the Baptist and Jesus and calls Jesus the “True Light” in verse 9. You see if you think about this logically you can see that our sun in the sky is our physical natural true light that rules over the day and the moon represents the opposite realm that rules over the night. This is a direct comparison of the two great lights in the sky mentioned in Genesis 1. In John 8:12 Jesus is speaking and He calls himself the “Light of the World”. He then says that those who follow Him will not walk in darkness (night) where the unstated moon (Satan) rules. You can again see a spiritual reference to a truth that is revealed in Genesis on the 4th day of creation. These opposing truths are called Day vs. night, the Sun vs. the moon, and the Light vs. the darkness. These are all symbolic representations of the hearts and spirits of men and women in the world today. Two spiritual dimensions and conditions that are directly opposed to each other and ruled by opposite spirits. Again in John 12:46 Jesus says, “I am come as a light to the world, that those who believe in me should not abide in darkness”. Jesus says those who do not follow Christ and His ways are those that are walking and living in the darkness and who are ruled by the night and Satan. This CANNOT be speaking of Christians. There is absolutely no logical way this can come close to the truth for those that believe the moon represents Christians. I have heard this belief from several people before, but it just does not balance with scriptures. A Christian is either ruled by Jesus in the Day or governed and ruled by Satan in the darkness..
2Pe 1:19 We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts:
Here we have another great verse that declares Jesus to be the Sun that arises and shines in human hearts to light our spirits so that we can see and understand His truth. Notice the keyword connection “arise” given here that matches what Malachi prophesied about the “Sun of Righteousness”. That is NOT a coincidence. These are all profound confirmations to the 4th day of creation. Notice that this verse in 2 Peter is speaking about previously written prophetic words concerning a light arising in a previously named dark place. We have to search and look for these words and find them, could this be those that we found mentioned in Genesis and Malachi? All you have to do is read it and see what it says about these two lights to see how much is related to what we have observed.
That is part of the difficulty in correct Bible interpretation. The Sun is called by many different names, titles and descriptions in the Bible so we have to be wise enough to see the connections and find them all using God’s help. In Genesis the Sun is called the “Greater Light”. In John the Spiritual Sun was called the “True Light”. Here in 2 Peter the Sun is called the “Day Star”. You do understand that our sun is our closest star to our planet and normally this start is the only one we can see during daylight hours? These are just some of the ways that God uses to hide information in the Bible for us to find. In Revelation 22:16 you can see Jesus being called the “Bright and Morning Star”. This again is a new symbolic reference to the Sun in Genesis 1 and Malachi 4 that arises in the hearts of men. These are all extremely important things to learn and to understand. I hope and pray that was sufficient to at least motivate you to go learn more.
Genesis 2 Adam and Eve
Another way God uses stories in the Old Testament to hide spiritual information concerning Jesus is through the use of typology. These are true natural stories of real natural people, places and things that have greater spiritual meanings attached to them to reveal to us hidden things that we cannot see. Sometimes types and shadows can be hard to recognize and difficult to discover or understand. However, God has given to us some clues in the Bible to help us and to point us to what to look for. Always trust the Holy Spirit to help you in your Bible study. He is the only one that truly knows what it means. In the 2nd chapter of Genesis God gives us the detailed account of the creation of man and of the woman, the law of marriage and the story of the beginning of the first human family on the planet. This entire chapter is a more detailed view of Day 6 of creation described in Genesis 1. Why is this detail information important and how does this relate to the claim of Jesus to be hidden in Genesis? That is a really good question. So here is the beginning of the primary reason why this is so important to know:
1Co 15:45 And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.
Here is a direct clue from God showing us a direct connection between two different men both called Adam. This verse compares the first created man Adam to the man Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ here is being called the “Last Adam”. Why is that? What you discover when you study Genesis 2, is that the first natural man Adam was a natural pattern for the last spiritual man Adam that was to come. So whatever God did to and for the first man Adam, is what will happen to the Last Man Adam in the spiritual realm. That of course is some totally new information to many Christians and it may be hard to accept at first, but just keep studying and you will see that it is true.
God created Adam’s wife and took her body from his body. You will recall God put Adam asleep and took from his side the bone to create a woman. As a result of what God did, Adam says “She is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh”. In other words, Eve was called the “body of Adam”. According to the law of marriage given to us in Genesis 2, it says “The man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife and the two shall become one flesh”. One flesh is just another way of saying “One Body”. Many people know that the Church is called the Body of Christ in the N.T. and yet they do not know how we became the Body of Christ. We can answer this mystery very easily if we see that by the law of marriage and the pattern of the first man Adam Genesis 2, the church has now become the Body of Jesus by a new covenant of marriage. You can see this very clearly by reading verses in Ephesians 5 about husbands and wives and then God reveals that this is a mystery that concerns Christ and the church.
Remember when Jesus was hanging on the cross? He died on that cross and in the N.T. this is often referred to as being asleep (1 Cor 11:30, 1 Cor 15:51). Jesus Christ being dead (asleep) on the cross was pierced in His side by a Roman soldier’s spear. Does this sound familiar to what we read in Genesis 2? Out of His side flowed Blood and Water. These are two powerful elements of our salvation to become His bride. Jesus Christ is the spiritual Last Adam who marries a wife who becomes His Body born out of His side. Because Eve is a woman that births every natural and physical being on this planet she represents a natural type of another spiritual woman who will birth spiritual realities in God’s new covenant family. I have many other blogs that talk about this in much more depth if you are interested.
Gal 4:19 My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you,
Conclusion
These were just 3 of the examples of the hidden Jesus in Genesis chapters 1 and 2. I hope that you learned something and can now begin to see how to learn to search out other hidden references to Jesus in Genesis trusting in God’s guidance. Many times these hidden references are not obvious at all, so we have to search for scriptures and find references, definitions, types and patterns revealed in other parts of the Bible. Jesus told us to search the scriptures, for these are they that testify of Him! The evidence for God can be found in His Word. God Bless!
God’s Word Based System! Are ALL Spoken Words Prophetic?
(Ver 1.1) Today will be another lesson (Part 6) from the Bible on the spoken words of God and man. If you have not read this series from the beginning I would suggest that you go and start reading with “Part 1“. As we read the Bible we can clearly see that God assigned certain men in the Bible with a gift of “prophecy”. These men were called the “Prophets” of God and they wrote vast amounts of scriptures about future events. So a prophetic word is one that could be taken as a future prediction of events to come. I’m really not a big fan of that definition of Prophecy. You see you can very easily confuse the words of “Nostradamus” as being future predictions, but did they come from God? Were they “Prophetic” or were they just someone writing down random thoughts of what they think will happen? I personally do not think they were prophetic or from God. Here is what I believe about prophecy and the realm of time. I believe that God lives outside of the limitation of time and space. The Bible says “In the beginning, God created….”. So we know before the beginning of time and space, God already existed. I believe that God can see all of humanity in a single view from start to end. The Bible says “I make known the end from the beginning”. Therefore, I believe that when God showed men in the Bible what to write about concerning future events, in the eyes of God, they had already happened from God’s perspective and God was just reporting what happened, before it actually happens in our time line. This is of course very difficult to comprehend how this is possible, yet men like Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein probably could better see it with many of the things that they have written about, to name a couple of modern day people who think outside of the box. So God’s prophecies are not predictions of things that might happen, they are just news reports of things that have already happened on our timeline. This is of course not predestination either. God did not cause all of them to happen, many times God just knew what men would do and used that for His purpose and plan. There is a major difference in the two perspectives of Prophecy. Every day, economists and people on Wall Street predict where the market is going based upon world events and factors that they observe around them. However, many, many times they are totally wrong so what they say did not come from God and was not prophetic and God did not perform what they said to fulfill it.
The complexities of the Bible are so huge that this is a very difficult subject to teach on. There are many factors and dependencies that we need to be aware of that it is impossible to teach on everything at once. Right now I am primarily concerned with the subject of Spoken Words so that will be my main focus of the rest of this lesson.
A while back I wrote a blog on “Speak to your Rock” and then I wrote a follow-up to that about “Idle Words“. At the very least, it would appear that God is trying to teach men, that what they say has significance to what happens in their lives. So I had a reader ask me this question, “Are words spoken by people prophetic because God showed them what will happen and therefore, they speak it and then it comes to pass in their lives”? Today’s blog will be an attempt to answer this question and hopefully explain what I meant in the other blogs that preceded this one on Spoken Words.
We can clearly see that every word spoken by people does not immediately happen to them. I believe this is by God’s design, if things happened exactly like people say, very few would have made it past a very young age. You see we have many people who say things out of ignorance and they generally do not mean a thing. You have many other people in the world who lie and these words generally do not mean anything. You have many other people who say things as a joke to be funny and these generally don’t mean anything either. Then there are words of slang that have crept into our mainstream that say the opposite than what they normally mean. Michael Jackson use to say “Ilm Bad” when he really meant “I’m Good”. There are just too many examples of people saying things that never happen so how do you balance that with other specific examples of men and women who have said something and it actually happens, exactly like they said? Was it a coincidence or an accident or was it something greater? In one blog I told you about Elvis Presley who was heard more than once to say that he would never out live his mother’s age when she died. Elvis died in 1977 at the age of 42, His mother had died in 1958 at the age of 46. So did what Elvis say cause what happened to him, or was it just a prediction that accidently occurred? You have to at least think about it and see that it is pretty amazing. I also gave you another example of my personal grandmother. She was getting older and did not like to drive her car in traffic. She was over heard by some other family members to say that “Some crazy driver would be the death of me”. One day as she was leaving one of her son’s houses and on the way back home, she pulled out in front of a couple of teenagers who were racing on the street where they should not have been. They broad sided my grandmother’s car and she was killed instantly. So again, we have to ask the question, did what she say cause it to happen or was it just an amazing coincidence? I could give you more examples like these, but I think we should shift focus to the Bible and see what we can find there about this subject. What the Bible says is far more important than any personal testimonies of people you cannot verify what they said.
In the O.T. in the book of Numbers chapter 13, God gives us an example that is very profound and has great significance to our current subject of spoken words. In this chapter, God tells Moses to send out 12 spies into the land that He has given to them. Their job is to look at the land and see if it is good and come back and report it to the people. Moses chooses 12 men, one from each of the tribes of Israel and they go and spy out the land. They then return to make their report back to the people after 40 days bringing large clusters of grapes. The twelve spies were divided into two groups. Ten said that there are strong people and walled cities. Two of them Joshua and Caleb said, “Let’s go up and take it, we are well able”. But, the ten said “We are not able, for they are stronger than we are”. The ten spies said “We are but grasshoppers in their eyes”. The ten spies stir up the majority of the people to believe they were unable to take the land that God had given to them. As a result of the “Evil Report” they began to say “Let’s go back to Egypt, and it would be better to die in the wilderness”.
In Numbers 14, Joshua and Caleb try to convince the people that they are able because God is with them and the defense of the inhabitants of the land has departed from them. What can we learn from this lesson found in the Bible? The Bible says these things happened and were recorded to be examples for us, the church. Two spies said “We can do it” and ten spies said “We are not able to do it” and both of these groups of people got exactly what they said. This is a lesson that you should begin to apply to your life and see how it applies to the things that you say. Review what you have said in the past and see if it is not what you are getting right now!
Let’s look at another example of a Bible story, so that in the mouth of two or three witnesses let every word be established. In 1 Samuel 17, the story of David and Goliath is a classic Sunday School story of how God used David to kill the giant Goliath. But, how was God able to do this with David and not with any of the other thousands of soldiers in the army of Israel? What was different about David? If you notice when you read this chapter, David was not afraid of this giant and all the other men in the army were terrified. Does this sound familiar with the story of the 10 spies? Weren’t they all afraid of the giants also? If you read this chapter closely you will also notice exactly what David said that made the difference to allow God to use him and not anyone else.
1Sa 17:37 David said moreover, The LORD that delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear, he will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine. And Saul said unto David, Go, and the LORD be with thee.
This is the beginning of a series of positive things that David says. David has great confidence in God’s ability to deliver. David has great confidence in God’s covenant. David says “God will be with me and deliver me from this Philistine”. Isn’t this like what Joshua and Caleb were saying? Can you tell the difference between a good report and an evil report? Both are spoken words, but one says “I will win” and the other says “I will lose”. Does what you say have any bearing on what God is able to do? If you do not understand that it does, you will forever be deceived into thinking that you have no responsibility in the outcome of your life.
Now let’s examine the real battle of David and Goliath. In Numbers 17:43 Goliath who also has a mouth full of words for Israel, starts to speak to David and asks “Am I a dog that you send out a boy with a staff?” Goliath curses David with his gods and tells David what he is about to do to him and his flesh. Can you see this is the real battle? David could have believed what Goliath said and run back home to watch the sheep and said forget this war stuff. Instead, David says this:
1Sa 17:45 Then said David to the Philistine, Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied.
These are the words that permit God to do mighty things. Because of David’s faith in God and God’s ability to save, David continues to speak and declare the end even before the beginning:
1Sa 17:46 This day will the LORD deliver thee into mine hand; and I will smite thee, and take thine head from thee; and I will give the carcases of the host of the Philistines this day unto the fowls of the air, and to the wild beasts of the earth; that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel.
As you can see David got exactly what He said. The stone left his sling and hit the giant in the only exposed spot on his body that was vulnerable and David ended up taking the giant’s head off with the giant’s own sword. As a result of David’s victory the rest of Israel suddenly got religion and remembered the God of Israel and were not afraid anymore. The army of God was victorious over the Philistines that day because of the words of a shepherd boy who would eventually become King. Did David’s words have anything to do with David becoming King? You bet they did exactly that. There are many Bible lessons that speak of things exactly like this. Because you have never looked for them, does not mean they do not exist.
What you discover by digging deep into the Bible, is that the world is based on a word and faith system. God tells us in the Bible that everything we see was created from things that we cannot see (Heb 11:3), these things that we cannot see are words. The words of God became the things that we see around us. If you look at Genesis 1, you will notice the Bible repeatedly would say “And God Said….”. These words that God spoke originated from God’s Spirit and became the things that we perceive with our natural senses. If Words created our universe that we live in, then Words can still change it. Of course are these changes only limited to God’s Words or does the words of others effect what happens in the world? That is a big question to consider. Many religious people like to think that God controls everything that happens in the world. A huge volcano eruption that was God’s work, so they think. A big hurricane, that was also an act of God, so they think. I guess what we need to figure out is, is this what the Bible says?
Jesus Christ is called the Word of God in Rev 19:13. Then in John 1:1 it says “In the beginning was the Word and the Words was with God and the Word Was God!”. So we cannot separate God from His word, they are said to be one in the same. In John 1:14, it says “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us” in speaking of God becoming a man in Jesus of Nazareth. John 1:14 gives us an example of how God’s word, by His Spirit can become something natural and physical. So God is His Word and the Word of God is God! God’s Word can also become a physical something that we can perceive with our senses. So far so good?
Then we see Jesus teaching us a farming lesson in Mark 4. The parable given there is about a farmer who throws seeds into different types of soil and some of the soil produces fruit and some does not. There are numerous symbolisms given to us in this parable, the soil is said to be the hearts of man. The birds of the air are demonic forces that attempt to eat the seed so that it will not produce. Finally, Jesus tells us that the seeds that are being planted are “The Words of God” (Mark 4:14). Now let me ask you a simple question, if God’s words are seeds, are all words that are spoken seeds? Is this possible? If you read another parable you might begin to see that it is entirely possible. In Matthew 13:24, Jesus tells us another parable about the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is like a man who sows good seed in his field…”. Remember the fields are the hearts of men. The Good Seed is the Word of God. What is the opposite of Good Seed, I believe it would be Bad or Evil Seed. Uh Oh, remember the “Evil Report”? So in verse 25 of Matthew 13 Jesus says “an enemy came in and sowed tares among the wheat”. If you read on you find that the tares have become the children of the enemy and the wheat the children of God. Who is the enemy? Satan would qualify as the enemy of God who has sown the bad seed or evil words into the world. So now we have two different kinds of seed being spoken of, one evil and one good. Those from God are good seeds, those from Satan are evil seeds. I hope that you are understanding that people now have a choice of what to speak. They can choose to speak the “good seed” or they can choose to speak the bad or “evil seed”. In Deuteronomy 30:19, God says “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing, therefore choose life that you and your seed may live”. Did you notice the reference to seed again? This is a double reference to two different things simultaneously. Seeds can be your children and seeds can be your words. In this verse this is spoken of in terms of blessing and cursing again and we can see more implied references to your spoken words. Jesus cursed the fig tree and blessed the little children with the same mouth. Jesus gave us object lessons of how a mouth can produce two completely different results based upon the seeds that they sow. One was a blessing to the children and one was a curse to the fig tree. So man can choose to live or die by their spoken words. Is this what the Bible says? If you read in Proverbs you find a very powerful truth being spoken of and it says “Death and Life are in the Power of the Tongue, those that love it shall eat the fruit thereof”. So did you notice what this verse said? It said your tongue has power and your words are the seeds that produce results, either good or bad. Do you understand this?
So words are seeds that are planted in your heart that produces some result or crop in your life. You can plant good seeds from God’s Word or you can plant evil seeds from Satan. The soil of your heart really does not know the difference. Someone asked me if I thought that your words were prophetic? I would ask you, if a farmer planted a field full of corn seed, is that the crop he will harvest in the process of time? Did the farmer prophesy “corn” into existence or was it the fact that he planted the seed and the crop grew up and produced what was put in the soil. So Words are seeds and produce either the good or bad things that were spoken or planted in your heart? I of course oversimplified this lesson because it takes more than just speaking words to get something to happen in your life. Faith must also be present. Faith is the belief and expectation of something or someone that you do not see or feel with your physical senses. You believe in God and that He exists, even though you have never seen Him, that is faith. You believe that Jesus died on the cross for your sins and was raised from the dead, and that is faith, since you were not there to witness it personally.
What people say with their mouths and believe in their hearts, that is what will happen in their life, either positive or negative. It is the law of Faith. Faith always existed in the world from Adam until now. Galatians 3:23 tells us that “Faith was Revealed” in the New Testament, meaning it was present in the Old Testament, but hidden from man and they did not understand it. So the Law of Faith existed when God told Moses to Speak to the Rock and God said that because you did not believe, you will not enter into the promise land. Moses did not believe, that is the opposite of faith. God told Moses what to do and Moses didn’t do it.
This is why God did not reveal the secrets of the Bible to the Old Testament saints. If they would have figured out how spiritual things worked back then, before Jesus came and provided salvation, we could have been in some real big trouble. God is now revealing how spiritual things work in these last days before Jesus comes back. Those who are spiritually mature will be able to see them and understand them, and those who are still childlike will reject them more than likely. I pray that you have understood these Bible verses and the spiritual laws revealed in them and now can apply them to your lives so that you can get Good Results and you and your seed will Live!
If you would like to continue reading this series of lessons on spoken words, you can go to “Part 7“.
Understanding Spoken Words! From the Abundance of the Heart the Mouth Leaks!
This is now Part 5 in a series of lessons about spoken words found in the Bible. If you have not read this series from the beginning I would suggest that you go and start reading from “Part 1“. God woke me up this morning and spoke to me. I read a guy on the internet and he blogged about God being allusive and hidden and so he concluded that God must not exist. A few minutes ago God woke me up in the middle of the night to convey some things to me about spoken words. People who say God does not talk to them do not know how God speaks so they are not listening to what He says. Today I want to discuss spoken words in the context that they are proof that God exists. Have you ever thought or asked yourself why people are communicators? Humans are social creatures that like to talk. Do you think that if no one was there to listen you would talk so much? What if you were on a deserted island and there was no one there to talk to, would you still talk to yourself or to God? Being made in the image and likeness of God we can clearly see that man was made for a purpose. By the design of God, man was made with the ability to communicate with God. God listens to your words no matter where you are or what you say. There is a direct spiritual connection between your mouth and God’s ear. Since there are billions of people on the planet and only one God, I do not know how He keeps track of everyone’s words at the same time, but He does and it must be easy for Him to do. God tells us in Matthew 12:36 that every idle word that we speak, we will give an account of each of them in the day of judgment. So apparently God has some ability to record and recall every word spoken from every human being that has ever been alive on this planet. Being a computer programmer, that is some amazing demonstration of power. That makes Google look like small potatoes. Google over the last 12 years or so has accumulated literally astronomical amounts of data, but this pales in comparison to what God is tracking in heaven.
Just the existence of your mouth and your tongue proves that someone was there to hear you even when you didn’t think that someone was listening. It goes to a simple debatable point that men sometimes try to make about a tree falling in the forest and no one being there to hear it, they always ask does it still make a sound? You see what difference would the sound be if there was no hearers. The sound would be just waves of energy that go nowhere and mean nothing. Atheist have a problem with answering why we are how we are. How we got here and why we have these intelligently designed features like a mouth that communicates with others and ears that have the ability to hear the sounds that others make. Nothing in the world that has any useful purpose got here by chance or accident. It is absolutely STUPID to think that man just evolved into what we are today. There is too much evidence to the contrary.
I have written hundreds of pages and thousands of words on a blog, why? Because someone takes the time to read some of them. Because I write, proves that you are out there reading. This is a very simple concept and a very profound truth. Because we can speak words, proves that God is listening to them. You might not like my logic or you might just ignore my logic, but nevertheless it is based upon truth.
Jesus taught us that our words have a spiritual connection to them. People do not understand this, clearly they are oblivious to the truth. Words spoken are not meaningless or mindless, even though many words are spoken without any thought given to them. This is what Jesus spoke to the Jews one day:
Mat 12:34 O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.
The heart of man, is the spirit of man. If you do not understand this you should study and use your brain to figure it out. Jesus clearly gives us a direct connection of the words that people speak to what they have in their spirits. You could say what comes out of your mouth comes out of your spirit. Jesus tells this group of people because of the evil that they have abundantly in their heart, it is impossible for them to speak anything but evil. Jesus repeats this statement in Luke 6:45. Good men speak good things because it is what they have abundantly in their hearts. Evil men speak evil things, because it is what they have abundantly in their hearts. This is some amazingly important information, yet people generally do not attempt to understand the significance. Here is another set of words spoken by Jesus about His words:
Joh 6:63 It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.
This is again some very significant information about the spiritual realm. The spirit has precedence and dominance over the flesh. The only reason your body is here reading this blog is because your spirit is in your body to give it life. To quicken in the KJV Bible means to “give life to”. Why is this important? It is very important because of how Jesus ends this verse. Jesus said “My Words are spirit and life”. Jesus was informing us where the words came from, that He spoke. His words were from God’s mouth and God’s Spirit. Because God put abundantly good things into the heart of Jesus, Jesus was able to speak good things that caused people to live. You cannot separate God from His Word. You cannot separate the Word of God from God either. Both of these are the same person. God’s words are God’s Spirit!
So what does all of this have to do with you and I? If you can agree with these things that I have said from the Bible. How do they apply to the here and now? Since you were made in the image and likeness of God, you can easily make some assumptions that if God’s words are His Spirit, then your words are your spirit. After all that is what Jesus said, from the abundance of what you have in your spirit, your mouth speaks. Jesus is described in the Bible as having the “Sword of the Spirit” coming out of His mouth. This is just another way to say what Jesus said in John 6:63. The sword of God’s sprit is His spoken words. The sword of your spirit is also the words of your spirit and what is abundantly in it. Many people in the world, utter curse words and blaspheme God’s name in every other sentence. This represents what they have abundantly in their hearts. Whatever you have abundantly in your heart is what will leak out of your mouth, this is a law of God and the way things work and connect to the spiritual realm from the natural realm and vice versa. Your mouth produces words that originated from the spiritual realm. These words are a result of whatever you put in your spirit, good or bad. In Proverbs God said this:
Pro 18:21 Death and Life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.
Those are some of the strongest words found in the Bible about the words that come out of your mouth. This verse in Proverbs tells you very clearly that your tongue has power and as a result of what you say, you either live or you die. Please keep this in mind and learn what God is trying to get you to see. God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading this series of lessons on spoken words, you can continue with “Part 6“.
Understanding God’s Circumcision of the Heart!
(Ver 1.2) This is of course a potentially explosive subject of an extremely controversial nature. There are well over 100 verses in the Bible that have a related topic or subject. I will of course not be trying to speak to all of these verses. What I will be attempting to do is focus on God’s typology from the O.T. and how it applies to the spiritual realm in the N.T. The Bible can be very complex, God can speak of natural things and spiritual things and call them by the exact same names. This makes Bible interpretation very difficult for many people and causes a great number of people to be very confused. Today’s subject is a key example of this point. Circumcision is normally thought of in natural terms only, but we soon discover that God gave us this natural example to teach us of something that we could not see with our natural eyes. Here we go with today’s Hot Topic, the Circumcision of the Heart. Let’s start by looking at an Old Testament prophecy and see what it says:
Deu 30:6 And the LORD thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live.
If you can read and see what this verse declares then you will better understand the verses that we will look at next in the New Testament. This verse tells us that God will do something that we are unable to do. This verse is not speaking of your physical heart, it is speaking of your spirit. In this verse God says I will circumcise your spirit. This of course is a symbolic spiritual operation and not a physical operation. After you are born again your spirit is uncovered, enabling you to see spiritual things. We’ll probably talk about this more soon, but notice this is an Old Testament verse so it has to be a prophetic future event. It also mentions your heart or your spirit and your soul and your flesh or body is the implied reference of circumcision. This helps us to see that man is a triune being made in the image and likeness of God.
Rom 2:28 For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh:
Rom 2:29 But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.
As you can clearly see in these two verses in Romans, God is contrasting and comparing two different groups of people. Both are referred to as being Jews, but one group is said to be circumcised by God and the other group by the hands of men. What do you think this is talking about? I’m sure if you do not want to accept what it says, that you must have already created an alternative interpretation. What we discover in the Bible is that, God initiated natural circumcision in the flesh way back with Abraham. This was an outward sign of the Old Covenant. Of course this was only a male practice and not done to females. This was not something God did personally, you do understand that, don’t you? So down through the centuries, the priests of Israel would perform this ritual to the male child on the 8th day after birth. This is the circumcision done by the hands of men that God is speaking of and comparing it to the real circumcision. God says very clearly in Romans 2:28 and 29 that these are not the true Jews. As you can see that is an extremely unpopular verse of scripture in many churches. Of course I added the word “True” before Jews in order to introduce a qualifier or an adjective to distinguish one kind of Jew from another kind of Jew spoken of in the Bible. So you may not totally agree with my adjective, “True”. You see God calls them that have been circumcised inwardly of the heart and the spirit to be the “real” Jew. God does the inward circumcision in man’s spirit and this is a fact whether you are male or female in the natural realm. What God does in the spirit realm is the Real Deal and everything else that man does is just a temporary patterned type of the real.
When God says something is “inward” and describes this in relationship to the terms of “hearts” and “spirits”, God is revealing a world that we cannot normally see with our eyes. Unless God gives you a vision into the spiritual realm, you are limited to your natural perception of reality. You can of course learn about the spiritual realm of God, by correctly observing what God teaches us in the Bible. The Bible says that God is a Spirit (John 4:24), have you ever seen God? The Bible actually says no man has ever seen God (1 Jo 4:12). So God is speaking of a Spiritual Realm or Dimension that is different than the natural realm that we live in here. I would venture to say that there are many Christians in the world that must not know this.
So why did God give Israel the Law and all of these outward practices that they have done such a poor job at keeping? I believe one reason that God gave Israel the Law was to prove to man that he was incapable of keeping it. Meaning God recorded the law for man to see God’s level of expectations and His requirements to obtain or earn righteousness by works and no man has ever fulfilled these requirements, except for Jesus Christ.
Rom 2:25 For circumcision verily profiteth, if thou keep the law: but if thou be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision is made un circumcision.
We can again see in Romans that God declares that man could achieve righteousness of his own works if he was able to keep all of the law of God. But, since everyone has broken at least one law, God declares that you are guilty of breaking all of the law (James 2:10) So as a result of breaking the law, God says your outward physical circumcision has been rendered useless, you have become like the un-circumcision. So apparently the fact that you are circumcised in your flesh has been superseded by a spiritual requirement that you were not aware of.
Act 7:51 Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye.
These are the words of Stephen speaking to the natural Jews on trial for his life as witnesses came before the elders and priests and lied to them about the words of Stephen. God further confirms that those who are judging Stephen are not the True Jews that God is looking for. God did not care about their fleshly signs of the Covenant of Old. God was using Stephen to look into their hearts and see that their spirits needed this circumcision done by God’s hands. You do understand that both Stephen and Paul were circumcised in their flesh and they counted this as unimportant. I guess I should change that, they saw a need for a greater circumcision done by God to be more important than that which was done by the hands of men. You can also learn that this circumcision involves your ears also. Did you know your spirit is connected to your ears? The Bible says “Faith comes by hearing”. Faith is a spiritual force and a factor that comes from hearing the truth of God’s Word. The truth can be easily rejected, as evidenced by the number of denominations in the Christian body. Evidently part of God’s circumcision results in the ability to hear the truth. Men can still choose to reject it and thus we have such a vast array of writings about what the truth is.
Col 2:11 In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ:
This is another verse that declares the church to be the “circumcision” made without the hands of men. This of course is a spiritual circumcision done by God. This verse informs us that God has cut off the body of the sins of the flesh. What is this talking about? Just because we become a born again believer in Christ, we still have the same body that we did before we were saved. So God must be talking about something symbolically that occurred within us that has not occurred in those in the world. If you do not know what I am talking about, I would be concerned that I am not saved. You see Christians should be becoming more and more spiritually aware as they grow in Christ.
Rom 8:16 The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spiriit, that we are the children of God:
God is a Spirit and if you are born again the Spirit of God has now come into your spirit on the inside of you and He now is the witness to the fact that you are a child of God. Isn’t that what this verse is saying? Apparently according to this verse, Christians are suppose to be spiritually alive and aware. If you have become more aware of spiritual things and less aware of natural things, then you are a Real Christian. If you have more concern with things about your body, than you do with your spirit, I would be very concerned. God gives us a fact that the circumcision of the body is a removal of the dominance of the flesh that every non-believer still experiences. People in the world are more concerned with how they feel and how you make them feel than they are about you personally. This becoming spiritually aware is the circumcision of the body from the spirit of man done by God. God gives you the ability to focus on what is more important. God gives you the ability to focus on eternal things more than the temporary things of this world.
2Co 4:18 While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.
What are these things that you can see being referenced in this verse? You can see your face in the mirror, you can see your food on your plate. You can see the house that you live in. You can see the car that you drive to name a few things that God said that are not that important. What are the things that you cannot see that God said were eternal? If your body is not eternal and God said you are, then you must be a spirit being that will live forever somewhere. Within the body of every human being is a spirit being that will exist somewhere forever. God is a Spirit and He will live forever. Every spiritual being is eternal. Did you know that the only thing that you will take with you to heaven or to hell is your experiences and memories on the earth. You will get a new body eventually, but that is not the body you have now. So what are the eternal things that you should be concerned with? I believe it is your job to get as many of your friends saved as you can. I believe it is your job to tell everyone that you can about Jesus and what He has done for them. These are the eternal things that you can take with you. Thank you for reading my Bible study on the circumcision done by the hands of God.
The Book of Ruth, Types and Shadows Revealed
(Ver 2.1) This is “Part 5” in a series of essential Bible lessons on “Understanding the Book of Ruth”. We have explored a lot of information, but have conceivably left out a lot of information at the same time. It is almost impossible to fully cover any subject in the Bible, because no one knows everything about the subjects in the Bible, except for God. I am a firm believer that God created this book of the Bible with an infinite number of thoughts and ideas, words and phrases, subjects and topics that are so well connected that it near impossible to discover them all in a human lifetime. I have already given you a significant amount of evidence that the type of Ruth appears to correspond to the spiritual characteristics of the church of Jesus Christ called His bride. We have also seen evidence that Boaz appears to be a type and “the” pattern representative of the spiritual savior and kinsman redeemer named Jesus Christ, the Son of God. There are a lot of Christians who do not understand these hidden types found within the Old Testament patterns. There are even some preachers who teach against these symbols being Christ and the church. I have heard several internet bloggers and teachers that attempt to convince us that the natural nation of Israel represents Ruth as the Bride of Christ. The claim proposes that only natural Israel can represent the woman Ruth who will be married to Jesus. These teachers further claim that since the Bible says the Church is the Body of Christ, they also call the church the husband to Israel. What they do is take one truth found in the New Testament and fail to balance it with other truths correctly. That is a major problem for the source of confusion.
I am saddened how people can be so ignorant and come up with such wild and crazy theological theories. These types of theories have such broad holes of contradictions within them and these can be easily seen if desired. But people do this and Satan enjoys the confusion that is caused in the church. Opinions and theories like these, do not hold water when analyzed correctly using the Bible. If you have not read this series of lessons from the beginning I would suggest that you go back and start with “Part 1“.
First of all, we need to remember that Ruth was a Gentile and that is obviously the first problem with this erroneous interpretation of Israel being the bride of Christ. A gentile by definition is not a natural Jew or a descendant of natural Israel. Ruth was a Moabite and a descendent of Lot, Abraham’s relative, but clearly clearly Ruth did not descend from Abraham. While reading the book of Ruth it is very challenging to see and know everything about what applies and how they apply to each of the given types and shadows. God selected truthful natural events, peoples and places in the Bible to represent future spiritual patterns that have or will occur in the future. However, the natural people, places and events do not always fit exactly and perfectly with what we know at this time. So it becomes difficult for some to understand how they all fit completely together. Much like a shadow being cast on the ground by the bright sunshine, a natural object makes a recognizable pattern on the ground, and so it is with Bible types and shadows also. The spiritual shadows found in the natural things of the Old Testament Bible leaves out most of the details of the coming spiritual reality that is causing the shadow. This is just how Bible types and shadows work by God’ design. Shadows always represent broad strokes of truth with a limited direct set of all of the details. But God is very wise and kind to insert enough clues to teach us how they are representative of the real spiritual realm. I hope we all understand this concept going forward. At the minimum please understand a lot of the details were omitted by God on purpose to both conceal and reveal the truth simultaneously. The fact that we do not know everything, we are blessed and should be thankful to God for our ability to see the parts that were revealed to us. Thank you LORD!
Let’s start today’s lesson by listing the primary themes and patterns that are found in the book of Ruth. I will list these in no particular order, and give you a brief description of what I believe they mean and then we will look at how to apply them.
|
Themes Found in the Book of Ruth |
Description |
| Life and Death | Elimilech and his sons all die after leaving Bethlehem. Death is said to be a separating force from the living. Thus represents the end of a covenant/marriage between a husband and wife as is said in many marriage vows, “until death do we part”. Therefore, Death is also the simultaneous ending of two in unity and the beginning of the problem of needing someone to be the answer/redeemer that can only come from someone that is living (Rom 7:1-4). |
| Families | One major theme of the entire book. Ruth is the story of one family’s struggle with life’s difficult circumstances and how a close relative comes to redeem and save them to create an heir so that the family’s name would not be erased without an heir. |
| Hunger and Famine | A lack of food that causes people to do things that they would not normally do under better circumstances. |
| Widowhood | God’s legal separation for a marriage covenant between a wife and her husband (Rom 7:1-4). |
| The Law | The plans and rules of God based upon His wisdom to help man learn their need for a redeemer. |
| Faith and Faithfulness | Faith is believing in something is true even when it looks like it is not true. Faithfulness is remaining loyal to someone or something even though it does not look like the best choice at the time. |
| Humility | The opposite of pride. A humble person always obtains the favor and the grace of God. |
| Wheat Harvests | A crop of intentionally planted seeds. |
| Passover | A specific time of the season for remembrance and the partaking of a covenant meal. |
| Near Kinsman | A relative that is living who is legally qualified and required by law to become our redeemer. |
| Love | The central theme of all the Bible. |
| Grace | That which is given to us freely, even though we do not deserve it. We partake of God’s grace by our faith. |
| Redemption | The act of restoring one’s former sold possessions back into your legal ownership. |
| Marriage | A covenant between a man and a woman. The two shall become one flesh! |
| Children | The primary reason for redemption of the dead brother. A redeemer would marry the dead brother’s wife and have a child. This child would be raised up as the dead brother’s heir of his property. Therefore, this child would keep alive the name of the dead. |
In reading through my list of the primary themes found in the book of Ruth, I hope that you can begin to see how they fit into the spiritual picture of Christ and the church.
Now let’s list the primary people and places found in the book of Ruth and see if we can determine who they possibly represent by looking at the definition of their names from the Strong’s concordance.
|
Name |
Definition of the Name |
| Elimilech | God of the King |
| Naomi | Pleasant |
| Mahlon | Sick |
| Chilion | Pinning destruction |
| Ruth | Friend |
| Orpah | Mane, back of the neck |
| Boaz | Unknown Root Word of unknown Meaning |
| Obed | Servant |
| Mara | Bitter |
| Bethlehem | House of Bread |
| Moab | The Mother’s Father |
BETHLEHEM
These are most of the primary characters and places revealed to us in the book of Ruth. As you can tell by reviewing the list, we still have a lot to learn. Let’s start near the end of the list first with BethlehemJudah. Places are often times used in the Bible to signify a spiritual state or a realm of existence. BethlehemJudah as it is called in verse 1 of Ruth chapter 1 is like the key place where the descendants of the tribe of Judah lived. When Joseph and Mary were about to have the baby Jesus, they were required by decree to go to Bethlehem, because they were of the lineage and descents of King David who came from the House of Judah. Because of this royal command of a census they were required to travel to their home city to pay their tax. Thus Jesus was born in the exact prophesied location (Micah 5:2), even though his parents did not live there. That was a very tricky thing for God to accomplish. If you recall, the Jews thought Jesus was from Nazareth and thus missed the coming of their Messiah. We can conclude or at least assume that the story of Ruth is related to Jesus, because of this given specific location.
Most of the time, the names of people and places in the Bible have meanings attached to them. Many times these names help to reveal the characteristics and types of the spiritual realm entity that they represent. Often times the meaning of names reveals clues that are definitely important to understanding the meaning of the typology in the story. Judah is a Hebrew word that means several things and has vast implications attached to it. Judah comes from a word that means “to throw with your hands”, it also has implications of reverence and worship as in to “praise”. In other words to “worship” with “extended hands”. Bethlehem as we have already seen means “the house of bread”. We can see that the word “house” means a family of relatives. The term bread means “food for the implied life and strength of men”. Are you seeing anything that sounds familiar? Jesus said He was the bread of life (John 6:48). So we must be talking about the family of God in this story of Ruth. This would mean that Judah represents the people who praise God, who are part of the city and the family of God.
MOAB
Moab is of course much more difficult to get people to see, because they have really given it no thought or deep study. Moab was the incestuous son of Lot and his daughter. Moab the son of Lot was also a half-brother to his mother. Moab was both the son of Lot and the grandson of Lot and all of this just complicates things. The term Moab means “the mother’s father”. The region of Moab was where Elimilech traveled when he thought there was no food (bread) in Bethlehem. These Moabites were Gentile people who were not in covenant with God and were not the children of Abraham. So we can see that this has an implied meaning of those outside of the family of God. This could be representative of the unsaved world and the all the people in it. Ruth of course was a Moabitish woman and therefore came from the realm of the unsaved to be married in covenant with the Savior and her redeemer. Moab is mentioned more than 100 times in the Bible and most of the time it is not a positive place or reference. Moab is usually a better place to be from than a place to be living in now. We can understand this is a picture of the Bride of Christ. Those who have come out of their Moab and now live in the House of God’s Bread of Life. The type of the church is a very good picture of those who have come out of false gods, to know the true living God. Ruth is a great type of this picture and I believe this is why God put her in this book of the Bible.
RUTH
The name “Ruth” means “a friend”. Jesus picked up on this in the book of John and revealed to us the connection when speaking to His disciples:
Joh 15:15 Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.
Jesus clearly speaking to the future church calls them His friends. Do you think this was an accident or a coincidence that Jesus did this? I definitely do not think so. I believe it is a clue that represents His connection to the book of Ruth and helps to identify the symbolic reference to the bride of the redeemer. We know that Ruth exemplified certain qualities in the Bible that are related to those of the church today. The primary quality that qualifies Ruth as a type of the church is “faith”. Ruth trusted in a God she did not yet know and God came through for her above and beyond all of her expectations. Next, the quality of “faithfulness”. Faithfulness is related to faith, but yet still different. To be faithful to your spouse is what Ruth was to Naomi and eventually to Boaz. The third quality of Ruth that qualifies her for the type of the church is “humility”. The true church should be humble in their attitudes and come with respect and reverence towards their Savior and Redeemer. Humility is the opposite to pride, and pride was the downfall of Lucifer. By remaining humble before God we are qualified to receive the grace of God.
I want to add a fourth quality. Ruth trusted completely in a religion and a people that were not her people. As sinners we are not in the family of God. We were born naturally as uncircumcised (not in covenant) with God people. But Ruth saw something in this family that was different than how she was raised and she followed her mother-in-law into this path of becoming a part of her family. The Jewish family of Naomi became her family. How does this pattern fit the church? We should know by reading the New Testament that the New Covenant began with only Jewish people. The 12 disciples were Jewish, the 120 in the upper room in Acts 2 were all Jewish, the apostle Paul was Jewish, etc. So when God moved to save the Gentiles, they all had to trust what these Jewish people were telling them was true. Wow, I think that is amazing. I thank God for the Jewish people that spread the message of Good News to everyone in the world.
