Ministry of Love

The intention of this blog is to share Biblical messages at least on a weekly basis. Any response is appreciated. I do not expect everyone to agree with my interpretation of Biblical passages. I will try to respond with love and thoughtfulness.

Saturday, May 31, 2008

Saturday Morning Musings, 05/31/08, by JAH

There's an old Christian saying that may date back to the ancient Jews. It says, "When all else fails, pray!" That's good advice, but I feel like it is a last ditch stand when you are in dire trouble. Better advice is pray often.

Prayer should be the response of a child who loves his Father. I think that is the reason David sought the Lord in the morning as well as in times of great need. I believe when Paul said, "I die daily," it was in his morning prayer time. It's logical to put God first before we begin a day of temptation to sin by committing our lives anew to Him.

When I first became a Christian, prayer was one of the hardest things for me to do. I wrote a little note on the front page of my new reference Bible, "Don't forget to pray at least three times a day." That has a nice little ring to it, doesn't it? I remembered that Jesus told us to ask our Father for our daily bread, and that reminded me to talk with God for a moment before eating my meals. I found my days began to go better. I did that in 1946 on board the USS Iowa, and sometimes other sailors thought I was having some kind of seizure because sat for a few moments with bowed head. Some of those began to study the Bible with me after our duty times.

When I began serving as pastor in 1947, I was completely unprepared to serve as a pastor. It was real On The Job Training for me. I discovered three times of prayer with another at bedtime was not nearly enough! I was constantly bombarded with questions for which I had no answers! The only wisdom I could claim was to keep my mouth shut a lot more than I ever had in the past! I began to read the Scripture in prayer searching for the message God had for His people. That required my turning to the Lord in prayer consistently particularly when I opened His Word.

My wisdom increased as I realized God's Sprit would work with me IF I let Him have the leadership in my life. I would turn my life over to Him, but it would not be long until I decided to do something totally contrary to God's will. When I discovered I was no longer in the Lord's will, sorrow resulted, and I almost frantically prayed to be restored. "I die daily" began to mean much more to me. Part of my increased wisdom was the discovery that I not only did not have answers for the hard questions, but that there was no pat answers to them anyway. I couldn't get by with quoting some worldly proverb, or some well-known preacher. I despaired of ever measuring up to the standard I believed should be the measure of a minister. That's when the Spirit would take charge again, and my joy would return.
I remembered one of my elder friends asking me if I had read the book, "Humility and how I obtained it" by I. M. Smart. I became content with the knowledge I did not need to achieve the heights, just achieve God's will for my life whether it was great or plain and simple. Paul was right when he wrote I Corinthians 1:26-31, "Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things--and the things that are not--to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God--that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: 'Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.'"

Now, I may forget to pray at a meal sometimes, but all during the day, and sometimes when I wake up at night, I speak with the Lord. When someone asks me a question about the Lord, or the Bible, or what to do next, I defer to the Lord for the answer before I speak. If He doesn't give it to me, then I really have nothing to say, except, "I'll continue to pray about this. Maybe the Lord will give me the answer. If He does, I'll share it with you."

