1 Corinthians (Program #19) – Growth in Life Needed (2)

In first Corinthians the apostle Paul confronts the difficult situation in the church there in a very wise way. He first identifies that their problems would due primarily to a shortage of the growth in the divine life. Although they had received the initial gifts of the divine life and the Holy Spirit they were still infants or babes in Christ.

He then unveils to them the marvelous progression of God’s economy. First they need to realize that they are all plants growing on God’s farms. Then the goal is to be built up together into a building and finally that this building is destined to become God’s dwelling place, His temple.

How about you and me? Have we received such a vision, such a revelation or are we like the Corinthians satisfied to remain in our spiritual infancy and hang on to personal preferences in our own traditions?

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Luke (Program #30) – The Ministry of the Man-Savior in His Human Virtues with His Divine Attributes from Galilee to Jerusalem (9)

At the time the Lord Jesus was on the earth, the Biblical religion of the day Judaism had many strict ordinances prohibiting all manner of activities on their Holy Sabbath day including healing the sick. And yet, the Lord Jesus purposely broke many of the ordinances. As He not only healed the sick, against the traditions and regulations of the Sabbath, but He would do so in the presence of the religious leaders, many times offending them. We will look at an interesting case today of the violation of the religious regulations with a purpose as the Lord Jesus was continuing to usher in the real New Testament Jubilee.

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Mark (Program #16) – The Move of the Slave-Savior’s Gospel Service (4)

Mark chapter 7 verses 5 through 7 tells us “And the Pharisees and the scribes questioned Him, Why do Your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with common hands?  And He said to them, Well has Isaiah prophesied concerning you hypocrites, as it is written, “This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart stays far away from Me; But in vain do they worship Me, teaching as teachings the commandments of men.”“

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Mark (Program #9) – The Ways the Slave-Savior Carried Out His Gospel Service (4)

By the time Jesus was ready to begin His earthly ministry, a well established God ordained religious system was firmly entrenched in the land of Palestine.  But as the very God Himself who was the fulfillment and reality of all of the components of that established religion you would think that He would had taken a great care to approach the leaders of that religion and to bring them into His ministry.

But the record of the New Testament reveals quite the opposite.  The gospels, in particularly the gospel of Mark revealed that Jesus showed no interest in maintaining the old religion with its’ traditions and rituals.  Even those were among the ones that God had originally instituted such as the Sabbath.

Rather, Jesus  offended the religious community to the uttermost by breaking the Sabbath regulation repeatedly and revealing that as the Lord of the Sabbath He was well within His authority to use the Sabbath to care for His people instead of as a  religious fetter to bind them and even to kill them.

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Mark (Program #7) – The Ways the Slave-Savior Carried Out His Gospel Service (2)

Mark chapter 2 gives us the account of the Lord Jesus as the Slave-Savior carrying out His gospel service to care for the need of fallen people. It’s a marvelous chapter that shows us 5 cases or incidents, each one demonstrating this loving care in a particular way meeting the need of all manner of weak, sick and sinful people.

What a picture of the glad tidings being lived out in their midst!  Of course, not all the people are eager and happy to see such a manifestation of the reality and the enjoyment of God.  The scribes and the pharisees, the self-righteous and religious among the people were indignant that their own the authority and their time on the traditions were completely ignored by the Lord Jesus.  For as He Himself told them, “those who were strong have no need of a physician but those who are ill. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.“

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Matthew (Program #46) – The Pathway to Glory (4)

Tradition.  Webster says “an inherited, established or customary pattern of thought, action or behavior handed down by word-of-mouth or by example from one generation to another without written instruction”.  Of course, traditions are an important part of our cultural heritage or even our religious heritage.  But what do we do when the traditions we cherished are found to be in direct conflict with God’s infallible word?  This dilemma has confronted believers and God-fearing people for centuries.  There are even numerous such accounts in Scriptures.  But it also confronts us, as God’s people today.   As we touch today some time-honored and beloved traditions of today’s religious culture.

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2 Corinthians (Program #18) -Competent of Christ as the Alphabets to Write Living Letters with the Life-giving Spirit of the Living Lord (1)

Most genuine Christians in the protestant traditions owe a great debt to such courageous reformer such as as Martin Luther. Luther was used much by the Lord to recover the great truth of justification by faith, even risking his life for the sake of this foundational truth of the Christians faith. But this is not the only truth that had been lost and in need of recovery. Other reformers went even further, realizing that justification must have a result beyond the mere objective fact. The Bible reveals that the issue of justification is life. It is life, divine life, operating subjectively in the believers that constitute us members of Christ and it is the Spirit of life through the New Testament ministry that also makes us living letters of Christ. Living letters inscribe with the living Spirit of the living God. Hallelujah for the recovering of the divine life.

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