BOAZ
Boaz has a name that has no direct definition attached using Strong’s definitions. But the BDB (Brown-Driver-Briggs) says it means “fleetness” and the NASEC says it means “quickness”. This appears to indicate a person who is fast in motion, reaction or response. But, I believe the best description of Boaz comes from his personal title descriptions. These seem to help us identify his spiritual position within the story in precision. We saw earlier that Boaz was called the Kinsman Redeemer. That means a near relative who has the legal ability and responsibility to redeem. That is exactly what Jesus is. Jesus left heaven and became a man just like one of us. Because of Jesus’ unselfish acts of kindness and love we have an unmerited opportunity for salvation made available to us.
Tit 2:14 Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.
We can clearly see in the N.T. that it talks of Jesus being the redeemer of the church. He has bought us out of a situation that we could not solve ourselves. This was exactly Ruth’s situation in the O.T. As you recall Ruth was from Moab and we have found that this represents the unsaved natural world.
1Co 6:20 For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.
The church is said to have been bought with a price and we have become His property from the purchased price of His shed blood. This is exactly the pattern of the transaction that took place in the book of Ruth. Boaz redeemed the property of his dead brother and also bought the woman Ruth to be his wife in the transaction. This is what God did, and it was God’s idea, God’s plan for redemption, and God’s system of salvation. To humans it does not make much sense, but to those who can see , it is a great and wise plan. Boaz is called a near relative, Jesus you could say was our near relative. Because Jesus became a man, like one of us, that qualifies Jesus to be our redeemer. Boaz demonstrated love, kindness, grace and extends favor to his future bride when she is unable to do anything to save herself. This is also a perfect picture of Christ and the Church. By Grace are we Saved through Faith.
The Marriage of Boaz the Jewish Brother to Ruth the Gentile
While the Bible is very complex, it does present us some clues to the relationship of Jesus and the church. There are specific verses found in the Bible that declare the Gentiles will trust in the coming Messiah. Ruth obviously trusted in Boaz enough to lay by his feet on the threshing floor. Ruth put her confidence in her redeemer and this was a picture of church to Christ.
Isa 42:6 I the LORD have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thine hand, and will keep thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles;
This verse in Isaiah is referring to Jesus Christ, who is the picture of Boaz. In relationship to Jesus, He is mentioned to be the “Light of the Gentiles”. We can easily see how this fits with the picture of Ruth. So while the name Ruth is not directly mentioned in the Bible, the type of Ruth is mentioned in verses like these that I am giving you. Here is another one that is applicable:
Isa 11:10 And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be glorious.
The Root of Jesse is again a reference to Jesus Christ our redeemer. The reference is given to us in this verse that the Ruths of the world will seek after Him. In reading the story of Ruth, you notice that Ruth goes from a poor widow field laborer to a woman married to one of the richest men in the city. Do you think Boaz’s rest was good for Ruth? How does the wealth of Jesus compare to that of Boaz’s money and possessions?
Mat 12:21 And in his name shall the Gentiles trust.
Speaking of Jesus, in Matthew, the Gentiles put their confidence in Him. This is the church to their redeemer. Isaiah 11:10 is also quoted in Romans 15:12 and declares that the Gentiles have put their trust in their Boaz. The Bible tells us in John 3:16 that “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son….”. We could say it in another way also, that “God so loved Ruth from Moab that he gave His Boaz to redeem us…” and all I did was change the names to the symbolic names found in the Book of Ruth. We can easily see that Boaz was motivated by love when he did what he did for Ruth and Naomi. Because of Ruth’s faith towards God she is now the wife of the savior and redeemer. A marriage in the Bible is a covenant in the eyes of God and a covenant is a marriage. You can see this revelation clearly by examining verses found in Jeremiah31:32 and Malachi 2:14 to name a couple of the obvious verses that you can find and read in the Bible. So far the picture of Ruth as the church and bride fits with other verses in the Bible that state Jesus is the bridegroom (John 3:29, Revelation 21:9).
ELIMILECH
Elimilech is a very specific Hebrew name that means a very specific thing. The name “Elimilech” means “God of the King”. Right there is where the difficulty begins for most Christians. That is a Hebrew word that has the name of God “Elohiym” joined to the Hebrew word for “King”. This of course has widespread implications written on it everywhere. As you recall from the book of Ruth, Elimilech dies. So who in the Bible is the “God of the King”? David was a popular King in the Bible and the God of King David was “Elohiym”. But I do not believe David is the correct answer for who this represents.
Maybe we should start with who is the real King? Our King is said to be Jesus Christ. Jesus is called the King of kings (Rev 19:16, Rev 17:14). David was told by God that one of his descendants would sit upon the throne forever as eternal King. Jesus also qualifies as a Son of David for this position. So we can fairly easily conclude that Jesus is the King. Who is the God of Jesus? You can begin to see the challenge starting to get much deeper now and much harder to understand. We all should know that Jesus was God and there is none beyond or above Him. The God of the Bible is the only true and living God. We can begin to see glimpses into the complexity of God’s manifested and revealed natures and personalities. There is God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost and yet these three are all still One God.
So anyway, Elimilech must represent our Creator God the Father, just using the name’s definition. But how is this possible? It is technically not possible for God a Spirit (Jn 4:24) to die, however if God does not personally die for our sins, our sins are not forgiven. Thus, we have a paradox and a puzzle presented to us from the Bible. Jesus Christ was the Son of God, yet at the same time He was still God in the flesh (2 Cor 5:19). We also know that Jesus said, “When you have seen me you have seen the Father” (Jn 14:9). Therefore, whatever happened to Jesus, happened to God. This is just basic logic using the verses that we have covered. If Satan and the Jews hang Jesus Christ on a cross, they are hanging God himself on the cross. Do you remember what Jesus said in a parable about killing the “heir” (Luke 20:14)? Jesus tells of a field that has been let out to a husbandman and the owner of the field sends servants to collect of the fruit, but they come away empty. Now, finally the owner of the field sends his son, saying they will respect him, but they do not, instead they kill him because he is the heir of the property that hey do not own but are using temporarily. By killing the Son of God, they think they have possessed the inheritance. Instead, they have sealed their fate.
It is important to note that Elimilech in this story represents God who dies. Through His death a redeemer is now required to save the property that He had owned. The Redeemer is of course also God and His name is Jesus Christ. Do remember what Romans 7:1-4 teaches us? Paul writing to Jewish people in these verses because they know the law, tells them they are under the bondage to the LAW and their covenant with God the Father until He dies. Then in verse 4 Paul gives them the good news (Gospel), that they are now freed from that law because of the death of Jesus on the cross. But, by Jesus having died, the Old Covenant was terminated for everyone that accepts God’s New Covenant righteousness by faith in His risen from the dead “Son” (Rom 4:13). Now the Jewish people bound to the law were legally free to enter into another marriage covenant with someone and Paul informs us this should be the Risen from the Dead LORD JESUS CHRIST. Wow, this should cause a lot of new light to begin to shine within your spirit.
NAOMI
Naomi is called “Pleasant” by the meaning of her name. Since she is married to Elimilech who represent God the Father, then we can conclude very easily that Naomi is an allegorical representation of the people in the natural Nation of Israel and those that were under the law of Moses. Naomi represents the Old Covenant relationship with God. Israel was the female wife of the Old Testament God of Abraham (Jer 31:32). She knows the law and uses the law to try to obtain her righteousness by works. In the book of Ruth Naomi is the mother-in-law to Ruth and she tells her what to do based upon her knowledge of the law to get her redeemer. This again is an exact picture of the early church. Do you realize that the only Bible the early church had was the Old Testament? Jesus taught exclusively from the text from these O.T. books. Peter taught from the O.T. in the book of Acts. The New Testament contains a whole bunch of quotes from the Old Testament. What God did was finally reveal the true meaning of the Old Testament to the church. Before, the church came along the O.T. was a giant spiritual puzzle of information that no man could understand. However, the New Testament is written largely from the revelation given to Paul and the other apostles about the things that explain what the O.T. really means. However, it also gives us a pattern that God can still hide more information for us to discover, even today.
Jer 31:32 Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD:
As you can clearly see in this scripture written in Jeremiah, God says that His Old Covenant was a marriage to the people of natural Israel. God is said to be their husband, they are implied to be the wife. We can therefore conclude that this is a revealed pattern of the coming New Covenant also. If one covenant was a marriage, the other covenant is also a marriage. The first is to a natural people, and the New is to a spiritual people.
So Naomi was married to Elimilech and Israel was married to Elohim (God). Naomi became a widow after her husband died, and so did Israel. So it still is a little bit difficult to understand, I know. We know that Ruth is faithful to Naomi and this seems to be a perfect picture of the Church’s continued faithfulness to the nation of Israel even today. It seems that the whole world wants to destroy the nation of Israel, except for a few that are controlled by a predominate Christian presence. The hatred towards the nation of Israel is extremely unique among all nations. I do not recall any other nation being so easily maligned and attacked in so many different ways. It is noteworthy to mention that the nation of Israel receives support from the Christians of the world and this is a picture of Ruth. Just as Naomi benefited from Ruth’s marriage to Boaz, Israel benefits from the church’s marriage to Jesus Christ. However, it is still important to note that Boaz was not married to Naomi, only Ruth was in covenant with Boaz and this is how the New Covenant is today also. Jesus Christ, the risen Son of God is in covenant with the Church and not natural Israel. Israel can receive benefits from the church’s relationship, but they are required to be born again and join the same church for salvation as everyone else. The Bible says that Israel is being provoked to “jealousy” (Rom 10:19). What makes you jealous? What makes women jealous? Other women make women jealous. Jealousy occurs when someone has something that you do not have. The church now has a better covenant with God, that Israel does not have anymore and this is the point of jealousy.
Rom 9:25 As he saith also in Osee, I will call them my people, which were not my people; and her beloved, which was not beloved.
God prophecies something in Hosea that is very profound and reveals the coming jealousy of Israel. Israel who were God’s people are now said not to be God’s people. Yes or No? Of course that is what it says, whether you like it or not. The nation of natural Israel who was the beloved wife of God, is now not the wife of God. These are physical vs. spiritual truths being presented to us. God is saying that I will make a New Covenant with a people that were not my people and now they will become my New Covenant spiritual people and my new beloved wife. This is the picture of Ruth and Boaz given to us in this story of love and redemption.
Death and Marriage
Now let’s examine a new aspect that the Bible talks about that maybe you have not seen before. If you recall I said earlier that death was a legal separation of marriages. That means when Ruth’s husband died she was now free to marry another man without retribution or the accusation of adultery. This is a Bible principle and a law found in the Bible that I refer to as the “Law of Marriage”. This is what Jesus says about the subject:
Mat 19:9 And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.
These are the words of God himself and they tell you exactly what God thinks about people’s wrong attitudes in the world today. I believe the divorce rate within the church is up to around 50% and that is crazy. So what does this have to do with the story of Ruth, you ask? This is what it has to do with the story of Ruth:
Rom 7:2 For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband.
In this chapter of Roman God is discussing marriage covenants and He says that a woman is bound to her covenant husband by the established law of God (Gen 2:24). If you recall in Genesis 2, when God created woman (Eve), she came from the body of her husband Adam. God then gave us the law of marriage. “A husband shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall be one flesh”. So just because you get a divorce that does not solve the “one flesh” part of God’s covenant arrangement. As you can see in Romans 7:2 the wife is joined to her husband as long as he is alive. But, since Ruth’s husband was dead that changes everything. Let’s keep reading in Romans:
Rom 7:3 So then if, while her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if her husband be dead, she is free from that law; so that she is no adulteress, though she be married to another man.
So a woman who divorces her husband and marries another man is called an adulterer. So what does this have to do with Ruth, well you have to just read the next verse in Romans to find that out:
Rom 7:4 Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.
In this chapter of Romans, God is speaking directly to the natural Jews and not the Gentiles. Why is that important? Because the natural Jews were the people that were married to God in the Old Covenant and if they now wanted to be married in covenant with another man while their first husband was still living, they would be in adultery. This is of course a very difficult thing to think about. God is a spiritual being and it is impossible to kill a spiritual being. That is why God became a natural and mortal man. By becoming a natural human man, God can now experience death (Heb 2:14). As you can see in Romans 7:4 it says very clearly that because Jesus died, they (Jews that know the law) are now legally free to “marry” another husband. This is a picture of the risen Jesus and the New Covenant. Did you realize that the New Covenant is with the Risen from the dead Jesus and not with the natural Jesus who walked the face of the earth as a natural human mortal male? Did you realize that this is an important fact to know?
The risen from the dead Lord Jesus is an eternal being and now a manifested permanent member of the Godhead. So the difference between Jesus the natural man and the risen Jesus, is that the natural man was born of a woman as a mortal man who could die and the risen Jesus was born of the Spirit cannot die anymore. The risen Jesus was born of the Spirit and He is the Immortal God Man. There are some big differences between the two. In Hebrews 13:20 God informs us that Jesus was raised from the dead in order to implement an everlasting covenant marriage. This statement has staggering implications that other covenants not implement by the same Power of God are potentially not everlasting. In fact Jesus claims in John 14:6 that He is the way, the truth and the life and no one comes to the Father except by and through Him. Wow, that is an amazing statement. This would seem to imply angelic beings as well as every human on the planet, past present and future.
I know that Jesus our savior we have a covenant with Him alone. I also know that He was God in the flesh, but yet He was not God in His full Omnipotent Powers, or it would have been impossible to kill Him. Jesus was a man that was able to be killed and that is not God in His FULL Deity Power. So did God die? If God did not experience death then you and I will soon have to experience it and we won’t like the end results. We know that “through death he (Jesus) destroyed him that had the power of death (Satan)” (Heb 2:14). So it is important to note that Jesus died physically and through his death he accomplished many positive things for us. Thank you Jesus
The Coming Wheat Harvest
This story of Ruth is a natural example of a spiritual truth that has occurred and is occurring already in the spiritual realm. We the church are gleaning and gathering in the harvest of God’s spiritual crop of people in the world which is God’s harvest field.
Jas 5:7 Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.
You see in the book of Ruth, the woman works the field to bring in a ripe crop. This is all typological to the story of the Church reaping the harvest of God’s precious fruit that He is still waiting patiently for. There will come a time when the harvest is over and that is a day of grave consequences for many, yet that is the reality of God. Jesus told us in Matthew 9:37 that the “harvest is truly plenteous but the laborers are few”. God is of course not talking about a natural harvest, but a spiritual harvest of people. Jesus taught numerous things about spiritual things, using crops, fields, seeds and laborers. You should go and study all of these and see how they relate to the story of Ruth. I believe you will find them very important to know.
The Nearer Kinsman Redeemer
I would like us to look at the “unnamed” man in the story of Ruth that is referred to as the nearer kinsman redeemer. It will be good for us to stop and understand what the meaning of a “Nearer Kinsman” is defined to be in the Bible. This term “nearer” is referring to the eldest living relative, and most of the time refers to a male that is a related blood brother by birth. We learn this concept in several examples of the Bible. For instance, reading the story Judah and his three sons in Genesis 38. This eldest son Er was given a wife named Tamar, but he died before having children. The next eldest son was given the dead firstborn son’s wife next. He refused to have children by her because it would ruin his inheritance. He died and now the youngest son would have the final chance, but he was not given to her. Tamara seeing this, dresses as a prostitute and has intercourse with Judah the father of her husband. She becomes pregnant and because of this the blood line of Jesus remained intact.
Another nearer kinsman example is found when Jewish religious leaders ask Jesus a question to test Him about the resurrection (Mat 22:22-28). In this test, they create a story of 7 brothers who all share the same woman as wife. Each died without creating a child and then they ask which husband will be married to the woman after the resurrection, since all had her? This again teaches us that the Jewish people who knew the law understood the law of redemption. Each brother from the eldest firstborn, to the last youngest would have married the same woman to raise a family heir. They would have accomplished this responsibility in the order of birth, from eldest to youngest.
The parallel example of the eldest to youngest near relative takes place in Chapter 4 of Ruth beginning at verse 1. It might be good for you to go and reread it to see the details given to us by God. Boaz goes to the gate of the city. This represents the place of government and business. Boaz requests the elders of the city to witness what he must do. Then a man that Boaz recognizes comes by the gate and this is the nearer kinsman redeemer that has the first right of refusal to buy the land of Naomi. Boaz tells the nearer relative that he must buy the property of their brother Elimelech and if he does not, he will do his family responsibility to buy it. But Boaz also informs this nearer kinsman redeemer that he must also marry Ruth the Moabite gentile to raise up a seed for the dead brother. This when the nearer kinsman informs everyone that this will “mar” his inheritance.
The Hebrew word H7843 that is translated as “mar” literally means to “ruin”. This nearer kinsman redeemer believed that by him taking this dead brother’s inheritance it would cause him to lose his own birthright. It is a very interesting problem. When is the first time this situation occurs in the Old Testament? It happens to occur in Genesis 38. In Genesis 38 God describes the story of Judah, his wife and his 3 sons. Judah arranges a marriage for his firstborn son and her name is Tamar. The firstborn son’s name is Er and he died without having any children with Tamar. Judah then gives Tamar to be the next in line kinsman brother named Ono. But this son is just like the nearer redeemer in Ruth and refuses to have a child with Tamar because he would be raising up seed for his dead brother and not for himself. Onan finds displeasure with God for this act, and he dies. There is a third son named Shelah and he is too young for Tamar, and she is asked by Judah to wait until he is old enough to become his wife. But this never happens. It would appear that Judah fears to lose this son also by marrying him to Tamar.
Now we get to Tamar’s righteous deception again. She tricks Judah into thinking she was a prostitute, and she has Judah’s children. One of these twins becomes the continuation of the family line that produces Jesus the Lion from the tribe of Judah. Wow, this child for the dead was the one that carried the family line forward for Christ. Wow! Ok, what do you see in all of this typology? Remember that Ruth was a Gentile that became pregnant to carry on the same family lineage for Christ. Notice, how the Hebrew word that is translated as “daughter-in-law” in the book of Ruth is the same word used in Genesis 38 for Tamar. This is God connecting them together by His word selection, family lineage and repeated pattern. It is important to see the patterns being repeated with the parallels and similarities in these two stories.
Who could this nearer kinsman redeemer represent in our Bible typology examination? I see him as a mystery in the puzzle since he is unnamed. This is a very challenging spiritual person to solve. I have learned to observe what Satan is attempting to deceive us with in the church and the world. By carefully observing Satan’s plans to distract, discount and discourage us from believing in what the Bible teaches us, he causes people to have doubt like Eve. “Has God really said?” One thing I have seen is there has been a satanic agenda that has been extended in the world to try to get people to believe that Jesus our Lord and Savior (God in the Flesh) had physical children on the earth while He was in His mortal human body. The accusation is made that Jesus had a physical relationship with Mary Magdalene and she gave him natural children upon the earth that are still existing today. Wow, this is such nonsense. But it became a huge movie in 2003.
So why would the mortal Jesus not want to take a natural wife and create His own family on the earth? The answer is simply because this was NOT the plan of God. We need to go and read Romans 7:4 again. This verse reveals that the marriage covenant with the church is with the Risen from the Dead LORD Jesus Christ. This is so very important to know. The Risen LORD is now fully deity absent of mortal flesh. He can then legally send His Spirit to live on the inside of each of us (His Body & Bride). This is one of the main reasons why Satan would have never crucified the LORD of Glory (1 Cor 2:8).
We will end this section with this information that is new to many Christians. Why did Jesus say a man must be born again to enter into the kingdom of heaven? Did Jesus include Himself in this statement or was he implied to be excluded in the statement because of His sinless life? I believe the statement was ALL inclusive and Jesus spoke of Himself prophesying His destiny to be God’s “FIRST” chosen Son and Heir. You see in Colossians 1:18 where Jesus was called by God to be the “FIRSTBORN from the dead”. God then tells us very clearly why this planned choice took place. God says He was born “first from the dead” in order to give Him “preeminence”. What does that mean? This Greek word G4409 means the first in rank and order.
God is teaching us that before Jesus was the first born from the dead, he was not the first in the order of rank or “preeminence”. Ok, now we are getting somewhere good. Boaz was not first in order when it came to his kinsman redeemer status to marry Ruth. So, they went to another to legalize the purchase of Naomi’s land and the marriage of Ruth. Because natural Jesus refused to make any covenants this indicates there could have been others that were above Him in rank or order that had the right of first refusal to covenant with the church. I believe this could have been Lucifer aka Satan. But the time to rejoice is Satan thought this would cause him to lose his legal inheritance in heaven. Of course that was my opinion and I am still looking to confirm this in the Word of God. It is interesting that most humans and many Christians do not believe in a devil! Let us wrap this section up.
Nevertheless, since Jesus is now “preeminent over and will always remain this way, every other spiritual being that came before Him has been eliminated from claims to us. The church now has their legal kinsman redeemer that will allow us to live forever (Jn 3:16) and have a marriage covenant that will not cease (Heb 13:20). Praise the LORD!
The Heir of the Dead
This was the book of Ruth and while we did not attempt to go into every detail or every type given, I gave you enough details to get you started. I will leave you with this thought. If Ruth does represent the church and Boaz represents the Risen Jesus Christ. Why did Boaz marry Ruth? The primary purpose and responsibility of every kinsman redeemer is to raise up an heir for the dead. So how does this apply to the main story characters: God, Israel, Jesus, and the Church?
Boaz has a son through the Gentile woman Ruth, they called this son Obed, which means “God’s servant”. Who died? God died, Adam died, Jesus died to name a few obvious choices and candidates. Jesus the eternal God Man now resolves two primary spiritual and natural patterns. By Jesus’ death on the cross, God is now free from every previous covenant relationship, whether this was Israel, Adam, or Satan. By the Risen Jesus establishing a New Covenant that is said to be better, man’s eternal separation from God has also been resolved, if you want to receive it. In the Book of Ruth, Ruth has a child that is the heir of the dead man’s family. If Jesus is the husband and the church is the bride, you have to see that Jesus will have a spiritual child through His new covenant bride/wife. This child has to be the Spirit of God, since the church is a spiritual woman and Jesus said that which is born of spirit is spirit (John 3:6). So we can see that the church must be going to have a child some day that will become the heir to everything that is or was in the spiritual and natural realms and the ownership of both of these realms will revert completely and totally back to God forever. We can see a prophetic view of this coming pregnant woman and her child in Revelation 12. From this point forward in Revelation God reveals the end and the demise of Satan’s future and decrees Satan’s destiny from the heavenly Judicial system using the law of God. This of course is all new stuff, so I anticipate it will be difficult for you to accept until you learn more. I would recommend that you not throw it away, just because it is new and different. At least study it and see if it is true. Thanks for studying the Book of Ruth with me. God Bless.
The Book of Ruth, The Man with a Shoe Loose and The Marriage of the Bride! Chapter 4
(Ver 1.1) We are now in chapter 4 of the book of Ruth. If you have not been reading this series from the beginning you should go back and start with “Part 1“. As you read chapter 3 of Ruth you should have noticed that Boaz tells Ruth that there is a closer relative than himself and he will have to see if the closer relative is willing to fulfill the law and marry her. You should remember that the law gave a specific order of precedence for the fulfillment of the requirement of the law. The order went from the closest or nearest relative to the most distant relative and always included the oldest male first down to the youngest male. So Boaz was not the first in the line of living relatives to marry Ruth according to the law of Moses. Therefore, Boaz in chapter 4 goes to the city gate and finds the nearer relative to discuss the situation with him. Boaz at this point must already know his intentions because Boaz has gathered the elders of the city to witness the discussion between himself and this closer relative.
Rth 4:3 And he said unto the kinsman, Naomi, that is come again out of the country of Moab, selleth a parcel of land, which was our brother Elimelech’s:
Boaz starts with the good news first. Naomi the widow of our dead brother, is come back and she is selling his property. So far this is a deal for any man that has money to buy it. To own land is a sign of wealth and to own a lot of land is a sign of great wealth. But, that was the good news and not the complete picture so here goes Boaz to explain what else is required.
Rth 4:4 And I thought to advertise thee, saying, Buy it before the inhabitants, and before the elders of my people. If thou wilt redeem it, redeem it: but if thou wilt not redeem it, then tell me, that I may know: for there is none to redeem it beside thee; and I am after thee. And he said, I will redeem it.
So Boaz before the witnesses of the elders of the city informs this relative that it is his responsibility and his decision to make. He then informs him that besides them, there are no other relatives that are able to redeem the land of Naomi. This means that they are all either dead or there were just no other living male relatives born in the family.
Rth 4:5 Then said Boaz, What day thou buyest the field of the hand of Naomi, thou must buy it also of Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of the dead, to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance.
Now Boaz starts in with the potential bad news. I guess it depends upon your point of view, but it is either good or bad based upon how it will affect you personally. Since Boaz was the younger brother in this relationship, it affects him differently than the older brother. Let’s think about this and how it affects each man. Boaz says that by buying the land from Naomi, they must also buy it from Ruth since she was married to the son of their brother. According to the law of Moses, this involves marrying the widow of the dead so that the family name is not removed from the face of the earth. Whatever son that Ruth and the redeemer has, becomes the heir of Elimelech ‘s land. You see it starts to get a little complicated at this point, since the future heir is now the owner of the dead family’s property, the relative that married the widow has no family or heir. I know this is not technically correct, but yet this is the way that these people viewed the situation. You can see that by the reaction of the closer relative to the news of marrying the widow Ruth.
Rth 4:6 And the kinsman said, I cannot redeem it for myself, lest I mar mine own inheritance: redeem thou my right to thyself; for I cannot redeem it.
Did you see what the nearer kinsman said? He told Boaz I can’t redeem this land or marry the widow, because it will mess up my inheritance. In other words everything that he is in line for and everything his heirs are in line for will revert to the dead brother’s family and he would end up with nothing, so he thinks. So the nearer kinsman tells Boaz, I won’t redeem it, so you redeem it. This is of course what Boaz wanted to hear happen, yet the process had to be followed in the law and the procedures must be satisfied in the eyes of God and all legal actions satisfied with the elders of the city who were the witnesses.
Rth 4:7 Now this was the manner in former time in Israel concerning redeeming and concerning changing, for to confirm all things; a man plucked off his shoe, and gave it to his neighbour: and this was a testimony in Israel.
Rth 4:8 Therefore the kinsman said unto Boaz, Buy it for thee. So he drew off his shoe.
As you can see, the nearer relative’s house is now called “the house of him who has his shoe loosed”. In the eyes of the law, Boaz has satisfied all requirements and responsibilities and is now free to legally marry Ruth. Boaz tells the elders and the people of the city that they are all witnesses to the fact that he has bought the property of Naomi and Ruth.
It might help you to understand what just happened based upon another story found in the Bible. In Genesis chapter 38 there is a story of another family who is directly related to our story. The story of the son of Israel named Judah. He has three sons and the firstborn is named, Er. When Er grows up big enough to marry, Judah gets him a wife named Tamar. Remember Tamar? The Bible says that Er was wicked in the eyes of God and so he died very young. Judah then told Er’s brother to take the dead brother’s wife and have an heir for his dead brother, the firstborn Er. But, the Bible says that Onan knew if he had sex with Tamar and had a child that it would be for his brother and he would not get anything. So Onan basically refused to fulfill his requirements and the Bible says that he was found to be evil in the eyes of the Lord and he also died young. So far not a good story, but yet this is how those in the Bible dealt with these matters. Judah tells the widow Tamar to wait for the third and last son to grow up and she would become his wife and then that son would raise up an heir for the dead firstborn. In the process of time, Tamar waits, but nothing happens. Apparently Judah was not a man of his word. Judah’s wife died and one day he went up to the city to do some business. Tamar hears about this and takes off her widow garments and dresses up like a prostitute, covers her face and waits for Judah to come by. She deceives Judah into having sex with her and she becomes pregnant. Judah did not have the payment for the sex, so he left her his signet ring, a bracelet and his staff as collateral security until the agreed payment could be sent to her.
Tamar was not there for the sex or the payment that was promised to her. She was there because Judah had not fulfilled what he had spoken to her and her dead husband, Judah’s firstborn had no heir to continue the family name. So even though her methods were not very admirable her intentions before God were highly commendable. So Judah eventually sends the payment back for the harlot that he could get back his collateral, but they could not find any prostitutes to pay.
Then time passes and three months later Judah is informed that Tamar has played the harlot and has become pregnant by harlotry. Judah is outraged and tells them to get her and she will be killed for her error. So she appears before Judah and tells him that before you do anything, I am guilty of nothing. Here is the father of my child and she shows him, his signet, bracelet and staff. Judah’s reaction is shock and immediately says she has been more righteous than him, because he had not given her to his younger son to be his wife. Like I said, this is not a great or a highly positive moral standard Bible story that you want to teach your children in Sunday School, yet it has great significance to the story in the book of Ruth. It helps to explain the dilemma that the nearer relative was experiencing. Tamar is also a name mentioned in the Genealogy of Jesus so it must have some relevance to something we need to know. If you search the Bible, you will discover that the term “daughter-in-law” is not widely used. In fact Tamar and Ruth are only two of four women in the Bible called by this title. So they are directly related and tied together meaning they share some commonalities that are very distinctive. As we continue through Ruth chapter 4 you will see why I went over this story.
Rth 4:10 Moreover Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of Mahlon, have I purchased to be my wife, to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance, that the name of the dead be not cut off from among his brethren, and from the gate of his place: ye are witnesses this day.
Boaz tells everyone to be witnesses to the fact that he has bought the land of the dead husband and he will marry the widow wife to raise up the name of the dead.
Rth 4:12 And let thy house be like the house of Pharez, whom Tamar bare unto Judah, of the seed which the LORD shall give thee of this young woman.
The people of the city now speak a blessing on the actions of Boaz. Did you notice the name of Tamar being mentioned? You see if it was not for the illicit actions of Tamar there would be no Bethlehem or people to witness these deeds of Boaz. There would be no elders of the city, there would be no Elimilech, in fact there would be no Boaz. Everyone present was a descendant of the house of Judah whom Tamar his daughter-in-law bore to him. All of these people recognized that they would not be present if it were not for Tamar and they could foresee that down the road in the future there would be many people born on this planet who would be grateful that Ruth was there to raise up and continue the family name of the tribe of Judah. In fact looking at the genealogy found in the Bible, if not for Ruth and Boaz, there would have been no King David and eventually no Jesus Christ.
Rth 4:15 And he shall be unto thee a restorer of thy life, and a nourisher of thine old age: for thy daughter in law, which loveth thee, which is better to thee than seven sons, hath born him.
Boaz fulfills the requirements of the law and marries one of the few women in the Bible that get mentioned by name in the genealogy of Jesus our Savior. Boaz is called the redeemer, the restorer of life. and a nourisher. These are all terms that could describe Jesus to us today. The story of Ruth is different than what many people think of when thinking of Jesus and the church. Yet it has many natural patterns in it that are very significant to this spiritual reality. In my next blog I will try to explore more of these patterns given to us in the Book of Ruth.
You can continue reading this series, by going to “Part 5“.
The Book of Ruth, The Marriage Proposal! Chapter 3
(Ver 1.1) We have already seen in chapter 2 where Ruth has found favor in the eyes of Boaz her potential kinsmen redeemer and she has even eaten with him in resemblance to a covenant type meal where they have shared bread. We can tell that Boaz likes this woman and grants her grace beyond all others. Naomi, Ruth’s mother-in-law knows the law and has recognized who Boaz is. In this next chapter we will see that God has orchestrated the answer to Ruth’s problems because of Ruth’s faith. God has answered her confidence in Him beyond her wildest imagination. It is amazing what trusting God a little can do. If you have not read the first part of this series I would suggest that you go back and start with “Part 1“. Now, let’s now look at chapter 3:
Rth 3:2 And now is not Boaz of our kindred, with whose maidens thou wast? Behold, he winnoweth barley to night in the threshingfloor.
Apparently, Naomi has some inside scoop on what Boaz is up to. Either Naomi is very nosy or Boaz has been dropping some clever clues in some obvious places. You figure out which one it is. Naomi knows that tonight Boaz will be working late in the threshing floor with the harvest. Of course all of this is symbolic and has meaning. Threshing in the Bible times was the harvest time activity by which the grain was removed from the husk. The husk represented the tares (or false grain) when it was separated from the actual usable good pieces of the plant. It really does not matter how this is done for this story, just the fact that it is being done is the part that is significant to what we need to know. If you study the words of Jesus you find that there is another coming harvest of people in the world in Matthew 13. Jesus informs us that the world is the field and that the wheat is the children of the kingdom of God. The tares are the children of the evil one. So we can see the Book of Ruth is prophetic in nature and speaking of something, an event that is coming soon. You should go and read Matthew 13 and find out the pattern of things to come. Then you will better understand the shadows contained in the book of Ruth.
Rth 3:3 Wash thyself therefore, and anoint thee, and put thy raiment upon thee, and get thee down to the floor: but make not thyself known unto the man, until he shall have done eating and drinking.
Obviously Naomi knows the law of Moses and tells Ruth to clean up herself really good and dress in her best garments and then to go to the threshing floor to meet Boaz. You can see that this is the picture of the church given to us in Revelation 19:7 where it says “his wife has made herself ready”. But, she tells her not to do anything until after he has eaten and finished drinking. It almost sounds like wait until the party is over and then do the following:
Rth 3:4 And it shall be, when he lieth down, that thou shalt mark the place where he shall lie, and thou shalt go in, and uncover his feet, and lay thee down; and he will tell thee what thou shalt do.
Here is where it gets complicated to understand. Maybe Naomi knows something I don’t, but Ruth is instructed to uncover Boaz’s feet and then to lay down and wait for him to wake up or return to a sober state and see what he has to say and then do what he says. The best that I have been able to figure out is that in Leviticus 18 God tells people not to uncover and make nude certain relatives for sexual purposes. God gives us a long list of individuals including your children and your grand children and says the reason why is if you see them naked, it is your nakedness that you are looking at because they came from you. What we can deduce from this, is that the practice of uncovering someone even partially is for sexual reasons and it is only OK for the husband and the wife. So in effect, Ruth is saying you are my husband, I have seen you naked. I know she only uncovered his feet, but it is a symbolic gesture that he realizes when he wakes to find her there at his feet.
Rth 3:7 And when Boaz had eaten and drunk, and his heart was merry, he went to lie down at the end of the heap of corn: and she came softly, and uncovered his feet, and laid her down.
So Ruth told Naomi that she will do what she has spoken and that is exactly what she does. Remember Naomi is the one that knows the law and Boaz is the one that is suppose to follow the law and fulfill his obligation to the dead. So Naomi is in effect speeding up the process and making it happen. It would appear that Boaz is either dragging his feet (figuratively speaking) and not doing what he is required or there is more to the story than we know right now.
Rth 3:8 And it came to pass at midnight, that the man was afraid, and turned himself: and, behold, a woman lay at his feet.
Now midnight comes around and we can assume it has been at least a couple of hours. Ruth must have went to sleep also at the feet of Boaz waiting for him to wakeup. Midnight is a very specific hour. It is the 6th hour of the night, the beginning of the 3rd watch of the night and represents the middle of the darkness. It is interesting to note that this is the hour when people are easily frightened and become scared. It was around midnight when the death angel visited in Egypt and killed the firstborn who did not have the blood of the lamb on the doorposts. It is also interesting to note that in Matthew 25, Jesus tells the parable of the 10 virgins. It just so happens that the bridegroom shows up at midnight and 5 of the virgins had oil and 5 of the virgins did not and were called foolish. So there is some significant parallels being given to us. Jesus Christ is called the “bridegroom” and the church is His bride. We can again see the connection between Jesus and the man called Boaz.
Rth 3:9 And he said, Who art thou? And she answered, I am Ruth thine handmaid: spread therefore thy skirt over thine handmaid; for thou art a near kinsman.
The word that is interesting in this verse, is the word for “skirt”. This word actually refers to the wing of a feathered bird like an eagle and is translated like that many places. It is also used to refer to the hem of a garment or robe. The priests were required to sew tassels on the hem of their garments. Then there is this reference in Deuteronomy that seems to be in reference to an elicit sexual encounter.
Deu 22:30 A man shall not take his father’s wife, nor discover his father’s skirt.
You can see that the man’s father and his father’s wife are spoken of in terms of being one. By the son uncovering his father’s wife he is said to uncover his father. So obviously Ruth must have learned something about the law herself. Boaz wakes up and is startled and asks who are you in the middle of the night. Ruth tells him I am Ruth and you are my near kinsmen redeemer. Now here is the other part that you miss reading the English part of the translation from the KJV Bible. This word “skirt” also occurs in the previous chapter, but is translated in a completely different way:
Rth 2:12 The LORD recompense thy work, and a full reward be given thee of the LORD God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust.
Reading this verse we can better understand what Ruth was trying to say to Boaz. Ruth was telling Boaz you are God’s answer to my problem, spread your wings over me and I will put my trust in you. If this is not a marriage proposal I do not know what you would call it. Wings are spoken of as a covering, and a place of safety in the O.T. Bible like in the Psalms. Many times this is God’s people under the wings of God’s protection. This is the picture of Ruth and Boaz as well as the Church and Jesus.
Look at this verse in Ezekiel and see if this is not what the woman Ruth is saying for her Redeemer to do to her.
Eze 16:8 Now when I passed by thee, and looked upon thee, behold, thy time was the time of love; and I spread my skirt over thee, and covered thy nakedness: yea, I sware unto thee, and entered into a covenant with thee, saith the Lord GOD, and thou becamest mine.
God says to Israel, when I looked upon you I spread my skirt over you. You can again see the reference to nakedness and being unclothed. In association with these words God says I have entered into a covenant with you and you have become mine by marriage. This is a very clear picture of Christ and the church. If you recall in the N.T. the church is said to be clothed with Christ. We wear Christ as a symbolic garment. This is a covenant marriage description when the husband covers his bride.
Rth 3:10 And he said, Blessed be thou of the LORD, my daughter: for thou hast shewed more kindness in the latter end than at the beginning, inasmuch as thou followedst not young men, whether poor or rich.
A reference to the kindness of Ruth is exemplified by Boaz. She is also portrayed to be a woman of character and integrity who is not doing things just for her on good. Her thoughtfulness and the fact that she followed her wiser mother-in-law’s instructions all proved that Ruth was a great candidate for a wife. We do not know how old Boaz is, but by implications given he is not a young man. Based upon him potentially being one of Elimilech’s brothers who has already died, we can assume that he is closer to Naomi’s age than to Ruth’s age. Nevertheless, Ruth is commended for doing what she has done.
Rth 3:11 And now, my daughter, fear not; I will do to thee all that thou requirest: for all the city of my people doth know that thou art a virtuous woman.
Boaz says that the whole city knows that she is a virtuous woman. Of course remember we are in Bethlehem, the future birthplace of Jesus. The Hebrew word translated as “Bethlehem” means the House of Bread. Another symbolic term for God’s spiritual house. Boaz commits to Ruth to do whatever is necessary to accomplished what she needed to satisfy his Lawful duty. Boaz has committed to do whatever is necessary to make her his wife. This is a marriage commitment and a verbal contract. Boaz has committed to redeem his dead brother’s debts and to raise up an heir for him, by marrying his dead brother’s son’s wife. This is the law of God, but also the wisdom of God and a picture of Christ and the church.
If you would like to continue this series of lessons, you can go to “Part 4“.
The Book of Ruth, Introduction to the Redeemer! Chapter 2
(Ver 1.1) In chapter one of Ruth we were introduced to many of the characters of the story of Ruth, but not all. If you did not read Part 1 of this series I would suggest that you go back and read the foundation and introduction and all of the information that I covered in chapter 1. I will not normally repeat myself so if you missed it, you just missed it.
So far we have seen that Naomi and Ruth have returned to Bethlehem during the time of the Barley Harvest and that they are in desperate shape financially. All of the men in their family have died and they have great needs just to survive. So let’s get into chapter 2 and the introduction of another primary character that will come to save the day.
Rth 2:1 And Naomi had a kinsman of her husband’s, a mighty man of wealth, of the family of Elimelech; and his name was Boaz.
We are immediately introduced to some new concepts and a new character in the very first verse of Chapter 2. Boaz is described as a near relative of Elimelech, the dead husband of Naomi. This is where it starts to become important to learn and know what the law says. Because of God’s wisdom, the law provided for the situation that Naomi and Ruth now were facing. The law says that if a man should die without leaving any heirs, that a brother or near relative of the dead man was required to marry the widow and to have a child by her to become the heir of whatever was owned by that man who died. This would also mean that the dead man’s family name would not perish from the face of the earth. One of the men that was qualified to fulfill this requirement was a man who just so happened to be a very wealthy man and his name was Boaz. Here is the law of Moses that pertains to this matter:
Num 27:8 And thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel, saying, If a man die, and have no son, then ye shall cause his inheritance to pass unto his daughter.
Num 27:9 And if he have no daughter, then ye shall give his inheritance unto his brethren.
Num 27:10 And if he have no brethren, then ye shall give his inheritance unto his father’s brethren.
Num 27:11 And if his father have no brethren, then ye shall give his inheritance unto his kinsman that is next to him of his family, and he shall possess it: and it shall be unto the children of Israel a statute of judgment, as the LORD commanded Moses.
