Sunday, August 30, 2015

Bible Study #734

The goal of Bible Study is not just learning, but living If you are saved, you will have a desire to be holy, a hunger for the Word, the inner witness of the Spirit, and a desire to share Jesus. These are the birthmarks of the believer. #734 30 June 15 We know that we are of God, and that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one 1 John 5:19 Grateful for . . . . THE WORD OF GOD ! (\0/) (\0/) (\0/) (\0/) (\0/) (\0/) Greetings! May I say please, I don't know where you live or what your weather is like. Some are having really hot weather. So those of you who are, please consider the animals who live out in the wild and have no home, which means, they probably don't have fresh water to drink. If you are able, find a bushel or tree that you can put a pan or bowl of water out for them. They are God's creatures too. I appreciate that! And I believe they would too! Happy Independence Day to you and yours! Be safe. we are of God: That Christians belong to God is the fourth Christian certainty. Only two types of people exist in the world according to John: children of God and children of Satan. One belongs either to God or to the evil world system that is Satan’s domain. Because the whole world belongs to Satan, Christians should avoid its contamination. No one can belong to both families simultaneously. Either one belongs to God’s family and exhibits His righteous character or one belongs to Satan’s family and exhibits his sinful nature. May God bless you this week! ♥ Memory verse for this week: 1 John 3:1 Something to think about: Satan is deceiving many today by leading them to suppose that they are savingly trusting in "the finished work" of Christ while their hearts remain unchanged and self still rules their lives. This week's Trivia's: [answer's below . . ] 1. In what country were Joseph and his father Jacob finally reunited after not seeing each other for years? 2. According to 1 Corinthians 6:19, a Christian's body is the temple of what? * * * * * * * * * It is His joy to enter into a sorrowful heart * * * * * * * * * BIBLE MEDITATION: “Then they said one to another, We do not well: this day is a day of good tidings, and we hold our peace: if we tarry till the morning light, some mischief will come upon us: now therefore come, that we may go and tell the king's household.” 2 Ki 7:9 DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT: Andrew Murray said, “There are two classes of Christians: soul winners, and backsliders.” In my humble estimation, there are two great sins a Christian can commit: the greatest is to fail to love the Lord Jesus. The second greatest is not adultery or drunkenness, but it is the sin of silence—to refuse to share the gospel of Jesus Christ. Suppose you knew the cure for cancer. Would you not tell it? Suppose you were on an island where people were starving to death and you knew where there was a vast hoard of food. Would you not tell it? Ours is the greatest mission, the greatest message, the greatest Master the world knows anything about. Our mission is the Great Commission. Our message is the saving Gospel of our Lord and Savior. Our master, Jesus Christ Himself, has told us we ought to take the gospel to every creature on earth. Yet many Christians are sinning against this command. They're committing what I call “the sin of silence.” If you’re not a witness, you're not right with God, I don't care what else you may do. ACTION POINT: I care not how faithfully you attend, how eloquently you teach, how liberally you give, how circumspectly you walk or how beautifully you sing. If you’re not witnessing, you’re not right with God. from the Ministries of Love Worth Finding . . . by Adrian Rogers * * * * * * * * * The highest love of God is not intellectual, it is Spiritual * * * * * * * * * We have begun another journey and will learn from the book "Hard To Believe" written by John MacArthur. In his book John helps us to understand the high cost and infinite value of following Jesus. GBY . . . . . . . . . . HARD TO BELIEVE . . . . . . . . . . . . BUT SOME WILL BELIEVE . . Christianity would be much easier to sell if only it had a good dose of twenty-first-century inclusivism. On one level, the message of the Bible sounds so attractive and comforting: God is love! Jesus forgives your sins! That’s terrific. The same gospel that tells us those things, though, also tells us to worship Jesus as Lord, that we can’t earn our way to heaven, and that the only way to eternal life is through Christ. We’ve seen that the frequent solution for making the message more popular and appealing is to distort and misrepresent the gospel by pumping up the easy parts and downplaying or ignoring the hard parts. We’ve also seen that many religious leaders around the world, including some who consider themselves evangelicals, take the question a step further by wondering aloud if people really need to have the gospel to be saved. Can’t they get to heaven without it? Won’t a multi armed Hindu god or an alligator do in a pinch? And what about the people who never had the chance to hear the gospel? Sending them to hell is hardly fair! There are two answers to these questions. First, you and I had better get to people with the gospel, because that’s what God commanded us to do. Second, if God, in His sovereign, eternal, elective purpose, has determined to bring people to salvation, then He will be sure that they receive the gospel. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, “Seek and you will find” (Matt. 7:7). And we are the instruments that proclaim the gospel. Whether or not the gospel is necessary for salvation is at the core of Christianity. The question is ultimately simple and straightforward: Either we can understand the Spirit and intentions of God on our own, or we cannot. And if we can’t, we have to look at the only place in creation where the deeper essence of God is revealed: the Bible. SPIRIT BENEATH THE SURFACE . . The last part of 1 Corinthians 2:10 says, “The Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God.” As deep and inaccessible as God is, we can still know some things about Him. He is powerful, He is complex, He’s a God of order and beauty and life. It’s true that we can see a lot in the creation. But if want to go beneath the surface, to the spiritual side of God—to the law, the salvation, the righteousness , and the redemption of God—we have to perceive that the Spirit of God knows the deep things, because the Spirit is God. In our human wisdom, we don’t have access to the deep things; we have access only to what we can see on the surface. We don’t know spiritual things about God: His nature, essence, will, and salvation. Paul gave an analogy in 1 Corinthians 2:11: “For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him?” We can be close to each other in the same family, or engaged in a common enterprise, yet we still can’t know each other’s thoughts. All we know is what is apparent to our senses. The only one who perfectly knows the thoughts is the spirit of the person who has the thoughts. The same is true of God. We can understand some things about Him from seeing what He has made, but none of us can know the deep things of God and any more than I can know, by looking at you, what your innermost thoughts are. Only your spirit knows what’s inside you, and only the Spirit of God knows the deep things of God. We’ll never know the deep, saving, spiritual truths of God unless someone reveals them to us. As 1 Corinthians 2:11 says, “No one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God.” Paul added in verse 12, “Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.” Those things are forgiveness of sin, salvation, and the hope of eternal life, as well as all the blessings of justification, sanctification, and glorification. We can’t know them by human reason. We can’t find them in a test-tube experiment. We can’t figure them out by rationalization. We can know them only through the revelation of the Holy Spirit. You can’t go to heaven unless you know how, and you can’t know how except by reading the Bible. That’s the only place where men wrote down words the Holy Spirit inspired. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God. Peter described the process: “holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit” (2 Per. 1:21). This is going to come as a radical shock to those advocating natural theology. Imagine what they’re going to say when they have 1 Corinthians 2:14 dropped in front of them: “But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” A natural man, who lacks the aid of supernatural revelation through Scripture, cannot know the things that only the Spirit of God knows. To him, they are complete nonsense. He can’t understand them because they are spiritually, not rationally, appraised. He can’t examine them by empirical study; he can’t attain them by any human intuition. Where does natural theology lead you? Nowhere but hell. It is a fatal, dead-end street, entered through eh wide gate that seems so comfortable, convenient, user-friendly, and seeker-sensitive. You can’t understand the things of God on your own, any more than Adam and Eve could, because you can appraise the essence of the Lord and Creator of the universe only through the power and revelation of the Holy Spirit. Without the Spirit, there is no knowledge. But for those of us whom the Holy Spirit ahs taught through the Scriptures, we have what 1 Corinthians 2:16 calls “the mind of Christ.” We can know what Christ thinks because the Scriptures