Thursday, May 29, 2008

I John 4:1ff, BibleStudy, TrytheSpirits by JAH

I John 4:1ff Bible Study Try the spirits

1. How many times do your remember the word "spirit" being used in First John up to this point?
(1) John spoke of the Holy Spirit in 3:24.
(2) He was not neglecting the Spirit, but rather waiting for the right moment to introduce Him into the letter.
2. Now in 4:1, he warns us to "not believe every spirit," but to test each one to find out if they are truly from God, or not.
(1) False prophets claim to be speaking in "the Spirit" when actually they have a lying spirit themselves.
(2) 4:2; Every spirit that acknowledges Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.
a. Jesus means Savior and Christ means the promised Messiah.
b. If a spirit does not acknowledge both, then that spirit is misleading the hearer.
aa. It is necessary to put it that way because a person can give any word a false meaning.
bb. A person may say he believes in Jesus, and you may discover he believes Jesus is a special prophet sent by God. (That's similar to calling a 4 star general in the army a special buck private)!
3. The name "antichrist" is self-explanatory.
(1) That person, or being, does whatever he can against Christ.
(2) Like Satan in the Garden of Eden, he will use the most effective thing he can.
a. In the garden, Satan was psychologically clever.
aa. He misused truth to plant temptation in Eve.
bb. He pointed out that the fruit was good for food! cc. After the temptation was planted, he questioned what God had said. (Eve obviously had God's Word second hand. She added to it.)
dd. That gave Satan an opportunity to put doubt in her mind about God's good intentions.
b. Satan will probably avoid saying Jesus is not real, but rather demote Him to a position less than God. That causes doubt in our minds, and makes us more likely to fall for whatever else he says.
(3) Should we fear Satan?
a. No. We should respect his ability, but we have no reason to fear him.
b. James 4:7 says, "Submit yourselves, then to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you."
c. That indicates we have the power as Christians not only to resist the temptations of Satan but also to put him on the defensive and send him packing!
4. 4:4, God is greater than Satan and anything and everything else.
(1) Christians have already defeated Satan. That happened the moment we accepted Christ!
(2) Being from God, we know God listens to us, but ungodly people refuse to listen to us!
(3) That is the way we recognize the Spirit of Truth and the spirit of falsehood.
vv. 4:7ff, God implements His love through us.
1. 4:7; Jesus said that the second greatest command is: "Love one another." (Mt. 22:39)
(1) Love comes from God.
(2) Everyone who lives by love is born of God and knows God.
2. 4:8, "God is love," and anyone who does not love is not born of God. (The word used here for love is agape.)
3. 4:9, We would not have known about spiritual love, except that God sent Jesus to reveal it to us.
4. 4:10; Real spiritual love is God's love to us. It is everything wrapped up in His sending Jesus to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
4. 4:11; Our response to that love is to love one another. (God did not expect us to do it by ourselves.)
5. 4:12; No one has ever seen God (God allowed Moses to see His back; Exodus 33:18-23), but if we live in Him and He in us, He completes His love in us!
6: 4:13-18; His Spirit in us is our proof of Salvation.
(1) We know that we are in Him because we have His Holy Spirit. (Eph. 4:30: "And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.")
(2) V 15; Anyone who acknowledges Jesus came into the world and is the Son of God, God lives in Him, and he in God.
(3) V 16; We rely on God's love. He is love, and if we live in love, we live in God and God in us.
(4) V 17; Love is completed among us, and we will have confidence on the Day of Judgment because we are like Him now!
(5) V 18; There is no fear in love. Completed love drives out fear. Those who fear are concerned about punishment, and those who are fearful do not have God's love completed in them.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Jesus the Word. by JAH

Jesus the Word
John 1:1-14

1. Have you noticed what Satan is doing?
(1) I don't mean murder, or rape, or even war.
(2) I mean how he tries to discredit Jesus.
2. He uses a number of different methods to accomplish his goal, and he has been using them since time began.
3. Speaking of which, measuring time is a product of mankind. (If we are slaves to the clock, then we are slaves to our own invention).
4. John's Gospel gives us aspects of Jesus' life on earth and of His personality. Some of these are not included in the other Gospels.
5. I think we should see at least six things about Jesus in these first 14 verses, and we will mention a thing or two that Satan has done and is doing.
6. I've given you a copy of those 14 verses as they were originally written.
(1) An exception to that is that many of the original copies were done with no spaces between words and no punctuation probably because writing materials were hard to come by.
(2) The lighter shades would be different colors if I had owned a color printer.
(3) The whole Greek New Testament is available to you if you have a computer connected to the internet. It can be found in various formats. Just go to Google and type in "Greek Bible."
7. I gave you this copy so that you can picture in your mind how hard it was for the early church leaders to translate the Bible into English, and because I want to point out something Satan tries to do when people translate Scripture.
8. Let's begin with verse 1 in the New International Version. ( READ Each verse as you discuss it).