What we see is an order of precedence and responsibility being established by the law of God. God declares a specific inheritance order when a man dies. God does this by design and for a purpose, that I will not get into in this blog. Let’s look at the order and analyze it, the order is always from the firstborn son, then the next born son, until the youngest son. If the man who dies has no sons, then his daughters can inherit in the same order from the firstborn to youngest. Next, if he has no living children, then the inheritance goes to the brothers of the man who died, again from the firstborn to youngest in that order. If he has no living brothers you go up the family tree to your father’s brothers, from oldest to youngest. The responsibility is thus passed to whomever is still living in the family from oldest to youngest, to inherit the dead man’s possessions. But, of course it is more complex than that. You also get the man’s debts and you must pay off those debts and redeem them. You just don’t get to take whatever he owned and make it yours, especially if his wife is still alive. Because she was also his and by the law of marriage she was one with him. So she has now also become your responsibility and there is more to it than that also. Here is more of the Law concerning widows and the brothers obligations:
Deu 25:5 If brethren dwell together, and one of them die, and have no child, the wife of the dead shall not marry without unto a stranger: her husband’s brother shall go in unto her, and take her to him to wife, and perform the duty of an husband’s brother unto her.
Deu 25:6 And it shall be, that the firstborn which she beareth shall succeed in the name of his brother which is dead, that his name be not put out of Israel.
Deu 25:7 And if the man like not to take his brother’s wife, then let his brother’s wife go up to the gate unto the elders, and say, My husband’s brother refuseth to raise up unto his brother a name in Israel, he will not perform the duty of my husband’s brother.
Deu 25:8 Then the elders of his city shall call him, and speak unto him: and if he stand to it, and say, I like not to take her;
Deu 25:9 Then shall his brother’s wife come unto him in the presence of the elders, and loose his shoe from off his foot, and spit in his face, and shall answer and say, So shall it be done unto that man that will not build up his brother’s house.
Deu 25:10 And his name shall be called in Israel, The house of him that hath his shoe loosed.
This is some very strange stuff, however as you continue to read in Ruth you see that they definitely follow these rules and protocols as the law of God dictates. God says that if a woman is a widow it is up to her husband’s brother to marry her and raise up an heir for his dead older brother. If you recall it was the eldest who inherited everything anyway and the younger son would have had to work for the older son because he would have inherited it all from their father. This was just how it was in the Law. By the younger son refusing to marry the older son’s wife they had legal recourse to take it to the elders and thus the reputation of the younger son who refuses to take his brother’s wife, his name would be disgraced and he would no longer be a person of any significance within the House of Israel. They would change his name to “Him that has his shoe loosed”. We will talk about this more later as we go through the rest of the chapters of Ruth. For now let’s go to verse 2 of chapter two:
Rth 2:2 And Ruth the Moabitess said unto Naomi, Let me now go to the field, and glean ears of corn after him in whose sight I shall find grace. And she said unto her, Go, my daughter.
Obviously Ruth and Naomi are hungry and in need of food. Ruth asks Naomi if she can go into the field and glean to find food for them to eat. Fortunately for Ruth and Naomi God also provided for them in the law of Moses. God wrote a commandment that establishes a principle that we should probably even be following today:
Lev 19:10 And thou shalt not glean thy vineyard, neither shalt thou gather every grape of thy vineyard; thou shalt leave them for the poor and stranger: I am the LORD your God.
God told the children of Israel not to pick their crops totally bare. Harvest time was a time to go and reap the crops, but it was also a time to leave some for the poor to come and get also. However, this was not a welfare system like a US government type of program. God did not give anyone anything for free. If the poor wanted to come and work and pick the crop to eat, they could eat, but if they wanted to have someone come and drop it off at their feet, they would go hungry. We can clearly see that Ruth had to go into the field and work to gather their food supply. Being a lone individual, she was unable to get rich from what she picked, but at least they could eat and not go hungry. Ten times in chapter two, it speaks of Ruth going into the harvest field to glean. Boaz happens to own the field that Ruth is working in and he sees her and asks his people who is this and they tell him Ruth the Moabitish who returned with Naomi from Moab. Boaz makes some commands and grants Ruth some extreme favor and grace. He commands his workers to help her gather and not to touch her. She is granted the ability to rest in their facilities and to drink from their water pitchers. This Gentile woman has found extreme favor with the right man and she does not even realize it yet. However, Ruth has one quality that exemplifies her beyond any other that might also be gleaning, she is humble. Humility is always the key to receiving grace.
Rth 2:10 Then she fell on her face, and bowed herself to the ground, and said unto him, Why have I found grace in thine eyes, that thou shouldest take knowledge of me, seeing I am a stranger?
The Bible says “God resists the proud, but gives grace unto the humble” (James 4:6). This is a Bible law and an established principle for receiving what you need. Boaz speaks further to Ruth and tells her that she has done well to stay with her mother-in-law and to live with a people she did not know. In other words Boaz was telling her that she had made the right choices:
Rth 2:12 The LORD recompense thy work, and a full reward be given thee of the LORD God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust.
Boaz now tells Ruth that she is trusting in the God of Israel. Because she has placed her confidence in the true God, God will reward her. Another way to say this is there are benefits to trusting in God. Ruth left her relatives and walked away from her old familiar life into a place she did not know and she has now found the favor with God. What made Ruth different than the other hundreds of widows that were in the land at that time? Ruth had faith, she trusted God. I really have not discussed applications of any of these scriptures up until this point. I have told you that the book of Ruth contains many significant types and shadows, which are natural examples of spiritual truths. I guess you might have already noticed that Ruth appears to be a type of the church. Those who have left their old lives and followed after the living God, trusting in His grace by faith. Does this sound familiar? It ought to if you are a Christian.
Rth 2:14 And Boaz said unto her, At mealtime come thou hither, and eat of the bread, and dip thy morsel in the vinegar. And she sat beside the reapers: and he reached her parched corn, and she did eat, and was sufficed, and left.
Continuing through the 2nd chapter we see another pattern being discussed. Boaz invites Ruth to eat with him and gives her bread and vinegar. Did you know that in Bible times you did not eat with someone casually, because by eating with them you were entering into a covenant with them. Simply by sharing bread with someone a covenant is established. If you do not understand covenants, this is not something you do with your enemies by accident or chance because it could cost you your life. A covenant is a marriage in the eyes of God so that is why you do not enter into them by accident. Boaz obviously likes Ruth a lot and has decided by this action to enter into a covenant with her, for her to become his wife. After all of this Boaz commands his reapers to grant her even more favor and let her pick anywhere she wants, even from the parts they are working in. The reapers are further ordered to leave handfuls on purpose for her to get easily. I would say Boaz has a plan.
Ruth goes back to Naomi and tells her all the good news that she knows so far. How she met a man named Boaz and what he had said to her. Naomi becomes ecstatic and almost can’t contain herself and says the following:
Rth 2:20 And Naomi said unto her daughter in law, Blessed be he of the LORD, who hath not left off his kindness to the living and to the dead. And Naomi said unto her, The man is near of kin unto us, one of our next kinsmen.
Naomi realizes and knows the law of Moses and God. She recognizes now that God has not forgotten them or their dead husbands. It is important to note what Naomi says next about this man named Boaz. She calls him a near kin. That means he is not a distant relative. It could place Boaz in the category of a brother to Elimilech. She then calls him “one of our next kinsmen”. It is interesting to note now that she does not say our next kinsmen, just one of the next kinsmen. What’s the difference? Remember God had a specific order of priority and the oldest always had first responsibility to fulfill the law first. Now here is the introduction to one of the keywords found in the this Book of Ruth that you definitely need to know. The word “Kinsmen” is a Hebrew word that means a “Redeemer”.
What is a “Redeemer”? Obviously a Redeemer is someone who redeems? So what does that mean? It is often compared to someone who visits a modern pawn shop and sells a valuable item for cash. The owner of the pawn shop usually pays them pennies on the dollar for their item in hopes of them not coming back to redeem their item. To redeem your item means you pay the price to get your item back. Does any of this sound familiar? Jesus Christ is our Redeemer, he has paid the price for our sin and bought us back. This is redemption by God from the fact that mankind sold themselves to Satan.
Isa 52:3 For thus saith the LORD, Ye have sold yourselves for nought; and ye shall be redeemed without money.
This is God’s message to the church. God declares that we have sold ourselves for nothing and therefore we would be bought back without money. In other words God was not going to pay any money to get us back, but that did not mean it didn’t cost anything. You see Jesus Christ gave his blood and life to pay the price of our redemption and this was more valuable than any money, gold or natural wealth.
At the end of chapter two of Ruth, Ruth tells Naomi that Boaz asks her to only work his field until the time of the end of the harvest season. I really do not know how you can read this story and not see the church and Christ throughout it. Christ owns the harvest field and the church are the laborers that are working to bring in the harvest. There is a coming time of the end of the harvest when it will be over. Jesus said in the Gospels “the harvest is great, but the laborers are few”. Jesus is not talking about a wheat or barley harvest or a natural crop. I guess because the natural Jews do not know the New Testament, they do not see the types and shadows given to them so clearly. It reminds me of a shadow portrait my son had done when he was young. I could look at it and recognize his profile immediately even though it was just an outline and showed no facial details. But, I could do this because I knew him and if you did not know him you would not know who it was a picture of. This is how the Bible is to those who do not know Jesus Christ. Because they do not know him personally, they do not recognize when they encounter a shadow that is projected and points you to him.
If you would like to continue reading this series, you can go to “Part 3“.
The Book of Ruth, An in Depth Study of the Church and Christ! Chapter 1
(Ver 1.1) I like the book of Ruth a lot. It is a very unique book of the Bible and a story full of types and shadows of the Messiah. The Bible is full of complex hidden information and this book contains some of the keys to information found in other places of the Bible. While the early church started with only Jewish believers and the disciples of Christ, today the church is widely considered to be a Gentile majority. There certainly exists Jewish Messianic believers and they are very valuable in the church, but yet they are a clear minority. These Jewish believers are called the “Remnant” in the book of Romans. What makes the book of Ruth unique, is the fact that the book is primarily the story of a Gentile woman. The life of a woman outside of the covenant of God’s Old Testament family. Why would God put a story of a Gentile in the Jewish O.T. Bible? Why is this significant? What information does it convey and reveal to us? Is the book of Ruth a prophetic statement on events to come? I will be going through this book of the Bible chapter by chapter and then wrap it up with a study of the typologies and symbolism given to us in the book of Ruth. In the entire Bible the name of Ruth only occurs 13 times in 13 total verses. There are 12 times in the book of Ruth and once in the book of Matthew. So other than the Book of Ruth itself, there is no direct references to Ruth, except in the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew. God must have a special reason for naming this woman in the genealogy of Jesus our Savior. You see in the Genealogy of Jesus in Matthew only 6 women are directly mentioned and only four by actual name. One woman in the genealogy of Jesus is a symbolic spiritual reference. These women are 1.) Tamar 2). Rahab, 3). Ruth 4). the wife of Uriah (Bathsheba) 5). Babylon and 6). Mary the mother of Jesus. That is some very unique company, and a very honorable mention, isn’t it? What does Ruth have in common with these other women that God included them all in the genealogy of Jesus? I mean what a mixture of women they are, one is a deceiver Tamar who plays like she is a prostitute, 2) Rahab a woman who actually was a prostitute, 4) Bathsheba a woman who committed adultery with King David. Babylon is called the Great Whore in Revelation. Why mention any women and not all the women? Why pick what seems like some of the worst possible women to include in the Genealogy of Jesus? Both Ruth and Mary seem like saints compared to the others. You should really ask these kinds of questions, if you want to know the truth. God does nothing by accident or chance in the Bible. Every word, every name, every mention has a purpose and is designed to conceal or reveal information. Obviously these women are all mothers, so they have that in common. If it were possible and you could check the mitochondrial DNA of Jesus you would also see that Jesus’ DNA had signatures of each of the women encoded within His DNA. It also appears on the surface that all of the women mentioned in the Genealogy of Jesus are also widows. While it does not say that directly about Rahab, we can assume it. It does call Tamar a widow, Ruth is a widow, Bathsheba became a widow. Mary also became a widow. These are interesting little points to keep in the back of your mind. Perhaps we will get into more of the similarities between the women later, but for now let’s concentrate on just Ruth.
Let’s start by listing some of the characters found in the book of Ruth. There is of course Ruth, but she is not mentioned at first. What we discover is the underlying story is about a family from Bethlehem, the same city of the birth of Jesus. We can already begin to see some implied meanings based upon the city of David being the originating place of residence. The story starts with the mention of a famine being in the land around Bethlehem. The book of Ruth mentions that this family of four is forced to move in order to look for food. The head of the family is a man named “Elimelech” and his wife is called “Naomi”, and they have two sons, one is called “Mahlon” and the other is called “Chilion”. The Elimelech family is a family who has descended from Judah, the fourth son of Jacob and Leah. The book of Ruth starts by telling us that the story occurs during the time of the judges. This would have been after the children of Israel had taken the promised land and before the appointment of Saul as their first King. This would have occurred somewhere around 450 years after Jacob had his 12 sons. We do know that Israel was in captivity in Egypt for approximately 400 years and they wandered in the wilderness for another 40 years. So somewhere after that we can see that there came a famine in the land of Israel.
Elimelech decides to up and move his family to the land of Moab, because they have heard reports of there being food there. Now Moab is a region where the descendants of one of Lot’s sons lived, also named Moab. If you recall the story of Lot, Abraham asks God to spare him from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and God did. However, as they were leaving the cities, the wife of Lot looks back and turns into a pillar of salt. Now that only leaves Lot with his two daughters. So the story of Lot is that his two daughters get their father drunk so that he could have children or sons through them and their father’s name and family could continue. Not a very good story is it? It seems like the more you dig into the book of Ruth the more strange things you discover. What you must realize is that if there was no incestuous relationship between Lot and his daughters there would be no story of Ruth. So while I do not say incest is good, God can cause good to come from anything that man does, no matter how wrong. So Ruth is a descendant of the incestuous relationship between Lot and his daughters.
The book of Ruth does not actually say how long they lived in Moab, but it implies that it was at least a little while, at the least many years. We do see in Ruth 1:4 that after Elimilech died and the sons married that there was a span of 10 years mentioned. We are not told how long it was before this or after this period of time is spoken of. So Elimilech moves his family to Moab. After a time there Elimilech dies and we do not know why. After this his two son’s find themselves wives to marry from the women in Moab. One wife is Ruth and the other wife is named Orpah and not Oprah! It then declares that after another passage of time, the sons also both die without having any children or heirs for the family. All of this so far is the just the first 5 verses of the book of Ruth and it covers several years of information.
Let’s put into perspective the family of Elimilech and the given time frame of these events. We know that Israel had departed from Egypt, being led by Moses and during this time period in the wilderness God gave Moses the Law. God is establishing a covenant relationship with the natural nation of Israel. God gives Moses the first 5 books of the Bible often times called the “Torah”. We also know that during this time period of Ruth that it was during the time of the Judges. So there were judges who ruled the people of Israel with the help of God’s prophets. Judges represent a legal system that is based upon laws. If anyone did wrong, they would face the judges. Moses had been given patterns of the temple of God, the ark of the covenant, the inclusion of the Levitical priests and the origination of animal blood sacrifices. So what do you think would happens if the covenant people of God would move away from all of this and go and live with a group of people who were not in covenant with God? Could this be the reason they died? I really do not know, but I can make logical assumptions based upon what happened, that it was at least related.
We know from reading the rest of the Book of Ruth that Naomi was familiar with the law of Moses. So they did not move away in ignorance, they moved away knowing what they were doing. However, since Elimilech was a descendant of Judah and not Levi, there were probably no more sacrifices being made for them. Unless of course they traveled back to Jerusalem to the temple and there is no reference to this happening. So Naomi, Ruth and Orpha are in a quandary. A predicament of tremendous proportions. Without any men left in the family they are doomed to a life of poverty and homelessness or either a life of prostitution. Naomi of course is older and is in the worst situation. Naomi tells her two “daughter-in-laws” to leave and go back to their families, thinking they have the best chance of finding new husbands with them. Her daughter-in-law Orpah does that and returns to her family and to her previous gods. However, Ruth demonstrates a different resolve, a different spirit of confidence. Even after Naomi told her that she is too old to have any more sons for Ruth to marry, Ruth tells Naomi, “Where you go, I go, Where You Live I will Live, Your People will be my People, Your God will be My God”. That if you do not realize it, is very strong covenant words for a lady who was not previously in covenant with the Almighty God. Then Ruth makes this statement:
Rth 1:17 Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the LORD do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.
I made mention earlier that the book of Ruth contains clues to other events in the Bible and this is just one of them. The mention of death as a separating force is the only natural force that is capable of breaking a human covenant relationship. When a man marries a woman, in many ceremonies that I have attended, there is a clause in the vows that says something like “till death do you part”. In this statement, the participants are vowing to remain committed to the marriage covenant until one of them dies. Death is the only legal separation allowed from the law of marriage. Once you have sex with someone of the opposite sex you are legally married in the eyes of God and you are not separated legally until one of you dies. Because, Ruth’s husband had died, she was free from the law of marriage and is now able to legally marry another man. She could have chosen to go back to her family and find another man, but she chose to trust the God of her mother-in-law “Naomi” and the results of her faith was tremendously greater than she could have imagined. Ruth was also married to the older firstborn son of Elimilech, meaning she has a significant advantage over the other daughter-in-law. For Orpah to gain the same benefits as Ruth, would not have been possible according to the law, but we will get into that more later.
Let me briefly talk you through the law of marriage. The law of marriage is given to us first in the book of Genesis, chapter 2. God creates woman, a wife for the man Adam. God makes the woman’s body from parts of the man’s body. Adam saw Eve and said “She is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh”. In other words Eve was the body of Adam in a different form. God then declares “that for this reason, shall a man leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh”. That is the law of marriage covenants, between a husband and a wife. Ruth was joined to her husband and the covenant of God, becoming one flesh with him. Ruth was technically under the law by marriage. However, since her husband died she was freed from the law.
Because Naomi had heard that God had visited the people of Israel and that there was again bread in the city of Bethlehem, they return back to Naomi’s former home city. Upon arriving, the people still remember her and are excited to see her, but she is really down and depressed that she left full and came back empty with nothing and very little hope. Naomi changes here name to “Mara” and tells people to call her that because it means “I’m bitter”. It is funny how people will accuse God of doing something that was of their own making. I never read anywhere that God told them to leave Bethlehem, so just because the circumstances didn’t look like they should stay, that did not mean they were suppose to leave. Did you understand what I just said?
So this is some of the basics found in chapter 1 of Ruth. Naomi and Ruth have returned to Bethlehem and it is in the time of the beginning of the Barley Harvest. So we know that Naomi had returned in or around the time of Passover, which can occur somewhere near March or April. In my next blog, I’ll talk more about the other primary character of Ruth that I have not introduced you to yet. This character is named Boaz and he is called the “kinsman redeemer” and we will discuss why this is also.
If you would like to continue reading this series you can continue with “Part 2” where we talk about chapter two, the introduction to the Redeemer.
Are You Hungry Yet? Blessed are Those that Hunger After Righteousness!
(Ver 1.1) God is asking you a question today, are you hungry yet? Too many times we in the world live in a state of contentment. Totally satisfied with who we are, what we know, what we have and where we are and being completely oblivious to wanting anything more in life. I am not talking about wanting more stuff, a bigger house or a new car or things like that. I am talking about being satisfied with what you think you know about the truth of God’s Word. We have vast numbers of church denominations in the world that are happy and content with everything they think that they know. They think they have arrived at a spiritual state of there not being anymore or any higher state of knowledge. I guess Christians like these have been deceived into believing they know as much as God. When in truth, they know little to nothing about God. People who sit in dead churches, eating stale bread of the doctrines of man and theological theories of seminaries are starving spiritually and they do not understand why. If you were in the middle of a desert where there was no fresh water around and you lived there so long that you were about to die, would you be smart enough to move? Clearly many Christians are not that smart. They live and die in a church that teaches nothing relevant, nothing new, nothing refreshing, nothing that satisfies the people’s spiritual thirst. People have become content with nothing and not knowing and thus live their life deceived.
Joh 6:35 And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.
Jesus himself speaking, says that He is the “bread of life”. Bread is a staple and a basic food group requirement. The spiritual lessons of bread are vast in the Bible and you should spend a long time learning about them. Jesus tells us that because He is the “bread of life” those who come to him will never go hungry. Jesus is speaking figuratively, symbolically and spiritually and not naturally. Those churches that teach the full truth of Jesus will give people something that feeds them spiritually. Jesus while he walked the earth taught some radically different things in a manner that people never heard before. Jesus taught these truths with authority and power. Jesus said some very difficult things that most churches ignore. There are some churches that only want to concentrate on salvation and getting people saved and ignore the rest of the Bible. While this is an important part of the message of Christ, it is not the complete message. Once you get people saved, then what? Are they supposed to go through life defeated?
Did you realize that eating is not something people do once in their lives and they are done with it? That is the attitude of many Christians and that is not right. Eating is a continual process, something we do multiple times a day, every day. Morning, noon and night we eat physical food. Is spiritual food suppose to be different? Did God give us these natural things to teach us about the Spiritual things? Too many times Christians want a to go to church on Sunday for a cold spiritual snack and they think that will carry them spiritually for the rest of the week. What you should do is read and study the Bible just as much as you spend time eating natural food. In this way you will be as strong spiritually as you are physically. Plus there is some great news, you can’t get too spiritually fat! It is impossible to eat too much spiritually. There is no extreme where you can have too much of the Word of God. In fact it is really much different than people think. In the book of Joshua, God told Joshua to mediate day and night on the Law of God and by doing this God said He would be successful in life.
Luk 6:25 Woe unto you that are full! for ye shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now! for ye shall mourn and weep.
So Jesus says something that is a warning to those that think that they are satisfied with what they know and what they have already learned. Because they think they are full now, they will soon become spiritually hungry. What does that tell you? It tells me not to be satisfied no matter how much I know and that we should make an effort to plan our next spiritual meal. Do not think that you know more than you do? Have you made yourself wise in your own eyes? Are you proud of what you can do, or what you have done? Do you place your confidence in your own ability and knowledge to solve your every problem? These are common traps of the enemy. Get people thinking like a teenager who thinks they know more than their parents.
Mat 13:12 For whosoever hath, to him shall be given and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.
If you read the context of this verse you will discover that Jesus is not talking about natural things, but clearly about spiritual things. The disciples had asked Jesus why do you speak to them in parables? Jesus said it is not for them to “know the mysteries of Kingdom of Heaven”. But, to you it is given. So Jesus makes a direct division between two different groups of people. Those who can see spiritually and those who cannot see spiritually. Are they both spiritually hungry? I would say yes, they are both in need of the same spiritual food from God. But, Jesus says not everyone will get it. What is he talking about? Jesus is saying that those who think they know everything will lose even what they think they already know. But, to those who are truly hungry for the truth, more truth will be given to them. That is exactly why there are so many people blogging on the internet who do not know anything, but yet they blog like they do. These are empty heads speaking empty words to people with empty spirits and nobody is ever satisfied or grows spiritually. Get hungry for the truth and the truth will find you. Be diligent to seek the Knowledge of the Truth and God will cause it to move in your direction and overflow your cup of knowledge with good things that only God can show you.
Are You Hungry YET?
Blessings and Cursing from the Same Mouth, This Ought Not to Be!
(Ver 1.2) This is now Part 4 in the series of very important lessons on spoken words found in the Bible. If you have not read this series from the beginning I would suggest that you go and start reading with “Part 1“. The Bible contains some of the strongest language on what people say. Either Christians are not aware of this or they simply ignore it and pretend that it does not apply to them. God says in His Word that it is impossible for Him to lie. We can obviously see that with men and women in the world this is entirely possible. In my earlier blogs on spoken words I talked about the sword of your mouth and how it cuts two ways. A double edged sword proceeding out of your mouths, is a symbolic representation that tells us words have spiritual power. You can speak good things or you can speak evil things. Speaking evil things is much more than just speaking lies, as well as speaking good things is more than just speaking the truth. There is an established precedence in the Bible that spoken words establish blessings and in the opposite realm spoken words can also establish curses. Today I will explore this subject in more depth. Let me give you my foundational scripture reference s from the Book of James, let’s read them carefully:
Jas 3:8 But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.
Jas 3:9 Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God.
Jas 3:10 Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be.
You can clearly see that God is talking about your mouth, your tongue and the words that they produce. It is mentioned in verse 8, with the concept of the tongue being a potential poisonous serpent. That does not sound good, does it? Then in verse 10 it says your tongue can produce both blessings and curses. What are the blessings and cursing that this tongue produces? We are not talking about curse words, those 4 letter words that mature Christians do not normally say, although these could be a small part of what God is talking about. Let’s get a Bible example of cursing something. In the book of Mark, Jesus is visiting Jerusalem and traveling in and out of the city. One day Jesus on his walk, views a fig tree and walks up to it and finding no fruit on it, Jesus does the following:
Mar 11:14 And Jesus answered and said unto it, No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever. And his disciples heard it.
Many people read these stories in the Bible, but ignore the point that is being made. Was the words of Jesus a blessing to the tree or a cursing to the tree? Jesus looks at the fig tree and does not find any fruit on it. I do not believe that Jesus is angry at the tree, but I do believe that He chooses to use the barren fruitless fig tree to demonstrate a very powerful spiritual life and death lesson to His disciples. Jesus does not pray, or ask anyone else to do anything. Jesus simply looks at the tree and speaks words directly to it. Please notice that these words were not positive. The negative words were directed only at the bare fig tree, but they were loud enough for everyone near Him to hear them. The next day Jesus and the same disciples are passing back by the same fig tree and Peter stops everyone and says this:
Mar 11:21 And Peter calling to remembrance saith unto him, Master, behold, the fig tree which thou cursedst is withered away.
Peter tells Jesus, that the fig tree which He had cursed was dead. Jesus had just spoken negative words to something inanimate and living and Peter remembered it and called it speaking a curse. Notice that Jesus did not dispute it or deny it. The definition of this word “cursed” in the Strong’s means to “doom” and to “execrate”. To speak words that have a very negative effect on something is a better definition of the word. Jesus spoke some very simple words and said “No man eat fruit from you hereafter forever” and that resulted in the tree dying within 24 hours. Of course Jesus was God and this does not apply to you and me, and if you think that is true then you are wrong. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that God came to the earth in His omnipotent Godhead powers. In fact if we study and search the Bible we will find the opposite being taught to us. In Acts 10:38 it says God had to anoint Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost power to do miracles. If Jesus was God in full power of the Godhead, Jesus would not need to be anointed by God, would he? Then in Hebrews 2:17 it says Jesus was made like us, his brothers. Jesus was a natural man and the Son of God at the same time. Jesus Christ the God Man became like the rest of us and chooses to become like one of His creations:
Php 2:7 But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:
Php 2:8 And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
These two verses in Philippians are very interesting. The term that Jesus “made of himself no reputation”, can be taken as He removed or separated Himself from His Deity power. Think about the “reputation of God” and then compare that with the reputation of Jesus Christ (the Anointed). These verses tell us very clearly that God became like a man. He looked like a man, he walked like a man, he talked like a man, he got tired like a man, he slept like a man, he ate like a man and went to the bathroom like a man. If God was here in his full deity power, you would not see some of the things that we see in the Bible. Jesus got hungry and thirsty, Jesus slept, Jesus wept, I mean look at the characteristics of God and see how they change in the life of Jesus Christ. While hanging on the cross Jesus said “I thirst”. Would God in his omnipotent power ever be thirsty? If Jesus Christ was here in the full deity power of the Almighty it would have been impossible to kill him physically, yet we see Jesus dying on a cross. Then there is the temptation of Jesus in the Gospels that I mentioned in the last lesson in this series. Jesus fasts for 40 days so he is obviously hungry and weak physically. Satan tries to get Jesus to do something simple for an Almighty God to do, by turning stones into bread. This is not something that is hard for God to do, is it? Why is this consider a temptation to God the omnipotent? It would only be a temptation if God had stripped himself of his deity power and was here on the earth operating within the limitations and constraints, like a normal human male. Do you understand this?
Heb 4:15 For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.
How is it even possible to tempt an omniscient God? A God who knows everything is unable to be tested or tried like a human yet that is what this verse said happened. Therefore, we cannot believe Jesus was God in His full deity abilities or this would invalidate the truth found here in Hebrews 4:15. If God is God and has the power and ability to create whatever He wants, whenever He wants how is it possible to ever tempt Him? You see in this verse in Hebrews it clearly says that Jesus can identify with how we feel. Because He was tempted in the exact same way that we are tempted, yet He did not sin. Was it possible for Jesus to sin? If it was not possible for Jesus to sin, it would not be a temptation to Him. If He was here as God, it would have been impossible to tempt Jesus with anything. Do people understand that Jesus was tempted in every way just like we are? How is this even possible if He is here in His Omnipotent Glorious Ability? Obviously it is not possible, so what does that teach us?
There are just so many references in the Bible to the man Jesus Christ not being in His omnipotent Godhead power that I cannot give you them all. I will give you another couple of examples of Jesus healing the sick. Was there anything that hindered or kept Jesus from healing anybody? You see if Jesus was God in his omnipotent power, no one would ever not get healed, if that is what God wanted to do. Do you agree? However, we find some conflicts with this thinking in the scriptures. If you read the 6th chapter of Mark you find some very interesting things occur. Jesus is visiting his hometown and place where he was raised as a child. But, when Jesus tries to heal people there, this is what the Bible says:
Mar 6:5 And he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them.
So it did not say that Jesus would not heal anybody, it said He could not heal anybody. A mighty work is easy by any of God’s omnipotent standards, yet Jesus is unable to do anything mighty here, so obviously we have a situation that is very hard to explain away. Either Jesus was not operating in His Godhead Omnipotent power or there is a force greater than God that kept him from it. What do you think it was? I do not believe there is any force greater than God’s power so Jesus must have made the decision not to use this power. There are many other scriptures that you should take note of, but I will stop there for now.
The Jewish O.T. Bible says “God is not a man” (Num 23:19), therefore, the majority of the Jews did not recognize Him when He became a man in Jesus. Today we have the same foolish philosophy and reasoning in the reverse being projected that says Jesus was God in His full deity power and this is how He did all the miraculous things that He did. People put God in their religious box and expect Him to abide by their rules and this is a major mistake. Is God still God? If God chooses to do something different than what you like to think about on how God is supposed to act, can He only do that? If God wants to come to earth in the form of a man without using His deity powers in manifestation, can God do that? Is it legal? Is it even possible? I believe it was God’s choice to what He did and how He does it without our input or consultation. Obviously we need to realize that we have a lot to learn.
So let’s explore the flip side of the coin and look at the blessings. A blessing like a curse is a word based expression that someone speaks out of their mouth that results in a positive outcome. There are a lot of examples of this in the Bible and I will give you only a few of them:
Gen 1:22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
There is an established pattern of words of blessings found in this verse in Genesis. Can you see how these words contrast with the example that Jesus showed the disciples when speaking a curse to the fig tree? By the law of first reference also called the law of first mention, we can discover that Spoken words from God can contain blessings. Blessing are what I will call “word containers” filled with love, favor, goodness and mercy within them. The words of curses that Jesus spoke were containers filled with poison. Uh oh. I believe we are now learning something very profound.
If God would have said nothing, there would have been no blessing from Him given even if He thought great thoughts about them. What we should realize is that silence is not always a blessing. I just like to call silence “Empty” buckets waiting to be filled. In many service times in churches people stand up for a moment of silence, thinking they are paying honor or respect to someone or something. I have not found a Bible verse to confirm this practice, have you? Could silence be something that Satan wants us to do instead of speaking a blessing over them? Could this silence simply be those empty containers awaiting to be filled with a positive expression? I believe that we can learn a very valuable spiritual lesson from this verse in Genesis. God speaks positive words as full containers of blessing to His children and the result was a positive God given outcome that occurred in their lives or we could also say this was God’s vision of possibility that was being transferred to his creation. I believe that this was the establishment of the spiritual law of either Blessings and Curses from spoken word containers being taught to us. God was teaching Adam and Eve by His awesome example, however, I’m not really sure if they got it.
Let’s move into the 27th chapter of Genesis and see the story of Isaac and his son Jacob. We know that Jacob became the Father of the natural nation of Israel. But, how did this occur, since he was not the firstborn son of Isaac? If you recall the story, I’ll shorten it in order to get to the part I need to get to. Jacob got Esau to sell his birth right for a meal. Later, Jacob’s mother helps Jacob implement a plan to get the blessing from his father Isaac. Isaac comes to his father when he was very old and he brings him a meal and some drink. Jacob is also dressed like Esau and smells like Esau.
Gen 27:23 And he discerned him not, because his hands were hairy, as his brother Esau’s hands: so he blessed him.
Isaac is tricked into blessing the younger son Jacob, thinking that he is blessing Esau.
Gen 27:27 And he came near, and kissed him: and he smelled the smell of his raiment, and blessed him, and said, See, the smell of my son is as the smell of a field which the LORD hath blessed:
This is the beginning of the blessing, but not the end of it. What we again see is the established pattern of God being passed down upon the generations. Just as God blessed Adam and Eve with His words, Jacob is now getting the words of blessings of his father.
Gen 27:28 Therefore God give thee of the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine:
Gen 27:29 Let people serve thee, and nations bow down to thee: be lord over thy brethren, and let thy mother’s sons bow down to thee: cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he that blesseth thee.
Jacob receives the words of blessings from his father Isaac. Jacob then goes out with the blessing and his brother Esau comes in from hunting and asking for the blessing. But, Isaac is very surprised saying “who are you”? Who was it that I blessed earlier?
Gen 27:33 And Isaac trembled very exceedingly, and said, Who? where is he that hath taken venison, and brought it me, and I have eaten of all before thou camest, and have blessed him? yea, and he shall be blessed.
If you read this carefully you will discover a principle, it is not as easy to take back your words after they have already been spoken. There are just a lot of Christians who do not have a clue what I just said and how it applies to them. If they say something by mistake they simply think it is OK to start over and do it again. It’s funny Isaac did not take this position or attitude. Isaac knew what was done was done. The blessing was given and it would not be taken back. Like I have said before, your words have more power and significance than you can imagine.
Gen 27:34 And when Esau heard the words of his father, he cried with a great and exceeding bitter cry, and said unto his father, Bless me, even me also, O my father.
Esau pleads with his father for him to bless him also. But, Isaac says that it is too late:
Gen 27:35 And he said, Thy brother came with subtilty, and hath taken away thy blessing.
This chapter in Genesis contains some amazing information, if you learn to apply it to your life in the here and now. Words are significantly powerful and can bless others, transfer blessings, transfer authority and ownership, and they are a legal contract in the eyes of God. Like Isaac you should learn to be a man or woman of your word, stand up and stand behind your words. Mean what you say and only say what you mean. Esau did not get a blessing from his father, because the blessing had already been given to Jacob. This represents character and moral fiber that few have in our world today.
There are just so many stories in the Bible about the blessings of God, I’ll just give you one more example from the O.T. This next story is also from Genesis and occurs in the 48th chapter. Joseph brings his two sons to Israel to be blessed. Israel is presented the sons with the older son on his right hand and the younger son on his left hand. The older son is expected to receive the Right Hand of blessing and the younger the Left Hand of blessing. But, Israel crosses his hands over and speaks the blessing upon his grandsons. Again we see a principle that Words are the mechanism of blessing containers being transferred upon these children. But, the hands are also being placed here with great significance and meaning.
Gen 48:20 And he blessed them that day, saying, In thee shall Israel bless, saying, God make thee as Ephraim and as Manasseh: and he set Ephraim before Manasseh.
Joseph was not happy that his younger son got Israel’s right hand blessing. So there must have been meaning and significance to what happened. If it did not mean anything, it would not have mattered would it? The right hand of blessing is intended for the older son and Israel gave it to the younger. The net result was the younger son became a greater people in the eyes of God. So what you do and what you say matters and makes a difference in the life’s of your children. Learn the lessons from the Bible of the power of the blessing and then learn not to curse your children with your the words of your mouth and they will achieve and rise to level of what you have spoken over them. Words are seeds that grow in young hearts. If you tell your children they are nothing and nobody good, that is exactly what they become.
Mar 10:16 And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them.
People while Jesus walked the face of the earth realized the potential for the blessing still existed. People would bring their little children to Jesus for Him to bless them. There were those who tried to stop people from bringing their children to Jesus, but Jesus rebuked them and told them not to do this. Jesus said this is a spiritual law and a foundational way of the Kingdom of Heaven. To touch someone and speak positive words of blessings has a benefit that you probably do not fully understand. Children today are growing up and their parents put curses upon them rather than blessings. As a result the children grow up cursed. Your children will live up to your words, either positive or negative. What you transfer into them, is what they will achieve to. What you speak over them, is what they will become. It is a spiritual law found in the Bible.
If you like to continue reading this series of lessons on spoken words, you can go to “Part 5“.
The Sword of Our Mouth! Our Words Cut Two Different Ways!
(Ver 2.0) I have taught on this subject of the significance of the spoken words of our mouth a couple of times now. Today’s lesson will be Part 3 in the series and I will be talking about something that is completely new and different to many Christians. However, if you haven’t read this series from the beginning I would suggest that you go back and start with “Part 1“. This lesson will be focused upon God’s usage of the symbolic nature of a “double edged sword” to describe spoken words. If you have read through the Bible you should already be aware of how God teaches us very clearly that Jesus has a double-edged sword coming out of His mouth. We will see verses in this lesson that describe Jesus is able to destroy those who oppose Him with this symbolic sword. This double-edged sword is widely accepted by theologians as a figurative representation of the power of God’s word spoken. If we do not understand this concept, I will attempt to expound next in this lesson on this subject to clarify it and to help us better understand the concept of the power of spoken of words. Let’s start by reading some foundational verses found in Revelation:
Rev 19:21 And the remnant were slain with the sword of him that sat upon the horse, which sword proceeded out of his mouth: and all the fowls were filled with their flesh.
God is truly an awesome God! It shocked me a while back when I heard about a group of people in the U.S. that were getting together to form a militia to help God fight the coming Anti-Christ. They were gathering guns and ammo like it would be useful to God’s victory over evil. Where do people get these types of foolish ideas? I really have no clue. These people obviously do not know God, the Bible or understand the omnipotent power of God. This verse in Revelation 19 reveals to us that the LORD Jesus will be sitting on a white horse and He will be able to kill everyone opposing Him, simply by speaking some choice directed words at them. That is a clear example of the power of God in action. God says something and then it happens. Pretty awesome, isn’t it? You can learn concept this from reading the Bible starting in Genesis 1 and going all the way through to Revelation 22. God’s spoken words will always prevail and will always come to pass. Let’s examine some additional verses because the Bible instructs us to establish every truth in the mouth of two or three witnesses (Mat 18:16):
Rev 2:12 And to the angel of the church in Pergamos write; These things saith he which hath the sharp sword with two edges;
Rev 2:16 Repent; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will fight against them with the sword1 of my mouth.
Jesus speaking to the church in Pergamos, warns them to change or else they will also see the sword of His mouth come against them. We can easily understand that God is a Spirit (John 4:24) and that God is not talking about a literal physical sword coming out of the mouth of Jesus. 
We must therefore, conclude that this described sword is a symbolic representative for the spiritual force that exists in the power of God’s Spoken Word. I really hope that you understand this concept. Did you notice that God says this figurative sword has two edges? Two edges describes a weapon that can cut in either of the two directions depending upon which way a person swings it. Two edges could could also symbolically mean something else. The words of our mouth can be a blessing to someone or a curse to someone. There exists two possible realms of opposing types of words in the world. In the last Bible lesson we observed two types called “idle” or “lazy” words versus “working” and “productive” words. But there are others like “good” words or “bad/evil” words, “positive” words or “negative” words and words of “blessings” or words of “cursing”. All of these are examples of a sword that can be used for two different purposes.
I find it fascinating that the English word “sword” is the letter “S” followed by word “word”. I believe the letter “S” can stand for “Spirit” and we will learn more about this very soon. The power of any sword or spoken word is always the same. It is non-existent until used or spoken. Therefore the power of any weapon will forever be dependent upon the directed purpose of the user. In much the same way how a natural gun is used in the hands of the shooter, a spiritual weapon can be used for two completely different purposes. The natural gun can be used as a positive weapon to help feed or protect people or as a negative weapon to hurt or rob from people. These are parallel truths concerning the words of our mouth. What I would like to do is give some additional scriptures that help to confirm what I have just said so let’s take a look at these:
2Th 2:8 And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming:
God is speaking prophetically in this verse about the coming events in Revelation. The wicked one described here is the future antichrist who will soon be revealed. The double edge sword we read about in Revelation in the mouth of Jesus is now called something completely new and different in this verse. The symbolic double-edged sword of Revelation is now defined to be the “Spirit of His Mouth”. This is still the same equivalent description of God’s Spoken Word that is infinitely powerful. God’s spoken word has ALL of the ability to destroy or literally consume anyone who is opposing Him. Do you understand that God’s spoken words are His Spiritual Power released? This is an awesome revelation of something that is found within the character and nature of God the Almighty. God is often described in the Bible to be omnipotent, but what is that makes God this way is what we will explore now:
Joh 6:63 It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.
