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LESSON
TEXT:
The
Apostle Paul advised his spiritual son, Timothy, “Study to shew thyself
approved unto God, a workman needing not to be ashamed, rightly
dividing
the word of truth,” (2 Timothy 2:15). Previously, he had
addressed
the commonly voiced present-day attitude that since we live in a time
under
the new Covenant or New Testament, we need not be concerned with the
Old
Testament. Paul said, "All scripture is given by inspiration of God,
and
is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for
instruction
in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly
furnished
unto all good works." (2 Timothy 3:16, 17).
Why
is this true? Is not all scripture inspired and completely true?
Absolutely,
but it must be read in the way it was intended to be read. For example,
Eliphaz and others of Job’s “comforters” had much to say that is
included
in God’s word, but which if taken out of context, particularly by
isolating
specific verses, may give a completely false idea of the real truth God
is trying to show. This is why you will often hear the scoffers say,
"You
can make the Bible say anything you want it to say." Each of us has
known
someone who had a completely wrong understanding of something we
ourselves
have said and told someone else that wrong story. We knew exactly
what we meant to say and wanted the other person to understand, but
because
they had a slightly different definition of one of the words we used or
failed to correctly hear what we said or because of even a perceived
look
or expression on our faces, or maybe we didn't use the best word or
phrase
to express our meaning, they went and told other people we had said
something
we never intended to say. And they really believed we had said
what
the other person mistakenly said we said.
As
we will study later, many things in the book of Job, Ecclesiastics and
Song of Solomon are particularly difficult to understand or are
frequently
misunderstood because the individual verses are quoted out of the
context
in which they were written. You will frequently hear verses from these
books quoted to "prove" that the Bible is "full of contradictions."
Many
of the things Eliphaz, Zophar and Bildad said in Job were their
understanding
of “old wives tales”, clichés and truisms as they thought
applied
to Job. The sayings are included by God to show how wrongly many
people,
in the natural, see things. Surely a loving God which was how Job had
always
described his God would never let such evil happen to someone who was
righteous
in His eyes, they thought. And logic would seem to agree. So
whatever
these men said in that context is later declared by God to have been an
erroneous opinion of mankind. Yes, ALL scripture IS profitable as 2
Timothy
3:16,17 says, and here we see God answering in the closing chapters of
Job, how mistaken and in some cases why Job's "comforters" were
mistaken.
Likewise, some of the things the wise King Solomon said after he had
backslidden
were written from the viewpoint of someone who had been reknowned for
his
wisdom and understanding and has been one of the wealthiest people ever
to live, but who has, by his backsliding lost the joy of the Lord in
his
life and now "all is vanity."
Throughout
your training at Apostolic Internet Seminary, you will hear two areas
of
major emphasis:
1. We
teach the Gospel as nearly exactly as Jesus Christ and His original
Apostles
would teach, preach and practice if they were here with us now in the
flesh
as it is possible for us to know. To know what frame of
reference
they spoke from in 30 AD, we must know "the law and the prophets" as
Jesus
said a well as some idea of their additional Pharisaical laws, just as
Jesus and the Apostles did.
2. It
is not possible to rightly understand what any New Testament writer or
speaker was saying and how he intended his hearers to understand him if
you are not also aware of the laws and traditions as well as the
prophecies
of the Old Testament. Even
Luke,
the "Beloved Physician" who was a highly educated Greek, was thorougly
acquainted with the Jewish laws, traditions and prophecies. Without a
foundation
of this knowledge, any understanding which can possibly be reached by a
modern Bible scholar familiar only with modern or even post 1611 AD
language,
terminology and understanding can only be flawed. Without understanding
the law and the prophets, we have no
real "frame of reference" by which to understand Jesus' sayings as His
Apostles did. In fact, it is almost like reading someone else's mail
and
not
knowing what has been said before. I recently held a dialog with an
extreme
peace movement person who seems sincere enough, but clearly reads the
sayings
of Jesus concerning peace from a whole different perspective than I do.
As I questioned him on the matter, he holds the view that the Old
Testament
has no bearing and was entirely done away with by Jesus. That Jesus
said what He said and that is it. It does
not
matter to him that the Apostles and virtually all Jesus' other hearers
would have understood Jesus from the perspective of their knowledge and
familiarity
with the Jewish law.
In the
Old
testament, as well
as the New, we have many "Exceeding great and precious promises," which
if we know them and meet the "If thou wilt, then I will,..."
condition
set by God, we can have great confidence, assurance and peace. Here is
one of the few that do not have the "If" within the verse itself.