reveal it. Natural man, lacking the mind of Christ revealed through the Spirit, ends up with no understanding. He ends up a fool. And he ends up in judgment. In John 14:26, Jesus said to the disciples, “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.” He assured them that God would instruct them how to record the deep things that are not discernible to the human senses, the profound issues of salvation that constitute the mind of Christ. next week: . . THE UNKNOWN GOD REVEALED . . * * * * * * * * * Seek the Lord while He may be found. Call upon Him while He is near * * * * * * * * * PRINCIPLES OF THE DRAGNET, PART 1 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet cast into the sea, and gathering fish of every kind; and when it filled, they drew it up on the beach; and they sat down and gathered the good fish into containers, but the bad they threw away. So it will be at the end of the age; the angels will come forth and take out the wicked from among the righteous. Matt. 13:47-49 DURING THE PRESENT CHURCH era, God allows unbelief and unrighteousness to exist in His kingdom. Therefore believers and unbelievers coexist, as Jesus already illustrated in His parable of the wheat and tares. This parable of the dragnet, however, depicts the separation of believers and unbelievers as the kingdom’s form changes at the end of the age. The dragnet of the Father’s judgment quietly moves through the sea of humanity drawing all people to the shores of eternity for separation to their final destinies—believers to heaven and unbelievers to hell. The invisible net of God’s judgment affects every person just as the dragnet impinges on every sea creature. Most people don’t perceive God’s sovereign plan or His eternal kingdom. They don’t realize He is working in the world. At times they can be moved by hearing of the gospel’s grace, or scared by the threat of judgment. But usually they quickly return to their worldly lifestyles and disregard matters of eternity. However, we can be certain that when this era ends and the Lord Jesus returns to establish His glorious kingdom, final judgment will be at hand. Her Christ does not fully describe the end times, but He focuses on judgment of unbelievers. He pictures a general judgment with particular reference to the final, great white throne judgment (Rev. 20:11-15). There “the dead, the great and the small” will be “judged, every one of them” (vv. 12, 13). But thank the Lord we do not have to fear that fate of we are trusting Him for salvation. ASK YOURSELF How does your heart react when you contemplate the vastness and grandeur of God’s plan—His knowledge and oversight throughout history and forward into eternity? * * * * * * * * * God never has been as interested in where you've been as He is in where you're going * * * * * * * * * Q & A with J. Vernon McGee . . . Q. If God knows beforehand who will believe, do we truly have free will? This is a question I’m confident no one will be able to answer in this life. With our little finite human minds one cannot reconcile what is known as the omniscience of God, the election of God, and man’s free will. Yet both of them are taught in Scripture, both of them are true, and there’s no conflict between them. But you must remember that God says His thoughts are not our thoughts, His ways are not our ways (see Isa. 55:8). Therefore you and I need to recognize that there’s a great deal about God that we do not understand. We attempt to deal with the attributes of God – that’s the way we begin to get a hold of Him. And one of the attributes of God is His omniscience; He does know everything. But I don’t know everything and you don’t know everything. He hasn’t told us what He’s going to do. He’s told us to preach the gospel to every creature. Here on the radio program we give out the Word of God and expect the Spirit of God to touch the hearts and lives of those who will hear the voice of the Spirit. Now how He works I do not understand. Our business is to give out the Word. You and I will not be shown the list that He has. We will not be told what God knows. Charles Spurgeon used to say that if God had put a yellow stripe down the backs of the elect, he’d just go around lifting up shirttails to find those with the yellow streak and then give them the gospel. But God didn’t do it that way. God told him to preach it to every creature, so that’s what he did. Because in Spurgeon’s book, they all could accept Christ. And to me it’s the same way: I assume that whosoever will may come, and that’s a legitimate offer that God makes (see Rev. 22:17). So if you don’t understand how to reconcile the omniscience and election of God with the free will of man, you are in a class with the rest of us. It reveals you are a human being, that you are finite, and