Exodus (Program #21) -The Hardening of Pharaoh’s Heart

God’s people Israel spent hundreds of years in slavery and bondage in Egypt.  Ultimately, the Lord heard their cries and initiated through His called one Moses, a personal battle with Pharaoh.  During the course of this lengthy conflict, Pharaoh is repeatedly subdued only to have his heart harden again to resist the demand of Jehovah God to let His people go.  This is the stuff of great Sunday school lesson to be sure.  But does it hold a meaningful lesson for all of us?  For all serious believers?

We are considering a very difficult question that has been the source of theological debate over the centuries; that is the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart in Egypt.  During this long conflict between God and Pharaoh, at times we see God hardening Pharaoh’s heart and at other times Pharaoh harden his own heart.  more…

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Exodus (Program #20) -Pharaoh’s Subtle Bargaining

We may not think of ourselves as particularly crafty or skillful negotiators in a worldly sense.  But oh how we bargain with the Lord!  There are a lot examples of subtle bargaining with God in the Bible.  But the story of Pharaoh in Egypt found in the book of Exodus is a particularly striking one.  For Pharaoh can at one time represents Satan but also represents ourselves or even our family members.  There is a lot for us to relate to in today’s program.

Today we are coming back to this conflict that took place between God and Pharaoh.  Initially it seems that the Lord’s demand of Pharaoh was clear enough, very straightforward: “let My people go, that they may hold a feast unto Me in the wilderness.”  He tells him in Exodus 5:3, but it take 10 long chapters and 12 different encounters before this ultimately takes place…

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Exodus (Program #18) – God’s Demand and Pharaoh’s Resistance (4)

God’s desire is that His people will build Him a dwelling place on the earth. This was His intention for the children of Israel even as they were held in bondage under Pharaoh in the book of Exodus and it’s His intention for us today. In Exodus, a struggle ensued between God and Pharaoh whereby He manifested not only judgment upon the Egyptian world but also the real nature and issue of the life of the world – the life that usurps God’s people. If we receive mercy, we’ll take this warning given to all God’s people about the usurping worldly system.

It has been a tremendous journey thus far, as we just get into the book of Exodus.  We come to that portion in the last few days, we have been reviewing the conflict between God and Pharaoh.  It is a fairly well-known story to most Christians and believers.  But Witness Lee has been pointing out that we are going to see very directly today that these 10 plagues and these 10 encounters, actually a dozen encounters that took place over all between God and Pharaoh were not just God’s judgement on Pharaoh and on Egypt but are really intended as an exposure and a kind of education for God’s people as well, to realize the real situation that Egypt represents.  Why do we know that this is a picture to expose but not just a matter of God’s judgement on Egypt and Pharaoh?

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Luke (Program #26) – The Ministry of the Man-Savior in His Human Virtues with His Divine Attributes from Galilee to Jerusalem (5)

We are all familiar with the Lord’s prayer.  It is covered in both Matthew and Luke.  But it’s interesting that here in the gospel of Luke immediately following the Lord’s marvelous training of His disciples not just merely in how to pray but how to pray themselves into God, He find Himself in a conflict with demons and dealing with mass rejections.

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Ephesians (Program #22) – The Breaking Down of the Middle Wall of Partition

The Bible in Romans tells us very clearly that Christ’s death on the cross resolved any conflict that exists between us and God. Roman 5 :1 “Therefore having been justified out of faith, we have peace toward God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”  And how we worship Him and praise Him for making such peace. But there is another peace that was accomplished through the redeeming death of Christ and Paul talks about this peace in Ephesians chapter 2:14 “For He Himself is our peace, He who has made both one and has broken down the middle wall of partition, the enmity, abolishing in His flesh the law of the commandments in ordinances, that He might create the two in Himself into one new man, so making peace.”

This specifically is not talking about peace between us and God. This is talking about peace between bitter and fierce enemies, peace between man and even between races and it is a crucial aspect of the salvation that we had received.  We’ll talking about this peace today on our life study of the book of Ephesians.

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Galatians (Program #34) – Live and Walk by the Spirit

The book of Galatians reveals 2 categories of people: those born according to flesh and those born according to Spirit. We might think this refers to Christians and non-Christians, and in a sense, thats true. But in fact as believers in Christ, our experience testifies that we can be in either category. The great conflict of flesh and Spirit is our focus on today’s life study of the Bible.

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