"There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh
thy
dwelling." (Psalm 91:10). Other important promises that are
there
to assure us of God's blessing are: "And said, If thou wilt
diligently
hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, and wilt do that which is
right
in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his
statutes,
I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon
the Egyptians: for I am the LORD that healeth thee." (Exodus 15:26b);
"The earth is the LORD's, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they
that dwell therein." (Psalm 24:1); "For every beast of
the
forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills." (Psalm
50:10); "And call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver
thee, and thou shalt
glorify
me." (Psalm
50:17)and "Bless the LORD, O my soul: and all that is within me,
bless his holy
name.
Bless
the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits: Who
forgiveth
all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases; Who redeemeth thy
life
from destruction; who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender
mercies;
Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed
like the eagle's. The LORD executeth righteousness and judgment for all
that are oppressed."(Psalm 103:1 - 6); "But he was wounded
for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the
chastisement
of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed."(Isaiah
53:5); "I can do all things through Christ which
strengtheneth
me."(Philippians 4:13) and "But my God shall supply all your
need
according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus."(Philippians 4:19);
"And we know that all things work together for good to them that love
God,
to them who are the called according to his purpose." (Romans 8:28).
These promises should give us confidence, assurance, rest, mental and
physical
health, joy, peace, Spiritual and material prosperity and virtually all
other good things we could hope for or need.
I
often use this illustration to show how Satan likes to make us think
God
is not faithful to all His promises to us. I really was a private
pilot.
I did not have my own airplane, but for the sake of this illustration,
let me say I have my favorite plane. Let us suppose I said to you,
“John,
if you will come to my house at nine o‘clock on Saturday morning,
February
3, I will take you up flying in my Grumman Cheetah airplane and we will
fly at 5,000 feet above your house.” Two weeks later, I have not seen
you,
but I hear the story going around town, “Sam Smith broke his promise to
John. He promised to take John up flying at nine o‘clock on Saturday
morning,
February 3, in his Grumman Cheetah airplane and that they would fly at
5,000 feet above John’s house, and he didn’t do it. Sam Smith's a liar
and a promise breaker!” The story has MOST of the facts correct.
1.
I did promise to take John up flying;
2. at nine o‘clock;
3. on Saturday morning;
4. in my airplane;
5. which is a Grumman
Cheetah;
6. that we would fly at
5,000
feet;
7. we would fly above
John’s
house;
8. I didn’t do it.
The
only thing wrong is that John neglected to say that he failed to show
up
at my house as I had specified as the only condition for taking him
flying,
but he has made me appear to be a promise breaker or even a liar when
it
was his own failure to come to my house at the time appointed. And the
fact that as a private pilot I could not charge him to take him flying,
so the flight would have been at no cost to him is like God's plan of
salvation.
Every promise I can think of that God has made to mankind says that if
man will do this, God will do that. But Satan likes to omit the little
"if you will" factor from God's promises to try to make you feel that
God
has not kept His promise.
Study
what the Bible says, in the context in which it says it. Modesty, by
definition,
is that which sets you apart least, and the commandments about clothing
and jewelry in 1 Timothy 2:9 and 1 Peter 3:1-4 are both telling
wives
to win their husbands to the Lord, not by what they wear, but by their
godly conduct, lifestyle and conversation. You lose much credibility in
your community by placing standards on your people which the people of
the community see as silliness and not holiness. Many people will never
darken the door of your church if your church has a reputation for
condemning
people for the way they dress or wear their hair. The holiness that
honors
God is that of love, joy, peace and longsuffering toward your fellow
man
and an awed reverence for the righteousness and purity of a highly
exalted
heavenly Father. This is NOT to say you should not live and preach
holiness,
but the holiness must come from within. If you say, "My church doesn't
believe a woman should cut or even trim her hair," the sinner who has
asked
the female saint about her long hair immedately assumes the church is
one
of those with strict holiness standards to which the sinner probably
does
not agree. But if you quote chapter and verse or simply say that
"I" like it that way or I believe I should wear it that way
because ______ and really know why you believe you should wear it that
way
rather
than blaming it on your church, standards explained as what you
personally believe may not be a deterrent to the
visitor coming, feeling the conviction of the Holy Spirit and getting
saved.