that you do not know everything. And I don’t either. This is in the hands of God, and instead of arguing about these points let us keep busy giving out the Word of God. The Lord will take care of His end. He’ll touch the hearts of those that should hear the Word. My business is to give it out. * * * * * * * * * We place value on the past: He places value on the future * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The fear [respect] of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding Prov. 9:10 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Answers to this week's Trivia's: 1. In what country were Joseph and his father Jacob finally reunited after not seeing each other for years? A. Egypt Gen. 47:5-6 2. According to 1 Corinthians 6:19, a Christian's body is the temple of what? A. The Holy Spirit [or Ghost] * * * * * * * * * Answers to Questions about Heaven . . . David Jeremiah Q. Will we have fellowship with one another in heaven? In heaven, we’ll have fellowship like never before! Because we will be God’s people made over, we will be perfectly compatible with one another and able, for the first time ever, to enjoy the intimate fellowship that we all long for in our hearts. And if heaven weren’t exciting enough, imagine having the unlimited opportunity to fellowship with people from all ages of history—even people we’ve only read about in books. There’s a whole list of people I’d like to meet. David and Joseph and Daniel from the Old Testament. C.S. Lewis, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Andrew Murray, A.W. Tozer, and many others. What an incredible time of fellowship! We can’t possibly comprehend it completely: but we’re going to live together with one another for all of eternity. In heaven, we won’t just fellowship with believers and the angels. We will be able to know and fellowship with our Lord in a way that we cannot possibly comprehend. We are going to know Him—the same Lord Jesus who walked upon the streets of Galilee and healed the sick and ministered tot hose who were lame and blind, the same Lord Jesus with nail-scarred hands and the signs of redemption in His side. Our Savior will be our personal friend; and we will fellowship with Him forever and ever. * * * * * * * * * Always pray to have eyes that see the best in people, a heart that forgives the worst, a mind that forgets the bad, and a soul that never loses faith in God. Until next time remember, "Keep looking up!" God loves you and yours, He really does! Nancy <\\\>< Remember: A man may go to heaven….. Without health, without wealth; Without fame, without a great name; Without learning, without earnings; Without culture, without beauty; Without friends and without ten thousand other things---- But he can NEVER go to Heaven without Christ. ~ This is a FREE e-mailing ~ This Bible Study is sent to subscribers only according to our strict NO SP*M policy. If you appreciate the information contained in this letter, please forward it to your friends. If you have acquired this letter from a friend and want to subscribe: Send an e-mail with Subscribe on the subject line to: hisfootprints4us@comcast.net If you do not want to receive these Bible Studies, please send an email with 'unsubscribe' on the subject line to hisfootprints4us@comcast.net No hard feelings This week's Quiz: Ruth and Esther . . . Only two books of the Bible are named for women. Like all of the Bible’s stories, these two stories are important. What do you know about these two extraordinary women? 1. Ruth was from: Ruth 1:4 a. Edom c. Ammom b. Moab d. Tyre 2. Ruth’s mother-in-law was: Ruth 1:2-4; Matt. 1:5 a. Naomi c. Rahab b. Orpah d. both a and c 3. Boaz was Naomi’s: Ruth 2:1 a. son c. brother-in-law b. kinsman d. cousin 4. When Boaz first saw Ruth, she was: Ruth 4:8 a. cooking c. planting a garden b. washing clothes d. gleaning 5. In order to show that he would allow Boaz to marry Ruth, the other man: a. shook hands c. took off his shoe b. winked d. turned in a circle three times 6. The name of the queen before Esther was: Esther 1:9 a. Vashti c. Sheba b. Jezebel d. Candace 7. If someone went to King Ahasuerus unannounced, he or she would be killed unless the king: Esther 4:11 a. smiled c. held out his scepter b. said to leave him or her alone d. motioned with his hand 8. Haman was: Esther 3:1 a. a king c. the king’s second in command b. a prince d. a chamberlain 9. In order to expose Haman’s plot, Esther: Esther 5:7-8 a. threw herself at the king’s feet b. invited the king and Haman to a banquet c. got Mordecai an audience with the king d. a and b 10. A feast was instituted to celebrate the defeat of Haman’s plot. It was called the feast of: Esther 9:26 a. Tabernacles c. Purim\ b. Esther d. Mordecai

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