Monthly Archives: December 2024

Daily Bible Study

December 12, 2024 Bible Study — Those Who Delight in Wickedness Refuse to Love the Truth

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Today, I am reading and commenting on  2 Thessalonians 1-3.

Paul writes that there will be those who falsely claim that the day of the Lord has already come, but we should not allow them to alarm us.  Paul tells us that the day of the Lord will not come until the rebellion occurs.  He does not tell us how to recognize the rebellion, except that when it occurs the “man of lawlessness” will be revealed.  Paul tells us quite a bit about this man of lawlessness.  First, he tells us that he will oppose everything which is called God, or is worshiped, and he will exalt himself over those things.  In fact, the man of lawlessness will proclaim himself to be God.  Every time I read this, it makes me wonder if Paul is referring to a single individual, or to society in general.  I look at our society today and see it encouraging people to oppose God and to view themselves as God.  On the other hand, Paul does seem to be referring to an individual whom others will worship.  In any case, Paul warns us that the power of lawlessness is already working in our society, but is being held back.  When it is no longer held back, the lawless one will be revealed and will deceive those who refuse to love the truth.  Again, I look at our society today and see people who refuse to embrace the truth, who instead choose to embrace lies and falsehoods.  People refuse to accept the truth because they delight in wickedness.  So, if we love and embrace truth, we will not be deceived by the signs and wonders which promote and serve lies.

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

Daily Bible Study

December 11, 2024 Bible Study — Live Holy Lives by Rejoicing, Praying, and Giving Thanks, No Matter What Our Circumstances

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Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Thessalonians 1-5.

Paul wrote to the Thessalonian believers that they should strive to live to please God.  Specifically, that they should try to do so more and more, because he knew that they were already doing so.  We should avoid sexual immorality, and control our bodies.  Paul implies that sexual immorality* involves taking advantage of others.  Paul teaches that we should avoid taking advantage of others to satisfy our desires and instead control our bodies and thoughts in order to serve the needs of others in love.  We should live holy lives.  We work towards doing so means minding our own business and working so that we are not dependent on others.  Interestingly, after telling us to mind our own business Paul writes that we should warn those who are idle and disruptive.  Further, he tells us to live in peace with our fellow believers and strive to do what is good for each other, and for everyone else.  Paul closely linked doing what is good for others to not paying back wrong to those who wronged us.  Finally, I think that some of Paul’s conclusion will help us understand what he means when he tells us to live holy lives.  He tells us to rejoice always, pray continually, and give thanks no matter what circumstance we find ourselves in.  Hold onto what is good and reject every kind of evil.

 

*Paul here only mentions sexual immorality, but from his other letters I think it is clear that he would include impurity, lust, and evil desires in this instruction, and quite possibly greed as well.

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

Daily Bible Study

December 10, 2024 Bible Study — Do Not Follow Those Who Have False Humility

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Today, I am reading and commenting on  Colossians 1-4.

Paul writes here that we should not allow ourselves, our thinking, to be captured by deceptive philosophies which depend on human tradition and the spiritual forces of this world.  A little later in this letter, he refers to those who delight in false humility and the worship of angels.  He describes such people as going into great detail about their experiences and being puffed up by idle notions.  Paul talks about how they insist that people must follow specific diets and celebrate rituals and religious festivals.  He appears to be referring to those who teach following an appearance of self-denial without actually allowing the Spirit to transform us and our desires.  In fact, Paul tells us that these philosophies are designed to make it look like we are living righteous lives, but that they fail to actually restrain our sinful desires.

Paul writes that we should not follow the rules of the spiritual forces of this world with “Do not handle. Do not taste.  Do not touch.” rules.  However, before we make too much of that, immediately after writing that Paul writes that we should put to death our earthly nature, which includes sexual immorality, impurity, and greed.  So, the freedom in Christ which Paul writes about does not mean that we are free to enslave ourselves to sin.  He tells us that the behaviors which grow out of our sinful nature are forms of idolatry.  I want to point out that most of the time, if not all of the time, when Paul writes about avoiding sexual immorality and impurity, he includes greed in the list of behaviors to be avoided as destructive of our new life in Christ.