STUDY
and know God’s Word thoroughly. The Holy Spirit can only bring to your
remembrance what you have already read, studied or learned! Pray until
the power of the Holy Spirit overpowers your own thoughts. To be
effective,
our sermons MUST be anointed by the Holy Ghost and delivered in His
Power.
But if the Lord inspires a sermon thought to you and gives you one or
several
key scriptures on that subject, it does not mean that you should just
be
satisfied to get into the pulpit without any prayer or study and “open
thy mouth wide and I will fill it, saith the Lord.” (This is a slight,
but commonly quoted, corruption
of Psalm 81:10). I hear far
too many sermons in which serious errors of
plainly written Bible facts are given and sometimes good and valid
truths
are preached even from these misstated facts, but much of the impact is
lost
on people who know the original fact as the Bible has stated it. As an
example, a minister who, I must say was proud of his ignorance, based
much
of one sermon upon what the wisest man ever, King Solomon told his son
David!!! I am sure the man really loves the Lord and he probably did
have
the leading of the Holy Spirit when he first started thinking about
that
sermon but the basic idea and truth he tried to communicate was lost
because
just about everyone was too busy thinking about his glaring error
during
the
majority of his sermon and his real point was missed.
Be careful about making promises on God’s behalf that God Himself did
not
make. Many promises were specifically to one person, such as Abraham or
Jacob or Moses. Many more were to the nation of Israel. Some are to the
church of Jesus Christ as a whole from the day of Pentecost until
today.
Still others are to all that believe on Jesus Christ, individuallyand
personally.
Some of those made to a specific individual named in the Bible may also
be applied to the church or to you and me today, but “And also of the
son
of the bondwoman will I make a nation, because he is thy seed,” (Genesis
21:13) obviously was not meant for each and every one of us today!
It was given to Abraham in a specific situation.
Of
Course You Don’t Understand!
(From
Manufacturer's
Directions Edition Bible studies by Samuel M. Smith awaiting funds
for publication.)
Both Jesus
and the Apostle
Paul
taught that things about the Spirit of God cannot be fully comprehended
or understood by persons who have not been born of the Spirit.
It is very
much like
trying to tell
you how to wire a house if you have never seen a living quarters that
was
not made of split bamboo and palm leaves and the only light you have
ever
seen at night is from a campfire, a stick torch or a candle. Or if I
try to tell
you that the electricity that will make the light bulb glow is
generated
by a coil of wire passing through a magnetic field if you do not know
what
a magnet is or wire or a coil. It may be even more confusing if I
attempt
to tell you that several different chemicals interacting with other
chemicals
and metals also can create an electrical current that flows through a
solid
wire so fast as to be almost instantaneous. It would also be confusing
if I were to tell you that certain solid materials were conductors of
electricity
and others were insulators.
But if you
grew up in a
house filled
with all the latest electrical and electronic equipment and gadgets,
studied
physical science in school and college and are a computer technician,
yourself,
my explanation in the paragraph above is almost too simplified. You
have
absolutely no trouble understanding and actually can add many more
details
that I left out for the sake of simplicity. For example, you may be
able
to explain how solar cells work to generate electricity, which
chemicals
are in different types of batteries, such as dry cell and wet cell,
lithium and alkaline and much, much more.
To understand
God is much
like understanding
electricity. There are scientists who do nothing but study and work to
develope new techniques, others who design new equipment, while others
are installers or electricians. So there are those who devote their
lives
to the study of God’s Word, others who attempt to communicate through
literature
those things which God shows them. Then there are the teachers who
thoroughly
explain an understanding of God’s Word and preachers who skim the
surface
and bring an anointed conviction through the electrifying power and
anointing
of the Spirit of God, also called the Holy Spirit.
Now some
people have a
nature that
makes them want to know about electricity and how it works. Others
couldn’t
care less how it works, they just want to use it. Still others would
rather
wear their G-strings and hunt with bows and arrows in the jungle and
see
by their campfires at night. Yes, we know there are people who leave
the
“comforts” of civilization to live in the jungle and in other primitive
places and ways because it is an inbred nature within them. Likewise,
there
are many who go for the new, the modern, the electric lifestyle, if you
please. While you can force a nature-lover to sit in a classroom and
study
all about electricity, he will find it a very dull and boring subject
which
he can barely wait to be freed from, but another person will classify
the
same subject and the same class as exciting and the best in the school.
It is extremely hard to teach mathematics to a student whose mind is on
surfing or baseball.
Those who
find the
Bible
confusing
are those who have not been truly born again into the kingdom of God.
