Monthly Archives: November 2019

Daily Bible Study

December 1, 2019 Bible Study –Spiritual Gifts Require Love to Have Any Value

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Corinthians 12-14

The Holy Spirit gives different spiritual gifts to different people.  The fact that someone does not have a particular gift does not indicate that they do not have the Holy Spirit.  There are three exceptions to this rule.  Everyone who has the Holy Spirit receives faith, hope, and love.  In fact, if we exercise our other spiritual gifts without love they are of no value whatsoever.  Paul even makes sure we know what it means to act in love:

Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

I generally try to rewrite in my own words the meaning of a passage, but this is such a perfect summary of love, and not just romantic love, but the love which God asks us to have for our neighbor.  

Before and after writing about the importance of love, Paul writes that we should desire the less flashy, less attention grabbing spiritual gifts more than their counterparts.  Speaking in tongues is a wonderful spiritual gift, but prophecy is more to be desired.  We should seek the ability to comfort those who are hurting more than the ability to shine in the spotlight.

Daily Bible Study

November 30, 2019 Bible Study — Living Among Non-Believers

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Corinthians 9-11

Paul writes that when he preached to Jews, he lived as a Jew, but when he preached to Gentiles, he lived as a Gentile.  The first part is easy to understand.  When Paul preached to the Jews, he ate kosher and was careful to follow the other traditions which came from the law.    The part about living as a Gentile can be easily misinterpreted.  One could conclude that he took part in their debauchery and religious celebrations.  However, a little later in today’s passage he gives us a clearer picture of how he behaved.  As I noted, when Paul was preaching to Jews, he ate kosher.  However, when he was among the Gentiles he ate whatever was put in front of him.  But, if the person providing the food made a point that it had been sacrificed to idols, and thus made clear to Paul that by eating it he was taking part in a pagan worship practice, he declined to eat.  In the same manner, we should associate with non-believers on a non-judgemental basis.  If someone invites us to a party and we wish to attend, we are free to go and take part.  However, if they were to tell us that the party was so that people could discretely hook up sexually with someone other than their spouse, we should graciously decline. 

Daily Bible Study

November 29, 2019 Bible Study — Resolving Disputes Between Believers

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Corinthians 5-8

I do not know that I ever noticed the connection between Paul’s teaching about Believers going to court against each other and what he writes before and after.  The entire passage follows a natural progression from one topic to another, with a real overlap in the guiding principle behind most of Paul’s instructions here.  Paul starts off by telling the Church in Corinth that they have someone among them who is doing something that even the pagans living around them recognize as wrong.  But instead of confronting this Believer with his sin, the Church was bragging about their tolerance.  Paul instructs them to tell this man that what he was doing was wrong.  Then Paul takes the same idea, that the Church has people who can recognize when someone is doing wrong, and applies it to situations where business deals between believers go wrong.  If you think another believer has cheated you, take it to the Church.  Let the Church appoint someone knowledgeable in such matters examine the facts of your disagreement and render a decision on how to resolve it.  If the other party is unwilling to accept the Church’s judgement, let yourself be cheated rather than exposing the name of Christ to ridicule before unbelievers.  Paul does not say it, and we should be extremely careful before going there, but he seems to hint that if someone in a dispute refuses to accept the Church’s judgement of the matter they should, perhaps, be treated as the man he mentioned at the beginning of the passage.

Daily Bible Study

November 28, 2019 Bible Study — Time And Again God Uses Simpletons to Show the Folly of the Wise

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Corinthians 1-4

Paul discusses division in the Church in Corinth.  Some people are claiming to follow Paul, while others claim to follow Apollos, some another Apostle, and some claim to be just following Christ.  Each group claims that their way of following the Gospel makes them superior to those who chose another path.  Certain non-denominational congregations claim this passage indicates that being non-denominational is the correct way, missing the point entirely (Paul mentions here those who make their claim as following only Christ).  Paul makes here the same point he made in the Book of Romans, none of us are superior to others; we all need God’s saving grace in the same degree.

Paul writes that God chose to use those the world thinks are foolish to shame the wise.  The Jews would not accept Jesus as the Messiah because of His death on the cross.  In that they saw Him as weak, not as the conqueror they imagined the Messiah would be.  The Greeks on the other hand thought the idea of resurrection from the dead was silly and foolish.  The Jews could not see how Jesus’ death demonstrated the power of God’s love.  The Greeks were convinced that resurrection from the dead was a fairy story for simpletons.  The elites were, and are, convinced that they are smarter and wiser than the common man.  Time and again throughout history God has used the simpletons of this world to show that those society deems wise to actually be fools. 