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

Daily Bible Study

December 9, 2024 Bible Study — Rejoice In the Lord Always

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Today, I am reading and commenting on  Philippians 1-4.

Yesterday, my congregation celebrated the third Sunday of Advent (since we will be doing a Christmas service on the 22nd).  The theme for the third Advent Sunday is joy.  As a result, Paul’s repeated references to joy and to rejoicing jumped out at me today.  It begins with Paul saying that he always prays with joy when he prays for the Philippian believers, because of the way they partnered with him in the gospel from when they first heard it.  Then Paul writes that he rejoices because his imprisonment and suffering has served to advance the gospel.  Further, Paul rejoices in his suffering because he will either die in service of Christ, and thus be united with Christ in the resurrection, or he will live to further serve Christ.  The former would be the greater joy, but being able to continue to serve God was also a cause to rejoice.  The key to sharing in the joy which Paul experienced is to value others above ourselves, looking out for their interests before we look out for our own interests.

As I am writing this I realize that in this letter Paul touches on all four Advent themes.  In chapter three Paul writes of counting everything he had which the world might see as his gain as loss, so that he might gain Christ.  He wanted to know the power of Christ’s resurrection, and of His suffering.  He has not yet obtained that, so his desire comes from his hope.  Yet, despite the fact that he has not yet obtained that for which he hopes, Paul has peace through his faith in Christ.  That peace causes him to rejoice and to call on us to rejoice.  When we suffer or face hardship we should rejoice because it means that God has counted us worthy to join in Christ’s suffering.  Rather than worry, let us present our requests to God with thanksgiving for what He has done for us, even if all we can think of is that He has considered us worthy to suffer.  As we do this, we will experience God’s peace.

I want to conclude with what Paul wrote in chapter four verse eight of today’s passage:

“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”

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

Daily Bible Study

December 8, 2024 — Unity As a Sign of Maturity in Christ

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Today, I am reading and commenting on Ephesians 4-6.

In yesterday’s passage Paul wrote that we were saved through no effort of our own, that we cannot claim credit for our salvation.  The fact that we have been saved does not indicate that we are superior to others.  He also wrote that God saved us in order that we might do good works.  In today’s passage Paul writes that we should strive to be worthy of the salvation which we freely received.  We were not saved because we were worthy of it, but, now that we are saved, we should strive to be worthy of it.  Paul then gives a list of behaviors which we must exercise if we desire to be worthy.  These behaviors are not the goal, they are the beginning of striving to be worthy.  We should be humble, patient, and gentle.  As part of that Paul writes that we should bear with one another in love.  I find it interesting that Paul phrases it that way.  By doing so Paul suggests that we WILL annoy our fellow believers, and that we will be annoyed by them, but we should bear with that annoyance.  And why should we bear with that annoyance?  Because we have been called to be one body worshiping and serving one God, through the activity of one Spirit.  We have been called to unity.  God’s Spirit has given us each different gifts and callings so that we might together build up His Body into unity working together to do His works.  Further, Paul writes us that we will know that we have reached maturity in God only when that unity is displayed.  Paul writes that we can move towards unity by speaking truth in love.  I really like that phrase because it sums up how we should deal with all people.  We should always be truthful, but we should only speak that which love directs us to say.

Paul continues by telling us that we must no longer live as the Gentiles, the pagans, live.  Their failure to accept knowledge of God, and of His gift of salvation, has caused them to lose sensitivity to each other.   As a result they have given themselves over to sensuality, indulging impurity and being filled with greed.  The argument is often made by those who do not know the Lord that they express their love of their fellow man through their sensuality, but Paul tells us that their indulging in sensuality the way in which they do actually demonstrates their lack of awareness of the needs of their fellow man and is a form of selfishness counter to love.  That sensuality is actually an expression of deceitful desires, rather than an expression of love.  Finally, I want to note how Paul connects the sins of sexual immorality with greed.  He shows us that the various sexual sins are one expression of greed, and that greed is idolatry, the worship of something(money, material goods, pleasure, etc.) other than God.

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

Daily Bible Study

December 7, 2024 Bible Study — Good Works Will not Save Us, But We Were Saved in Order to Do Good Works

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Today, I am reading and commenting on Ephesians 1-3.