But
those of us who have been born into the kingdom of God want to
understand
it and the more we study it, the plainer and more easy it becomes to
understand.
The Apostle
Paul spoke of
Jannes
and Jambres who were ever learning and never able to come to a
knowledge
of the truth. The reason is that whie they had a curiosity, there was
not
the in-born ability to understand. You may have twenty or thirty
students
in any given class, and most of them will ony partialy understand what
is
being taught, whie there will be a few who grasp it easily and well and
understand
it fully. This is usually an in-born ability. So too is the
understanding of
God’s
Word. If you have not yet been born of the heavenly seed, there is
every
probability that much of the Bible will seem strange and beyond
comprehension
to you. But when that instinctive understanding of the Holy Spirit is
within
you, it becomes easy to understand. Nearly all of us have at one time
or
other struggled with learning something needed to pass a course in
school
and then suddenly, one little bit of information unlocked the whole
thing,
and we began to understand easily. This is what the real new birth of
water
and the Spirit will do for us in the matter of understanding God’s Word.
Do
Ye
Not Understand? (From Selected
Sermons)
JESUS has
come down from
the mount
of transfiguration with Peter, James and John to find a crowd of
scribes,
Pharisees and other curious by-standers questioning His other nine
disciples. (Mark
9:14-37). There, He also finds one in the crowd whose son is
possessed
by a deaf and dumb spirit, and His disciples have not been able to
deliver
the lad. The disciples could not, at first understand why , and Jesus
casts
out the demonic dumb spirit. When they get into a nearby house, they
ask
Him about their own powerlessness and He explains them that that kind
of
demon can only be cast out by them or us by prayer and fasting.
Then they slip away to
Galilee
where He spends a time apart with His disciples to teach them. Among
the
thin gs He tells them is concerning His own crucifixion, which they do
not and seemingly cannot understand. In this case, He does not
apparently
explain, but goes on to Capernaum where He takes them in a house before
He asks them, "What was it that ye disputed among yourselves by the
way?"
You would expect that it would have been about the bombshell of
information
that He was going to be crucified, but they had so little understood
that
that their discussion had been about which of them should be the
greatest.
Of course they were afraid to ask Him but He knew their thoughtrs and
sat
down and called all twelve to Him to explain that the first should be
last
and then called a child to Him to illustrate the importance of even a
little
child in His kingdom. The important thing to note here is that He knew
what was on their minds and wanted them to understand that true
greatness
is not something you seek, but the result of your actions.
In this same
type of
setting in
Matthew, He says, "Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they
seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand,
“And in them is
fulfilled the
prophecy
of Esaias, which saith, By hearing, ye shall hear, and shall not
understand;
and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive, ” (Matthew 13:13,
14).
Why? “For this people’s
heart
is
waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they
have
closed: lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with
their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be
converted
and I should heal them, ” (Matthew 13:15. Also Mark 4:12; John
12:40;
Acts 28:26,27).
“And He said, Unto you
it is
given
to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables;
that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand,”
(Luke
8:10).
Jesus
chided the
Apostles for
not understanding.
“Do not ye yet
understand…” (Matthew
15:16,17; 16:9,11; Mark 8:17,21; John 8:43).
Jesus
wanted the
multitude to
understand.
“And He called the
multitude,
and
said unto them, Hear, and understand:…” (Matthew 15:10. Also Mark
7:14).
Jesus
wanted His
Apostles to
understand.
“Then opened He their
understanding,
that they might understand the scriptures,” (Mark 7:18, Luke
24:45,47).
Paul
wanted the church
to understand.
“Wherefore I give you
to
understand,
that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed; and
that
no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost,” (1
Corinthians
12:3).
“But I would ye should
understand,
brethren…” (Philippians 1:12).
How do we
understand?
“Through faith we
understand
that
the worlds were framed by the word of God…” (Hebrews 11:3).
What Happens When We
Lack
Understanding?
The following listing
of “bad
things”
includes “Without understanding,” but in fact a person with
understanding
of the judgments of God would not be doing these listed things:
29 Being filled with
all
unrighteousness,
fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy,
murder,
debate, deceit, malignities, whisperers,
30 Backbiters, haters
of God,
despiteful,
proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to arents,
31 Without
understanding,
covenantbreakers,
without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:
32 Who knowing the
judgement
of
God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only
do
the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. (Romans 1:29-32).
Edited March
2003 by Rev.
Samuel
M. Smith
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