I. Verse One and Two.

1. "In the beginning"
(1) "The" is understood because "beginning" is in the dative locative instrumental case).
(2) Whatever, whenever, wherever anything began is the idea here.
2. "was the Word." This is the first thing to note about Jesus. When everything we know began, He was there! The omicron before logos is equivalent to our "the." It shows John is talking about a specific word, and from v 14, we know it was Jesus. There the Word is spoken of as "the One and Only, who came from the Father." It is obviously Jesus. Refer to John 3:16, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."
3. We see nothing of Satan in this, but if you read at least one other translation, you will find it saying something like this: In the beginning was a word, and a word was with a god, and a word was a god. He was with a god in the beginning.
(1) The use of an indefinite article is foreign to the common Greek of the New Testament. They did not use any indefinite articles.
(2) In the second place, it is an obvious attempt doubtlessly fostered by Satan to picture Jesus as less than God.
(3) I've talked to other people of other religions who also would have us believe Jesus is a prophet (only), or perhaps a noteworthy person in history.
(4) Anything that lowers Jesus' His true position as God the Father's One and Only is instigated by Satan whether is a Christian who does it, or not.
(5) Much more could be said about this, but our subject today concerns the superlative greatness of Jesus.
4. How long has Jesus lived?
(1) We assume eternally.
(2) The least we can say is that He was there with the Father when everything began!
(3) Beyond that, verse 1 concludes by saying, "the Word was God." That's the second thing this says about Jesus.

II. Verses Three Through Five.

1. The third thing John tells us about Jesus is that He was the Agent through whom everything made was made, and nothing at all was created except through Him!
2. V. 4; Life is in Jesus.
(1) Doesn't that remind you of John 14:6? Jesus said, "I am the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
(2) His life is also the light of men. We often picture a light bulb coming on to represent a new idea, and that's a good way to do it. When we have constructive ideas flash into our minds, we should remember all light comes from Jesus!
5. In v 5, I suspect John had the Jews in mind when he used the word "darkness," and it is certain in v 13, but most of the world was in spiritual darkness then and still is now. I Corinthians 2:14 seconds this: "The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned."

III. Verses Six through Nine.

1. At the time these verses were written, there were people who thought John the Baptist was the Christ/Messiah.
2. These verses clarify John's position and task.
(1) V 6; John truly came from God and was sent by God on a particular mission.
(2) He came to bear witness to the light, Jesus.
(3) V 7; His assignment was to promote belief in Jesus.
3. V 8; He was not God's light. He was a witness to God's light in Christ Jesus.
4. V 9; His witness was that God's light was in the process of being revealed for all mankind!

III. Verses Ten Through Fourteen.

1. Vv. 10,11; To me, these are two of the saddest verses in the Bible: Jesus came to His Own people, the Jews, and they refused to receive Him.
(1) We can determine some reasons by history within and since the writing of Scripture.
(2) They formed their own picture of what Jesus would be like, and what He would do.
(3) They were so wrong that they could not see the truth before them even with John's witness, the witness of the miracles, and the witness of the lives changed before they eyes.
(4) For many Jews, it would mean changing their lives and repudiating a lot of their history. They couldn't do it!
2. Vv. 12, 13 soften the blow.
(1) John, and all the apostles were Jews, and they received Jesus and were saved.
(2) The way opened then is still open and some Jews meet Jesus today just like Gentiles do. In Acts 15: 11, Peter stated, "We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they (the Gentiles) are."
3. The last part of 12, and all of verse 13 is so beautiful and clear, let's read it as it is: "He gave the right to become children of God, children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but bon of God."

Conclusion:

1. Satan has worked so hard trying to lower Jesus in our estimation that it is hard for us to see the true Jesus, but God's Holy Spirit reveals Him in all His glory when we let Him.
2. Jesus was there at the beginning, and He has always been and always will be God!
3. Everything that we can see, everything we can detect with microscopes, telescopes and in any other way, was created through Him.
4. Romans tells us that all creation suffers with all of us sinners as a result of the original fall in the Garden of Eden. God sent His One and Only Son to light up this old dark world, to shine in the hearts of all those who trust Him.
5. Jesus died for us taking our sins to the cross with Him to fulfill God's requirement for forgiving our sins.
6. When we trust Him for forgiveness and salvation, we become God's children with the light of God shining through our old sinful bodies and brightening the world.
7. God's Gift of adoption into His family, of forgiveness, of life everlasting is waiting for you.
8. All you need to do is admit you are a sinner, accept Christ as your Savior and to depend on Him to change you completely into someone who will bring glory to God in His presence! And by the way, that will be glory for you, too!