You can see a second confirmation that the Spoken Words of God are Spirit! This verse was Jesus speaking to us and He says that His words are this Spirit that quickens. To quicken is an old English term that means to give life to us. God’s words are declared to be a force of life to us. Because of what God has spoken to us we can live. Now recall, what we previously read in Revelation. In those verses God states His spoken Words are something that produces death. These represent the same spiritual power directed two different ways for two different purposes. This is an example of a double-edged sword. A knife can be used to kill someone or it can be used to save someone’s life if used in a wise knowledgeable way by a surgeon. Wow, these are very important lessons to learn and apply to our spoken words.
You will notice if you study the Bible, that Jesus chose His words very carefully and never shot off His mouth with random thoughts. His words were always focused, directed and had a purpose. Much of what Jesus said to people were words recorded by the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. In John 12:49 Jesus said He was told what to speak by His Father in heaven. How many of us can say that? How many of our words come from the God in heaven? We should learn to become more like Jesus because, God’s words were always active, relevant and important. Now let’s look at what the Bible says about the Power of God?
Heb 1:3 Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;
We can now see and learn from another verse about the Word of God. This time God reveals to us that “All” of His Power is in His Word. The Greek written here does not say “His powerful Word” it says “The Word of His Power” and that makes a huge difference. Some translators tried to change the meaning to “powerful” word but the KJV Bible stayed true to the original Greek and preserved it as an accurate truth. Here is the difference, does God’s Word have power or is it His Power? Can we try to think why this is important? If God said I am LOVE it would be completely different than Him saying I have love. I believe this principle is what God was saying to us in Hebrews 1:3 to His spoken Word. I believe that God is attempting to give us a revelation that His Word is His Power and His Power is His Word.
Therefore, we cannot separate God the omnipotent from His omnipotent Word or we could say His Word is God (John 1:1)! This is why John 6:63 said the Words that Jesus spoke to us were from God’s Spirit and they contain His life giving Power for those who received them. Always remember that God’s Words are Spirit! God’s Words are Life! God’s Words are His Power! As we have seen before they are also a weapon against His enemies. So we can all begin to understand that the Spoken Words of God can give life to some that will receive them and can take life away from others who do not accept the free gift of salvation. That is the nature of a double=edged sword. One aspect and application is always positive and the other is very negative. That was a summary of several foundational truths that the Bible teaches us about the Word of God and the Sword of the Spirit.
So how does this apply to us? What good does all of this information do me? Are there any benefits to speaking God’s Word for me? In other words what’s in this lesson for me? We all know that God is all powerful, so how does this power help me? Start by asking yourself this question. Why did God give us a huge book of His Written HOLY Words? Does the written Word of God have any visible power rising out from the pages? Obviously not! Therefore, these written words can only help me if I can learn to speak them. I beleive that only by learning to believer and speak His Word will it ever help us. I beleive this is “one” of the main reasons why God gave us His written Word. God gave us His Word so that we can put it in our minds (Eph 4:23). He also gave us the Word so that we could put it in our hearts (spirits) to believe it. Finally, I believe that He gave us His Word so that we can now choose to put it in our mouths to speak it (Mat 12:34).
Heb 4:12 For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than ANY two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of( soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
Let me introduce you to a hidden secret, in the Bible it says God is not the only one with a “two-edged” sword in his mouth. In fact we do not have to think very hard or for very long before we figure out that every created human in the world can open their mouth and speak words either positive or negative. This also includes other created spiritual beings like angels, demons and Satan. All of these beings were created with mouths which emit words that come from their spirits (Mat 12:34). But, this verse in Hebrews says plainly that God’s sword is sharper and more powerful than any of the others that might exist. This verse clearly informs us that the other mouths have power in them, but implies that they are in a limited capacity compared to God’s spoken Words. Do you get this concept?
If man was made in the image and likeness of God (Gen 1:26), like the Bible clearly says we were, and if God’s Words are sharp and powerful, then our words must have a limited resemblance to His. But, here is the major part of God’s contribution to man, God gave us His spoken words written in a book form in order to permit us to put them in our mouth to speak them. And the Bible says that God watches over His word to perform it (Jer 1:12). Wow, I hope you understand what I just said. The implications are far reaching if you can accept it and believe it.
Eph 6:17 And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:
In Ephesians chapter 6, God commands the church to put on the armor of God. 
Each of the armor pieces described to us is a symbolic representation of a spiritual truth of the completed freely given work of God to and for humans. In fact every piece of armor is something that God has already provided to us freely. It is now up to us to make the freewill choice to take each item and put it on. This aromor included the Shield of Faith, the Breastplate of Righteousness, the Belt of Truth, the Helmet of Salvation, and the Shoes of Peace. God is telling the church that there is a spiritual war and we must get ready for it. So far all of the weapons of armor that I just mentioned were defensive types of weapons to keep us safe from the blows of the enemy Satan. But, then in verse 17 of Ephesians 6, God finally tells the church to take the “Sword of the Spirit”, which is directly defined to be “the Word of God”. How is this Sword of the Spirit going to help us? I believe very firmly that we now have the direct implied connection to our mouths! Can’t you see this? The only way that we can use the Spiritual Sword of the Word of God against an unseen spiritual enemy to our advantage is to speak it. Leaving the Bible on our coffee tables will do nothing to keep the devil out of our houses. This is a very powerful, spiritual Bible law being revealed to us. What you say is far more important than what you can possibly imagine or know right now. Take a look at this verse in Isaiah:
Isa 59:21 As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the LORD; My spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed’s seed, saith the LORD, from henceforth and for ever.
God is prophesying an awesome new covenant reality that is now established with us in the church and God says that He will put His Spirit upon us and His Words in our mouth. Can you see the direct connection between our mouths speaking His spoken words with His Spirit?
God literally says that these words will not depart from our mouths, nor from the mouths of our seed. Who are those called the Seed of Abraham? We in the church are the seed of Abraham (Gal 3:29)! Who is the Seed of the Woman? You probably do not know this, but Jesus was the chosen Seed and we the church are in that Seed of the Woman (Rev 12:17). God’s Word will not depart from our mouths and we will overcome Satan by His Blood and His Word that He has given to Us (Rev 12:11)! I taught you earlier that this was a Biblical Spiritual Law being revealed to us. Let’s look at an Old Testament example of this.
Jos 1:8 This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.
The lessons found in the Bible through intense study are usually very deep and complex and have many hidden truths associated within them. Because we do not understand them completely we can easily just read over a truth and not grasp that these words apply to us and what we should be doing today. Here in the book of Joshua God uncovers the secret to a human’s success on this planet. It is a basic spiritual principle and law that is not very difficult to follow if we can understand it. God tells Joshua that He should speak His word both Day and Night. We could say that means constantly and continually or every waking moment. God was teaching Joshua about the Sword of the Spirit that will cause him to be a great success in this world. But, there is also an implied opposite truth found in this verse. God says by impled antithesis that if we do not speak the Word of God we will not be a success. Do we want to be prosperous and successful in life or dismal disappointed failure? God is telling us how to do both, right here! We have to make the choice. We are not forced to do either but usually being passive results in failure and this is many people’s wrong defaulted selection.
Remember when Jesus was tempted by Satan in Luke 4:1-13? Three times the enemy came to tempt him into a subtle trick. But, here is the lesson learned from this example. Every time the enemy Satan came with a temptation, Jesus brought out the Sword of the Spirit called the Word of God and said “IT IS WRITTEN”. Wow, that is extraordinarily critical to learn from and apply to what Satan does to us. You see the Bible says that Jesus was tempted the very same way that we are tempted (Heb 4:15). But, He was wise enough to use the sword correctly as a living example. I pray that this will be a benefit in your life today.
I guess I have gone long enough in this lesson and given you plenty of new things to think about. The sword of your mouth is either going to be a blessing or a curse to you and to those you direct it at. While your negative words will never be able to put a curse on me, they will cause curses to come upon you and your children. What we say is so completely important that it cannot be emphasized enough for us to think before we speak. If we do not have a Bible verse that backs up what we are about to say, we probably should not say it.
If you would like to continue reading this series of lessons on spoken words you can go to “Part 4“.
The Spiritual Family Structure of God’s Family. Part 2
(Ver 2.8) The spiritual family structure of God is one of those Bible basics that every Christian should be intimately familiar. God is said to be a triune being. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Yet these three personalities of God are reflected in One True God. In my first blog on this subject I talked about Jesus starting a new family of God. I talked about Jesus being born into the world, a product of unique circumstances. Because, God was His Father and Mary was His mother, Jesus was both God and man totally and completely. That means Jesus Christ was 100% God and 100% Man. Jesus Christ was the only one that was both the Son of God and the Son of Adam. This made Him uniquely qualified to fix problems in both dimensions of the spiritual and natural realms simultaneously. Maybe you did not realize that there were things to fix in the spiritual realm, but you really need to stop and go back to read “Part 1” of this series first. Today I will continue to talk about the spiritual family structure of God’s family and I want to start with some things that Jesus said to us:
Joh 14:1 Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.
These are the Words of God coming out of the mouth of Jesus Christ. These words declare that Jesus and God are one in the same. Jesus very clearly tells us if we believe in God, we better believe in Jesus. Because, Jesus was God in the flesh, walking among us like He was one of us. This is the amazing truth of God’s word. It is also the only way to be saved, whether you like it or not.
Joh 14:2 In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
Jesus continues His discourse revealing great spiritual information to us. Jesus announces that where He came from was His “Father’s House”. A house is always a family structure with relatives and family members living within it. Now, think with me and see who is speaking, it is Jesus the Son of God on the earth. When you are a son on the earth do you live with your father forever? That is an interesting question. Here in the natural realm a man will marry a wife and usually establishes a new independent family and they normally do not live with their parents. What I am getting at, is that Jesus is inferring His Father’s house is not His house. The Bible contains some very complex truths in it and this is certainly one of them. It is definitely hard to understand since the Son of God on the earth is God. But, God’s intelligence is so far above our mind’s thought process that He can do some simple things in ways that are difficult for us to understand. What I want you to begin to understand is that Jesus does not call it His house and that is very important to see. You see Jesus is choosing His words very carefully and using extreme wisdom to reveal something that is far greater for us to know. What we need to do today is to start thinking differently about the family of God. Jesus tells us that He came from His Father’s house from heaven and we now need to figure out what this is or I should say was.
You see, in John 1:18 the Bible says no man has ever seen God. We also know that when Adam was created and his wife was brought to him by God, that God established a new family on the earth which was detached from God’s spiritual family in heaven. You see this truth when you study what God says in Genesis 2:24 “for this cause shall a man (Adam) leave his father and his mother and shall cleave to his wife”. From this statement we can understand that God was Adam’s father that we are told that he left to be joined to his wife. But God is establishing a new type for a future pattern for the Last Adam (Jesus) to come into the world and leave His Father and Mother and to be joined to His bride. Therefore, the family of Adam is a separate earthly family from God’s existing family in heaven that Jesus is speaking of where He came from and this is a prophetic view into an event that was to come after the time that Jesus was speaking these words in these verses in John. Therefore this family of God where Jesus came from was not comprised of any of the men or women that were on the earth. Think with me and make a note that Jesus declares God’s family consists of family members that are not men, so who are they? We will definitely explore this information in the Bible later in this series, but for now let’s continue with what Jesus is saying. Jesus says if it were not this way I would have told you. Then Jesus makes this statement, “I go to prepare a place for you!” Jesus is talking to you and I and He is saying that He was going to be leaving this planet soon and going to build a new household for His new family. To “prepare” has an implication of a building project. I believe that it is not just a renovation of the old, but the creation of a new home that will be better the previous one.
Joh 14:3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.
Jesus continues to speak to us and tell us that where He goes we will also be going. Jesus tells us very clearly that He will soon return and “receive us unto Himself”. Have you ever thought about what those words mean? Why is Jesus receiving us unto Himself? So many Chrisdtians in the church like to call the church the body of Christ only. Then they ignore the rest of the Bible. If we were just the body of Christ, we would not need to be received unto Him, would we? I do not ever wake up in the morning and receive my body back to myself. Do you understand what I am saying? It would appear that Christians are now separate from Christ in order to be received by Him. It helps if you understand “Bible Covenants“. Since I have already done lessons on this subject I will not repeat the information here again. You should go back and read these lessons and learn what a Covenant is in the eyes of God. I will help you to some extent, Jesus is called the “Bridegroom” and He is in covenant with His Bride, the church. The church will soon be fully assembled in heaven for the marriage supper of the Lamb of God. During this time we will be fully and completely joined to Him and become one with Him forever. Jesus later tells us in John 14 that “He is the truth, the life, the way”. He also says that “No one comes to the Father except through Him”. Meaning there is no other religions in the world that will offer you salvation or an alternative way to God. That also means there are no other covenants of God that will save you either. God has sent Jesus Christ into the world to provide one way for all the people of earth to come into this new Family of God. We have already seen that God’s previous family structure was in heaven and had a very large location with many mansions in it, before Jesus ever came to the earth. Jesus then tells us that He was leaving the earth to go back to heaven to prepare places for us. So either God has a housing shortage in Heaven or the Heaven that we knew is going away and God is preparing a new place.
Rev 21:1 And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.
Why is it necessary for God to build a new heaven and a new earth? I can understand the earth, but heaven is a tricky thing to consider to be something that is in need of repair. Man has done a pretty poor job of keeping the earth intact. But, come on we are talking about God in heaven now. Why is it necessary for God to create a New Heaven? Evidently, we can see that there was a major problem in heaven that also consisted of a heavenly spiritual war.
Rev 12:7 And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,
If God’s wars are like our wars, there is always a lot of damage done to infrastructure and buildings. Now I do not mean to imply that God makes war like we make war, that is not what I am saying at all. After all it is God’s forces defending Heaven and not threatening to take it. It is Satan and his angels that are trying to overthrow God’s throne. God sends Michael and His angels to fight this enemy. What we have is some new things to consider. Why is Satan at war with God in heaven and what changed? You see in the Book of Job, Satan walks up to God without any conflict and discusses Job. By the time we get to the book of Revelation, we see that Satan is no longer welcome where he previously use to walk freely. Do you remember in the book of Daniel when Daniel prayed and fasted for an answer from God. Do you remember what happened in that story? It appears God sent an angel to answer the prayers of Daniel and Satan and his angels were in a spiritual battle that lasted 3 weeks, until the angels of God finally prevailed. The prince of Persia withstood God’s answer to the prayers of a man on the earth. That is an amazing story of why things can take so long when you pray and ask God for help. There is an enemy of God that is opposed to you and to God. He tries to stop your answers from happening. If Daniel would have resigned after only two weeks of prayer and fasting, Satan would have won. But, since Daniel did not give up, God did not give up and God prevailed and the answer came. Let me give you a picture diagram of the family of God revealed in the Bible as of Genesis 2:
Eph 3:14 For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
Eph 3:15 Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named,
Since we are discussing God’s spiritual family structure, I thought I would give you some more verses to establish that God has a family and then also describe the locations for this family. According to this verse written to the church God’s family is now in two different realms of reality. One is spiritual and the other is physical or natural. This verse in Ephesians declares God’s family to now be within the scope of both of these two sets of reality. We have one set that is found in heaven and one set that is on the earth. And God’s family is comprised of selected individuals from both of these places. However, do not attempt to be all inclusive and say that everyone in both realms has been saved and are in the unified family of God. That is what Universal Salvationists like to teach and project. They claim in error that God will save everyone eventually. They clearly do not understand that Jesus came to divide the good from the evil and not to change the evil back into the good.
Here is a graphical representation of God’s new spiritual family. God’s family now consists of members of two different set realms. In the previous diagram I showed how the two families were separate in Genesis 2. The first set realm heaven existed prior to the other set realm created on the earth. The earth is the natural temporary realm where we all live today. God created our current world system approximately 6000 years ago and turned the authority of His creation over to His created man Adam (Gen 1:26). Adam represented a new start and a new natural family structure of God’s spiritual family. Adam’s family was separate from God’s family that already existed in heaven. God did all of this for many reasons and I cannot get into all of the reasons in this blog because it would take a tremendous amount of time to explain. Today, man exists within the constraints and limitations of time and space. We are spirit beings created in the image and likeness of God, but limited to the confines of a natural body. Since Adam’s family was separate from God’s family, that is one of the main reasons that Jesus had to come to the earth in the form of a man. God’s new family established by Jesus Christ the Son of God and the Son of Man, consists of selected members of both of these set realms. Jesus was able to accomplish and provide salvation for man because He was a man as well as a division from His father’s house simulataneously by His death on the cross. Let’s look at the definition of the word translated as “family” in Ephesians 3:15.
G3965
As if feminine of a derivative of G3962; paternal descent, that is, (concretely) a group of families or a whole race (nation): – family, kindred, lineage.
This verse in Ephesians uses a word for “family” that is very interesting. You can see from the definition some widely applicable truths. God’s new family structure is a pattern of another previous structure that God did in the Old Testament. We are said to be a new nation of people descended from the Most High God. This is an interestingly different word that has a feminine connotation attached to it. Why would God put a female reference on the church? Because we are the bride of Christ. The church is a representative spiritual pattern of natural Israel. The natural nation of Israel was God’s wife in the Old Covenant. This was a pattern given to us for the New Covenant.
Jer 31:32 Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD:
You need to see what the Bible says and then interpret it using the Bible. God declares to the nation of Israel that I was your Husband. If God was the Husband to the nation of Israel that makes natural Israel the wife of God. A covenant is a marriage in the eyes of God. God proposed marriage to a nation of people and they accepted and entered into a covenant with the Almighty God. This is another example of God being a spiritual male in a spiritual family structure. We can clearly make many assumptions based upon this unlimited information. If God can marry one group of people, what stops God from marrying another group of people? Nothing really, except if you just marry a new group of people and you are still married to the other group of people you are now a polygamist by definition. There is a lot of men on earth that would like to think that God is married to multiple women, but you have not studied the Bible and therefore have put your thoughts into the mix where they do not belong.
Why did Jesus come to earth, being the Son of God? It is because Jesus Christ the Son of God was never married to anyone else before now. I know technically Jesus is the same God and He was married to Israel, but was that God the Father that was in Covenant with them or Jesus, God the Son? You soon realize how smart God is and how tricky He can be. I do not mean to imply that God is a deceiver, what God does is very legal, but yet very unexpected. Satan did not anticipate Jesus Christ and therefore, now realizes that he should not have killed him. Why is that? Why was the death of Jesus so detrimental to Satan? You should really give that some serious thought. You see you can learn from God by reading a clue given to us in the book of Ruth, when Naomi and Ruth are talking and Ruth says I’ll stay with you until “death separates me from thee” (Ruth 1:17). Death is a separating force. Death is a spiritual power that naturally divides one from another. In a marriage ceremony the husband and wife are said to be joined until death do they part. Marriage is a covenant relationship and God uses His death on the cross to separate Himself from Satan. Yes that means Satan was in covenant with God also. You should really study the Bible more, you might find all kind of new things in it, if you look for them. Let’s move on to a verse that helps to clarify what I was saying about Israel and God the Father’s covenant relationship:
Rom 7:4 Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.
This verse in Romans has some amazing information in it. God is writing this section of Romans directly to the Natural Nation of Israel. You can read the context and see this very clearly if you understand the wording. So while the context is talking about the law of marriage that was given to only natural Israel it then declares to them that they have been released from their previous covenant with God, by the death of Jesus Christ so that they can be legally married again. God says very clearly that they are now free to “marry” another, and then describes Him to be the Lord Jesus Christ who was raised from the dead. Did you ever realize that the Jesus who died was different from the Jesus who was raised from the dead? That is what God is saying in this verse. Jesus Christ was raised from the dead and became the “firstborn” from the dead (Col 1:18). This verse now declares to natural Israel that they have been freed from the law of marriage with God the Father by the death of Jesus on the cross. The marriage to Jesus who is risen is in reference to the New Covenant and their opportunity to become the bride of Christ. Jesus confirms this reality in this statement:
- Joh 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
If the old covenant was a way to be saved then Jesus lied. The Old Covenant is not the New Covenant. We can clearly see that truth in verses like Hebrews 8:6 or Hebrews 12:24 when Jesus becomes the mediator of a new and better covenant. Any covenant called new is one that never existed before. All of this information that I am introducing you to will become clearer as the series continues and more scriptures are revealed to you.
Many like to think that God is a polygamist and is in covenant with natural Israel and the church simultaneously right now. While they do not call it Polygamy, that is what God calls it. However, once you realize that the Old Covenant was with God the Father, and the New Covenant is with God the risen Son, I believe that changes everything dramatically. It also means that God is not in covenant with Natural Israel anymore. I do not have time or space to explain that, but you can read my other blogs and find more answers, if you want to know the truth. The natural nation of Israel is able to enter into the New Covenant with Jesus Christ, if they want to. However, most of natural Israel has chosen to close their eyes and not to see the truth, so they reap the works of their own deceptions. There is more I could write and many other scriptures that we could explore, but I have gone too long in this blog. Hopefully I can continue this subject in the future.
If you would like to continue reading this series of lessons about the spriitual family of God you may continue with “Part 3“.
What Does God Think About Homosexuality? What Does The Bible Say?
(Ver 1.3) This is “Part 1” in a series of advanced Bible lessons on the subject of “What does God think of homosexuality”. This of course is a hot topic and one that is fiercely debated, even in churches. There are so many controversial subjects that people just want to ignore, because they do not want to offend anyone. I never recall Jesus avoiding any issues that were brought before Him but, I also do not recall Jesus ever directly addressing sin in any area of people’s personal lives. People need to understand what Jesus said in John 3:17. Jesus claimed that He was not sent into the world to condemn the world but through Him the world might be saved. This of course, people are very quick to point out, Jesus never said anything about homosexuality and I have even heard people try to accuse Jesus of acting like a homosexual. It is amazing how foolish people can become when they want to justify their erroneous ways and their sinful lifestyles. While Jesus rarely addressed sin, you will find that after He healed people, He would sometimes say, “now go and sin no more unless a worse thing come upon you” (John 5:14). To the woman caught in adultery Jesus said “go and sin no more” (John 8:11). So Jesus never said that sin was OK and acceptable. Jesus never justified sin, nor would He tolerate people doing everything they wanted to do. So it comes down to a question of the definition of what sin is and this varies tremendously from person to person. Some think their sin is better than someone else’s sin and thus they justify themselves to be righteous in their own eyes. The basic modern argument for homosexuality being forced down our throats is a statement that claims this is who we are. They claim that God created us this way. This is the only sin that I know of that makes these assertions. So that is why I am writing about homosexuality and not about adultry today. I have never heard someone caught in adultry say this is just who I am and you will have to accept me this way. Therefore, I am not here to discuss all types of sin today, I just want to focus in on what the Bible says about homosexuality and see if we can determine if God thinks this is a sin, based upon the Bible and not my opinion or yours.
While some people like to claim that Jesus never said anything about homosexuality they quickly forget that Jesus was God in the flesh and that He said plenty about the subject in many other parts of the Bible. While Jesus was walking the face of the earth in the flesh, you will notice that one of the only things that Jesus ever confronted was religious people who thought they knew more than He did and proclaim themselves to be better than everyone else. Self-righteousness still abounds today even in the church. We have church people protesting Homosexuals and Abortionists and in doing so, they proclaim themselves to be perfect. As a result Christians are portrayed on TV and in the news as the hate mongers. Christians are viewed as those who are hateful towards others and intolerant towards minorities. Is this what Jesus did? Didn’t Jesus tell the crowd of potential stone casters, “He that is without Sin, Cast the first stone”? I think you could legitimately change that to say, “To Him that is without Sin, Pick up your Signs and Posters and hold them up!”. It just doesn’t make much sense what people think is right to do, if you think about it. Christians should change and become more like Christ and less like those in the world. In Jesus’ lesson about fishing for men, you must conclude that you never try to clean a fish, until you first catch one. Too many people are trying to get clean fish first and then take them to God to be saved and this is not how it works.
What are Christians suppose to do? I believe that Christians should just tell the truth and that would be a great place to start. The truth is a very difficult thing to tell people sometimes, because it is not easily accepted by many who do not wish to hear it. The truth is often times rejected on purpose so as to deflect blame, shame or guilt away from their lives. While there are many who want to portray an openly gay life style with open pride today, there are equally as many who are ashamed of their ways. People do not like to tell about their childhood experiences, where a grown up abused them and did things to them that they should not have done. These are the areas of life that hurt people and cause emotional and psychological damage and people think that many times they are better left unsaid and swept under a rug somewhere. Because I do not know you, I cannot speak about you. I can only tell you about my personal experiences and you of course can believe them or not.
A male family member that I know of was molested as a child by an older male relative. I know this, because I was there. It was the middle of the night and this male relative tried to molest me too, but I was too big for him and I said leave me alone. Because I did not know what to do, I did nothing to stop him from molesting this other relative. As a result of this attack, this young male family member later turned to a homosexual life style. But, I know where it started and how it started and this was not how he was born. This is rarely talked about in the world, in the news media and on TV. That is unless it is committed by someone in the church. Then it is run up the flag pole like, look at these people who say they are Christians, they are just perverts who molest our children. Because people do not normally talk about these events in their young lives, most pretend that they never happen. What people do not understand, is many Gay men want sex with young boys and that is widely swept under the rug and never discussed. We can easily understand that being a pedophile is a sin, or at the least against the law. But we ignore the bigger problem, that there is a heart issue, a mind issue and an emotional issue that is not being addressed in the victims of these molesters.
As a teenage male growing up in America in the sexual revolution 70’s, I was targeted by older males. Satan also attempted to get me into this lifestyle. I was picked up and did not know what was happening before it happened. These guys were aware that I was under age and did not care. That is why they picked me to begin with. Being naive is both a blessing and a curse, you are kept from knowing what people really want, but when approached you are easily tricked into being somewhere you should not be. Because, I was young and naive, I was a candidate and an easy target for these predators. So how many Gays are talking about this kind of behavior openly, not any that I know of? I am very thankful to God that these creeps did not scar me for life or get me to change who I really am. I am also thankful to God for not allowing them to hurt me more than they did. People rarely talk about these kinds of things, and it is very difficult for me to even admit that I was there. I could have very easily been drawn into the deception of this wrong life style. I could have been deceived into believing that I was just like them. So I have given you my personal experiences with this issue. Gays would make sex with young males legal if they could get away with it. I would venture to say that most Gay men have been molested somewhere in their childhood and have been deceived into the lifestyle, but do not discuss it.
So the title of my blog is “What Does God Think about Homosexuality?” Just based upon what I have written, so far about my experiences what do you think that God thinks about what men do to children? Or even what women do to little girls? Do you think that it is OK, in the eyes of God? Is this how God created people to act? That of course is a very loaded set of questions. God loves everyone, but does not approve of everything that people do. It is not OK to do something’s, just because you are able to and you want to. There are many things in the world that are here, not because God created them for us, but because, man wanted them for their pleasure and self-indulgences. What does God think about “homosexuality”? Let’s look at what God says in the Bible and just see some of the examples of God’s thoughts toward the subject.
Rom 1:26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:
Churches, who ordain gay ministers, must ignore vast parts of the Bible. Here is God speaking about women who are making a critical mistake. God calls it “vile affections”. These are women who have sex with women for their own selfish pleasure. God calls sex “natural”, but only between a man and his wife. The natural use of a woman is not to have sex with another woman. If you do not know how to read, you can obviously make up excuses and attempt to explain away what God says very plainly. The term “vile” means indignity, shame, reproach, dishonor and disgrace. Those are some pretty strong words for something that God does not look upon with favor. The term “affections” can mean “lusts”. I will talk about this word more as we look at the next verse in the chapter:
Rom 1:27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
Now it starts to become much more more obvious to what God is talking about. God is definitely saying that sex between a husband and his wife is natural. However, God says that sex between two males is a clear “error”. The term “unseemly” in this verse means “indecency” . What is indecency? We have heard the term used “indecency with a child”. That means that in the eyes of the law, you are doing something that you should not do to a little child. This can include touching them inappropriately to speaking suggestively to them, or whatever. “Indecency” in the eyes of God is what happens when a man has sex with a man. God calls it something that should not occur. It is an abuse of the specifically designed sexual reproduction principles established by God. You have heard of drug abusers and alcohol abusers, well God is calling men who have sex with other men sexual abusers. God is saying sex has a purpose and was designed in a certain way to be between a husband and wife and anything else is abuse of the design. People ignoring God’s moral standards have sought to establish their own definitions of morality. The term “error” in this verse means to be “deceived”. God is saying that men who have sex with men and women who have sex with women have been “deceived”. Who is the deceiver? Of course the deceiver is Satan. Satan has caused men and women’s minds to be tricked into believing a false reality of who they really are. If you know how to read and to look up the definitions of the words in the Strong’s Concordance you will see that I am telling you the truth.
So now let’s discuss what God says is the reason for this deception and how it works. The Bible says that these men “burned in their lust” one toward another. What does that mean? What does it mean to burn? What is lust? If you look up the word translated as “lust” in Strong’s it is very interesting. Lust means “excitement of the mind”. I have often times heard it said that the mind is the devil’s playground. This is how he is allowed to work to deceive people. Do you know that it is illegal for the devil to appear to you and try to trick you naturally? I guess I won’t go there today, but Satan uses people’s thoughts to entice them into doing things that they should never do. You know that men who molest children or just have sex with other men do not start out that way, they have done it hundreds of times in their minds before they ever act it out in the natural. Doing wrong things outwardly are all just manifestations of inward fantasies, projections and thoughts. The reality of acting out a “lust” is always the result of a previous repeated fantasy of someone’s imagination. What you continually think about, is what you will eventually do. Think wrong things, you will eventually do wrong things, this is how God designed the human mind to work. If you put the right things into your mind, you will get more positive things to come out of your mind into your actions. But, if you put Garbage into your mind, you will always get garbage out of it in what you do. Why do you think the Bible says for us to put forth an effort to “RENEW OUR MINDS”? (Rom 12:2) The renewal process of the mind means a renovation or the replacement of the old previous thoughts in your mind to think new and improved ones from God’s Word. You could call it a mind thought upgrade to think higher spiritual thoughts. By replacing the old carnal thoughts, with new spiritual thoughts we can eventually change what we do. People wonder why we have such problems in our schools and never place the blame on the fact that we have taken God and the Bible out of our schools and are now are reaping the results of producing spiritually ignorant children without morals and standards. Ok, I got off the subject, I was talking about homosexuality and how people become homosexuals and told you about your mind being the cause and then went into schools. Sorry about that. I started this paragraph speaking about lust and I need to get back on track..
Lust is a longing for, something that is highly desired to someone. Did you know if you do everything that your flesh longed for, you would be in really bad shape? Lust is something that is a normal human emotional state, but what you lust after is always the root cause of every problem. The verse in Romans was talking about the unnatural sex between people of the same sex as being a result of unnatural thoughts that were acted out. So why do some men lust for men and others do not? Why do some men lust after alcohol and some do not? The Bible says we are all carried away with different things, there are many different temptations in the world (James 1:14). For the most part, it came about from something that happened in their childhood, their parents could have been alcoholics and it was passed down. This is a factor that you should realize. The sins of the parents are often times passed to the children. Let’s change the focus and go back and see if Jesus ever said anything about homosexuality:
Mat 19:4 And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female,
Jesus asks a very basic question about creation and I wonder why Gay people do not see that He is talking to them. While some people say that Jesus never talked about homosexuality, I am about to prove them wrong. Jesus in effect is saying “Are you STUPID”, can’t you READ?” In the beginning did God create them MALE and MALE or FEMALE and FEMALE? Or did God create them Male and Female? Somehow, God must have changed His mind somewhere in the course of human history. I can only guess that this is that these homosexual proponents must think today! They obviously declare that God created me this way. I’m Gay because I was born Gay! The lies and the deception from Satan are very deep when it comes to this issue. People seem to think that God has changed somewhere during the last 6000 years, and the Bible clearly says that God never changes (Mal 3:6). So what do we do with Bible stories like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen 19)? In this story two men show up at Lot’s house and the house is surrounded by the men of the city. These men demand for Lot to send the men out so that they can have sex with them. However, these men were angels and they strike the homosexuals blind and later destory the city. I guess we just ignore these stories and pretend that they are not in the Bible and let these people continue with their lie. We are just all suppose to get along and become more open and tolerant and just look the other way and pretend that it is not happening. After all God must have intended to created Adam and Steve, instead of Adam and Eve, He just made a mistake.
1Co 6:9 Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,
People can be exceedingly foolish, sometimes. They think you have to have overwhelming evidence to the fact of anything in the Bible in order for it to be true. Just because some people cannot find 15 to 20 Bible verses about the subject of homosexuality, they feel it is not worthy of mention and deem it to be insignificant to their view of God. However, God does not view it this way. In fact God says we only need at the minimum, two verses in the Bible to establish any truth. If you can find just two verses it is an established truth from God’s perspective. That is the Bible law of interpretation and you can ignore it, if you want to. Here is another very clear verse in 1 Corinthians and it says something that is profound if you look up the definitions of all of the words. God starts by declaring that He is talking about the “unrighteous”. Unrighteousness is the opposite of being righteous. To be “righteous” means you are in good standing with God. The Bible declares that true Christians have obtain the righteousness of God, so we know that this verse is not talking about true Christians. The word translated as “unrighteous” means “heathen” and “wicked”. So the unrighteous are clearly warned that they will not inherit the kingdom of God. The verse then goes and defines who these unrighteous people are. Most of the descriptions of these next terms are sexually based. So right there we have a major problem being presented to the church. I’ll start with the word “fornicators” and that word means “male prostitute”. Isn’t that interesting? This is someone who sells their body for the sexual pleasure of others. This word can apply to homosexual prostitutes as well as heterosexual prostitutes. But I do not see the need for most women to buy a prostitute so this is not what God is talking about, is it? Now let’s skip to the word translated as “adulterer”. The word in the Strong’s carries the “male” gender for a word that is a derogatory definition of a “male lover”. Again this is not a good word for men. Now let’s continue to the next word translated as “effeminate”, we can already see the negative implications on this word. The Strong’s defines this word as a “catamite”. A catamite is defined as a boy that is kept for the sexual pleasure of an older man. This is the definition of a homosexual and you can ignore it if you want to stay in your sinful ways, but it does not change the truth. Finally, the last Greek word in the verse tops off the list with the most plain conformation and definition, this word is translated in the KJV as “abuser of themselves with mankind”. Already we see a pattern of definitions that is clearly not an endorsement of the homosexual lifestyle. This Greek word is defined in Strong’s as a “Sodomite”. This is just so clear that those who do not want to know the truth have been blinded by Satan to not accept what God is saying to them in a clear warning. Sodomy is male sex with a male. I mean give me a break, the only way a male has sex with a male is either orally or anally. Males are not designed this way and God tells you very clearly that it is an abuse of the original sexual design of humanity. So those who want to continue to be how they say they were created will probably not change no matter how many scripture verses I give them. Gay men and women will always ignore the truth for whatever they want to do. Either they will see the truth and change or they will encounter the error of their ways for an eternity. This is what the Bible says, so accept it or choose to reject it and die in your sins, it will always be your choice. I’m sorry if I’m being very blunt, but it is time to be plain, sound a clear warning and tell the truth.
1Jn 2:16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.
We have already clearly seen the relationship of lust to homosexuality, if you do not understand the relationship of the two, then you do not want to know the truth. What is homosexuality? What is the definition of homosexuality? It is the sexual relationship of two people of the same sex. So why do people do this? The Bible calls it the lust of the flesh. To lust after flesh is said not to be of God, but is said to be of the world. God is giving you some very clear information about homosexuality in a non-direct way. If you think that you can lust after a man and be a Christian man at the same time, God says this is not of Me.
2Ti 4:3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;
This is what churches are doing who let in Gay ministers. They ignore God’s truth and preach their own version of godliness. They do not want to have to change, so they change the Bible to fit what they desire. The subject of lust is widely discussed in the Bible, and you should be able to see how it applies to homosexuality. If you do not, it really doesn’t matter what God says to you anywhere, you have already made up your mind to stay where you are at. Did you know God will let you do that? God never forces anyone to change.
I could give you many, many other Bible verses on the subject that are far more direct and speak clearly on this subject, but I have gone long enough for now. I suppose I will hear some criticism about what I have written. I know there are churches in America that stand up and allow homosexual leaders to teach and preach and to be ordained as God’s chosen ones. These people have gathered together teachers who justify what they want to hear and have chosen to ignore the truth. Do not be deceived with them. If you are going to a church that promotes sin as something good, you are going to the wrong church. I always get amused at people who do not like what God says in the Bible. People like to attack the messenger and want to kill them for bringing them the bad news. God says certain things about homosexuality that will not be popular with those who wish to continue in their ways. I did give you enough information in this one blog to show you how you change what you are doing, if God is talking to you today. If you do not agree with what God says in the Bible, then I prefer not hear the words of fools and idiots, so do not leave me any negative comments. Take up your negative comments with God and not me, I did not write the Bible.
It is difficult not to have an opinion on this subject of homosexuality. We cannot go anywhere, where it is not thrown in front of us. If you have been on vacation to any of the popular destinations in our country, you have been confronted with homosexuality on every street corner. San Francisco has widely been held as the capital city of the Gay community, put we were confronted with it in Key West, Florida and even north in Martha’s Vineyard, then certain districts of New York City. We were in Orlando Florida at Disney World, one year and it just so happened to be the same time that Disney held Gay Pride Day or something like that. There are Gay Pride parades and events in every major city now and they dress up and cross dress and do as many perverted unnatural things as they want to call it all normal behavior. Very few places in the world are now not open to the blatant show of in your face sin. Almost everyone in the media, and on TV and in the Movies have come up with a direct homosexual agenda that is being rammed down the throats of God fearing Christians. The News media likes to put homosexuality in the same category as racial bigotry and hatred. I do not know how they can confuse the two issues and think we can lump these into the same level of intolerance. One is a Sin and the other is the color of someone’s Skin. Is there a difference, you bet there is. The homosexual lifestyle is portrayed as a valid alternative lifestyle on TV. Homosexuals have come out of the closets in droves in the last 50 years. Gay marriage is being pushed in every state as a violation of their rights. Acceptance and equal rights is the agenda of the Gay community. All calling for acceptance in who they say they are. This is the way we were born, this is how we are, it’s in our DNA, and so they would like to try to convince us. They are claiming to have been born with a Gay gene. Now having said all of that, I do not think Christians should go around and hold up signs, telling Gays that God Hates Them. That is idiotic and not helping anyone. Where in the Bible does it say that God hates Gays? Christians should not be in the Gay bashing or hatred realm of existence. We are to preach the good news, like Jesus did in a way that might help some. I believe that Christians are to stand up for what is right and base what we believe solely on the Bible. So have you ever read the Bible? What does it say about Homosexuality? I have not found anything favorable or tolerant about this sin, have you? However, it is still just a sin like every other sin and God views all sin in the same light, on the same level plane. One sin is not greater than another if you study your Bible, you will see that God does not rate sin in varying degrees like people do.
So if you are struggling with this issue and thinking there is no hope, you are wrong. You do not know the power of God to change the hearts and minds of people who want to change. If you want to stay where you are and do what you do, God will let you. I have given you enough information in this blog on what it takes to change. With God’s help you can do it.
If you want to go and read the next lesson in this series you may go to “Part 2“.
Learning and Following the Spiritual Laws of Bible Interpretation!
(Ver 2.4) People generally do not like to follow rules. If the speed limit is 35 they like to push it 41 or 42 and see if they get away with it. Life is full of rules and we should begin to realize that these laws have benefits and reasons for existence. Laws should be viewed as positive things in the world. You live by them every day, they govern what you do and if you violate them, you pay the consequences. Without laws we would live in a world of chaos. There are natural laws, scientific laws, laws of gravity, laws of aerodynamics, laws of governments and these all provide structure to our world. When we abide with them and cooperate with them, we usually live in a world that is safer and generally a better place to exist. So do people not realize that the spiritual laws in the Bible are also given to us for these same reasons. By learning about the spiritual laws of God in the Bible we can better understand what the Bible means. By ignoring these spiritual laws, we have what we have a lot of today, we have a church of chaos, disagreement, contention, arguing, controversy, and the lack of agreement and harmony.
Without people following the laws of Bible interpretation, we have hundreds of possible interpretations available about what the Bible means. I’ve got bad news for most people, not every Bible interpretation is the truth. A lot of the teaching in the church is just someone’s opinion of what they think the Bible says and this is not how God intended it to be. If God was interested in your opinion, he would have asked you to write the Bible. Your opinion is not worth a dime, in the eyes of God. Your intelligence is so far below that of God, that it is probably humorous to God to hear what you have to say and what you think is right.
NO PRIVATE INTERPRETATIONS
So what are these laws of Bible interpretation that we should learn to follow? I hope you understand the importance of laws, for I will not expand that part of the discussion any further. Up until now I have just introduced you to some basic concepts of the usefulness of laws. Now I will talk about a couple of the major rules of correct Bible interpretation that not too many are following. The first law of Bible interpretation should be one that everyone knows, because I think it is the most important to know and use. I’ve already touched on it a little bit in the introduction and it has to do with keeping your opinion out of your interpretations. An interpretation represents a biased opinion of the facts given. People cannot interpret the Bible without putting what they know and have experienced into it. Your personal experiences, your prejudices, your upbringing, even the words of your pastor are all factors into how you view the Bible. What you see in the Bible is always slanted by the many complex factors of influece and these are sometimes very difficult for people to get out of their minds in order to see clearly what God is saying.