 

 

 

Daily Bible Study

November 27, 2019 Bible Study –Accepting People As They Are While Helping Them See How They Can Be Better

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Romans 15-16

I never realized before reading through Romans this year that there is really just one theme running through the entire letter.  While Paul touches on other things as he expounds on this idea, he keeps coming back to it.  Paul says again and again, in different ways, we should love others as God loves us.  That means accepting people as they are, not as we wish they would be because God accepted us as we were when we first came to Him.  However, that does not mean that we should not encourage people to change.  Indeed, Paul tells us tat we should help others to do what is right and build them up in the Lord.  Just as Christ accepted us as we were, as we are, and gave us the Holy Spirit to transform us into who God made us to be, so we should accept people as they are and encourage them to accept the Holy Spirit’s transformation of themselves.

Daily Bible Study

November 26, 2019 Bible Study — God Loved Us Even Though We Did Not Deserve It, So We Should Love Those We Think Don’t Deserve It

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Romans 11-14

Paul continues his discussion of the paradox between our free will and God’s providence.  Our salvation is not the result of any action we have taken and therefore not something which we deserve.  Rather we were saved by God’s grace and mercy because He chose us.  Yet, we must be careful because if we stop having faith, and acting accordingly, God will reject us as He has rejected those who refused His free gift.  Even the fact that God has chosen us does not make us better than others.  Paul’s entire point here is to address a very human tendency: the desire to elevate ourselves above others, to find some way to claim that we are better than other people.  Sometimes, we do that by claiming to be worse than they, to be a better sinner than those others.  This even forms the basis for the problem Paul addresses when he tells us not to condemn others.  If our purpose in telling others that what they do is to tell them, “I am better than you because I do not do THAT,” (whatever THAT is) then we are failing to truly love our neighbor.

In chapter 12 Paul brings all of this together.  I have already touched on his instructions that we should not think more of ourselves than we really are.  We should love each other with genuine affection, not just going through the motions of how we think we should treat others, but actually caring about them.  As an aside I want to note that you cannot truly care about those whom you have never encountered.  In order to follow Paul’s instruction to truly care for others we need to allow the Holy Spirit to transform us.  Otherwise we will find ourselves conforming to behaviors and norms which our society claims are correct.  Those behaviors and norms are those of people who choose to think of themselves as better than others, who choose to think that only some people are deserving of love.  When we should know full well that none of us are deserving of love, but God loved us anyway.  Which is why we should love others, especially those we are tempted to believe are not deserving of love.

Daily Bible Study

November 25, 2019 Bible Study — Accepting God’s Love and Allowing It To Transform Me

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Romans 8-10

Some of what Paul writes in today’s passage is relatively easy to understand and some of it is extremely difficult to understand.  We easily understand that if we allow ourselves to think about sinful things we will find ourselves doing those things, while if we allow the Holy Spirit to control our thoughts and think about godly things we will do godly things.  Following up on that is the idea that if we allow the Holy Spirit to do so, He will help us to do God’s will. (The part about helping us pray syncs right up with my comments I made the other day about needing to pray more).  We can even easily understand that nothing, no power, thing, or being, can make it so that God does not love us.  We will experience God’s love whether we wish to or not.  For those of us who desire the experience of God’s love there can be no greater comfort than to realize that God is looking out for our best interests.

Which brings us to the things which are more difficult to understand.  Elsewhere Paul speaks about the need to choose to do God’s will.  Even at the beginning of this passage he writes that we must not allow our sinful nature to control us.  Yet he also writes that we can neither choose nor work to receive God’s mercy; that God chooses to whom He will show mercy and to whom He will not.  So, what does this mean?  There may be more to it than this, but at the very least, it means that I cannot consider myself better than any other person.  Being a follower of Christ does not make me better than someone who is not, not even the vilest sinner I can imagine.  I am not a better person than Adolf Hitler was, than Josef Stalin was, than the murdering rapist just caught by the police.  I have not done those evil, terrible things because of God’s grace and mercy, not because I am somehow better than those people.  Yet, to fully experience the joy which God has in mind for me I must choose to embrace His love and allow it to transform me.