2Pe 1:20 Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.
God writes this as being something that we should know first. That makes it sound very important for us to know. Some do not know how God writes the Bible and therefore come to the wrong conclusions. God can hide the most important things in obscure verses deep in the middle of the Bible. I wish I could give you a good reason why God does some of the things that He does, but I’m not God and I do understand all of them, by far. I just do the best that I can with what I have learned so far, and you should do the same. Anyway, this verse in 2 Peter tells us very clearly that the Bible is not open to our private interpretations. In other words, God is not interested in your opinion or what you think that it means. If people would learn this one simple rule, it would help them tremendously. You see in the word “private” carries the meaning of “self”. That means that people are putting their own spin on what God has said. Instead of learning what God says about the subject, they want to ignore God’s words for what they think is correct.
What we learn from this verse in 2 Peter is that the Bible interprets itself. What does that mean? It simply means that God is smarter than you and I, and He has given us His own explanations on what He has said in the Bible. While this sounds good on the surface, it is also a challenge to us. Finding God’s explanations and definitions are not always as easy as you would like to think. It involves an effort and a level of work to study the Bible and find out what God has said. God could have made the Bible easier to understand, but He didn’t, so we work with what He has given us. We bow to His greater wisdom on the subject and submit to His design. If you do not do this you will continue to be lost in your mindless reality and you will miss what God has for you. So learn this first rule and it will change your perspective greatly. It will also cause you to ignore what other people think the Bible means. That alone is worth a fortune of your time and Bible study effort. People on the internet who do not give Bible verses, I very quickly just turn off and do not read. It sure saves a lot of time not to have to listen to the opinions of ignorant people.
Another aspect of what a private interpretation is, can be the use of any other book or source other than just reading the Bible. You see I talked to a guy on the internet the other day and he gave me his interpretation for some prophetic scriptures in the Old and New Testaments. His major problem was the fact that his interpretation was dependent upon information from history books, internet calendars and way too many sources that did not include God or the Bible. That is an obvious example of interpreting the Bible in error. Once you set foot outside of the Word of God you are treading on Satan’s realm and domain of deception. Another example of error is interpretations that name modern individuals, entities, governments, organizations or whatever else you care to interpret into the Bible. I have heard repeatedly the reference to the Pope being the antichrist and this is crazy speculation and a clear example of a private interpretation. The pope did not exist when the Bible was written, but Satan did exist.
Some like to read that God knows the end from the beginning and therefore in Revelation He can tell us of caoming things that do not yet exist like the Pope. While this is certainly possible we must still attempt to interpret the Bible with the Bible and the Pope interpretation is a major conflict with many other verses in the Bible that teach us something differently. Understand that the Bible does not contradict itself in the proper correct understanding of the words written. In other words one verse is not going to conflict with another vese so we must balance the correct interpretation between both truths given. First, God says there is nothing new under the sun (Ecc 1:9). The thing that has been is the thing that shall be again. That right there tells me that the Pope is not God’s enemy and to declare him the anti-Christ is in opposition to God’s Word that there is nothing new. Then there is this verse in the N.T. that says “While we look not at the things that are seen, because the things that are seen are temprorary and the things that not seen are eternal” (2 Cor 4:18). God is basically telling us if we are looking for natural signs and ignoring the spiritual world you are going to miss it. Can you see the Pope? If you can see the pope then the pope is not what we should be focused on. What God is teaching us in this verse is that we should change our focus and not be fixated on the external things and try to perceive the spirit behind the external visible person. Ok, do not misunderstand what I am saying. We do live in a natural world but we should be dominated with the Spiritual things of God and not the flesh. If the anti-Christ comes in the flesh, people are only going to be able to discern him with their spiritual awareness and not by looking at the outward appearance that will easily deceive many.
Therefore learn to change your perspective to God’s point of view and see scriptures and things in the spiritual realm first and then you will understand what is happening in the natural realm. Correct bible interpretation is not easy, but it is achievable by simply learning the rules and this was only one small aspect of the subject and it is impossible to cover it fully in this one lesson.
IN THE MOUTH OF TWO OR THREE WITNESSES
The next thing that I would like to discuss is often misused and ignored. This law is a law found in the Bible and one that God has clearly spelled out. However, I guess people do not apply it to Bible study and Bible interpretation. Did you know everything in the Bible is not plainly laid out? God gives us some very valuable information in some very minor scriptures. For example, the virgin birth of Christ, which is a basic foundational Christian theological position and critical to the identity of Jesus, is only mentioned a couple of times in vague references. You would think that God would talk about this more clearly and give us many more verses that told us about this, but yet He does not. I was reading a blog the other day and this very deceived man was speaking about “homosexuality” not being mentioned in the Bible clearly so therefore he concluded that it was not important to God and that he could still be a Christian and a homosexual at the same time. What people do not understand is that it only takes two verses in the Bible to say the same thing and that means it is an established truth of the Bible. Because this man only found two or three verses against homosexuality, he came to the wrong conclusion and said it is OK to stay in sin. This is what God says:
2Co 13:1 This is the third time I am coming to you. In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established.
Did you see what God says in this verse? God says that if you can find at the least two references in the Bible to the same subject, then that establishes the truth that you should live by. This is a basic truth that our courts and legal system needs to abide by. If it is just the word of one against the other, then you will have a very hard time figuring out what the truth is. But, if you can find two witnesses who agree, then that establishes the basis of the truth. So we learn that we cannot just go read a single Bible verse and try to make it say something that it does not say. We are required by God’s design to get a corresponding and collaborating witness to every truth. Knowing this fact will change almost everything found in many church doctrines. That means the people who try to teach snake handling in churches have a major problem with what they teach. They do err in their interpretation of the Bible by selectively preaching a single verse out of context. I’ll go even further than that today risking offending someone in the Catholic church. The Bible does not teach we need a Pope. Peter was not the first pope that they claim that he was. They take one verse out of context and try to make a man-made doctrine to establish the office of the pope and this is a dangerous way to treat God and the Bible. You can make the Bible say anything that you want it to. There is proof of this in every denominatio of the church. However, if people would only read and study the Bible using the rules of God to understand what is written we would all benefit and come closer to a unified set of beliefs. Learn to search your Bible for at least two verses to establish the truth and this will help you tremendously in how you view the truth.
These are just two of the most important basic spiritual laws of correct Bible interpretation that you need to learn and put into daily practice. Once you finally do this, you will begin to see that there is a major difference between God’s Bible truth from what some people are trying to convince you is the truth. There is a conept from our history that applies to today’s lesson on God’s laws. The Law of aerodynamis always existed from the time of Adam, but no man knew or understood it so we did not benefit from it. Do you see the application that I am getting at and the importance of knowing about God’s laws? People who do not know that spiritual laws exist can never follow them or utilize them to their advantage to understand God’s Word. However, once you discover them and learn to use them they have great potential for the same dramatic change in our lives as the invention of the airplane. Just a short time ago no one knew how to fly and today it is a common occurrence that everyone participates in. This is why I am teaching this subject today so that we can all benefit and begin to use God’s laws to understand the Bible. Thanks for reading my Bible lesson on the Laws of correct Bible interpretation. God Bless!
Deception the Greatest Weapon of Satan!
(Ver 1.3) This is Part 1 of a series of lessons on the subject of deception found in the Bible. Today I want to discuss how Satan causes people not to see the truth of God’s Word. It is a common practice in military training for Generals and commanders to study their enemies. By understanding an enemies strengths and weaknesses you are better able to defend against them or better yet to defeat them. The more you know about your enemies the better off you are. So does the church have any enemies? You must be an ostrich Christian with your spiritual head stuck in the ground if you do not see that we do. There is a spiritual force of evil in the world that is bent on taking the church down. They have specific tactics and tools that they use to try to defeat the church. We know that the Bible says that we “wrestle not against flesh and blood” so we know that people are not the source of our opposition, even though Satan does use people to try to get to us. We know that those forces of evil that we fight against are the “principalities and powers, the rulers of the darkness of this world” (Eph 6:12). So just because flesh and blood comes against the church with accusations and verbal or physical attacks, these people are controlled by a spiritual force that we cannot perceive with our physical senses.
2Ti 2:26 And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will.
We can understand that Satan, our enemy uses “snares” to come against us. A snare is a trap, a trick or strategy that causes us to become captive or a prisoner. If every trap was obvious, we would never be caught. So these traps must be hidden or covered so that we do not see them clearly. I believe that Satan’s primary weapon is the deception of thoughts that are placed in our minds. What is deception and how it is used against us, will be my subject for today. Let’s start by defining the word “deceived” from the Bible:
G4105
From G4106; to (properly cause to) roam (from safety, truth, or virtue): – go astray, deceive, err, seduce, wander, be out of the way.
That is a very interesting definition for the word “deceived” found in the N.T. This word means to “cause to wander or roam from safety, truth or virtue”. If you have ever been hiking in the woods, you know that usually there are designated trails and established pathways. However, if you become adventuresome, and attempt to deviate and make your own way, this is normally where your failure and deception begins. Many times a path will have a fork in it and if it is not clearly marked you better have a good map. Sometimes walking down a path you encounter what looks like a good way to go and it suddenly turns into a dead end. When I was younger, my wife and I started climbing a mountain in Colorado. It took a good part of the day to get to the top. We did this on a whim and were not planning on being gone as long as we were. We took no food or water and on the way back down the mountain decided to try to take a short cut. If this short cut would have worked, we would have been back to camp in time for dinner. However, we ran into a cliff and a steep terrain that there was just no way to continue. So we ended up going back up the way we came and finally back the way we climbed up. This little analogy has vast spiritual implication on it. Jesus told us that he is the “Path”, “The Way” and He revealed there is no other way to God (John 14:6). So where did all of these other religions in the world come from? Who gave us these religions and why are they here? You do know there are well over 20 major religions in the world and within these 20 or more religions there are further divisions or sects and all of these just cannot be the truth. The variation in what they believe and teach is so radically different that there is no way they are even related. This is what I believe about these religions, and why they exist. I believe they are an attempt of the enemy to provide information overload. By providing you so many options and so many possible ways of thinking you are easily overwhelmed to know which one is right. How do you know which one to choose? So God comes to the earth and gives you the truth and tells you that Jesus is the way, but all of the other religions of the world say no, that is not right, we have the only truth. Wow, what a trick! What a major distraction! What a way to get people to not see the real way! Who is responsible for all these lies? The Bible tells us very clearly, that there is one individual, a spirit being that is responsible for this dissemination of invalid and false information and it is Satan:
Rev 12:9 And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.
So we can clearly see that the “great dragon” who is called Satan is responsible for the deception that is being perpetrated upon the human race. People are being led down paths away from the truth and in directions that are directly opposite from the truth, into a realm of darkness and they do not even know it. These deceptions are being instigated at every level and every location on the globe. Satan is interested in deceiving everyone, because why? Is Satan just a really bad guy who does evil just because he can, or is there a greater motivation and purpose to his behavior? You should really think about that question and determine Satan’s motivation, since that is not my primary subject I will not try to elaborate on it for now. However, I will talk about a related subject and mention this:
2Jn 1:7 For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist.
We have already seen that Satan is the chief initiator of all deception. However, as I said before, Satan uses people to get his messages out. Satan is a spiritual being that controls and manipulates natural people. So we have people, even in churches today that stand up and teach things that are lies. Here is one of the ways to determine if they are telling the truth or not. It would seem that Satan is highly opposed to letting people believe that God came into the world in the flesh, in the form of a man named Jesus of Nazareth. Why is Satan so opposed to this message? Did God’s presence on the earth cause something to happen to Satan that Satan wants to try to undo? Let me ask you this, if I said that the Holocaust never happened in Germany like some idiots try to say in the world, does that mean it is not true? No it doesn’t change the fact that it occurred just because you don’t believe it occurred, does it? But, what happens is it changes your perception of reality and therefore it changes your results and you lose any benefit of believing the truth, because you have bought into the lie. This is the net result of telling people God did not come to the earth in the man Jesus Christ. By telling people that Jesus was just a normal human male, you take away His ability to save you and forgive your sins. As a result you are lost with no hope of salvation and that is really bad news for you.
So this next part will not be particularly popular with some Christians, but yet I believe it needs to be said. Deception involves someone speaking false words. False words is a nicer way of saying lies. A liar is a deceiver. A deceiver is a liar. They go hand in hand. Where one is, the other is also present. They are the Siamese twins of Satan.
Joh 8:44 Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.
Jesus speaking to the Jews reveals some very strong words of truth, and says they are of their father, the devil. Since that is not my subject I will not go there today. Then Jesus tells us that Satan is the father of all lies. That is just another way of saying that Satan is the initiator of lies. However, it is interesting to note that not everything that Satan says is necessarily a lie. Jesus said “When Satan lies” not “When Satan speaks”. There is a major difference. It also makes deception much harder to recognize. When Satan speaks 10 truths mixed with one or two lies, how do you know which is which? If you notice back in Genesis 3, when Satan spoke to Eve he said some things that were true, but then he also mixed in a lie. This is how Satan operates, mixing truths with lies so that you become deceived into believing the lie. Here is a definition of one of the Greek words translated as “lie”:
G5574
Middle voice of an apparently primary verb; to utter an untruth or attempt to deceive by falsehood: – falsely, lie.
To utter an untruth. In other words to speak a lie. What is truth? Truth is based upon the Word of God, because the Bible says that it is impossible for God to lie (Heb 6:18). So God only speaks the truth. What God says we can take as the truth. The Bible contains the truth of God, but not everything in the Bible is truth. That statement shocks some Christians also, but you have to understand when you watch the 6:00 evening news, is everything that they say or report true? What if they interview a known criminal and he says I’m innocent, I did not kill that woman. Should you believe it just because it was on the news? So it is with the Bible, not every recorded word or statement of men and women in the Bible is the truth. It is true that they said what they said, but it did come out of the mouth of God so why are we suppose to believe it all? Job said some stuff that God reprimanded him for and asked him, were you there when I made the heavens and formed the stars? If you read Job 38:2 God says “Who is this that darkens counsel with words without knowledge”. That doesn’t sound very good for Job’s words, does it? We have the recorded words of Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar Ananias, Pilot, just to name a few men who were not saved, nor were they prophets of God. So truth come from verses that say “Thus saith the Lord”. Truth comes from the Words in Red in the N.T. Also truth comes from the mouth of God’s prophets.
So a lie is an untruth. A statement not based upon facts or clear evidence. A lie is a statement of “fiction”. That is why I avoid reading books labeled “fiction”. They are the words of someone’s imagination, either based upon some facts or no facts. We are surrounded by Fictional movies, books and other examples of entertainment that challenge our Christian faith. There is so much of this in the world today that it is amazing we can think at all. Satan is the author and originator of “fiction”, “untruth”, “lies” and “deception”. That is why I debate the fact that some authors call themselves “Christian Fiction Writers”. To me that is just another oxymoronic term for a true lie. I told you this was not going to be popular, but we need to consider what we feed on. Just as we should watch we eat physically, we should also watch what we put into our spirits. Here is a scripture that confirms this:
2Ti 4:4 And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.
This verse is speaking about Christians who knew the truth at one time, but have now followed fables. The Greek word translated as “fables” means “myths”, “tales” and “fiction”. Do you see the danger of “fiction”? Satan can use it to lead you off of the path of eternal salvation back into a path of darkness. That just can’t be good, right?
1Ti 1:4 Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith:
We are again warned of the introduction of “fiction” into our lives that results in us questioning our faith. This verse tells us that truth “edifies” or “builds up our faith” and we can clearly see that “fiction” does the opposite.
2Pe 1:16 For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.
Cunningly devised “fiction” will lead some into paths they do not want to go. To say something is “cunning” and “devised” means that it is purposely designed to lie to you and bring you down. In other words fiction is more than just entertainment, it has a purpose and a design intended to do harm to you and to deceive you. You can certainly see why this is not popular, but yet it is in the Bible, so what do we do with it?
So is deception becoming less prevalent or is deception in the world growing? Are there less options or are the number of possible lies being exponentially increased in our daily lives? I believe that with the advent of the internet and the information explosion era that we are living within, we are faced with an increasingly difficult levels of deceptions. Sometimes the false information is blatant and obvious, but other times it is subtle and very tricky to see. There is such a diverse set of false information on the internet and TV, that it is very difficult for most people to figure out what is real. This is what the Bible says about deception:
2Ti 3:13 But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.
The amount of deception in the world is increasingly growing at a rate that is difficult to comprehend. The number of ways to be deceived, the number of ways that lies are presented are exploding on TV, movies, the internet and the other media sources, that there is no way to keep track of it all anymore. If a Christian wanted to discredit all of them they would not be able to. What Christians need to understand is that we are not called to teach against lies, we are just called to present the truth. Those who believe will be saved and those who do not believe, will not be saved (Mark 16:16).
Eph 4:14 That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive;
Just as natural children are more easily tricked than adults, spiritual children are more easily deceived than mature Christians. We are admonished to grow up spiritually and to become mature in Christ. Otherwise we will be tossed around easily with the trickery of Satan. You do know that Satan has been around a lot longer than you have, don’t you? You do understand that he has more experience with what to do, than you do. So if you are depending upon your ability to deflect the lies that he will present you, you are already deceived. In this verse in Ephesians God tells us not to accept every teaching that is thrown at us. I found the word “sleight” of men to be very interesting when I looked up the definition. It means “dice”, or “a gambling cube”. The implication is given that these men are gambling with your lives and theirs. They are rolling their cubes and playing a game that is not easily won. The next term in the verse is that of “cunning craftiness”. This term means to be “subtle”. If you recall this is the way Satan came to Eve in Genesis 3. Satan used specific thoughts to deceive the woman and that is Satan’s only weapon against you. All Satan has to do is trick you a little bit, distract you from the truth by just a minor difference and you are now off the true path.
Rom 16:18 For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple.
This verse is so amazingly true to our world that we live in, that I am shocked at the reality of our current government. We seem to have a President who speaks “fair” words that have deceived the hearts of the simple minded people of our nation. He says one thing and does an entirely different thing. Simple refers again to those who are not mature, those who are not grown up. To those who are still childlike. It is amazing how many people qualify for this labeled description. It is a very sad statement to the condition of our nation.
Flattering Words, Cleverly Designed Fables, Subtle Words of Deception, these are the tricks of the enemy, Satan. He overwhelms you with information that is contrary to the truth that you have difficulty recognizing the truth. The tricks of the enemy are the same as when Eve was deceived, the words and the number of words is the only difference depending upon your situation and circumstances. Learn to recognize deception and choose not to be deceived.
If you would like to continue reading in this lesson series on this subject of deception, you can go to “Part 2“.
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If you want to know how to get saved and know that you are with confidence you can go to: How do I get saved?
A New Commandment I Give Unto You!
(Ver 1.2) This is Part 2 in a series of Bible lessons on the subject of Understanding the Purpose of the Law of Moses. I covered a lot of new information about the Law already and I do not think that I will review any of what I have already covered. Therefore, if you did not read the first lesson, I would suggest that you go back and start your study with “Part 1“. I will say that in my last lesson I introduced you to the fact that the Law was a positive thing given to us by God. In other words I believe that the law was an intentional good thing designed for the benefit of the entire human race. Without laws we would not know or understand sin, guilt, punishment, consequences, to name a few things that the knowledge of the law teaches us. Laws give us guidelines, structure, organization and meaning or definition to what is right and what is wrong. Without laws we would live in a world of full of nothing but chaos. This would be a type of world where everyone would be doing what was right in their own eyes while ignoring the effects to what their actions did to those all around them. Today’s lesson will be an introduction to another brand new concpet. Are Christians in the church today under the Old Law, or under no law or under any new New Law? Many today believe that we are noy under any law and that is not actually what the Bible says. They base this belief on verses like Romans 6:15 which is an example of taking one truth and attempting to make it the only truth. This is just an example of not finding the complete truth of God’s Word on a given subject. Many are guilty of this and it is an easy trap to fall into. Just because we are not under the Law of the Old Testament does not mean that we are not under any New Law. That is the primary subject of the rest of my lesson today.
What is the difference between what is old and what is new? New sometimes can be a relative term. Is it new to you or is it new just because no one else has ever possessed it before you? New to me is definitely stated not to be the old. Old to me is definitely stated not to be the new. I view this concept in the same terms like the Old Covenant versus the New Covenant which are totally separate and distinct covenants of God. Both the Old and New Covenants bare a resemblance of characteristics and features, but they are totally and completely not the same. That was my introduction to the Law of the New Covenant. Let me now take you to some important verses in the New Testament and discuss this New Law of God.
Gal 4:4 But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law,
So I asked you a question in my last blog on this subject, did God put Satan under the law? This verse in Galatians is very clearly a clue into the answer to that question. Why was Jesus Christ born a man under the law of Moses? Jesus’ physical mother was a virgin woman named Mary, a direct descendant of David the King of Israel. We know that Jesus is therefore a natural born Jew from the tribe of Judah, by birth. Therefore, God in the Flesh being born under the Law is now bound to all of these laws, commandments, and statutes written in the O.T.. Exactly why did God do this? The God that was outside of the Law and who gave the law has now placed Himself under the law that He gave. That means whatever the law requires applies to everything that God can do and can’t do. Those are pretty strong words aren’t they? Why would God put any limitations upon Himself? Obviously God gave the law, so He must have designed the law to serve a specific purpose that would help Him to accomplish something of greater value. What was that something that God needed accomplished that only the creation of Law could do? You should really think about things like this and search for them in the Bible to see if you can find them. What you should take away from this verse in Galatians 4:4 is, if it was necessary for God to be born under the law of Moses, then it would be necessary for Satan to be put under the same law also. As I tried to teach in the first lesson, that laws only apply to those that are under them. No law is ever applicable to anyone not under the authority of that law.
Jesus made the statement that “I did not come to do away with the law, but I came to fulfill it” (Mat 5:17). So what did Jesus do while he was in the flesh walking under the law to fulfill the law? What did he accomplish to fulfill all of the Mosiac law? Was it just the fact that he did not commit any sin? Was this the fulfillment of the law? I do not think that is the entire picture of what that actually means. Did you notice that Jesus died on the cross? So being sinless under the law did not save Him, did it? We know from other scripture that the Bible says that “No flesh will be justified by God, for keeping the law” (Gal 2:16). So was Jesus in the flesh? Yes, then He was not justified or saved by keeping the law either. This is not what made Jesus righteous or justifed Him. We can discover some valuable clues by searching the scriptures and finding out God’s definition of what this means to fulfill the law:
Gal 5:14 For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
We can begin to understand what the fulfillment of the law was in the eyes of God by reading this verse in Galatians. God tells us that all of the law is fulfilled in just one word. What was that word? That word was Love! This of course is not a human kind of love, but it is a God kind of love and that is totally different. Humans love Coke, pie, hamburgers because they make them feel good or do something good for them. That is not the God kind of love. God does not love us because we do something good to Him or for Him. Bible, love is not a feeling or even an emotional state. Love is a choice to do the right thing for others even when you do not feel like it.
Rom 13:10 Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
Here we have another witness to the fact that God says the law of Moses is fulfilled by the single isolated word of Love! To do the right thing for your neighbor means that you do not steal from them, you do not hurt them, you do not lie to them, you do not covet or lust for what they possess, and on and on we could go. Clealry God is defining a new definition for what the fulfillment of the Law represents to us.
Rom 13:9 For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
All of the law of Moses is summed up into the word “Love”. We can only comprehend the rest of the law by understanding what Love is in the eyes of God. This is why Jesus makes this statement in the Gospels:
Joh 13:34 A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
If the Law was a negative thing God would be wanting to get rid of it. However, we have discovered that the law is a positive and good thing and that is why Jesus gives us a New Law. You do understand that we are still under the law being in the church right now? It is not the Law of Moses, but it is the Law of Jesus. Jesus initiated a New Covenant in His own shed blood and in doing so, He established a New Law. This New Law is significantly less complicated than the old law while at the same time including all of the Old Law in the single statement. It is amazing how complex the laws created by our government are. I believe the Health Care bill was a very thick stack of papers that are still being argued over to what they mean. Would you say that more laws are better than less laws or are fewer laws better than many laws? According to God less is better. God replaces a thick book of written laws with a single statement and calls it better. God is not opposed to the law, it is more what the law is intended to do and its purpose that God is most concerned with. By Jesus giving us the Law of Love, we are now required to follow ONLY one rule. When faced with a problem in the natural we should always stop and ask, “What would Love do with that?” Did you notice that Jesus said you must love like I have loved you? In other words we are not to love people like we love a can of Coke. I do hope that you understand this profound concept.
Rom 3:31 Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.
God says that by walking in the New Commandment of Love we now establish the law. Isn’t that an interesting concept? What all of Natural Israel was unable to do, God says that we are capable of doing. Why is that? For one thing we have God on the inside of us helping us to do it. Plus we are not worried about hundreds or thousands of rules, because God has simplified it down to just One Rule! That just makes it easier to follow doesn’t it?
If you would like to continue to read this series on understanding the Law you can go to “Part 3“.
Understanding The Bible Definition and Purpose of the Law of Moses! PT 1
(Ver 1.3) This is Part 1 in a series of Bible lessons on Understanding the Purpose for the Law. Why was it necessary for God to give Moses the Old Testament Law? The reason for these spiritual rules of do’s and don’ts are critical for Christians to understand. While Christians do not rely on keeping the law to be saved, they should still be intimately familiar with what they mean and the underlying reasons for God giving them to the natural nation of Israel. God says my People are destroyed for a lack of knowledge (Hosea 4:6), so the more we learn and understand the less likely we are to being destroyed in this world. So let’s learn about the O.T. Law and determine what it is and why it was given using the Bible:
Gal 2:16 Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.
God declares a truth about the law that is essential to understand. The O.T. law is based upon “Works”. Works is man’s attempt to do something that they think pleases God by doing without something that they really want to do. I hope you understand what I just said. Every religion in the world is “works” based. Man trying to achieve a state of self sacrifice in order to appear pious or worthy in the eyes of God. In some religions men beat themselves with whips and chains until they bleed. They think through this self inflicted pain and suffering that they have achieved favor with God. They have been deceived into stupidity and foolishness. This religion also teaches that life is like a balance scale and the good deeds that you do will be weighed against your bad deeds and if the good deeds outweighs the bad, you have earned your salvation. This is just another example of Satan’s deception. In Galatians 2:16, we see works being contrasted with true Christianity. True Christianity is based upon Faith in Jesus Christ and what He has done and provided for us. That is completely different than the law of works and the works of the law. This verse clearly tells us that nobody will make it to heaven based upon their works. That is not good news for natural Israel or the other religions of the world.
Rom 3:20 Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.
We can clearly see one of the primary reasons that God gave the law. God declares that No flesh will be saved by obeying the law. So we immediately discover that the law was not given to save us. We can take this reason off of the list of potential reasons for the law. Then God says that by the law is the knowledge of sin. What does that tell you? Before the law was given into the world, no one really knew what sin was. It was only because the Bible said “Thou shalt not commit murder” that you would know that this is not an acceptable thing to do. To know that there is a law that has consequences for doing something and then to do it anyway is the act of a fool. However, to do something that is still not right, but there is no law against it is still sin, but yet God said how would you know it. So one of the primary reasons for God giving the law is to teach everyone what sin is and that these sins have consequences. With the Law comes the Knowledge of Sin!
Rom 7:7 What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.
Here is another witness to what I just said. This verse clearly tells us the same thing and gives us another example. By God saying “thou shalt not covet”, we know it is a sin to lust after what our neighbor owns or possesses. So the Law is not an evil, bad or negative thing, but a good thing. It helps us to learn and know what is good and what is evil. The law helps to guide us into what are the right things to do.
Rom 7:12 Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.
So the Bible again confirms what I just said about the law. The law is Holy, the law is good and just. The law is a positive thing meant to teach us the difference between right and wrong. God gave us the law to show us that we cannot make up our own rules and think that we are good in our own sight. That is exactly what most people in the world do, they reason in their own minds what is good and what is right and they follow their own desires and God says that is wrong.
Rom 4:15 Because the law worketh wrath: for where no law is, there is no transgression.
The word “transgression” means violation. If you get arrested in our world, it is usually because you violated some law that was passed by the lawmakers of the city, state or federal governments. So again we see a principle being established for why the law was necessary. Without law there is no “violation” being committed. People in the world usually pass laws to make people stop something that is potentially harmful or hurtful to themselves or others. For example, driving too fast in a car can cause loss of life and property. So people have developed laws to limit the speeds that cars can go in certain areas. The speed limit varies depending on where the area is located, like it is slower in front of school zones. If you are caught speeding you are charged and if found guilty, you pay fines and there are consequences such as points on your license. So without laws, people could go 100 MPH through a school zone and cause great damage and loss of life and there would be nothing that the government could do to them. This is a key lesson of why God gave the law, so take note of it.
Rom 5:13 For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law.
Without laws in the world (physical, natural, spiritual and governments), the world would be in a state of chaos. Everybody doing whatever they felt like, whenever they wanted to, to whoever they wanted to and there would be no consequences legally speaking that they would ever be faced with. I do think that without law we would also see a vigilante retribution being enacted and people would be forced to come up with their own definition of justice. But, Romans 5:13 informs us that sin has been in the world, before the law existed. But, then it says that these sins would not be charged to their account without the existence of the law. When you read and learn verses from the Bible like these you should automatically think how do these apply to me? How does this apply to Israel? How do these apply to Satan? How do they apply to all of the other spiritual entities in God’s spiritual realm? If you do not think in these terms you will miss out on what God is trying to teach you. Let me ask you a question and get you to thinking. If it is as the Bible says and Satan was found with sin in him from the beginning, what can God do about this, if there is no law against it? I believe you can start to understand the problem that God had. Legally speaking there is nothing that God can do with Satan, unless he is put under the law. That is an amazing thing to consider and probably a key reason for why the law was given. Learn to think while you read and to ask questions and you will learn so much more than just reading it. I’ll get into this more later.
Rom 7:14 For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin.
This is an interesting twist and is highly informative. God tells us that the law applies to the spiritual realm and not just the natural realm. We know that God gave Moses the law on Mt Sinai and that it was written down in the natural realm by a man. But, think about it, God is a Spirit and the words that He spoke to Moses came from the spiritual realm. God is clearly telling us that these words found in the law apply to all spiritual beings, including God himself, the angels, you and I and Satan and his demons.
Gal 3:10 For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.
Here is a very scary statement about the O.T. Law. God says that anyone under the law is under a curse, if they do not obey all of the law. Do you know of anyone that has obeyed all of the law? For one thing I do not think you know all of the law and the other thing is you certainly can’t do it all consistently, I do not believe anyone on earth is capable of it. The law is more than following 10 simple commandments, the O.T. law is 5 large books of rules, commandments, instructions, and it is vastly not understood even by the Jews who read it every day. I may be wrong but I believe that this is one of the reasons for God giving the law, to show man that he is incapable of making a perfect score. It is impossible to bowl a perfect score in the game of life playing according to the rules of the “works of the law”. I assume natural Israel has not yet gotten the news yet, they must still think they are able to save themselves.
Jas 2:10 For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.
Here is a second witness to the reality that man is required to keep all of the law. If any man offends or violates a single commandment, this verse in James says that he is found guilty of violating every commandment. I am certainly glad that is not the way our courts work. We would have to have everybody in a prison cell and there would be no free people in the world. If you drove your car too fast you could be sentenced to life in prison. That is what God says about his law in the O.T. Too many times people like to rate and compare sins. This sin is bigger, or greater than another. This sin is just a little one and that isn’t as bad as doing this or that. But, God says every sin is equal, there are no big ones, and no small ones. These are very tough rules to follow. In fact they are impossible for man to follow.
Gal 3:24 Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.
So God says that the Law was designed to be a teaching tool for mankind. An instrument that was intended to point them to Christ. Is this the way the nation of Israel views the law? Obviously not! Is this the way you should view the O.T. law, absolutely. You should use it as a teacher who is pointing you to a savior, the Messiah.
1Ti 1:9 Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient,for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers,
God tells us who the law was given for. To me every human would potentially qualify, but also this sounds more like Satan’s resume than anything else. You do realize that this is why our government passes laws, don’t you? If nobody did bad things you wouldn’t need any laws against doing them. So we pass laws to keep people from doing stupid, foolish things. This is another one of the key purposes of the O.T. law. Because, there are bad, evil people in the world, because there is a bad, evil spiritual force in the world, God was forced to enact spiritual laws. I hope you are getting what I am saying.
Let’s review briefly what we have learned so far and make a list of the key items concerning what the Bible says about the law:
- Sin will always Sin with or without the existence of Law.
- God’s Law is a Positive Thing that Helps us to see.
- The Law is Works Based. Obeying the Law is man’s attempt at earning Salvation.
- No Flesh can achieve Righteousness by the O.T. Law.
- Therefore, no one can be saved by observing the O.T. Law.
- However, Sin is not put on your account, if there is No law.
- Without the Law, no one knows what Sin Is.
- Without the existence of the Law there is no legal consequences for Sin.
- If you violate even one Law you are guilty of violating EVERY Laws!
- The Law given in the natural realm is Applicable in the Spiritual Realm.
- The Law was designed to teach us we need a savior and to point us to Christ.
- The Law was given because of the evil that existed prior to the law.
That was a quick synopsis of the information we have learned from the few verses about the law. We start to begin to understand what the law is and why it was given by understanding these verses. There is of course much more to learn about the law. There is different types of laws. Human laws, laws of nature, laws of science, and spiritual laws, just to name a few types of laws. Let’s continue this lesson with another verse found in Romans:
Rom 3:19 Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.
This is one of the most outstanding and revealing verses in the Bible about the Law of Moses. It reveals some hidden spiritual principles that are critical for Christians to understand. The principle is given to us that the law only applies to them that are under the law. In other words Mexico cannot pass a law that affects me, because I live in the USA. Now, if I go to visit Mexico, then I am under that law system, but as long as I stay in the USA, nothing they do can affect me personally. That is what Romans 3:19 is saying. God tells us that the law is only effective over those that are under that system of spiritual government. USA laws do not affect Chinese citizens or companies unless they come to America. Think about that and ask the questions that I asked you to think about earlier. Does the O.T. law affect you? Does the O.T. law affect the natural Jews? Does the O.T. law affect Satan or any other spiritual entity? Is God bound by the Laws of the O.T.? These are all important questions to consider. You see if Satan is not under the O.T. law, then there is still no punishment for his sins that God can convict him of in any heavenly court. You need to consider these questions and determine, did God somehow put Satan under the Law in order to convict him of his sins? If you do not realize that God is a legal minded God who does everything in a fair and just way, you do not know God very well. God will not throw Satan into hell without him being found guilty and being convicted for his crimes of sin. If God did this, then he would be more like a foreign country that throws people into prison because they just don’t like the way they look. Think about the character of God and realize that God is the supreme judge of all spiritual matters. In the heavenly judicial system, there must be laws that can convict someone like Satan or God would be unjust. God says in Romans 3:9 that the law was given, so that every mouth could be stopped. You see if Satan was unjustly accused of God, he has a legal defense against such actions. However, if Satan is under the law and can see clearly that he is in violation and guilty, he no longer has a defense against such charges.
I think I will end this lesson on that note. I hope and pray that you learned something that was of benefit to your walk with Christ. I’ll try to continue this lesson in a future blog.
If you would like to continue reading this lesson, you can go to “Part 2“.
The Abrahamic Covenant and the Promised Seed!
(Ver 1.1) Today will be a little bit different perspective on a familiar old subject. This subject is widely taught in many different circles and it is interpreted very differently in most of them. We will look at some familiar verses using the light of the Word of God to see what they mean. Using the Bible to interpret the Bible, we will begin to see and understand the truth of the Word of God. The basis of our lesson today comes from the book of beginnings, Genesis chapter 15. As with many things written in the book of Genesis God uses symbolism to convey hidden spiritual information. This chapter of Genesis is certainly no different. In this chapter God tells Abram that he will have a son, who will be his heir. God tells him that the number of his seed will be as the stars of the heavens. In other words God declares that Abram’s descendants will be innumerable, more than he could count. While these words can certainly be taken completely naturally, I believe that God is speaking about spiritual things in a prophetic way. If you have not ever realized it, God is more interested in spiritual things than He is with natural things. If God can fix you spiritually, then you will do the right things naturally. That is the root cause of America’s problem and the rest of the unsaved world. People want to raise children and think they can do it without God and ignore the Bible and then they are surprised to find our prisons overflowing. You will never fix the sin problem, until you allow God to fix the spiritual problem within the hearts of man with His Word. Teach the Bible in school to your children and see if the world doesn’t change.
Gal 3:16 Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.
We can learn much, by reading God’s commentary in the Bible. God purposely gives us clues in the Bible to what other verses mean. Often times these explanations are revealed in the New Testament. This verse in Galatians is very interesting, since our subject is the Abrahamic Covenant and I just mentioned the Seed of Abraham. We can now begin to see and understand that God was speaking prophetically and in a very tricky manner when talking to Abram about his seed. Seed is one of those types of words that can be either singular or plural and you can’t really tell the difference by just looking at it. However, God reveals that Abraham’s seed was singular and this was symbolic of the one man called Christ Jesus. So we know that Jesus Christ is the Seed being referred to in Genesis 15.
Gen 15:5 And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be.
What we begin to see is another example of a Biblical Paradox or Puzzle being given to us. How can one man, Jesus, the Seed of Abraham number beyond the number of stars in the heavens? That of course is a very difficult puzzle to try to answer in a single blog like this. Unless you start to think spiritually and consider what the New Testament reveals to us you will never understand it. Galatians and other books of the New Testament speak of the church as being the children of Abraham. The N.T. reveals that Abraham is the spiritual father of the many people who have come into the church. This is the beginning of understanding this spiritual paradox.
In Genesis 15:9-10 God instructs Abram to take 5 animals and kill them. God tells him to split three of the animals into halves. Now we have a bloody mess on our hands. God tells Abram to spread them out on the ground. We then discover that birds try to come and devour the animals and Abram has to drive them away. These are also all key symbolic references and they symbolize spiritual things. The bloody animals killed represents the covenants of God. The birds of the air represents the demonic forces attempting to prevent the covenant. Blood is always symbolic of the forgiveness of sins. Also in Bible covenants, the animals were split into pieces and they were saying, “thus it be done to me, if I brake this covenant”. So we see that God is revealing to us some very important information about Bible covenants. When two parties would enter into a covenant, they would pass between the bloody pieces of the animals and “cut an agreement” that was mutually beneficial to both participants. Both parties in the covenant were required to follow the terms of the agreement and to be faithful to it. If one party in the covenant had need of something that the other had in their possession, then it would be freely available to the other party. It is exactly like a marriage between a husband and a wife who now have joint ownership of everything. But, did you notice what happens in this covenant in Genesis 15? Who does it say walked between the pieces to cut the covenant with God?
Gen 15:12 And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and, lo, an horror of great darkness fell upon him.
After Abram drives away the birds, the sun goes down and it gets dark. It says Abram enters into a deep sleep and he is overwhelmed with darkness. Darkness never represents God, but the opposite of God. Darkness always represents Satan and his domain. God gives Abram some prophetic words about his natural children being in bondage for 400 years, but tells him they will come out at a certain time. These verses 13 thru 16, no doubt contain symbolism and information beyond the natural, but I will not attempt to teach what I do not know fully. So let’s look at verse 17, for it is really getting good with this verse.
Gen 15:17 And it came to pass, that, when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces.
As you recall Abram killed 5 animals and laid the pieces upon the ground. Now normally if this covenant was between God and Abram, God and Abram would now be walking between the pieces and cutting the covenant with God. However, we find that Abram is asleep on the ground and two different symbolic people walk between the bloody pieces to cut the covenant. What does this tell us? I believe that it tells us that Abram was incapable of keeping the covenant that God wanted to make, so God makes a covenant with himself. Did you notice what the two symbols were that passed through the pieces? One was a “Smoking Oven” and the other was a “Burning Lamp”. I really do not know how these two symbols can represent anything other than God. Both are God in different forms and using different descriptions. Much like God the Father and God the Son are one God but both are unique and separate at the same time.
In Hebrews 12:29, it informs us that God is an all consuming fire. I know this is not exactly a smoking oven, but you can get there mentally if you think about it. People in Bible days did not have electric power and they cooked with fire. If you look up the term translated as “Oven” you will find that it means a “Fire Pot”. So fire is involved in cooking with an ancient Oven. In Deuteronomy 9:3 God is again called a “Consuming Fire” who destroys. However, everything in the Bible has symbolic meaning if you can find it. In Deuteronomy 4:24 God is again called a consuming fire, but it then further stipulates why. God is said to be a “Jealous God”. That means God does not like it when His wife sleeps around like Israel was guilty of. It is very difficult to actually say that the smoking oven represents God, because we cannot find a direct reference in the Bible that says that. However, if you do a word search and look for the word “oven” in the Bible you will see that it more often than not, refers to a place where wicked and evil people are consumed. People who are consumed by the fire of God. God is certainly the fire, but the smoke could be the evil being burned up and consumed. So it is a little more complex than we can imagine right now to declare that God is covenanting with himself. We can look up the word “Smoking” and see what else it reveals in the Bible:
Exo 19:18 And mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly.
It would appear the “Smoke” is associated with the Old Covenant since “Sinai” is mentioned in this verse in Exodus. We know that God gave Moses the law on Sinai. We know that this verse says God is again the fire that descended upon the mountain. The Smoke is equated to that which ascends upwards. We can again derive, that which is consumed by the fire of God is evil and whatever is left would be the ashes and the smoke, that which remains after God’s burning. Fire normally consumes, oxygen, fuel, oil, or whatever is placed in it. God is definitely the Fire, the flame, the heat, the light. But, the oven and whatever is consumed is a different substance than God. If God is the all consuming fire as we have seen in the Bible, the smoke would be representative of that which is burned up or consumed by God.
Psa 18:8 There went up a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth devoured: coals were kindled by it.
God is again compared in terms of being a device that produces smoke, like an oven, a furnace or any other similar fire burning device. Out of the nostrils of God comes smoke from something that is burned up or consumed by the fire of God’s mouth. It is a very interesting symbolic representation being given to us.
Psa 37:20 But the wicked shall perish, and the enemies of the LORD shall be as the fat of lambs: they shall consume; into smoke shall they consume away.
You see the same terms being repeated in this verse of Psalms 37 and it says God’s enemies who are the wicked, shall be as the fat of the lambs, and they shall be consumed into smoke. Verses like these are helping me to see that God’s covenant in Genesis 15 is God walking between the pieces of animal flesh. So we have in a roundabout way identified one symbol that has been said to walk between the pieces and cut the covenant.
The Lamp on the other hand is more easily interpreted using verses in the Bible. We can find several good examples that declare that God is the burning lamp. A lamp of course is a light in the darkness or night. A lamp involves fire, oil and light. All of these symbols are used for symbols of God in the Bible. Let’s find some of these verses and review them:
2Sa 22:29 For thou art my lamp, O LORD: and the LORD will lighten my darkness.
This verse is exactly what I just said and refers to God as the Lamp that gives us light in the darkness. Darkness again represents the spiritual domain of Satan. People are born into the world that is ruled by Satan. The hearts of men and women are said to be in darkness until they are saved and Jesus Christ shines spiritual light into them.
Psa 119:105 NUN. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.
You cannot separate God from His Word, they are one in the same. God is light and in him is no darkness. God is also His Word! God’s word is a spiritual light unto our spirit man within us. By reading and studying the Bible we bring light to areas that have never seen the glorious light of God. God and His Word are the Lamp that is lit to show the way unto righteousness.
Pro 13:9 The light of the righteous rejoiceth: but the lamp of the wicked shall be put out.
So many verses in the Bible are very informative and this one has hidden meaning within it. If God is the lamp and the light, what is this verse telling us? The light of the righteous will be GLAD, and the lamp of the wicked will be put out. If Satan is the evil one that rules the darkness, His light or lamp of God has now been put out. To put out a lamp means it is deprived of oxygen or oil or starved of any substance that causes it to burn. This involves any means of causing the flame to be extinguished. We can clearly assume that Satan use to be in the light of God, but God has now turned that light out. It also has spiritual implications to those in the world that refuse God’s salvation and they also walk in the same darkness of spiritual night.
Isa 62:1 For Zion’s sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, and the salvation thereof as a lamp that burneth.
God prophesies that a burning lamp will come out of Jerusalem. This lamp will burn with the light of Salvation. This very bright lamp will also establish righteousness. So who do you think God is talking about? This is a prophetic statement for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ that was to be crucified in Jerusalem to bring salvation to the world.
Joh 3:19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
Jesus speaking to the nation of Israel, says He is the bright burning lamp that contains the light of the world. But, Jesus then said that men loved darkness more than this light so they were unable to see the light. Jesus equates the evil deeds of men to be of the darkness of the world. God is therefore being contrasted as being the source of good, the initiator of kindness, goodness, grace, mercy, love and compassion, but the men of Israel as a whole, chose to reject these good things and to remain in their evil darkness.
Joh 8:12 Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.
Jesus is again very clear in telling us that He is the Lamp that lights our spiritual paths. Jesus says that if we follow Him, we shall not walk in darkness. We could say in modern language that Jesus is the Flashlight of the present dark World. If you have ever been camping in the forest, with no electricity you better take a flashlight or two. To walk in the woods without one would be crazy. This is how people are in the world, without Jesus and the Bible. They are walking in spiritual darkness and they do not know where they are going or what they bump into or stumble over. The symbolism within the Abrahamic covenant is very powerful, the spiritual implications are very informative. We can see that God, the lamp of the world makes a covenant with the smoking oven that contains the consuming Fire of God. It would appear to me that God in His infinite wisdom took the place of Abraham in the covenant and made a covenant with Himself. In this way God could implement an agreement that both parties were capable of keeping. Abraham was a physical natural man and incapable of keeping the covenant at the level that God wanted to establish, so God made a covenant that He could keep in the spiritual realm with Jesus Christ who was the promised Seed that now establishes our eternal covenant with God. So what was God’s solution for man not being able to keep a covenant? The human race is sin prone, error driven, ignorant of spiritual things and God’s ways. How is God going to make a covenant with people who are prone to errors and mistakes? God’s solution is to became one of us, a man who is both human and God to implement an unbreakable covenant with Himself and His eternal man. We then can see that God has used Jesus Christ, the Promised Seed to bring the rest of the human race back into right standing with God. Everyone that accepts the free gift of salvation will be included. It doesn’t matter if you are a Jew or a Gentile, the door is open to all. It doesn’t matter if you are rich or if you are poor, the door is open to all. It doesn’t matter if you are a man or a woman, the door is open to all. Because of what Jesus has done, we have now have the opportunity of a life time being presented to all of us. I pray that you make the right choice.
The Bible is so complex that it is impossible to know everything that is in it and to comprehend what everything in it means is also impossible. So we do the best we can, with God’s help in figuring out what it all means. We would be lost without His help, so I am eternally grateful and I hope that you are too.
The Promises and Covenants of God are ALWAYS Conditional!
(Ver 1.1) I want to discuss a difficult subject found in the Bible that is hard for many Christians to get their minds around. Too many Christians like to put everything on God’s back and make Him completely responsible for everything that happens to them. It is like when a major storm comes and blows their house down and they believe God is in control and He had a higher purpose for doing this to me. However, when you read the Bible and study it closely we find out some very surprising things that should cause us to begin to think differently.
When God makes a covenant with a People on the earth, you will find that God is always capable of keeping the covenant and to Him it was a forever agreement and arrangement. However, what we find in the Bible is that it is not all completely up to God and that you and I have a part to play in the relationship for the continued blessings of God to manifest. Let’s review the principle and then establish this spiritual law Biblically and learn what we can:
Isa 1:19 If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land:
In this verse in Isaiah, God puts forth a promise to His covenant people. But, this promise comes with conditions. In order for God’s people to eat the good of the land, they must first, be willing and obedient. These sound like two little requirements that are placed upon God’s People! But they really are larger than you think. If people fulfill only one condition such as being willing but not obedient or being not willing and obeying does that match the conditions necessary to eat good? Obviously not, they fail and do not eat the good of the land. This is the basis of a spiritual law, that I call the “IF YOU DO THEN I WILL DO” law! “IF” “THEN” is a popular computer programming construct that is widely used in programming languages. There is also a converse or inverse part of the law that goes something like this:
IF YOU DO THIS
THEN I WILL DO THIS
ELSE THIS HAPPENS!
God knew about IF THEN ELSE computer programming constructs before we knew there were computers. God uses this construction in the Bible in the promises that He makes with humans and the Covenants that He implements with the People. If we apply this construct to the verse we just read in Isaiah 1:19 we can see it more clearly:
IF (YOU ARE WILLING AND OBEDIENT)
THEN
YOU WILL EAT THE GOOD OF THE LAND
ELSE
YOU WILL NOT EAT FROM THE GOOD LAND
This is some very basic Computer Logic applied to the Word of God and yet so profound! If you understand what I have said so far, then let’s go through some other verses in the Bible and determine what else God says about conditional requirements.
Let’s go back and review some words spoken to Natural Israel by Moses from God. These are the Words of God spoken directly to them, but if you look closely they are also prophetic and we can easily notice that they are very conditional:
Exo 19:5 Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine:
What does it mean to be conditional? If I said I would give you $1000, if you would stay silent for 24 hours, is that $1000 conditional or automatically yours? No, it not guaranteed! We can see that conditional means, if you follow the instructions and rules you will get the $1000, otherwise you do not. The key word is “IF” you satisfy the requirements! Pretty simple concept isn’t it? However, Christians I guess do not understand these concepts, especially when it comes to God and the Bible.
When we read a verse like Exodus 19:5 and it says to Israel that “you shall be a peculiar treasure unto me and above all people”. What was the requirement for this to happen in the natural realm? God clearly said, “if you obey my voice and keep my covenant”, then I will do what I said and make you above all others. So when did natural Israel ever fulfill any of these requirements? If you searched your Bible and could not find it in the Bible, I have to admit that I couldn’t either. It would seem to me, that Israel has a major problem. Let’s continue with the next verse:
Exo 19:6 And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel.
Exodus 19:6 continues to demonstrate what God will do, if Israel obeys and keeps the covenant. What we see in these two verses are a discovery of the fact that God’s blessings to Natural Israel are conditional. In order for those in covenant with God to obtain the best that He has for them, they must do something to qualify for them. Did any of the words in these two verses ring any bells to you? Did you see any parallels or glimpses into another reality that God is prophesying about? To me it was obvious, but to others they miss it, because they may be slightly dull of spiritual eyesight. These key words are echoed in a verse found in the New Testament:
1Pe 2:9 But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light:
Peter writes to the church and declares to them that they are these “peculiar” people, the holy nation unto God, being priests and kings of the Most High. Isn’t that an amazing coincidence? Of course God doesn’t do anything by accident and this verse is put here to show you who the church really is. I know I haven’t introduced you to this concept yet. Many Christian people do not like to think or believe that the Church is a spiritual version of the natural nation of Israel, but yet it is so prevalent in the Bible I do not know how people miss it. This is based upon the concept of natural patterns that point us to greater or higher truths within the spiritual realm. Let us read another verse:
Rev 1:6 And hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.
Again we see John this time writing about the church and to the church, calling them the kings and priests of God. That qualifies the church as being these royal rulers of the spiritual domain of God. That makes the church a new spiritual priesthood unto God. This is of course difficult to fully accept for many believers. Please do not let it offend you. I will not be offended if you believe something else.
Heb 8:9 Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they continued not in my covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord.
So as we have seen, the blessings of God are conditional. The human continuation and participation within the covenant of God is also conditional. People want to put all of the responsibility on God to whether or not a covenant is valid and that is not what God says in the Bible. You can always depend on God to be faithful and He will never fail you, but that does not relieve you of your responsibility in the relationship.
What if you are married to a spouse and you are the one that is faithful and they are not. Will that work for very long? I know my wife would not put up with it. If you think you can then you are a fool. Is faithfulness a two way street that is required of both marriage participants? Of course it is! So do not put all of the responsibility upon God, God will not fail the covenant. God is eternally faithful. However, humans are imperfect and fail, people make mistakes and God will forgive us. But only if we ask for forgiveness. Repentance is an essential and valuable key part of any Christian life. If we are not sorry for how we how we act and the things we use to do, we are not a Christian. We are just someone who doesn’t want to go to hell.
Hebrews 8:9 clearly tells us that God disregarded Israel, because Israel did not keep their covenant. The Bible says this, God says this and I did not write the Bible. Is God anti-Semitic? That is what some will try to call me for saying something like this. So you can accept it for what it says or you can attempt to explain it away. Covenants with God are always Conditional! Let’s review another Old Testament example of these conditional promises of God:
Deu 28:1 And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments which I command thee this day, that the LORD thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth:
The key word “IF” is given to the nation of Israel again and God tells them that “IF” they would diligently follow the Word of God that “THEN” God would make them above all nations. There are very specific requirements to the blessings of God and if you continue to read down in this chapter you will also find that there are very specific curses for not following these instructions. This is a Bible principle and a spiritual law being established by God. This is how God works and this should inform us of our responsibilities to listen and obey. We start by recognizing that we have some responsibilities and then we go about finding out what they are and how to follow them or fulfill them.
Jer 4:1 If thou wilt return, O Israel, saith the LORD, return unto me: and if thou wilt put away thine abominations out of my sight, the shalt thou not remove.
You see in Jeremiah God says to Israel, if they would return and put away their abominations, that God would not remove them. There is a very strong statement with very direct consequences being made to the Natural Nation of Israel. There are just too many verses in the Bible like this that declare God will do something if you first do something.
We cannot pray and ask God for something and then when it does not come, think that God said NO! Many times things like praying for specific answers in the Bible have specific conditions and requirements attached them. You have to base your prayer on the Bible promises that provide the answer, pray the right way, believe the right things, do the right things, say the right things, act in the appropriate manner and then God will do His part. This is a staggering concept to many Christians, but yet it is in the Bible if we look.
God always tells us what to do and then expects us to do it. Then God will always step in and do the rest. Read the Old Testament very closely. Notice things that God instructs Joshua when taking Jericho and other such examples. God would always tell them to do something very specific and if they did it, God would come through and do the rest. When Moses went to God with a problem, either about Pharaoh or the children of Israel, God would always tell Moses to do something with very specific steps and requirements or conditions. If Moses followed and obeyed, God would always do His part faithfully. The Bible is full of examples like this.
Jer 31:36 If those ordinances depart from before me, saith the LORD, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me for ever.
I guess many Christians cannot comprehend that God would require humans to do anything in order to obtain God’s Grace. It is almost unimaginable that Israel could do anything that would cause God to end their Covenant. I have read in a few Bible lessons from other teachers that some people think that God’s love and all of the blessings of His Covenants are unconditionally guaranteed and nothing that anyone does can cause God to back out of it.
We should go back and reread the Bible and look for how many times the word “IF” is used in verses concerning Israel. We will discover that God has put conditions on many of the things that He has given to His people. God placed responsibility of the continuation of the covenant into the hands of those who He was trusting to do the right things and be obedient. If you study carefully you discover that Israel did a very bad job of fulfilling their end of the bargain. What a bargain they had, they had the fastest and most direct way to the Messiah, they had the first choice at Salvation, they were the keepers of the Holy Word of God and they blew it.
NEW COVENANT CONDITIONS
Rev 3:20 Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.
Just as the Old Covenant was conditional, entrance into the New Covenant is also conditional. There is no such thing as Universal Salvation. There is no such thing that everyone is saved automatically, because God wants them to be. God always requires action by man. People need to realize that God has already done everything that He needs to do to get all of the people on the earth saved. However, that does not mean everyone is saved or will be saved. Jesus tells us clearly in Revelation that He is standing at the door of the heart of man, knocking and that clearly indicates that He wants to come in. However, the conditional part of the verse clearly states that the Man on the inside is required to hear the knock and open the door to let Him come in. There are conditions to people getting saved. People are required to act appropriately and let Christ in. There are also specific conditions to staying saved. I really do not want to get into this subject any deeper for I have touched on this subject in other lessons. Realize and understand that the Old Covenant of God with natural Israel was a conditional agreement. It was very clear in the Bible that in order for Israel to remain in Covenant with God, that Israel was required to be faithful to God. Just like in any natural human marriage contract, God’s covenant works this way also. Both parties are either faithful to the vows, commitments and conditions of the agreement or the agreement is terminated. If one party is faithful and the other party is not, the agreement is terminated. There are many very difficult things like this in life and they are also revealed to us in the Bible. Recently in national news several prominent men have been caught being unfaithful to their wives. They have discovered the hard way that there are consequences to their actions in life. Israel may learn very soon that she has also encountered the consequences of her actions.
Then pay attention to things God writes to the church in the New Testament. Why would Jesus and God say so many times a warning for us not be deceived? There appears to be some unseen consequences for being deceived. Perhaps a Christian does not live a long life. But perhaps the Christians finds out like one of the 5 foolish virgins that they were not really known by Jesus. Remember in the 10 Virgin parable there was a need to have oil for the lamps. This sounds like a major condition for entering into the divine wedding feast.
Thank you for reading this lesson. I know there are a of other Bible verses that come to mind that teach this concept that I did not get to include. I appreciate your time reading and I also appreciate your comments, and questions. If you have a prayer request, please leave it and we will pray for you and add you to our prayer list. God bless you until next time.
Speak to Your Rock! Pt 2 – Do Idle Words Keep You Out of The Promise Land?
(Ver 1.6) Today is the second lesson on the subject of the significance of our spoken words. I know this is a very controversial subject and one that many Christians do now subscribe to believe in. However, regardless of what we believe about it, our beliefs do not change what God and the Bible says and the results that we get from the God’s established Spiritual Laws that are found within the Bible. In the last lesson on this subject, we learned about “Why Moses Didn’t Enter Into Promise Land”. God said it was because of Moses’ unbelief, He told him that he would not be able to lead God’s people into the promised land that He had already given to them. Unbelief is one of a Christian’s greatest enemies in receiving a promise from God. This can include the unbelief of what the Bible says or the unbelief of what the Spirit of God is leading us to do. It could even be the unbelief of what a Bible teacher teaches us from the Bible. I am not saying that I am anything important personally in you hearing from God, unless I say what the Bible says and that should make what is said important. All we need to do is read the Bible and see what it says and then believe it, to see that what is written is true or not (Acts 17:11). People should recognize that there are crazy people on the internet doing the same thing that I am doing to help people, many automatically discount what is said as being the same crazy ramblings. By automatically dismissing what someone says, many people at times miss what God had wanted them to know. Not everyone on the internet is crazy, and some of them have some very profound deep things to teach if we are open to them. Learn to judge every teacher by the Word of God and remain open and prepared to change your thinking and beliefs. God is doing some really great things in the world today and those who are open to them will enjoy their benefits. If you would like to read this series from the beginning, I would suggest that you go back and start with “Part 1“.
So today I want to discuss more about the Bible topic of “Spoken Words”! But not just any spoken words, let’s talk about those that Jesus called “Idle Words”. What are “Idle Words”? Let’s start by reading the lesson’s foundation Bible verse.
Mat 12:36 But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.
Wow! That is an amazingly strong statement from Jesus. Jesus is obviously directing our attention at our spoken words. But, not just any spoken word, but rather one specific type. God tells us personally that the “idle words” that we speak will be judged by God on judgment day. I mean that could be a very scary statement for some people to even think about. Obviously I can see too many people do not believe what Jesus said or either they do not understand what the verse means. Otherwise, they would probably keep silent more often. 
In today’s world idle words are all around us, on our cell phones, on our tablets in our emails, on internet websites, on Facebook and Twitter on TV, on radio, raining down from our satellites, printed in our magazines, news papers and fictional books. I mean we are bombarded by idle words coming at us from a multitude of different ways. How many of these text messages that we get or send can be considered idle words? Try to examine your Facebook experience and see how many words are crossing your path that can be called idle words. I know of some people and I won’t mention any names that appear like they are never quiet. To hold a phone conversation with them is impossible, because they are the only one speaking and you just have time to say “yea” or “uh?” occasionally. Some people spend hours and hours on the phone talking to everybody about everything. How many of these kind of people do you know? I pray that you are not one of them. It would appear on judgment day that we may have to sit or stand around and listen to everything that people said on this earth for a very long time. Doesn’t that sound fun? No! I do not think any of us will be very happy on judgment day.
I am generally a quiet person. It has been my personality to listen more than to speak. If you knew me, I believe that you would agree. I know many Other people are different, I know that and I do not fault them for being different. But, nevertheless I believe we need to learn what the Bible says about the definition of “Idle Words”. These are the words that God says we will personally have to account for, so what are they? It would appear that we need to learn to avoid these types of “idle words” like the plague. But that can only begin with us first learning about what they are. Here is the definition of the word from Strong’s:
G692
From G1 (as a negative particle) and G2041; inactive, that is, unemployed; (by implication) lazy, useless: – barren, idle, slow.
The concepts given to us in the Bible can so easily go over our heads. Because we don’t understand them, we may simply ignore them. This Greek word G692 means “unemployed” or “inactive”. That is a concept that most Christians do not have a clue what it means. The Greek word is the combination of the negative particle combine with the Greek word G2041 that literally means to work or toil.
I’m not going to do any jokes right here either, because that would be an example of more idle words. You see idle words are contrasted to be opposite to “employed” words “productive” words, “active” words or “working” words. These are all employment, work and job related terminologies but now they are being related to us in association to what we speak. God is saying that our words ought to be working for us and not just be idle or lazy. What we should learn are working words change things. God used His working words to change darkness to light in Genesis 1. Does God expect us to do the same? The answer is Yes! So how do we get our words work for us? 
Working words are a concept found in the Bible word “edification”, where we use our words to build up like as in a construction project. In the last lesson about Moses’ big mistake, God told Moses to Speak to the Rock and this is an example of working words. Instead of obeying Moses spoke to the people and called them rebellious. God said to Moses to speak to the Rock and get the answer and instead Moses spoke the problem and did not enter into the Promise Land. If you did not read this lesson you should, it is one of the best ones that God has given to me up to this time. What Moses did was an example of “Idle Unemployed Words”. Instead of using his words to work for him and get the answer, Moses spoke the problem and failed to enter into the promise land.
So we can start to understand now that God says every, lazy, idle, useless, unemployed, inactive,and non-constructive word that we speak we will be judged for all of them. How many words in the course of day do we “employ” that are “productive” to get good “results”? The clear implication to this verse is for us to change what we say to words that “work” for us! As Christians we should become aware of the words that we speak. We should think about what we say before we say it. Just because a thought comes into our mind, that doesn’t mean that we should speak it out. This is a common trick of the devil. Satan gives people thoughts in an attempt to get them to speak them out. Why is this so important for Satan to do this? Believe it or not your spoken words gives Satan entrance to come in and kill steal and destroy from you.
People do not understand what God said in Numbers 14:28, that whatever I hear you say that is what I will do to you. People do not realize that God is listening to what they say. People do not realize that God does to them whatever comes out of their mouths good or evil. That is very strong! Many times people like to think that God is in complete and total control of everything that happens to them. In their thinking they do not believe that they have anything to do with what happens in their lives. 
They believe that it was either bad luck, or just a coincidence, or an accident or just an unfortunate set of circumstances that they are faced with. But, God has established and given to us spiritual laws in the Bible and this is one of them that every believer needs to grasp immediately. You can very easily discount what God says and what the Bible says. But, if you do that it still does not mean that what happened to you is not something that you at least contributed to making it happen.
Let me give you another New Testament verse that repeats what Numbers 14:28 says. This is a Bible verse that is obviously very controversial and hard for many believers to grasp and believe. This verse is found in Mark chapter 11:
Mar 11:23 For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.
Jesus gives us the spiritual definition of Numbers 14:28 and clarifies a few details that were not clearly given to Moses. Many times we will learn that God teaches things in progressive stages. He will give us a little bit in one place and let us take it in in small parts and then He will give us a little bit more as we are able to chew and swallow it. This way we are not overwhelmed or choked with too much of the new Words of God. Paul taught this way also. Paul told some I wanted to feed you meat but you were unable to partake and I fed you just soft milk (1 Cor 3:2). So God teaches us a few meaty things in Mark 11:23 about how the spiritual law of spoken words work. I guess I should start by giving you the context of this verse in Mark 11. Jesus was traveling through the countryside and He sees a fig tree with leafs on it. Jesus then goes up to the fig tree looking for figs to eat. Finding none, Jesus speaks to the fig tree to curse it and the disciples heard Him. The next day they all walk by the same fig tree. Suddenly one of the disciples notices that the tree was withered and dried up from the roots upward. So what was Jesus doing? Was Jesus just mad or upset at the tree because it didn’t have any fruit on it? No, I do not think so. Was Jesus showing off and saying to them “look what I can do and not you”? No, I do not think so. Did Jesus say “This happened because I’m God and you are not”? Again, No, I don’t think so. Or was Jesus teaching them and all of us an object lesson on the spiritual law of spoken words? I believe that Jesus was telling them a spiritual secret and demonstrating the spiritual law of spoken words to His disciples so that they would learn a valuable lesson in life. You’ll have to make up your own mind in what you believe and figure it out if Jesus was talking to you also. I would personally pray and ask Him to show you what it means. Jesus is no respecter of persons and what He did for one he will do for everyone.
You can see that a “disciple” of Christ is a word that means a student, a learner, a pupil. Are you one of these? Maybe you think you know everything and you are the master? If you do you are in trouble and being covered and blinded by your ignorance. If you are a Christian you must be a Christ follower forever, a student of Christ forever, or in other words His disciple forever. Only He knows everything and we don’t. So whatever Jesus says to Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, I believe He is talking to you and I also! Please do not think that you know more than they do. Learn what Jesus was trying to teach them and we will become what He wanted us to become, more like Him.
So what was the lesson of Mark 11:23? Jesus told them and us that if we would speak to the mountain and believe that what we say would happen, we would get exactly what we say. There are so many lessons to learn from this one verse that I cannot teach them all, nor do I claim to know them all. A mountain is a symbolic representation of a negative situation or set of circumstances that we are facing, possibly an obstacle, either physical, mental, spiritual, financial or whatever we are faced with that appears to be a challenge. Jesus told us to speak to it and tell it to be removed and it would obey us, if we believe. Why is it necessary for us to both speak and believe? What we say and what we believe represents us putting our faith to work. That is the opposite of being idle or unemployed. All people both speak and believe either positively or negatively about things that around them. They either speak an expect good things to happen or speak and expect bad things to happen to them. Speaking and believing involves a decision that we make that even though the problem looks big and impossible to move, Jesus said that it would have to obey us and what we said to it would have to be done!
How many Christians believe this truth? I can see there are a growing number, are you one of them. If you are not one of the ones that believes the LORD JESUS then begin to notice what you say and believe and see if it is not what you get eventually. This principle works for you or against in the positive or the negative, because it is a spiritual law! I know this boggles the minds of religious unbeliever who do not believe what Jesus said. You see I did not write these verses in the Bible, I’m just a news reporter doing my best to show them to you with a greater emphasis of importance. These verses have been in the Bible for hundreds of years and people have just ignored them. We are responsible for the information that they say and how they apply to our life. God told Moses in Numbers that the Rock would obey his spoken working words, but Moses spoke to the people and called them “rebels”. God told him his words would bring the answer and he ended up enlarging the problem. Moses didn’t believe God and didn’t enter into the promise land and this is definitely a lesson for us all today.
Let’s look at some more example verses with the Greek word G692 translated as “idle” just to obtain a greater subject knowledge. This Greek word occurs only in 6 verses and is only used 8 times in the N.T. Jesus used this word in describing the man in the parable that went out to hire workers in his field. He goes to men and asks them why are you idle? They answer no one has hired us and then they go to work for the man. It is self-evident what the word means by studying this parable in Matthew 20:1-6. Not working is the definition of “idle”. Therefore, here is another verse in the N.T. that contains this same word:
2Pe 1:8 For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Greek word for “Idle” is found in this verse in 2 Peter 1:8. However, it was translated as “barren” in this verse. “barren” might mean the basic same thing as inactive or unproductive. But, I believe that God is seeking that we should avoid this situation of unemployed word from occurring in our life. I know it does not directly say “words” in this verse, but think about what the verse is saying, “in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus”? Isn’t that words? Isn’t “knowledge” obtained by words and we can’t say anything unless we have knowledge to do so” Also it would seem that “Idle” could be considered to be synonymous to being “unfruitful”. God is telling us in this verse in 2 Peter that we should not be either of these. You see to be “barren” can also mean to not bear any fruit. Jesus cursed the fig tree in Mark 11 because it was barren. Do you think he was symbolically giving us some valuable clues to spiritual things? It is also interesting to see the context of this verse. Let’s look back at a preceding verse:
2Pe 1:4 Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
The promised land, symbolically represents these “exceeding great and precious promises” that God has given to us in His word. As this verse says, that these promises have already been given, we are now required to possess them. To become a partaker is the same as to become a possessor. God had given Moses and Israel the promise land and told them to “partake” of it. They did not believe God and therefore failed to obtain what was freely given. The promise land represents the blessings of God. The promises of God also represent the blessings of God. Because Moses did not believe he remained in the curses in the wilderness and died there. This is a powerful type and shadow of what we have facing us today. There are giants in our spiritual promise land today trying to intimidate us and keep us out of possessing it. How do we do this? We speak only words that are “useful”, “employed”, “working”, “productive”, “active”, “positive” and “fruitful” words. Then we avoid all spoken words that are “idle”, “unproductive”, “inactive”, “negative” and “unfruitful” words. This is the lesson of Moses found in Numbers 14 and Jesus and the fig tree in Mark 11. These are the words of Jesus found in Matthew. Avoid these “Idle Words” and you will be very glad when it comes to the judgment day and you have a much better opportunity to possess the promises of God in your life today. Thank you for studying the Bible on this website and please leave a comment if you would like to share your experiences in this area of life. God Bless!
If you would like to continue to read this series of lessons on spoken words, you can go to “Part 3“.
Many Will Be Called, But Few Chosen! Predestination Debunked!
(Ver 1.3) This is Part 2 in an important series of Bible lessons addressing the erroneous belief of extreme “Predestination”. If you did not read “Part 1” I would highly recommend that you start there and come back to this lesson. Today I will address the erroneous philosophy of “predestination” again using the Bible. In my last blog I talked about how some believe that God intentionally hardened Pharaoh’s heart so that God could work great signs and wonders in Egypt. I guess some people think that God was just wanting to show-off! I do not know how people can get such mixed up ideas, but I guess it takes all kinds. In this blog I want to talk about another “hard saying” found in the Bible that appears on the surface to indicate that God has preselected some people and others He has purposely rejected. It appears to me that some even take it and twist this message to say that God has predestined some for salvation and others for damnation. This of course to me is clearly in error and it violates the character of God and it turns Him into something that He is not. If this was true, it would make God the Great Nazi Deity in the sky, who kills the inferior races and only selects those who are worthy or superior enought to be saved. Isn’t this what Hitler did? Is God the same as Adolf Hitler? I do not think so! What we have is a classic example of what I call “taking ‘a’ truth and trying to make it ‘the’ truth”. This is a widely popular error found throughout the church body where men choose to wrongly divide the Word of Truth in order to believe in their incorrect interpretation of the Bible. People need to realize that there is more than one truth found in the Bible and in order to correctly interpret any verse you have to take into account all of the other related verses. This of course is a very challenging problem we all face, because none of us knows every related Bible verse. Bible study is like building a house or a building. You must start with a basic firm foundation of Biblical truths to begin. If you try to build on anything else your house of interpretations will fall down too easily. So what we do is learn everything that we can about the basics and then start to build upon what we know and correctly apply these things to the new things that we learn. That is the best that any of us can do. Truth always builds upon truth yielding a sound and tight fitting construction, which will result in a structure that is not easily blown down. True Bible Interpretation is not a house of cards that can be toppled easily. So let’s look at one of these Bible verses that seem to indicate “predestination” on the surface.
Mat 20:16 So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.
Here we have Jesus, God in the flesh speaking to us directly and you can very easily take it the wrong way. You can use your limited human mind to conclude that God is omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient and therefore, whatever God wants is what happens to everyone. You can take this statement by Jesus to mean that God has chosen some and others He has rejected. I mean on the surface it really looks like this is what it could be saying. However, if you think about it more closely you will see that interpretation is a house of cards. You see why would God call “Many” and only choose a “Few”? If God was only going to select a very few, you would think that God would already know who was going to be selected and not bother calling those that would not be selected! Don’t you think that makes logical sense? Why even call them if they are not being selected? That would make God a teaser and a tempter. Hang some bait out in front of someone and then yanking it away right before they get to it. Sorry, you were not selected! Is that your God? That is not my God, so either we have different Gods or one of us is deceived! However, there are other hard sayings found in the Bible that are equally hard to accept on the surface and here is one of them:
Rom 9:13 As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.
This is a difficult verse on the surface. How can God choose one son over another? You could take this as a predestination act of God, if you wanted to. The verse before this one says that while the children were still innocent and were even still in the womb, that God said the “elder shall serve the younger”. What people do not realize is there is a major difference between “predestination” and “foreknowledge”. There is a major difference between causing something to happen and knowing what will happen. God clearly tells us that He makes known the end from the beginning. Is this because God has predestined the end, or is this because God lives outside of the dimension of time and can forsee the end results. I personally believe that God can see the end and this is what He reports, especially when it comes to the knowledge of what people will do like Jacob and Esau. God already knew the character traits of each child and what they would do and what they would not do. However, “predestination” would dictate that God predetermined what each child was purposed for and preselected one and rejected the other. In other words in the “predestination” theology man plays no role in who God selects. I talked about God being the great puppet master in the sky, pulling everyone’s strings making them do this or that depending on what God wants done at that time. This is a common religious philosophy that is widely taught in some churches. These people subscribe to a “no fault” religion. They believe whatever happens to them in life, it is just not their fault! They did not do anything to cause it and they could do nothing to stop it! That is very ignorant to believe like that, but many people do it any way! After all it relieves them of any responsibility or accountability for what they do.
So why would God choose Jacob and not Esau? If you recall Esau ended up selling his birthright. Jacob probably did some unethical tricks to get his father’s blessing but nonetheless Jacob has became the rightful heir to his father’s name and fortune. You also have to realize that Jacob and Esau and this story is a spiritual foreshadowing of events to come. This story has parallels in the natural that are patterns and types of what God was going to do in the spiritual realm. Jacob is a type of Jesus Christ. I believe Esau is a type of Adam, Jesus Christ’s older brother. But, I know I do not have time to teach this and I probably already opened a can of worms that is causing some readers to draw back, so I’ll stop there for now. What we must realize is that Jacob was selected by God, because of what Esau had decided and the actions that he had chosen. People play a role in what God does through people more than most people realize. What people want and desire, what people think, what people say and do all play a key role in whether God is able to use them. If you want to live in sin and be mightily used by God, guess what, God is not going to hesitate to look for someone else. You are the determining factor to whether God is able to use you!
So why would God hate one son and love another? What does God hate? Let’s look in the Bible for the answer to that important question:
Deu 16:22 Neither shalt thou set thee up any image; which the LORD thy God hateth.
It would appear that God hates it when people serve false gods and idols. Hate is a very strong word. If God hates something it must be very bad. Do you think that Esau could have been involved with another god or idol? Do you know that it is exactly possible, here is another verse that speaks about Esau found in the New Testament:
Heb 12:16 Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright.
This verse in Hebrews is interesting, isn’t it? The verse is talking about “fornicators”. In the Greek this word means “male prostitutes”. Because Esau compramised his integrity and sold his birth right God selected Jacob. You should use your Bible search program and go through and study the verses you can find out about “Esau” for there are many references in the Bible to him. He is a natural type of something in the spiritual realm that God hates. But, also look for verses that refer to “Edom” for this is the nation of children that came from Esau and see what God says about them. It is a fascinating study. Maybe after you read all of these verses you can begin to see why I believe that Esau represents Adam and Satan.
So let’s move on to some verses found in the Bible that directly challenges the theory of “predestination”. These verses will cause a conflict that must be resolved in order to correctly interpret the Bible. I’ll start with one in Proverbs:
Pro 24:23 These things also belong to the wise. It is not good to have respect of persons in judgment.
You see on the surface you ask, why is this verse related to our subject and that is why the Bible is so difficult to understand for many. They just don’t put the pieces of the puzzle together correctly so they end up confused and wrong. This verse ends in a statement that a judge should be fair to everyone. If a judge gave one man a 10 year sentence and let another man off for no time for the exact same crime, would that be fair to the one that got 10 years? Does God have mercy on some people like this and others He does not let off the hook and throws them into hell? Isn’t God the Supreme Judge of the Universe? So does God judge differently than you should? Why do you think that God came to the earth in the flesh in the first place? I believe it was to set an example that we should follow. So we should be attempting to become just like God? I believe that we are. So if God tells us to judge without respect to persons, God is already this way! Do you get it?
Act 10:34 Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons:
So God tells us what Peter the Apostle discovered. Peter says that God shows no “respect of person”. This Greek word has the following definition from the Strong’s:
From G4381; to favor an individual, that is, show partiality: – have respect to persons.
This Greek word is pretty clear in its definition. To be partial to someone means you look favorably towards them. It means you place a higher preference or priority upon one than the other. It means you esteem some and look down upon others. This is the Bible definition to having “respect of persons”. It is clear that this is not an attitude that we should possess towards anyone. But, that doesn’t mean we should accept everyone as they are either. If you do, you will have to let your pedophile teachers, teach your Sunday school classes and that would be crazy wouldn’t it?
Rom 2:11 For there is no respect of persons with God.
Unless you are spiritually blind you cannot read a verse like this and still believe in the philosophy of “predestination”. This verse clearly says that God does not show favoritism towards anyone. God does not play favorites. God does not grant favors to anyone. God is fair and treats everyone the same or God is being unfair. You of course can ask a lot of questions and refuse to believe that this applies to God, but you would be failing to see what God is saying in the Bible and that is a huge mistake. So God has said for us to be fair towards everyone, because I am fair to everyone. So what is the determining factor of why God chooses one and not the other? As we saw with Jacob and Esau, it had more to do with what they did and not so much with God forcing the decision. Here is another interesting verse that is certainly relevant to our subject of “predestination”.
Luk 10:42 But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.
Jesus is at Mary and Martha’s house teaching and Martha comes to Jesus and complains that her sister is not helping fix the food for everyone. What was God’s response to this question? Did God say, “Mary I have chosen her and not you, I have done all of this for a purpose and a plan that you do not understand”? You see that would be a true “predestination” theologian’s viewpoint. Fortunately for us God did not say this. But, God says “Mary has chosen to hear the good things and I will not take it from her”. It appears that Martha could have chosen the same thing that Mary chose and asked Jesus to feed them when they all got hungry, but she didn’t do that. Jesus seemed to think that Mary’s choice was better than Martha’s choice, can’t you see the difference? Did what Mary choose to do affect her personally and the results that she got? Did what Martha choose to do affect her personally and the results that she got? The answer to both of these quesdtions is, YES! The decisions people make are directly involved in God’s ability to use them and that determines what they get. People have more to do with what God does, than they can possibly imagine.
Rev 3:20 Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.
Apparently God wants to come in and have dinner with you! If God wants in the door, do you think that God is not powerful enough to come in? Why would the omnipotent God be standing on the outside knocking if He really just wanted to come in to eat with you? The answer to that question is because God is a Divince Gentleman. God will not force anyone into anything. They must choose to open the door to let Him in. Do you see how ignorant people can get with their invented religious ideas that God is in control of everything that happens to a man, to his house and him opening the door to let God in? If God was in complete control He wouldn’t be knocking and waiting for someone to let Him in would He? God is God and He is all powerful, but He does not violate your freewill choice. God will not force you to open the door to your heart and let Him in. You have the responsibility to open the door and invite Him in. If you do not do this, God is a perfect gentleman and will not kick the door down like a thief or a robber.
Let me end this blog with this new and different perspective to the subject of predestination. Many times people do not think when they read the Bible so here is something new to consider. If God only chooses some why does this Bible verse say what it says?
Psa 69:28 Let them be blotted out of the book of the living, and not be written with the righteous.
You see you can very easily read a verse like this and completely miss what it says and think that it does not apply to anyone or anything. However, Jesus thought it was important enough and says this about it:
Rev 3:5 He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels.
So what does this have to do with predestination? It is because you do not see, that you do not understand. This verse says everyone’s name was written down in the “Lambs book of Life“, but that some of these names have now been blotted out. In other words, God expected everyone to be saved, but obviously there are many who did not accept the free gift. You see God did not write your name in the “book of life” after you got saved. The Lamb’s book of life had every name of every human that was supposed to be here on this planet already enter into it. We can therefore conclude that God wanted everyone to be saved and those that overcame are the only ones that their names now remain in the book. So if God predestined anything or anyone, God predestined everyone to succeed and to be saved, but some chose to reject God’s plan and do their own thing. The word “Blot Out” means that the name was already there and removed or covered over using “God’s Whiteout”. People who are young do not understand the concept of “whiteout”, but those who are older do, before computers were around people would type pages manually and have to cover mistakes up with a white liquid paper product. I think you can still buy this product, but I doubt if it is very widely used for anything. This is however, the concept given to us in Word of God. God writes every name in the Lamb’s book of life and then depending upon their actions and decisions, God is forced to remove their name, if they so choose. It is truly amazing what the Bible says when you can see it! God Bless you and may you be blessed with the knowledge of Him that freely gives us all things!
If you would like to continue to read about this subject you can go to “Part 3“.
Does God Cause Some People’s Hearts to Be Hard? What About Pharaoh?