Daily Bible Study

November 24, 2019 Bible Study — Flawed Human Beings Were Chosen By God To Be Our Examples

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Romans 4-7

Paul tells us that Abraham’s faith in God’s promise to him never wavered.  Yet, Paul was aware that Abraham took Hagar as a concubine in order to have a son by her.  This tells us that God does not count our moments of human weakness against us.  Or, perhaps it tells us that Abraham came to believe that he needed to change his life’s course in order for God’s promise to be fulfilled.  In any case, we know that God told Abraham that His promise would be fulfilled through a son which Abraham would have with Sarah, and that is indeed what happened.  My point being that even when we make mistakes in following God’s plan for us, if we maintain our faith, God will honor His promises.  From a human point of view, we would say that Abraham’s faith had wavered, but Paul tells us that from God’s point of view it did not.

Perhaps Paul gives me the greatest hope towards the end of chapter seven in verse nineteen when he says, “I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway.”  Then he provides the answer by telling us that God, through Jesus Christ, will free us from this situation.  I know that all too often I do what is wrong and do not do what is good, but I have faith that the Holy Spirit will transform me in God’s time.   This passage gives me hope.  If God considered Abraham’s faith to have never wavered, and if Paul found himself doing what was wrong, then I can know that even I can be changed by the Holy Spirit.

Daily Bible Study

November 23, 2019 Bible Study — Faith In the Power of the Holy Spirit to Transform Us

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Romans 1-3

I am not going to try to hit all of the points of importance in this passage.  In fact the first thing the Spirit reminded me of from this passage was not one of the things Paul was trying to communicate here.  When I read how Paul prayed fro the Believers in Rome I was reminded that I do not pray as I should, nor as much as I should.  It was a reminder for me to once again seek the Holy Spirit’s aid in improving my prayer life.  Paul writes here of praying day and night, I am lucky to pray a few minutes each day.

Paul expounds here on a point which Jesus made.  Anyone who seeks God will find God because the Universe which God created reveals His nature to anyone who truly looks.  As a result of this fact, much of the wickedness in the world comes about from people attempting to convince themselves that God is not what the Universe shows them that He truly is.  Those of us who acknowledge God need to be careful not to think that doing so makes us better than those who refuse to do so.  The fact of the matter is that even we who acknowledge God are guilty of doing wrong, which means we are no better than those who deny His existence.  In fact, no one is able to truly do what is right unless God’s Spirit transforms them.  We can only be justified before God by placing our faith in Christ.  This is where the whole thing gets very complicated.  The fact that we can only be justified, and are justified, through faith does not mean that it is acceptable to continue to do that which we know is wrong.  Our faith should tell us that doing what is wrong is self-destructive.  Even when we do not know how it can work out, our faith tells us that doing what is wrong reduces the amount of joy in our lives while doing what is right increases that joy.  I know this to be true, yet I still struggle with sin.  Which brings me back to my point from the first paragraph: I need to seek for the Holy Spirit to transform me into someone who prays as, and as much as, I know that I ought.

Daily Bible Study

November 22, 2019 Bible Study — Urgency and Patience In Preaching the Gospel

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Acts 26-28

Luke’s account of Paul’s testimony before Agrippa contains two things I want to highlight today.  It seems that for most of Paul’s testimony, Festus viewed it as pointless exposition by a religious scholar.  However, when Paul declared that he believed in the resurrection of the dead, Festus could contain himself no longer and declared that Paul was crazy to believe that.  We will find many who are willing to listen to the Gospel as long as we talk about the moral code it enacts, but who will be unwilling to continue when we explain why that moral code is binding.  Paul’s responds to Festus’ accusation of insanity by appealing to Agrippa’s knowledge of what had happened.  I want to note that Agrippa clearly felt that Paul’s appeal to him was an attempt to get him to make a commitment to Christ.  Which brings me to something we should all strive for.  We should all pray, just as Paul did, that those we encounter come to know the Lord, whether it happens quickly or takes a long time.  We should strive to have the same urgency to communicate the Gospel which Paul had, desiring people to respond at once but being willing to wait for the Holy Spirit to work.

Luke’s account of Paul’s trip to Rome as a prisoner tells us a lot about Paul’s character and how others saw him.  When the ship docked in Sidon, the commander of the guards escorting Paul allowed him to go onshore to visit with friends.  Then later, when they were in Fair Havens and debating whether to go to a better winter harbor, Paul was consulted, even though they did not take his advice.  Then when the ship became caught in the storm which eventually wrecked it, Paul took a leadership role, encouraging those aboard, convincing the soldiers to keep the sailors  from abandoning ship, and getting everyone to eat shortly before they ran aground.