(Ver 1.4) This is the Part 1 in an important series of Bible lessons addressing the primary subject of Extreme Predestination. Many times people read things into the Bible missing what God actually says to make their own independent wrong assumptions. Ignoring all of the words written on one subject they simultaneously jump to the wrong conclusions based upon selective reading. Today’s Bible lesson will be a prime example of this type of error in wrong Bible interpreation. Reading the Bible in isolation and not allowing God to interpret the Bible is one of the most dangerous approaches to take in Bible interpretation. The Bible will always explain the Bible, but we are required to search the Bible in order to find these explanations. The explations are not going to come to you and fall into your lap. I once talked to a man who had graduated from an unnamed theological seminary, who claimed that God causes some people to be saved while choosing for other people not to be saved. This belief is very much the classic manmade “predestination” mentality or philosophy. His reasoning was based upon a combination of the known omnipotence of God, the sovereignty of God and several other beliefs that he attempted to use to explain why things appear to be as if God controls what occurs in the world. Because God is omnipotent and sovereign, his claim was nothing happened unless God authorizes it or commited it. He was very pleased to show me scriptures in Exodus that appear to say that God purposely hardened Pharaoh’s heart so that God could do some spectacular plagues and signs to demonstrate His great power. It is funny how religious minds work and think sometimes. They think they are right, but when you actually study it out you can find something completely different in the Bible. Many times the simple basic things written on the surface of the Bible give way to more elaborate complex spiritual meanings, that can be taken completely different than the surface reading. So this seminary graduate chose to believe something on the surface and did not look any deeper to find out if that was really what the Bible actually said. We as Christians, must weigh every scripture using other scriptures that are relevant to the subject. We must use the Bible to interpret the Bible correctly, because only God knows what it all means and not us! Today I will attempt to give you the rest of the story and help you to see the difference. Here are a couple of the scriptures that my confused seminary brother in Christ used to say that God had hardened Pharaoh’s heart:
Exo 4:21 And the LORD said unto Moses, When thou goest to return into Egypt, see that thou do all those wonders before Pharaoh, which I have put in thine hand: but I will harden his heart, that he shall not let the people go.
Exo 10:1 And the LORD said unto Moses, Go in unto Pharaoh: for I have hardened his heart, and the heart of his servants, that I might shew these my signs before him:
The Bible is written in a style that it can literally be interpreted in many different ways simultaneously depending upon the readers point of view or perspective. From a single verse, 12 different people can read it and get 12 different individual interpretations. This however, does not prove that any of them are right. God purposely selected this method and style of writing the Bible so that mankind would have a choice in what they believe. However, this does not mean every interpretation is correct, just because God allows you to jump to these wrong conclusions. You see in Exodus 4:21 and Exodus 10:1, that God is speaking to Moses directly and God tells him what to do and then tells Moses what will happen as a result of what Moses does. Religious people like to think that God’s will is the only will that is ever accomplished on the earth. If God wants something done a certain way, then God’s will automatically overrides everyone else’s will and God gets His way. That reasoning does not make any sense to me and I haven’t been able to find any Bible verses that directly back that theory. You see that theory would make God the giant puppet master in the sky who pulls everyone’s strings to make them do exactly what He wants, when He wants it done. That does not match the character or nature of God revealed to us in the Bible. This does not match other scriptures that say God has given man choices and decisions to make. If God was calling all of the shots, why would God say “Today I have set before you life and death, therefore choose life”. Bible verses like these tell me that man has a choice and God makes a recommendation which one we should choose, but is not forcing you or I into making this right decision. Therefore, we have a conflict presented to us in the Word of God. Is God a good God, like the Bible says or is He an evil God to some and to others He treats differently. Has God given mankind a choice in the result of their lives and their destiny or has God predestined some to hell and others to heaven? Were angels given the ability to make right or wrong choices? Does God really control everything that happens in the world, good, bad or indifferent? Does it matter what I do today? Can my choices change the results that I get? Will what I do affect anyone else’s results? What is the character of God like? Does God require man to do something that He can do differently and God calls it OK for Him, but sin for man? You have to ask yourself these important questions. These are hard questions and I cannot attempt to answer all of these in this one blog.
I have to admit, that reading just those two verses that I gave you in Exodus, that it really appears that God purposely caused Pharaoh’s heart to become hard, so that He could do some great signs. I mean you can very easily take it this way if you want to, by ignoring the rest of the Bible. However, the Bible is One Book by One Author, who has intentionally revealed Himself in a very tricky way by spreading out little clues about himself from cover to cover. We are required to find these clues first and then to use these clues to interpret the other verses in the Bible using this information. Our interpretation of a single part of the Bible needs to be in harmony with all of the other verses found in the Bible on the subject. One verse cannot contradict or conflict with another. If you think it does, then you are wrong and do not understand what it says correctly! God is always consistent and constant in His character, and His treatment of all people.
Often times people confuse foreknowledge with predestination. Just because God knows your reaction to some event that happens in your life, does not mean that God caused it to happen that way. So when God tells Moses of Pharaoh’s reaction to what Moses was going to do, why didn’t Moses stop and ask God what else can we do that will actually work and let the people go? Don’t you think that Moses could have changed God’s mind and His approach to something that would have actually worked, if there was anything that was going to work? Well the problem is still the question did God intentionally harden the heart of Pharaoh in order to accomplish His greater plan for Israel? I think we need to start this study by defining what it means to be “hard hearted”. Isn’t that what we are talking about? If God made Pharaoh’s heart hard, how did God do this and what transpired or changed in Pharaoh when this occurred? Did God do something in Pharaoh that caused him to react how he did? Was there a specific something that changed within Pharaoh that forced this reaction? Instead of trying to get a definition of “hard hearted” from the dictionary, let’s see if God gives us a definition in the Bible:
Mar 8:17 And when Jesus knew it, he saith unto them, Why reason ye, because ye have no bread? perceive ye not yet, neither understand? have ye your heart yet hardened?
Here is a classic definition of being hard hearted directly from God. Jesus is speaking to the disciples about them having no bread. He ends the verse with a four part question that ends with “did you harden your heart”? So why did God ask this question, if God was hardening their hearts? Didn’t God already know if He was intentionally hardening their hearts for some purpose? Isn’t Jesus Christ God in the flesh? I hope you can begin to see how foolish people can be by believing in “predestination”. Here we have God in the flesh asking if “they” had hardened their own hearts by doing what? Part 1 of the question was by “reasoning”. This is a mental operation of an advanced feature of the human capability. You can train a monkey to do something that gives you a specified result, like play a song on a piano, but they will never be able to reason for themselves in order to come up with the notes to a song! If you think differently, you are wrong! Humans have the capability to “think”, to “reason”, to “consider”, to “dispute”, and to “muse”. These are all logical methods of coming to a conclusion and then they also have the ability to discuss their thought process of why they came to this answer. A monkey can do this only in an extremely limited capacity. Keep in mind that “reasoning” ability is based upon knowledge. People are only able to come to conclusions based upon what they know about the subject. The more they know, usually a better decision can result.
So apparently “being hard hearted” involves your mind, your thoughts and your reasoning capability, based upon your previous knowledge. Then Jesus asks parts 2 and 3 of the question, “didn’t you perceive what I said?”, “and didn’t you understand it?” The first word to “perceive” is a very interesting word. It means “to exercise the mind”. It means to “think”. It also means to “observe”. All of these things are mental operations of the human mind. Now the next word translated as “understand” means “to put together”. It also means “to become wise”. It also means “to comprehend”. These are also all mental operations of the human mind. So what was one of the determining factors to why the disciples hearts were hardened according to Jesus and God? It was because they did not understand or see what was being said. They used their minds to reason the wrong things and come to the wrong conclusions based upon the knowledge that they had up to this point. So was this God’s fault or the disciple’s fault? Who caused their hearts to be harden? Was it the words that Jesus spoke or the their own lack of sufficient knowledge and inability to understand what he said that caused their hardness of heart? This is a very important lesson to learn, because it applies to most Christians in the world today. Jesus could ask the same question to most people who write blogs on the internet and even to many who sit in the pews of our churches. I’ll go even further and say Jesus could ask most preachers who graduated from seminary, what are you thinking?
Mar 16:14 Afterward he appeared unto the eleven as they sat at meat, and upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they believed not them which had seen him after he was risen.
Here is another determining factor in the definition of “hardness of heart” given to us by God. Jesus met with the 11 disciples after He was risen from the dead and He more or less rebuked them for their “unbelief”. Jesus appeared to some and not others and some went and then told the others, but at least some of the others did not believe what was told to them. Jesus called this being “hard hearted”. This is also a key factor to what we find wrong in our churches today, and it speaks to why people do what they do. They either believe what is being taught or they do not! Those who believe are said to be “tender hearted” and those who do not believe are said to be “hard hearted”. Of course we do not believe anything just because someone says it, we have to be smart enough to verify it in the Bible, but that is a different lesson. So what we have learned is that people have a choice in what they believe, don’t they? By making right choices in what we believe we become more “tender hearted”, by making wrong choices in what we believe we become more “hard hearted”. I hope you are grasping these concepts, they do apply to you right now.
Heb 3:13 But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.
So this is now factor three in the definition of becoming “hard hearted”. In, this verse in Hebrews God says to us, that the deceitfulness of “sin” is a key factor to becoming hard hearted. Sin involves missing the intended mark of righteousness and holiness. We are all guilty of this and some more than others. However, it is a determining factor of who is said to be “hard hearted”. Now I do not think that I covered this subject completely, but I have given you several key factors to the definition of becoming “hard hearted”. So let’s review what we have learned as to what causes people to be hard hearted:
- The Ignorance of People Who Do Not Know Any Better!
- Inability to Perceive, Hear, Observe, See Spiritually
- Inability to Comprehend, Understand Mentally
- Distractions of Temptation and Sin Physically
The result of these factors will culminate into:
- Wrong Thinking
- Wrong Reasoning
- Wrong Believing
- Wrong Conclusions
- Wrong Assumptions
- Wrong Actions
So do any of these factors play a role in the life of Pharaoh? If you do not think so, you would be wrong again! God gives us basic clues and definitions throughout the Bible and we must apply them correctly, so here I go. Did what Pharaoh learn as a child make any determination how he would react as an adult? Would being the leader of one the most advanced nations on earth with untold power and riches factor into how Pharaoh would react? Does the fact that Pharaoh and his people worshipped false idols and imaginary gods play any factor into how Pharaoh would react? You know there are just so many different factors to consider that go into this decision process that Pharaoh had, that I cannot come up with them all. But, when Moses appeared to Pharaoh and said “The Jehovah God” has sent me! What would have been your reaction if you were Pharaoh? This was not one of Pharaoh’s gods? Who is this God? That is what I would have thought! What was Pharaoh thinking while Moses asked for the children of Israel to be freed? Here the ruler of Egypt who possessed around 2 million slaves, was being asked to let them go for free and what do you think he thought about a request like that? Do you see how these factors that we just learned of becoming hard hearted from the New Testament apply to what happened in Pharaoh’s heart? Pharaoh did not believe Moses! Moses did not come in the name of any of Pharaoh’s gods! So when the true God says something to someone who doesn’t believe He exists, what is their reaction suppose to be? I hope that you are beginning to see how complex the world and the Bible is.
Let’s continue through the Bible in Exodus and see what else God says about Pharaoh’s heart being hardened:
Exo 8:15 But when Pharaoh saw that there was respite, he hardened his heart, and hearkened not unto them; as the LORD had said.
This verse is a little different than the first two that I gave you from Exodus. This time it says Pharaoh was the one that hardened his own heart. Moses had been commanded by God what to do and say before Pharaoh. During this time, Pharaoh’s magicians would counter the acts of God with their own similar tricks. Pharaoh saw these great signs of God as just being a magic potion of a sorcerer, which he could also cause to be produced using his own magicians. Whatever, God did, the magicians of Pharaoh countermanded them with their own spectacular results. So far God hasn’t done anything that was spectacular enough for Pharaoh to be impressed with. Pharaoh did not believe in the God of Israel, so there lies the root of Pharaoh’s greatest failure in judgment.
Exo 8:32 And Pharaoh hardened his heart at this time also, neither would he let the people go.
Here we have another verse that clearly says Pharaoh was responsible for hardening his own heart. Do we have a contradiction in scriptures or just a simple misunderstanding of what it all means? Can God harden people’s hearts simply by them not believing in Him? Will what people think about what is said to them, affect what they choose to believe? Did God harden his heart or did Pharaoh harden his own heart? Can you see how both of these statements are true at the same time? God hardened the heart of Pharaoh and Pharaoh hardened his own heart are two perspectives of the same event. What if Moses had come in the name of the god “Apollo”? Would the reaction of Pharaoh had been different? I do not think so. So you cannot say that it was God’s fault for hardening Pharaoh’s heart. Pharaoh didn’t believe in “Apollo” any more than He did “Jehovah”. All Pharaoh knew was this was not his god so he was closing his mind to what else was being told to him. Christians do this in churches every day. A new teacher comes to town and says something that doesn’t fit what they think and they shut down and do not hear the rest. It didn’t matter if it was directly from God and the truth, it was just not what they wanted to hear so they ignored it. I know this happens with the things that I write on my blogs. Many read it, but do not believe it, understand it or accept it so they shut their minds down and ignore it all.
1Sa 6:6 Wherefore then do ye harden your hearts, as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts? when he had wrought wonderfully among them, did they not let the people go, and they departed?
In this verse we again see a comparison being made between the people of Israel and the people of Egypt ruled by Pharaoh. We can see very clearly that each of these people are responsible personally for hardening their own hearts. There is no contradiction to the scriptures and there is no predestination reality with God. God knows the decisions you will make, but you are still responsible for them, not God.
Eze 36:26 A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.
Do you know this scripture is talking about you? If you are a Christian, you have this new heart available to you right now! Did you notice that God said I will take out your “Stony” heart? Isn’t a “stony” heart a formerly hard hearted person? This again can be taken incorrectly, as something that God is solely responsible for making happen. Some people still think like God is the spiritual surgeon who does a spiritual heart transplant surgical procedure in every believer! But, that would not be a good interpretation of this verse based upon what we have learned. God says I will replace your stony heart with a soft tender heart of flesh. Are these symbolic references? Yes they are! Is God responsible for this happening in you? Yes and No! You still have a part to play in the procedure. God never overrides your will and makes you do anything. God never takes anything away from you that you do not want taken away. God never gives you anything that you do not want to have. This is the character and nature of the God and Man relationship. However, without God doing anything we would all be hopelessly hard hearted. So it is a partnership between us receiving what God has freely given to us by faith. Here is an analogy that helped me tremendously when I studied this subject about the hearts of mankind. I heard a preacher teach this so I cannot take credit for it, but, I will share it with you, so that I can help you to see it also.
Jesus Christ is called Light. Jesus Christ is called the Sun of Righteousness. Jesus Christ is compared symbolically to the natural sun in our sky. The church is said to be in the “Day” and not in the “Night” or the darkness anymore. Darkness represents the domain of Satan and evil. So the church walks in the Light of God and Jesus Christ has risen in our hearts to give us this new glorious light. So what can we learn from this symbolic representation? Does the sun shine on everyone equally? Or does the natural sun in our sky shine only on the righteous and good people in the world? Of course the sun shines on everyone the same. What causes the same light to shine on everyone equally the same with no bias or prejudice towards anyone? Is this the nature and character of God exemplified in a natural part of creation? Are the hidden qualities of God being clearly shown to us by looking at the sun in our sky? Does God treat everyone the same? My Bible says God shows no respect of persons, so God must be fairly treating everyone the same. God has given the same Bible to everyone that contains His words of hope! Yet some believe it and some do not, is this God’s fault? Did God make one person hard towards the Gospel and another He made receptive and tender? Why does the same natural sun in the sky, both melts wax and hardens clay simultaneously? Is it the sun’s fault that these two objects react differently? It is the same heat and light source upon both objects isn’t it? But, the reaction to this light ray is completely different based upon the type of object absorbing or being bombarded by the light. Can people choose to be hard or tender to the Light of the Word of God in the same way? Do people have a choice in what they do, what they hear, is what they think important, what about what they say and how they react? Of course people have these choice everyday and that is exactly why some people harden their own hearts and refuse to hear the truth and others are receptive and open and learn the truth. The same Sun shines on everyone, but not everyone chooses to react the same to this constant light source. You must choose to be wax and refuse to be the clay or you will become harden in your heart toward God also.
This is precisely the situation of Pharaoh in Exodus. God said something that Pharaoh did not want to hear. God said something that Pharaoh did not consider important. God said something that Pharaoh did not think was relevant to him or his situation. God said something that Pharaoh did not believe. So, God knew that no matter what he said, Pharaoh was not going to let the Israel people go. Pharaoh wanted them for their labor and their lives of service for his own good. Pharaoh let power and influence determine his outcome and the result ended very bad for them. If you did not know it, Egypt is a type of the world. Pharaoh is a type of Satan. Moses is a type of Jesus, the deliverer and the children of Israel a type of the Church. These are all types that represents patterns of things that were to come in the spiritual realm in the New Covenant of God. Our spiritual Deliver is Christ Jesus who has freed us from the captivity of sin and Satan. You have to decide right now are you a child of Egypt or a child of Israel and choose to become hard or tender toward what God is telling you right now.
There are many other things to learn from these lessons of Pharaoh, but I have gone too long in this blog. I pray that you received something that was a positive benefit in your spiritual walk with God. God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading in this series about the subject of “Predestination” you may go now to “Part 2“.
Introduction to the Trinity of God, God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost!
(Ver 1.4) Today’s lesson is “Part 1” in an essential Bible series of truth concerning the revealed triune nature of the Godhead. This lesson will be focused upon an essential introduction of the subject. Because there are new Christians all the time, I realized people are like me and do not know everything. There are new people choosing to come into God’s family every day that need to learn the fundamentals of Christianity. Furthermore, this seemingly simple subject can become immensely technical and deep. So I will occasionally teach on basic Bible concepts that everyone should become intimately familiar with. By building a strong foundation on the Word of God, you are better able to defend your faith to others who may raise questions to why you have chosen to place your hope in and believe in the Bible (1 Peter 3:15). If you do not know anything the Bible says you are not able to share with others to help them enter into His truth. So today I want to introduce another basic foundational Bible concept. How can one God be viewed in three different ways? It is really not too difficult to understand these three personalities of God, if you research them in your Bible. They are easily seen, frequently named and usually only ignored by people who do not want to accept them. God is called first and foremost a Spirit (John 4:24). Therefore every other manifestation of God must originate from His Spirit. You see one manifestation of God is accomplished by Him giving Himself a new titled description for His Spirit. God the Father is a title or a name for the Spirit of God who procreates and has covenants, a family and children. God is the Father of all spiritual beings (Heb 12:9). If you have a spirit (and you do), it came from only God’s Spirit given to you in your mother’s womb at conception. This truth delegates the responsibility of all human spirits to acknowledge God to be the original Father of their spirit.
Then there is God the Son. This manifestation of God occurred when the Spirit of God came upon Mary the virgin and she conceived a male child named Jesus (Luke 1:35). The body of Jesus came about as a union of the Seed(Word) of the Father God and the egg in Mary’s womb. The combination of these two (physical egg and Spoken Spirit Word) produced a child that was not God, but yet had the Spirit of God in Him. It might seem rather confusing at first, if you have never been taught this way. You see the Bible says that “No Man” has ever seen God (1 Jn 4:12). But we know many men and women saw physical Jesus Christ when He was here on earth. But they all technically just saw the body that contained the Spirit of God and they never actually saw God who is a Spirit as we learned from John 4:24.
The plot thickens however, because Jesus did say “when you have seen me, you have seen the Father” (Jn 14:7). So Jesus did not separate Himself from the Father at any time. Jesus repeatedly said that He and His Father were One (Jn 10:30, Jn 17:11). So when Jesus walked the face of the earth and spoke to the people, whatever He said was God speaking, because Jesus was God in the flesh (Mat 1:23). Or we could also say that the Spirit of God was in the flesh of Jesus.
BIBLE FACT 1: ONLY ONE GOD
I think I will begin this lesson by establishing Bible verses that clearly declares that there is only one true God who created everything. There can be a potential problem when studying the trinity because of these three titles, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. These three titled manifestations of the God can easily lead some to believe we have 3 different Gods. But this not true. Only One God created everything we see and God gives credit to the operation of all three divine descriptions to have participated in creating us. Let us start with a basic law from God in the Old Testament:
Deu 6:4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD:
This is a classic verse written in the Law of Moses. God declares that He is One Lord! The children of Israel widely accepted this verse and believe in this One True Lord! However, when He visited them personally in the flesh, they put Him to death on a cross. Why didn’t they recognize their God? That is an obviously good question to consider and answer. It seems the Nation of Israel is still stumbling over the same things as they did back then. I have talked to Jews and they hate Christians and put them down as a false religion. Little do they know that they are the ones now in the false religion of works that will not save them.
Mar 12:29 And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord:
Jesus, who was God in the flesh did not contradict the Old Testament law, but further confirmed that there was only one Lord God. Many times people have a tendency to limit what God can do and put God in their very small and limited religious box. God can do something so very radically different that the things we can think of with our simple natural minds.
In fact God has already done some very radical things that we are just now discovering in the Bible. But, these people in Jesus’ day did not recognize their God, because they did not expect Him to be standing in front of them in this humble form. Perhaps they had read about God in the burning bush speaking to Moses, or in the cloud on top of the mountain meeting again with Moses and they think that this is the way God always talks to men. So heaven forbid if God does something so new or radically different to come in person in the flesh and stand before them and speak! That just doesn’t make any natural sense for an omnipotent God to do, does it? Of course the Jews were not privy to all of the facts either. They did not know that the angel Gabriel had visited Mary when she was a virgin and said she would conceive a child by the Spirit of God. They were not privileged to know that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, the city of David and the prophesied birth place of their Messiah.
The Jews only knew that Jesus was a man from Samaria and a city of Nazareth. They understood how, He had grown up like every other child in the region and nothing appeared to be different or unique about him. They assumed Jesus was just like the other children in the family of Joseph and Mary and no different than His natural half-brothers or His natural half-sisters. The Jews made wrong assumptions and never attempted to find out the truth by asking relevant questions. They were deceived by Satan and they killed the God who came to save them. Thank God, they did because we now are saved because of it. Obviously, God foreknew how they would react and what they would do, since He purposely chose this specific time in human history to be born into the world.
Mar 12:32 And the scribe said unto him, Well, Master, thou hast said the truth: for there is one God; and there is none other but he:
Here is a verse of scripture that confirms what the Jews believed. They knew that the Bible said there was only One True God! This scribe declares that there are no other true gods except Him. But, yet he was talking to Him personally and never realized it either. That to me is a very sad story.
Jas 2:19 Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.
The devils and Satan know there is only one True God! They are extremely fearful of Him. In fact they are doing everything they can legally and illegally do to try to keep the plan of God against them from coming to pass. It is interesting to see how many men and women in the world are so passive toward God. So many could care less if there is a God, they are consumed with their own agendas. People’s priorities sure need to change, don’t you think?
Mal 2:10 Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us? why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother, by profaning the covenant of our fathers?
Here is an interesting verse of scripture. It tells us that there is one true Father God. Then it also says there is only One True God who created us! The Bible is a very complex book and tells us many things that are difficult to wrap our human thinking minds around. The trinity of God is one of these concepts that is difficult to fully grasp for human thinkers not thinking in a higher spiritual God kind of way. How can one God be manifested in various ways using different names and titles? You see this verse calls God the One Father, but yet Jesus in John 8, in talking to the Jews said “ye are of your father the devil”. So obviously Jesus did not see them as his true spiritual brothers. Jesus clearly said that He had a different spiritual Father than they did. This partly demonstrates an ongoing problem of many religions in the world today. The Jews thought that God was their father, but Jesus declared something that was completely different than what they thought. So they were wrong and Jesus was right. Many people today want to be all inclusive and say every religion is just another path to the same god. But, they are also wrong. Let us look at another verse from 1 Timothy:
1Ti 2:5 For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;
You see the Bible declares something very different than what people think. That is why Christians are many times accused of being hateful and narrow minded. Those who see the truth, know that there are not many paths that lead us to the True God. For example, this verse in 1 Timothy declares the opposite. God says there is only one path way to God and that is only through the man Christ Jesus. The Messiah Jesus was God in the flesh! God came to the earth personally to accomplish everything that He needed to accomplish and He did it personally to insure that it was done correctly at the right time in the precise way. The term “mediator” is an interesting Greek word so let’s look up the definition and see what it reveals:
From G3319; a go between, that is, (simply) an internunciator, or (by implication) a reconciler (intercessor): – mediator.
The word “internunciator” carries a meaning of someone who speaks on the behalf of someone else. “Inter” can mean between and “nunciator” is someone who speaks. So Jesus became the one in between man and God who is authorized to legally speak to each opposing party. So a “mediator” is someone who is also a go between of the two parties often times in a legal battle. Both of these titles fit the situation the human race was in. We needed someone to be our legal attorney to plead our case for us, because we did not have a legitimate case without this help. God provided Himself an intercessor, a spokesman for the human race when we had no chance of salvation. Because God became a man, every man and woman now has a chance to talk with God personally. Humans were incapable of saving themselves and we were in dire straits without a hope of any future. God provided the way out of our dilemma, before we ever understood what a dilemma we were in.
You cannot be narrow minded when you read the Bible, if you are you will not be able to accept some of the radical concepts that God introduces you to. God is One God, but comes to us in different ways for different purposes.
Remember that the Bible says that “No Man” has ever seen God, but that doesn’t mean we cannot come to know Him. God being a Spirit, makes it difficult for natural men and women to grasp all of the hidden qualities of His nature and personalities. What we must do is become spiritually open to what God wants to do and realize that whatever He does will probably be different than anything we could have imagined. Learn the lesson of the Jews who did not recognize their God when He chose to walk in their presence in the flesh. You see the Bible says God is not a Man (Num 23:19)! That was a completely factual truth when these words were recorded in the Old Testament. But that does not mean that God could not become a man if He choses to do so. Jesus Christ was the Word (God) made to be a flesh body (Jn 1:14) and it was this human body that contained the Holy Spirit of God. But I do not believe that this manifested physical body containing God limited God in His spiritually manifested form to only be in the body of Jesus. In fact the Bible clearly tells us that every Believer who has accepted Jesus as their Lord now has the Spirit of God living on the inside of them. So obviously God’s Spirit is bigger than the individual body of Jesus Christ alone. Part of the Spirit of God is in me right now! If you are a real believer, then a part of the Spirit of God is also in you! Because the Jews put limits upon God and would not let Him out of their small mental box, they were unable to see Him clearly. Do not be guilty of putting God in your small box and miss Him either!
1Co 8:6 But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.
There are so many verses that declare and name God as being One! This verse speaks of two parts of the trinity as both being this One God that we are learning about today. God the Father, is the original spiritual father. But, Jesus Christ, the Son of God is also this same One Lord God! Notice that this One Lord Jesus Christ created all things. So you cannot separate the two manifestations of God and say they are two different Gods or Creators, they are just two personalities of the same One True God. Now let us shift focus from seeing God as being just Two to see how God claims to actually be Three in One.
TRIUNE = THREE IN ONE
1Jn 5:7 For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.
This is one of the greatest scriptures in the Bible directly naming all “three” members of the unified trinity and calling each of them all One! However, notice that the Son of God is called the Word of God in this verse and that is a revelation that you need to get a hold of. In John the 1st chapter verse 1, God tells us very Clearly that God and the Word are One in the same. Then in verse 14, God tells us that the “Word became flesh and dwelt among us”. So we can now begin to understand how God could become a man called His Son in the flesh and still be God Almighty. I guess I should address the fact that this verse is widely reported to be false because it is not found in every manuscript. However, this is the ploy of Satan to attempt to delete these words to cause doubts in the minds of people. You see you can find this basic information in several other verses in the Bible and therefore I am confident in all of these verses of truth. Check in John 5:37 and see where God the Father is being a witness of God the Son. Read about Jesus being called the Word of God in Revelation 19:13. Look at 1 John 4:14 where it speaks of God the Father and God the Son. Look at John 15:26 where Jesus the Son of God describes the Spirit of God coming forth from the Father God to “testify” of the truth of Jesus. A witness in the Bible is always someone who can testify in a court of law under an oath, so again we see the trinity in very revealed self-evident terms. There are many verses in the Bible like this but I’m not going to do all of your Bible study for you today in this introductory lesson, so please make the effort and go and search to find more of them.
CONCLUSION
So this has just been a quick and simple introduction to the subject of the trinity of God. I concentrated mostly on scriptures that declare that God is One True God. But, I also introduced you to the fact that God can do things differently than we expect, if He wants to. It is interesting that God always worked in the Old Testament through a mediator, a go between. Either Moses, or another prophet would go to God and get the message that He wanted them to hear. God used this principle and pattern of a go between for literally hundreds of years. But, when God became the “go between” in the form of the man Jesus Christ, the majority wanted nothing to do with Him. God did something the same way that He had always done it, but implemented it in a different way and they automatically rejected Him because He was so different than what they thought. Jesus Christ became the Moses mediator of His day on earth and God’s own people refused to listen to Him. I guess being “narrow minded” applies to many people in the world. Everyone thinks they know what they need to know and when God does something different, we like to criticize it and brand it as a false teaching. What the Jews should have done was to search the scriptures and find out what God was going to do and then verify if what Jesus said went along with it. Instead of thinking they knew what was right and what was wrong, they should have been open to some new viewpoints of truth. We as Christians also need to search our Bibles and see what God is going to do and remain open to Him potentially doing something that we did not expect Him to do.
Finally, the Bible says that Satan will do everything that he can to deny the deity of Christ. The antichrist we are told in 1 John 2:22 will deny that Jesus is the Christ and claim that God had no Son. God says very specifically that this antichrist will deny the existence of both the Father and the Son. There is a major reason for this denial of truth, which I cannot get into today in this lesson. If it were not important God would not have warned you about this. I will say briefly two major religions of the world deny God had a Son and these are the Jewish and Islamic religions. That is very important for you to know if you miss the rapture. It is clear to me that Satan will do everything in his power to deny the trinity of God and will cause many people to fall into deception to believe this lie that there is not a trinity. You need to understand that this is why it is important to know and study this subject so that even you will not be deceived when this occurs. Thank you for reading and studying the Bible with us at Agapegeek.com. God bless you and please share this lesson with everyone you know. Press “Like” also and all of this will help others find us. God Bless you until next time.
If you would like to continue reading in this series, please proceed to “Part 2” now.
The Sin Unto Death! Part 2 The Unpardonable Sin!
(Ver 1.3) Today is Part 2 on the subject of “Once Saved, Aleays Saved”, “Eternal Security”, or “Unconditional Security” of the believer after salvation. I will continue to talk about this subject today in greater detail giving you a new perspective on the subject that I call the introduction of the unpardonable sin. Does an unpardonable sin exist? Can a Christian commit this sin and even lose their salvation? In the first lesson on this subject I contrasted the teaching of some churches that is often called the doctrine of “once saved, always saved”, to a new but clear reference found in the Bible of what God calls the “Sin Unto Death”. In that lesson I taught that God instructs us not to even pray for a person that has commited this type of Sin Unto Death. If you did not read this first lesson, I would strongly suggest that you go back and start your reading with “Part 1” and then continue forward to today’s lesson.
So what is the “Sin Unto Death”? As you recall from Part 1 of this series I determined that man still possessed a free will choice and that they could decide at any point in time not to be saved. This action would result in their rejection of the saving grace of God. That which God has given to them for free can be freely given back to God at any time. People will never lose the right to choose between good and evil, God and Satan, light and darkness even if it is an extremely stupid choice to make the wrong decision. I do not think that the people who teach “once saved, always saved” have taken this reality into account. They simply want to rely on the divine omnipotence of God to make all of their choices and decisions for them but God just does not do this. There are several references in the Bible that indicate people must strive and contend for the faith (Jude 1:3). That there is a struggle and an armed conflict raging in the spiritual realm (2 Tim 4:7). We have a spiritual enemy doing all that he can to deceive us and cause us to turn back to our previous ways. There are numerous scriptures that clearly inform us that people are not once saved and then can never make the choice to go back to their old life styles. For example:
Heb 10:26 For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins,
This verse in Hebrews is another prime example of someone who was saved by the shed blood of Christ and who has now wilfully chosen to go back to sin. Wilfully displays a choice of their freewill. This verse describes a Christian that has learned the truth of God’s Word, but now decided to ignore it. I gave you another verse in the last lesson and it was interesting to see that this person was described as someone who has trodden or walked on the Son of God in verse 29. This is a common Bible term that is used for when someone defeats an enemy. So to this person, Christ is no longer their savior, but has become their enemy. When a person turns back to this old way, you can read here in vese 26 that there is no more sacrifices that can save them. This verse says that they had accepted the one true way to God but have now turned away from the truth and as a result have lost their salvation without any hope for salvation. That is a clear definition to what an unpardonable sin is. God clearly tells us that there is only one sacrifice for our sin, not two, three or more. Christ died one time on the cross, so do not take it lightly, thinking that it is OK to walk away from Christ and that you can come back whenever you like. This is the sin unto death that God is speaking of.
Here is a new problem that I was recently introduced to. One persons tried to explain away all of these verses in Hebrews 10 as not applying to Christians because they said this book was only written to the natural Jews or the Hebrews. Wow, people can become so deceived, can’t they? How ignorant do you have to be to not see this book was written to church? That means it was written to me! That means the scriptures apply to me. If you used their logic then the book of Timothy only applies to Timothy and we should it ignore it also. Using their logic the book of Romans was only written to the people in Rome so we should iginore that one also. I could go on and on like this through every epistle in the N.T. and explain each of them away using some ignorant human reasoning. I’ve seen this type of behavior by Christians and even seminary graduates repeatedly. Whenever they do not want to embrace a truth as being applicable to them, they say it was written to someone else. Heaven help them to see the truth!
THE UNPARDONABLE SIN
Now is the time to get into my new main subject verse that is very important for you to understand. Here is another key verse of scripture that has great significance to our subject of eternal security and to what I have been teaching on subject of the sin unto death. The Eternal Security Extreme Grace message is based solely upon the theory that there are no sins that are possible for a Christian to commit that will cause them to lose their salvation. I mean that would be a radical message, if that is what Jesus believed. However since Jesus didn’t even believe that I think I will not write off His words to believe in a false eternal security. Look here in this verse in Matthew, and see that Jesus is speaking and that He says some things that are very hard to accept for my Grace teachers so they have to ignore them or explain them away:
Mat 12:31 Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men.
Apparently, according to what Jesus just said there is at the least one sin that will not be forgiven of anyone that commits it. If you did not understand that this was an all-inclusive statement that leaves no one out, then you are not reading it correctly. This verse would have to apply to all Christians as well as to all non-Christians equally since Jesus did not qualify the target audience. Jesus informs us that there are a whole bunch of different kinds of sins and blasphemies that will be forgiven a man or a woman on this planet. But, Jesus then says that there is one that will not be forgiven any man or any woman at any time and that is when they blaspheme the Holy Ghost. Therefore, if there is just ONE SIN that is unforgiveable, then salvation is no longer unconditionally secured, but has been transformed by definition to a conditional salvation. Remaining saved would then be totally dependent upon you not commiting the blasphemy of the Holy Ghost. That clearly changes salvation to an unsecured CONDITIONAL event! So let’s define this word blaspheme, using the Strong’s:
G987
From G989; to vilify; specifically to speak impiously: – (speak) blaspheme (-er, -mously, -my), defame, rail on, revile, speak evil.
Obviously, according to this definition, blasphemy is the spoken words of a person, that are directed against the character of God. As you can see it implies that God’s character and nature is good and yet I hear men constantly speaking of Him in terms of being an evil being. I would be very careful with what you say about God, after reading this verse. If you walk about speaking of God as being evil or being the reason for evil you do not understand the Bible and are in jeopardy of being guilty of blaspheming the Holy Spirit of God. I heard people speak of God being responsible for the 9/11 attacks of the terrorists and that to me is blasphemy. I have heard people claim God is responsible for the earth quake in Haiti, and that to me is also blasphemy.
Satan uses whatever he can to try to deceive you. I have been guilty of this in the past. Because of my ignorance of the Bible, Satan used my ignorance against me to his advantage when I was young. I remember when I was a kid growing up in church, a traveling minster came into the church and spoke. I do not recall everything he was talking about, but I do know that he spoke about the “unforgiveable sin”. Later in my life, as I was getting close to 21 years old, I was faced with a very hard set of circumstances. I was recently married and my father fell unconscious in his living room. It appears later that we found out that he had a stroke. They rushed him to the hospital and he lay there for a few days still unconscious. Now my father was a preacher a big part of my life. He went to Bible school and had a church that he was the pastor of and seemed to me to be doing the right things. One day as I drove by the hospital I was very discouraged and down about the situation and I said out loud “if this is the kind of God you are, I don’t want anything to do with you”. You see we had many Christians praying and God was not appearing to answer. What I did not know was all of the things that God had tried to do months earlier to get my father to change and fix the problem that was causing these results. My father either out of pride or rebellion did not heed the warning given to him by a great man of God that tried to help him. My father was sitting in a Bible class with this man one day and God showed the teacher that my father was going to die. God told the teacher what to say to him and asked my father to come see him privately to talk about it. This man prayed for my father in public, but did not tell anyone what he saw or what God said. Months later this same man spoke at my father’s funeral service. God put the responsibility of what happened to my father in my father’s hands and my father chose to ignore it as being unimportant. You do realize that God leaves your destiny up to you and you alone?
So now the years went by and Satan used the fact of what I said to God to convince me that I had committed the unpardonable sin against God. Satan used the words of a minster from my childhood to convince me that I could no longer by saved. Ministers need to learn to be careful what they say to who. If they are not careful they can affect someone just as easily negatively as they can positively. There were times that I thought of suicide and had a desire to just end it all. But, thank God for His mercy and His grace! You see later in my life I had another situation come up that I had no other place to turn, but to God. In crying out to God for help I started to seek Him to know Him better and to see if I could still be saved. I learned from my mother that God had tried to help my father months before he died in that Bible class. So it was not God’s fault that my father died. So even though I blamed God for it, it was because of my ignorance of the situation that caused me to say what I did to God. God as a result did not hold it against me and God could still and did forgive me. One night with my wife, after I had been seeking for more of God, God came upon me and then filled me with His Spirit on the inside. This was a manifestation of His Spiritual divine power like I had never experienced before or since. God solved Satan’s plan of deception with an experience that left no doubt in my mind that God was real and that He was on the inside of me and I belonged to Him. I now knew for sure beginning that night that I had not committed the unpardonable sin and that God cared about me personally enough to prove it. So I cannot guarantee you that God will do for you what He did for me in the exact same way. Rarely have I ever seen God do the same exact thing twice in the precise same way. However, God knows how to reach you if you are interested in being reached. If you believe in God, like I did you have half the battle won. If you want more of God and are truly hungry and thirsty for more of His Spirit, you are on the right path to allowing God to work in you, however He sees fit to make Himself real to you. God is sovereign and God is omnipotent. But, God will not override your will or your choices. God will remain hidden, until you make the choice to seek Him diligently.
So I gave you a mini version of my testimony and I usually do not talk about me in my blogs. My blogs are not about me! However, I think my experience might be able to help someone so I included it in hope that the right people would find it.
1Jn 5:16 If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it.
If you are concerned that you have already committed the unpardonable sin, but are questioning it and reading this blog, you probably have not. Satan is very tricky, he definitely uses what you do not know to hurt you and deceive you any way that he can. Satan uses your thoughts against you. He puts doubts and thoughts in your mind to mislead you into destruction. Be hungry for the truth! Seek God with all of your heart! God will not let you down, He actually wants to show you how real He is.
Rom 6:16 Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?
There will always be a choice set before you as long as you are on this earth in the flesh. God will never take your ability to choose away from you. You can choose to obey Him and His Word or select to go your own independent way. This verse in Romans clearly says that you still have responsibility and the choice to make and this verse was specifically written to Christians. There is still a “sin unto death” and this is also called by the synonymous title of the “unpardonable sin” that Jesus spoke of in Matthew. If you still do not understand what these are you should go back and reread these lessons and look up every scripture in your own Bible and study them more until you get them on the inside of you. I’m not through with this subject because God says many more things in His Word that we need to know about it. So I will continue “Once Saved Always Saved” in the future. God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading on the subject of Once Saved Always Saved you may continue with “Part 3“.
God In 3 Dimensions, God For Us, God With Us, God In Us!
(ver 1.1) The Bible speaks of God in many different aspects with various described characteristics. The New Testament also states that we in the church today are now in a better covenant than the one that came before (Heb 8:6). What makes our covenant better now than the one that was established with the natural nation of Israel? I will not attempt to fully answer that question, but I will give you some pertinent clues to why I think it is better now. In the Old Testament God was certainly for the nation of Israel. God was certainly with the children of Israel. But, I do not think that God was ever in the children of Israel. God dwelt with the nation of Israel only in things that were built with the hands of men. Moses made God a temporary dwelling place using tents. Solomon built God a temple in Jerusalem. But, all of these things were just temporary patterns made by men for something that was to come that was made by God. Let’s examine the Bible today for God’s realities and why we have a basis of a better covenant now.
We will start with God being with us and look for Bible verses to establish God’s presence with His people. What does it mean for God to be “with” us? One definition of the term “with” is to be in the company of. In other words to be in the same company. God is said to be in our company. You could say that God is said to be our companion. Here is a Bible verse that appears to convey this thought:
Psa 46:7 The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah.
God is the Lord of hosts and this verse establishes the idea that God was with the children of Israel in the Old Covenant. We can read stories in the Old Testament when Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt, how God went before them in the day as a cloud and a fire by night. So we can clearly see how God was present with them during their time in the wilderness.
Isa 8:10 Take counsel together, and it shall come to nought; speak the word, and it shall not stand: for God is with us.
We can clearly see that there are implied benefits for God being with us as this verse says that God was with Israel. This verse is speaking about the subject of spoken words and this verse implies that they can be weapons against us. But, elsewhere in the Bible God also said that no weapon formed against us will prosper, so we can see this is possible because God is with us. God is on our side, by our side and that is a very good thing. We have specific benefits, because God is with us.
Mat 1:23 Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.
This verse in Matthew is a little different than the others. This time God is spoken of in terms of becoming a man like us and walking around with us on this planet. God in the flesh, walking around looking just like us. That is the powerful story of the salvation and redemptive plan of God. If God never came to be with us, we would all still be in dire straits. Let’s shift gears and look at the next dimension of God, God For Us!
Rom 8:31 What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?
It is said that God is “for” us. This is contrasted as an antonym to the word to be “against”. I am certainly glad that God is not against us. However, I think that many religious people struggle with the concept of God not currently acting as the judge, the jury and the executioner. Whenever, 9/11 happened and terrorist flew planes into NY and Washington D.C., I heard many Christians try to say it was God’s judgment upon us. However, these are ignorant Christians who do not understand that God is “For” us and not “against” us. If God was “against” you and that was His judgment, no one would be alive to tell the tale. There is coming a day of judgment, but that is in the future. Right now Satan is responsible for all of the killing and murder going on in the world, not God! Satan is against you, God is for you. I could give you many more verses that speak to God being for us and not against us. But, I want to move on to the third dimension of God that makes our covenant much better than the Old Covenant God had with Israel. You see God was “with” Israel and “for” Israel, but never “in” Israel. We have this gift of God and it makes our covenant much better than the old.
Rom 8:9 But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.
You see in this verse in Romans, God is saying that those who are born again, have the Spirit of God dwelling in them. God further stipulates that the Spirit of God is also called the Spirit of Christ. You cannot separate Christ from God nor God from Christ, they are one in the same. What is the difference between Old Testament prophets and New Testament Prophets? Both have a prophets anointing, but the New Testament prophet has God living on the inside of them and the Old Testament prophet did not. An anointing is like an outward pouring of the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God comes “Upon” a human and is anointed to do a specific job for God. David was anointed to be King by Samuel. The prophet poured the oil over the head of David and this was symbolic of how the Spirit of God came upon him. If David would have had the Spirit of God on the inside of him, David would have had to drink the oil. Little details like these are often times missed when casually reading the Bible.
Rom 8:11 But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.
This is another verse in the same chapter of Romans, that declares that the Spirit of God dwells in the believer. This of course is very hard to describe to someone who doesn’t believe. I can tell them that I have sensed the presence of God within in me at times, in the past sometimes very strongly, like my insides were on fire. Other times I have felt nothing at all. But, regardless of the feeling or sensations that I perceived with my senses, I know He is there because His word says He is. He said He would never leave me nor forsake me, so I know He is there all the time. God can give you sensations that can be physically felt if He so desires and thinks that you would benefit from them. However, it is dangerous to pray and ask God to do this, because Satan can also manifest to deceive you. I never prayed or asked God to make me feel like I was on fire on the inside of my chest, God choose to do this because I guess He thought I needed it. Be very careful what you pray for, make sure it is based upon scriptures. I do not know of any verses that says God will give you any specific feeling in your flesh to confirm His presence.
Col 1:27 To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory:
There are many verses like this one that I could include, but they just go to confirm the fact that the Spirit of Christ now dwells in those that believe. This is truly a mystery to the world and to the natural Jews. They have never experienced this, but they do have the opportunity to participate in this great mystery if they choose to. The free gift of life and salvation is open to whomsoever will. What does it mean to have God dwell in us? To dwell somewhere implies a place or a location that we live. Say a specific address or a specific city. I dwell in Dallas, TX, some might be able to say. A dwelling also implies a home. God has made his home in us. We are now the new home of God. Where we were not His home we have become His home. This is really an awesome difference between the New Covenant and the Old Covenant. The church is the New Jerusalem, the spiritual city of God’s new home. We have become this spiritual city built up in Christ, Jesus Christ the chief cornerstone, where in we all fit together being built up in the spiritual realm.
So God is For You! God is With You! and God is In You! if you are a believer and have made Jesus your Lord and Savior.
Speak To Your Rock! Why Moses Didn’t Enter into the Promise Land!
(Ver 2.4) If you have ever read my blogs you know that I can be controversial. I say things that are new and different. But, I can only say what God teaches me to say and I have learned that God is different than anyone else I’ve ever met. So if I say what God says to me, it will probably be different than what most men say and teach. Today I want to explore some scriptures that God taught me many years ago. Why didn’t Moses get to enter into the promise land? What kept Moses out from the promised end of God’s plan? The examples written in the Old Testament are there so that we can learn not to repeat the same mistakes that they made. If we can learn these lessons from Moses, I think we can apply them to our situations today. We have a better covenant, established upon better promises, yet we do not possess them automatically. Even though God had already given the children of Israel the Promised Land, they were required to do something to possess it. This is an extremely valuable natural typology of a pattern that is repeated in the spiritual realm for the church. So let’s examine what kept Moses out of possessing God’s Promised Land.
I want to examine verses in the book of Numbers. In chapter 20 of Numbers, Moses has a big problem again. He is attempting to lead the people of Israel through a desert, there is little to no water to drink and the people and the animals are all very thirsty. Moses goes to God and asks for help and God responds with a set of specific instructions, so let’s now start reading with what God says to Moses in the desert.
Num 20:8 Take the rod, and gather thou the assembly together, thou, and Aaron thy brother, and speak ye unto the rock before their eyes; and it shall give forth his water, and thou shalt bring forth to them water out of the rock: so thou shalt give the congregation and their beasts drink.
God gives Moses a very specific set of instructions with a limited number of steps. These are not complicated steps, but yet people sometimes hear what they want to hear, instead of what God says and that get’s them into trouble in a very big way. As we read through the rest of this chapter we find that Moses did not do what God said to do. Let’s examine carefully the specific set of instructions that God gave:
- Take Your Rod.
- Get Your Brother Aaron.
- Gather the People before the Rock.
- Speak to the Rock.
- Give Everyone a Drink.
Five little things God told Moses to do. There were five little specific steps of instructions from God. Was this complicated? No! Was this different? Yes! God had never given these instructions to Moses before, so maybe Moses had a struggle with them or maybe Moses just assumed he knew what God had said. Maybe he heard in his mind something different? I do not know, I do know that it is interesting that Moses is the one that wrote this book of the Bible and if he made a mistake or didn’t understand it why did he write about his short comings? Interesting question isn’t it? What I learned from observing the instructions of God is that He rarely repeats exactly what He said for you to do before. If God told you to strike the rock last time, then guess what you will probably be doing something different the next time. I’ll talk more about that later. Let’s read through Numbers and examine what Moses did, instead of following God’s instructions:
Num 20:9 And Moses took the rod from before the LORD, as he commanded him.
Num 20:10 And Moses and Aaron gathered the congregation together before the rock, and he said unto them, Hear now, ye rebels; must we fetch you water out of this rock?
Moses makes a great start to obeying God, but a really lousy ending. Let’s examine what Moses did according to these two verses and list the steps that he took:
- Moses Took the Rod.
- Moses Met with His Brother Aaron.
- Moses and Aaron Gathered the People Together Before the Rock.
- Moses Then Said to the People.
The first 3 steps seem to be perfect matches to the instructions that God gave to Moses. So when did God ever tell Moses to say anything to the people? I know that you have to say something to them to gather them or assemble them before the rock, but when did God tell Moses to speak to the people after they were all gathered together? Did God tell Moses to preach to the congregation? Did God say to tell the congregation anything at all? I do not think that He did. This represents the beginning of the downfall of Moses. As soon as you start deviating from the plan of God, you begin to miss it and you fall into disobedience and there is the root of his problem. If we continue reading in the next verse we will see what Moses did next:
Num 20:11 And Moses lifted up his hand, and with his rod he smote the rock twice: and the water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank, and their beasts
Did you see what happened next? Let’s continue our list of what Moses did and analyze them to see what they say to us. We are now on step 5 of what Moses did.
5. Moses Lifted His Hand.
6. Moses Smote the Rock.
7. Moses Smote the Rock Again.
8. Moses Gave Everyone a Drink.
You can see that Moses did eight things to God’s 5 step plan of instructions. How many things is that, too many? Of course that is 3 things too many. God never told Moses to raise his hand. God never told Moses to strike the Rock. Why did Moses have to hit the rock twice? I think it was simply because nothing happened the first time Moses hit the rock. I believe that God realized that Moses wasn’t going to follow the plan so He was merciful and gave them water to drink anyway. Moses had to hit the rock twice before anything came out and I bet you that Moses was a little concerned after nothing happened the first time that he struck the Rock. What we must realize is that even though God still gave the people a drink, Moses’ actions taken had grave consequences attached to them. So what was God’s response to Moses and Aaron’s actions taken? Was God pleased? Of course not, God says something that is very profound:
Num 20:12 And the LORD spake unto Moses and Aaron, Because ye believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them.
God reveals the reason Moses struck the rock instead of speaking to the rock, as being a case of his unbelief. Moses apparently had a problem with speaking to an inanimate object and expecting anything to happen from just your spoken words. I’ll bet you a lot of Christians are still like Moses today. God was trying to teach His servant Moses a valuable lesson about the spiritual law of words. Words have authority and power behind them and God was attempting to raise Moses’ expectation level and spiritual awareness. We know that previously in the wilderness that God had told Moses to strike the rock to bring out water for the people, but this time God changed the plan. If you did not realize it, God hardly ever does the same thing twice. By God’s instructions, Moses was supposed to speak to the rock before the people. So while the people were watching, the people would have learned a valuable spiritual lesson also. But, Moses failed and as a result God told him that he would not enter into the Promised Land that he had already given to them. 
That is a sad lesson, but that is not the entire story. You see you have not gotten the symbolism in this story found in Numbers. It is very important to see that this story is covered with types and shadows of spiritual things to come. The children of Israel are a type of the church. Moses and Aaron are types of the leaders in the church. The Rock is a type of Jesus Christ. The Promised Land is a type of the Word of God, the promises of the New Covenant. The wilderness can represent the time of trials or tests in the life of believers. The water is most often representative of the spiritual drink of God’s Word.
1Co 10:4 And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ.
1Co 10:5 But with many of them God was not well pleased: for they were overthrown in the wilderness.
1Co 10:6 Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted.
So what are the lessons that we the church should learn from this one story in the Bible?
Let’s go back through the story again and this time look for the spiritual typology. God tells Moses to take his rod. The rod represents a symbol of power and authority. It can also be a symbol of correction. You can rule with a rod of iron and that would represent a strict control of intolerance or of a swift set of consequences for disobedience. However, God never tells Moses to do anything with this power symbol. God then tells Moses to get with Aaron his brother. I feel like this represents church leadership talking together and working together for a common goal for the good of the people. Then God tells these leaders to gather the people. The people represent the church and they should be meeting together to witness the example of the leadership of God’s plan in order to learn what God is doing. Now, here is the real lesson from the story. I believe that we can see and learn a lot from the next instruction that God gives to Moses. Step 4 God said for the leadership to “speak to the Rock”. What did the Bible say was the Rock? The Rock represents Jesus Christ. So what is Jesus Christ? Jesus Christ is the answer to your every problem. What was Moses’ problem? No water or angry upset rebellious people? Obviously Moses’ problem was his own people. You need to understand this, because it is very important to see. People are the biggest problem in any church. If it weren’t for people, church would be a great place to be. People are the biggest challenge any minister faces. People like to talk, gossip, complain, criticize and many other ungodly things. People will start divisions, confrontations, internal fights, and just complain about anything they think that doesn’t fit with what they want to see happen. People will start petitions, call for church meetings and votes to try to run the show and all along disregard God’s appointed leadership, his anointing, His plans and His purposes. God has placed leadership in the church. Pastors and teachers are called by God and appointed by God to do a specific job in a specific way. Most of the time God deals with the leadership of the church and tells them exactly what to do and say to the people. This is a significant learning point from the patterns found in the story of Moses and the children of Israel. God never addressed the congregation or spoke to anyone in the congregation directly about how to run the the group or what to do. God always went through His chosen leader recognizing spiriutal organization and sturcture. This is how a church is supposed to operate today. In the church it is a little bit different in that God is inside of every believer and He will speak personal direction to each individual believer. However, God still recognizes spiritual order and He will not tell anyone in the church how to run the church other than the pastor.
Where was Moses’ downfall? What was the first thing that Moses did that was not on God’s instruction list of 5 specific steps? If you recall the downfall came when he started talking to the people. This is a critical lesson for preachers as well as for the congregation members to take note of. Here is the principle that Moses failed in. Moses had a problem with the people in that they were thirsty which caused them to be rebellious. Why didn’t Moses just speak to the Rock and get the answer to his problem? Instead of speaking to the Rock and getting the answer, Moses called the people “rebellious rebels”. Here God is trying to teach Moses a lesson concerning a spiritual law of speaking the answer and Moses chooses to speak the problem instead. Wow, did you just hear what I said? That was more than worth your time reading this lesson if just you understood that one very important point. This is a critical lesson to learn and apply to our situations today. God never said to speak to the people, and speaking to the people who were the problem was not going to bring Moses the answer. You know if you tell someone who is a thief that they are a thief, it will never cause them to come up higher and change? If you speak to rebels and say they are rebels, they will never learn to change. Speaking to your problem and saying they are your problem will cause them to continue as they are and they will remain your problem because of your words spoken over them. The people of Israel never learned any lessons from this experience. Moses never learned any lessons either. God told Moses that he was not going to lead the people into the Promised Land because of his unbelief. Moses was probably one of the greatest Old Testament prophets of God and he came far short of the destiny that God had intended for him. Can’t you see how his example of failure applies to you and can it help you not to repeat his mistake? If you can, it will radically change what you say to who and when. Many times it would be better to keep your mouth shut and not say anything than to speak the problem and remain in unbelief and miss out on God’s answer to your problem. God told Moses that if he would only speak to the rock, that the rock would obey his words. That statement boggles most Christian’s religious minds. God will do what I say? If you would only study the Bible and what it says about the words that you speak, you would certainly change many of the things that you say. The problem is that most Christians fall into the same unbelief category and continue to speakto and about their problems. Earlier in the book of Numbers, God revealed two things to Moses and Israel that have a direct bearing on everything that I just said about Moses. You see it would be unjust if God punished Moses for doing something that God had not already told him to do and explained to Moses how things will work. If we go back and read we will discover that God had already given Moses two spiritual laws to learn and to follow. Take a look at what God says in these verses:
Num 6:22 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
Num 6:23 Speak unto Aaron and unto his sons, saying, On this wise ye shall bless the children of Israel, saying unto them,
Num 6:24 The LORD bless thee, and keep thee:
God taught Moses and Aaron, that they could bless Israel with the words that came out of their mouths. By Moses speaking these positive good words over the people, God was able to bless them and cause them to prosper. As you read down in this chapter, Moses and Aaron are supposed to say several other words of blessing and then in verse 26, God concludes that “I will bless them“. Here is the principle given, you speak blessings and I will bless them! Did you get that concept? That is exactly the opposite of what Moses said and did. Moses looked at the people and called them “Rebels”. Can God bless these words? What you find is that Moses ended up cursing his own people with his words and that is a major problem. God cannot bless Israel because Moses did not follow the instructions of God and the spiriutal laws of God. To emphasize the point even clearer to Moses in couple of chapters God tells him directly something that is very hard to misunderstand:
Num 14:28 Say unto them, As truly as I live, saith the LORD, as ye have spoken in mine ears, so will I do to you:
These words were spoken directly to Moses and Aaron, the leadership of the nation of Israel some 6 chapters earlier than the “speak to the rock” chapter in Numbers 20. God reveals to Moses a spiritual law concerning his words that he speaks. This spiritual law applies across the board to everyone in the congregation as well as the leadership. God tells Moses that I will do whatever you say. This verse tells me that God listens to the words that come out of your mouth. Whatever you say, that is what God will do to you. I know most Christians do not believe this. That just doesn’t make any sense does it? Why would God do that? I do not know, but yet it is exactly what the Bible just said, isn’t it? I guess Christians think these people in the wilderness were different than us today. They were not really examples that we can learn anything from. I guess people do not realize they are our examples and we better learn from their mistakes, or we will be doomed to repeat their failures. There are many other Bible verses that I could go into right here to confirm what I have just said. You can study them for your selves and see if they are there, or you can simply ignore them all and think they do not apply to you. I’ll give you one confirmation to the words that I have just taught on and this is information found in the book of Psalms:
Psa 106:32 They angered him also at the waters of strife, so that it went ill with Moses for their sakes:
Psa 106:33 Because they provoked his spirit, so that he spake unadvisedly with his lips.
As you can read this is God’s commentary on the story of Moses that we just studied. In these verses God tells us that the children of Israel made Moses angry. God calls this the waters of strife. By making Moses angry we are informed that his spirit was provoked to speak unadvisedly with his lips. You can clearly see from this verse that it was what Moses said that was his problem and not his striking the rock. You should learn that what you say is also potentially your greatest problem area and learn to control your tongue even when angry or being upset. You can clearly see a connection of what you say coming from your spirit inside of you. This is an extremely valuable lesson to see and to learn from.
One of the most important subjects in the Bible to study and to understand is that about your spoken words. God tells us that He is listening to what we say and that He will do to us whatever we say. If we speak evil, that is what we will get. If we speak good things, that is also what we will get. Your words only affect your outcome and what you get. Because, the children of Israel, murmured and complained to God about their situation that is what they got. The older generation did not enter into the promise land, except for Joshua and Caleb. What made Joshua and Caleb different? What caused Joshua and Caleb to enter in where the other people their age all died? You should go back and read that story very closely and see what Joshua and Caleb said, when the others said the exact opposite. God did to Joshua and Caleb what they said and the others also got what they said. This is a prevalent reality found throughout the Bible, from cover to cover. You can read practically any story in the Bible and you can observe very closely exactly what they say, then read ahead and see what they got in life. It amazes me when I study the Bible like this and see what God’s response is to what people say. I know there are other spiritual laws in the Bible also; this one is not the only spiritual law that affects what people get in life. But, this one is certainly one of the ones’ that people do not have a clue about. Elvis Presley said he would never live to be older than his mother and he did not. My grandmother said that a crazy driver would be her end and two teenagers racing ran into the side of her car and killed her. If you look at what you have today and analyze it with what you said in the past, it will almost always add up to the same results. Learn to be careful what you say even in jokes. I’ll try to do more lessons on words in other blogs, but I have gone long enough today. God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading this series on words, you can go to “Part 2“.
Bible Creation Revealed! Pt 4 – The World that Was PT 2!
(Ver 1.1) This is now Part 4 of a series of advanced Bible study lessons about the creation timeline using God’s perspectives. If you have not been reading this series from the beginning I would recommend that you go and start with “Part 1“. In my last blog I introduced you to the “World that Was”. There are numerous Bible verses when viewed correctly, that reveal to us a civilization on our planet that was completely destroyed by God. This previous world system helps to explain the age of the universe, dinosaurs, and other factors that science conflict with what some Christians seem to teach about creation. You cannot look at a star in the night sky and say that it is only 6000 years old. It took significantly longer than that for the light from that star to reach where we are so that we can see it. Astronomers and scientist using radio telescopes, the Hubble telescope and other methods can look out into space and can view things that occurred millions, even billions of years ago. I have heard some Bible teachers claim that God only created things with the appearance of age. In other words they were saying God was a deceiver of mankind. Create a world that looks really old but call it new. Is this what your God would do? Does this fit the character of God’s integrity? I do not think so! So we have to put the pieces of the puzzle together correctly to see what God reveals to us about creation in the Bible and that is what I have been trying to do. I am attempting to put the puzzle pieces given to us in the Bible to discover the truth of creation.
There are many Bible verses that we need to see that speak to us and give us clues about creation and Genesis. Let’s look at some additional verses found in the Bible that at least imply other worlds existed other than our present world. Here is a verse that has clear implications written within it:
Gal 1:4 Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father:
Do you understand that you do not need to qualify the noun “world” with the adjective qualifier “present evil” if this is the only world that ever existed or ever will exist? What we see is an implied reference to both a world that was before our current world and a world that will be after our present evil world. You have to be smart enough to see what the Bible says. Think about this, if there are only two world systems, the evil world and the good world to come, you do not need to add the word “present”. You only need to add the word “present” world if there existed a “past” world. Otherwise, you could differentiate our world from the good one to come by the one adjective “evil”. Do you understand this logic? The Bible is very tricky that way. God is so much smarter than us and He knows exactly how to say something so that you can gain a tremendous amount of information from just a few words, while making it difficult for you to see at the same time. If you can see all of this it will help you to understand other Bible verses. Here is another Bible verse that is more direct about the world that is to come:
Eph 1:21 Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come:
You have to be blind not to see that God is telling us that we are living in a temporary world system right now that is not going to be the same world system in the future. God will implement a change and recreate the world system. God calls this a new heaven and a new earth in Revelation. If there will be a new heaven and a new earth and a new world system that is to come, you have to admit that it is at least possible that there existed an older world prior to our current world also.
Eph 2:7 That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.
Here is one more verse that speaks of a world to come. This is the same Greek word translated in other places as “world”. It speaks of a coming time where God will bless those who are in Christ Jesus.
Heb 1:2 Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds;
We have seen several verses now that imply there is or was more than one world created by the Words of God. In this verse in Hebrews 1:2 we can again see a reference to us being in the last days of our current world. We can also see that Jesus created this world. But, since the word for “worlds” is plural in the KJV Bible as it should be, we can understand that not only is there another world that will come in the future by the Word of God, we also know that there was a previous world that was also created by the Word of God in the beginning.
Heb 11:3 Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.
I believe I gave this verse earlier, but I want to emphasize the plurality of the word “worlds” in this verse. Some might try to say that this is only speaking of our solar system and the other solar systems in the universe and that is the plurality. That is an interesting misinterpretation of this Greek word. If you recall there are two words translated as “world” in the New Testament. One meaning an “orderly arrangement” and the other meaning an “age”. This word in Hebrew 11:3 means “ages”. As in multiple slices of time. We are living in a current world age, there is a coming world age and we have clearly seen that there was previous world age before Genesis 1:2.
So what happened to this world system that came before Genesis 1:2? Who destroyed it and why? We are not given a lot of clues in the Bible, but we are given some clues so let’s look at some of them:
Isa 14:16 They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms;
Isa 14:17 That made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not the house of his prisoners?
These verses found in Isaiah are widely believed to be a description of Satan. I firmly believe that is exactly who these verses are talking about. But, then you also have to notice what they say about Satan. They are not prophetic words of any coming events, but they are more like the words of a news report of a past historic event. These verses speak of a catastrophic event that occurred within earth’s history. It speaks of a complete and utter destruction of a world system. A system with inhabitants, with organized cities, and all of the other qualities that we possess now. A city implies roads, buildings, walls, safety and security. It implies an organized government and the rule of kings with kingdoms. All of these things were destroyed between the verses of Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2 because of Satan. Let’s back up in the chapter and view the conformation to who this is speaking about and what God reveals to us in his description:
Isa 14:12 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!
Let’s analyze the first part of this verse. It declares that God is speaking about a spiritual “fallen” being named Lucifer. The Hebrew word for “fallen” means “to cast down”, “to perish”, “to overthrow”, and “to die”. We can clearly see that something happened to bring Lucifer down. This Hebrew word for Lucifer is also a fascinating word with a specific and direct meaning. It implies “brightness” like the sun. It also has the literal meaning of “the morning star”. The morning star is not Venus or some other bright star like object in the night sky. The “morning star” is our sun that rises in the morning. This is a very significant name and title. This verse calls Satan the “son of the morning”. I hope that you understand that the word “morning” means “early light”. God is giving us a very significant clue to the identity of Satan. God is calling him his son. We know in the New Testament that it declares that God is Light! So being called the son of the “early light” implies a son of God from a very long time ago. This verse has direct implications of being a long time ago by the word “early”. This implies “first light” or the time when light begins to form in the sky before the actual sun rises. If you have ever witnessed the sun rise, you can learn a very important lesson to what God is telling us about Satan. Satan was one of the first, if not the first creatures created by God. He would have been the equivalent to Adam the first creature of our world. Lucifer would have been a pattern or a model of Jesus that was to come. If you search your Bible you will find that Jesus gives us the same information in the book of Revelation for the name of Lucifer. Jesus informs us in Rev 22:16 that He is the true “Bright Morning Star” because He is the root and offspring of David. What Lucifer use to be, is what I really am, says Jesus.
Heb 1:5 For unto which of the angels said he at any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee? And again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son?
This verse in Hebrews is an interesting contradiction to what I just said or is it? If you look closely at this verse God is speaking about angels. We know that Lucifer was the chief angel. So God is making and demonstrating a major difference between angels and His Son Jesus Christ. God did not become a natural Father to any creature except to Jesus. Because of the virgin birth of Jesus, Jesus has become the only son of God born of a natural woman. This makes Jesus radically different from Lucifer doesn’t it? Lucifer was never born naturally, so while he was a spiritual son of God, he was never a natural son of God. Jesus was both a spiritual and natural son of God and this makes Jesus the true “morning star”.
1Jn 3:8 He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.
For this reason Jesus Christ came to the earth, to undo the works of the devil. What works were these that caused God himself to come to earth to undo what had already been done? That is an amazing question to ponder. This verse in 1 John tells us that Satan had been sinning from the beginning. Now that we have seen evidence for another world system that Satan caused to be destroyed, we can begin to understand why God created another new world system and came to earth personally to make sure it worked this time. So we can assume that Satan was sinning from the beginning of time and not just from the foundation of the current world. We must begin to understand that these two events are different times and different worlds.
Here are some more verses that are specifically related to the subject of the Bible account of creation. These verses that I will show you will further confirm the existence of the previous world and what happened to it. We will begin to read starting in chapter 4 of Jeremiah and verse 23:
Jer 4:23 I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light.
I hope that you can see the significant similarities of this verse with Genesis 1:2. If you do, you will see they are directly parallel descriptions speaking of the exact same time period. This verse is God’s commentary to Genesis 1:2 and gives us additional information that is related to what happened to cause this condition of destruction. We can also see the declaration that the earth was covered with darkness. It is assumed that there is something blocking the sunlight from penetrating to the surface, something like very thick clouds or very deep water or both. We can clearly see that this verse is directly speaking of Genesis 1:2 and 1:3. In Genesis 1:3 God says “let there be light”, this would be God’s answer to the problem of “no light”. Let’s move to the next verse and see what else God is describing to us:
Jer 4:24 I beheld the mountains, and, lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved lightly.
I am not really sure how to take this verse, it says there were mountains, but yet it declares they were moving lightly. To me that would seem to indicate that the currents of the oceans caused them to move and shake. But, here is the verse that I want you to start taking note of for what it says:
Jer 4:25 I beheld, and, lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled.
Now we have a major clue that God is talking about Genesis 1:2. God says in this verse that there was no man or no Adam. The Hebrew word “man” is the same Hebrew word for “Adam”. God is saying there is no Adam yet and all of the birds that were in the sky have vanished. Why would God speak of birds vanishing before there was no man named Adam in the same sentence? Adam was created on the last part of day 6 of the recreation account in Genesis 1. The birds and other animals come on the 5th day of God’s recreation. So we can clearly see that whatever time God is speaking of is before both of these have occurred. Yes? There must have been birds back in Genesis 1:1 that all disappeared with the rest of God’s creation. There really is no other logical explanation for this verse. Now it is really going to get good, let’s read verse 26:
Jer 4:26 I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the LORD, and by his fierce anger.
So what cities is God speaking of that was before Adam came along? Again we have to be smart enough to put the pieces of the puzzle together correctly, but this is a major clue to what happened in Genesis 1:2. God declares that the world that was changed from a fruitful place to a wilderness. God specifically says that in this world there existed inhabited cities. The Hebrew word for “city” in this verse means a place that is guarded by a watch. This implies a government, organization, leadership and a lot of inhabitants. But, God also informs us that these were all broken down. This Hebrew Word for “broken down” has the following definition:
A primitive root; to tear down: – beat down, break down (out), cast down, destroy, overthrow, pull down, throw down.
Isn’t that what God said to Lucifer? How are thou “fallen”. In this word it clearly means someone destroyed these cities intentionally. They were leveled as if they had never existed. God declares that He was extremely angry and this is why that world was destroyed. Because of the sin and ungodliness that existed in that time God had to destroy it.
Jer 4:27 For thus hath the LORD said, The whole land shall be desolate; yet will I not make a full end.
In the next verse, God is still speaking of the time before Adam and says that world was completely destroyed and perished. The Hebrew word for “full end” can mean “completeness”. What God is saying is that just because that world perished, it was the not the end of all time. There was more to come, a new world that Adam would be given. All of these statements were given to us as clues to what happened in Genesis 1:2 before Adam was put on this planet. God specifically speaks of a destruction that occurred that caused the world to be “void” and “without form”. These are the descriptive terms given to us and they help us to see that these verses in Isaiah and Jeremiah are God’s commentary on the Bible creation account found in Genesis 1.
Because many people do not understand how God wrote the Bible, they do not know how to look for the hidden clues in the Bible. The Bible is not in chronological order, nor does it have all information on any given subject in any one location or book. God spread out clues in the Bible in widely dispersed random patterns, hiding them in and around verses that are not always related. God can jump from one subject to another subject using a wide perspective of time periods, people, natural vs. spiritual things, places and many other ways that He has used to conceal information from his enemies.
So all that I have been trying to do is to read the clues found in the Bible and put them together logically to help us understand what God is really saying. It involves work, research, study and a major effort to find all of these verses and then additional effort to understand them and put them together correctly. I know it is not easy to see, I know it can be taken other ways, I know there are many other possible interpretations, I know you can believe what you want to despite what I said. God will always allow people to be wrong. So I have presented a new perspective and at least given to you some new things to think about and to consider. I pray that you will study to show yourself approved unto God and not rely on me to do your Bible study for you.
There are still many questions that come to my mind about this world that God describes as being before our world. Here are some of my questions, maybe you can come up with some others.
- Why didn’t God come to the earth and offer salvation to that world?
- Who were these multitudes of earth inhabitants that perished? Angels?
- Did they all go to heaven after God destroyed this world?
- If the Bible says that death came by Adam, how could this world be destroyed and animals, birds and all the other creatures, plants and living organisms all have died?
- Why couldn’t God just throw Satan into Hell with his followers before He created our world?
There are just so many very tough questions to answer still. Obviously the Bible is a very complex book full of answers if we can figure them out or better yet when God shows us in the Word what it all means. I’ll end this blog with this verse of Jesus speaking:
Rev 1:8 I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.
Jesus Christ is speaking and calls himself the beginning and the ending of all things. The Lord that is, that was and the Lord which is to come. We can again clearly see the significance to three different and separate worlds mentioned in this verse. It says within the realm of time, Jesus existed in the world that now is, the world that was and the world that will be coming in the future. The Bible has many verses like this all over it, if you can find them and relate them to the subject. I never try to provide every scripture reference to a subject that I teach, that would be a very difficult task for anyone to do. So I try to provide at least two or three good references to help establish every word that I teach from the Bible. By doing this we can be assured that it is correct and then can go and try to find other confirming verses. If you know of other verses that I did not include I would be happy to hear about them. God Bless.
What in the World is God Waiting For? 3 Things God is Waiting for Before Jesus Returns!
(Ver 2.1) Did you know that God is waiting for specific things to occur before Jesus comes back? If you did not know this you could be a potential hindrance to when Jesus comes back. I know that doesn’t sit well with a lot of religious minded people. People widely believe that God is sovereign and because God is sovereign they believe that He also gets whatever He wants, whenever He wants it. Nothing happens they believe unless God commits it or permits it. If this was the way God really was, He would remind me more of an immature two year old who always wants their way and screams when they do not get it. I do not think God acts like a two year old. A two year old has no patience! But, God is described to be the God of Patience in Romans 15:5. You do understand that if God was not waiting for anything to happen, then God would have no need for the virture of “Patience”, right? The association of God with the term Patience reveals that God waits for things to occur and that He does not cause these things to occur. Of course it is more complex than this, because even the farmer has patience for his crops, but yet he is the one that planted the seeds to cause the predetermined future outcome of his crop. This is really a better anaology for God’s patience also. God awaits for His outcomes to come to maturity that He has planted and we will see this more clearly as we continue through this lesson. I hope that you understand what I just said about the concepts of paitiece and what the word means. You see, I do believe that God is sovereign, but I also believe that God has character, morals and principles that place self imposed limitations upon Himself to what He does and when He does it. This is called self-control and this is a clear sign of physical and spiritual maturity. Patience is also a Christian developed attribute or fruit that God is awainting to manifest in all of us.
There is a popular church doctrine called preminence that states Christ’s return is emminent and at hand. Meaning there are no scriptures left to be fulfilled in all of Bible prophecy for His soon return. There is two erroneous assumptions dictated in this doctrine. The first problem is that you assume that you know and understand every Bible prophecy and this is clearly a mistake from someone who has raised themselves beyond where they are presently in spiritual knowledge. No one but God knows every prophecy and understands them all. Are you God? Then there are the verses in the Bible like the ones that I’m going to give you today, that these types of teachers must explain away or ignore completely to hold fast to their doctrine of preimence. So what does the Bible tell us are the certain specific things that God is patiently waiting for to happen before Jesus returns? Today I am going to discuss three things that God is waiting for. When I read verses like these, I ask myself, if God wanted them to happen, why doesn’t He just make them happen? That of course is an excellent question. Apparently God is not in total control of everything like some people think He is. Before we start let’s define waiting. What is waiting?
WAITING: remaining inactive in one place while expecting something to happen
According to this defintion , the word waiting means to sit inactive in one place while expecting something to happen. Does God do this? To think of God being inactive blows my mind, and I know it is hard for people to conceptualize. However, you might be surprised that God does do this. You should actually read your Bible more closely and pay attention to find out what God does and what God doesn’t do instead of just assuming you know.
1. GOD WAITS FOR THE PRECIOUS FRUIT OF THE EARTH
Let’s look at an important verse found in the book of James that clearly tells us something that God is patiently waiting for, before Jesus returns to the earth:
Jas 5:7 Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.
What is this precious fruit of the earth that God is waiting for? This verse is clearly saying God is waiting for something in relationship to a prerequisite requirement that must occur before Jesus’ return. You do realize that God is the husbandman in this symbolic filled verse? One interpretation for this verse is telling us that God is waiting for people to get saved before Jesus returns. God wants everyone to get saved according to 2 Peter 3:9. If you read 2 Peter 3:9 you will find the word “longsuffering” associated with God and this is again referring to God’s great patience in waiting. If God wants everyone to be saved, why isn’t everyone saved already? Apparently it is up to others to go tell people so that they can get saved. Apparently people have to accept the free gift of salvation. So apparently God has done everything that He is going to do to get people saved and He is now waiting on us to go into all the world and preach the gospel (Mk 16:15). This verse in James tells us that God has “long patience”. Did you know that patience is a sign of maturity? If you do not make people do the right thing, then sometimes it takes patients to give people the opportunity to learn to do the right thing. This is one of the greatest qualities of the Omnipotent God! God wants people to get saved, but will not force anyone into making this decision. So God is waiting with great patience for as many people to get saved as can. There are many days on earth I look around and see all of the evil things going on and ask God “What about today? Send Jesus back today!”. But, I know there are so many more people who can be saved if we try to reach them.
The salvation process is also being called a farming process. A husbandman is the owner of a field where a crop was planted. The husbandman plants specific seeds into the field that He desires to see grow to produce specific mature crops and this created process always requires time to develop. What does a farmer do after planting his crop? Mostly a farmer waits for the crop to come up. This is an inactive time befor the coming harvest season. Is God’s crop ripe yet? Has this planted crop fully matured? You do know that the harvest season is upon us?
2. GOD WAITS FOR HIS ENEMIES TO BE MADE HIS FOOTSTOOL
So we have seen that God has long patience and can wait for what He wants to happen without forcing them to happen. What else is God waiting for, before Jesus comes back? In this next verse God informs us of something that is potentially controversial, yet I still believe what it says:
Heb 10:13 From henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool.
God is waiting for His enemies to put under His feet. A footstool is where you put your feet to rest them. The coming time of rest is a 1000 year millennial time period that corresponds to the 7th day of creation when God rested from His work in Genesis 1 and 2. God expects His enemies to be made His footstool before this happens. Where are God’s feet? The feet are in the body of Christ. Christ is the head, but the church is the body of Christ so where is God’s feet? Who are God’s enemies that He is expecting to be under our feet? It is Satan and his demonic host of angels. God expects them to be placed under our feet. Jesus will not return until this happens and I know that is a very controversial part of my blog. I have heard many preachers claim that Satan was put under foot by Jesus on the cross. However, the Bible has so much more to say about that and I will not attempt to elaborate on all of these verses in this blog. If you desire to learn more about this you can read my blog on “The Seed of the Woman, The Seed of the Serpent“. So the Bible says God is waiting for His enemies to be made His footstool, when is this going to happen? How is this going to happen? What is God waiting for, is it you again? I’ll give you a very quick overview to help get you started:
Rom 16:20 And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.
I will close this section with this verse helping to prove Satan is not underfoot yet. At the time of the writing of this book of the Bible, the Apostle Paul claimed that Satan’s head was not yet bruised. Paul wrote this well after Jesus was raised from the dead and had returned to heaven. The majority of preachers today teach that Jesus was the seed of the woman that bruised the head of Satan, but they have to ignore Romans 16:20 to adhere to that interpretation and that is a major problem. Therefore we can easily understand that Satan has not yet had his head bruised. If you recall this was a prophecy that God made in Genesis 3 speaking to Satan. God told Satan that the woman and her seed would bruise his head. Who is this prophetical woman and what is her seed? If you read the Bible study above you have a good idea already that this is the church body. The church is the bride of Christ called the coming woman in Genesis 3:15 and she is the woman that will bruise the head of the serpent.
3. GOD IS WAITING FOR THE MATURITY OF THE CHURCH
We are now at the third thing that God is waiting for before Jesus comes back. Again, we have more controversy with these verses, because they are difficult for many immature Christians to accept. It is many times like discussing Algebra with a 4 year old. They are just not ready to accept it and do not have the basic understanding of all of the necessary subjects to discuss these advanced topics. Nevertheless, here I go and I hope you will understand it:
Gal 4:1 Now I say, That the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all;
Gal 4:2 But is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the father.
There is a parallel being given to us in these two verses of scriptures. They state that a child is not ready to rule until he or she has grown up and matured. As long as they are still a child, it says they are no different than a servant, even though they are ruler of everything. Children require teachers and governors so they do not hurt themselves or others either by accident or on purpose. Children do not have the maturity God is looking for to put His enemies under His feet. God is waiting for the church to grow up and to become mature. Quit bickering and fighting over trivial childish things and become a mature Christian. The church is the joint heirs with Christ that this verse is paralleling. Even though we are these heirs, many Christians are still developing and in need of maturation. God is waiting for us to grow up.
Rom 8:19 For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.
God is waiting for the manifestation of His children. Even as a natural child is born physically and needs constant care and attention, over time they begin to develop skills that allow them to take more and more responsibility over what they do and how they do it. This is a natural process that corresponds to a spiritual process that God is trying to get us to see and understand.
1Co 3:1 And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ.
In this verse God says that He could not talk to the people in Corinth about spiritual things, because of their immaturity. God is saying that every Christian starts as a baby Christian, but He expects them to grow up and mature. An immature Christian is mostly concerned with carnal or natural things. A mature Christian is more concerned with spiritual things. This is one of the signs of maturity in the body of Christ. Where does this put you in the spiritual growth chart?
Heb 5:12 For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat.
God’s word is spiritual growth food for your spirit. But, this spiritual food comes in two extremes of basic milk formula for children and strong meat for mature Christians. A new baby Christian requires to focus on the very basic milk concepts of God’s word in order to grow. God’s word has both basic milk simple subjects and complex advanced meat meat subjects. These advanced topics are the strong meat that God is referring to and a baby Christian will choke if you try to feed them these subjects. Just like little natural babies cannot eat any solid food for many months, spiritual babies cannot understand the strong meat of God’s word. Natural babies are introduced to small quantities of soft non-milk food and they eventually will develop enough to be able to eat anything. This makes it very difficult to teach any subject, since we are all in varying stages of spiritual development. I have a tendency to teach advanced subjects, but some people do not understand them simply because of where they are in their spiritual growth.
1Co 1:7 So that ye come behind in no gift; waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ:
So if you are like me, we are all waiting for Jesus to come back and take us out of here, but who is waiting for who? You have to ask yourself what can I do to help this process along. Is there anything God is needing me to do today? Do I need to grow up and become more spiritually aware? Do I need to mature spiritually? Do I need to do anything to allow God to put His enemies under my feet? Do I need to go and tell someone about Jesus today? Do I have anything to do with when the return of Jesus is? I hope that you see that you do. Share this lesson with your friends today to help them grow and learn that there are things that God is waiting on patiently before Jesus returns for us and by us cooperating we could help God end this thing more quickly. God Bless you and thanks for reading my Bible lesson today.
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