In this letter to the Ephesians Paul writes that all of us at one time lived in transgressions and sins.  As a result we did not truly live but were dead from those sins and transgressions.  However, God, in His great mercy, raised us up with Christ and made us alive.  This did not result from anything we had done.  Rather it was a gift God which gave us through faith, so that none of us have any room to boast.  Our works did not save us.  God saved us by transforming us so that we could do the good works which He had prepared for us.  Paul teaches a vitally important lesson here.  Good works will not make us right with God and therefore do not give us any basis for boasting.  However, if God has saved us we will do good works because He has remade us for that explicit purpose.  By allowing God to raise us up and give us life we become able to approach God with freedom and confidence.  Even when we, or others about whom we care, face suffering and difficulty, we know that Gd is able to more than we can ask or imagine through His grace working within us.  So we should not be afraid to ask anything of God which we believe will bring Him glory.

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

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December 6, 2024 Bible Study — Against Such Things There Is No Law

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Today, I am reading and commenting on  Galatians 1-6.

In his letter to the Galatian believers Paul addresses two issues in the Galatian Church.  Having written that I went back to the passage to compose my thoughts about the first issue and realized that in some ways they are different expressions of the same issue. Paul begins by writing that the reports he is receiving suggest that the Galatian believers were being led astray by some teachers who had arrived and claimed to be preaching the Gospel, but were teaching something contrary to what Paul taught.  Paul insists that anything contrary to what he originally preached to them is NOT the Gospel and anyone who so preached should be under God’s curse.  Paul points out that he was not attempting the approval of any human beings (note the similarity to what he wrote to the Corinthians about things other teachers were saying about him).  Paul writes that if he was seeking human approval he would not be a follower of Jesus.  Which suggests that the two issues Paul addresses later in this letter were about attempts to please others rather than God.

Which brings me to the first false teaching Paul counters in this letter.  Some among the Galatian believers were teaching that followers of Jesus needed to follow the Law of Moses, including circumcision for the men, but not limited to that.  Those who followed this teaching were insisting that Christians needed to practice the feast days of Judaism and all other aspects of the Law of Moses.  Paul points out that if we seek to gain righteousness through following the Law, we will be enslaved by the Law, but that we have been freed by Christ and are no longer bound by the Law.  Paul writes that we must choose whether we will live in slavery to the Law or the freedom of Christ.  Paul makes the point that we cannot succeed in being good enough to get into heaven, we can only get into heaven by accepting God’s gift through Christ and putting our faith in Him.

Having established that we have been called to freedom in Christ, Paul then addresses the second false teaching he wanted to counter.  Paul writes that we should not use our freedom in Christ to indulge our sinful desires.  Rather we should humbly serve others with love.  Rather than use our freedom to satisfy our physical desires, we should seek satisfy the Spirit.  He gives a list of the sort of things which grow out of seeking physical pleasure.  I am not going to rewrite that list here because Paul’s list in the passage is well written.  I am however going to reproduce at least part of the list of things which Paul tells us grows out of seeking the please the Spirit, because no one can claim there is anything wrong with any of these: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  Whatever we choose to do, we should ask ourselves in what way that action is an expression of one or more of the things on that list.   If the answer is that it is not in any way an expression of something off of that list, we should refrain from that activity and replace it with something which is an expression of that list.

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

Daily Bible Study

December 5, 2024 Bible Study — Boast Not About Our Strength, Instead Boast About How Christ Used Our Weakness

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Today, I am reading and commenting on 2 Corinthians 9-13.

Paul warns the Corinthian Church that he will be prepared to confront those who continue to live as the people of this world live.  It appears that he had received word that some among the Corinthian fellowship were dismissing his advice on how we should live, basing their position on the idea that Paul was timid and that other more eloquent and impressive “apostles” had taught things which contradicted what Paul had taught.  Paul begins his argument against such people by arguing that we need to make every thought and argument obedient to Christ.  Further, we must demolish every argument or pretension which sets itself up against the knowledge of God.  Then in verse seven of chapter ten as Paul begins to make his argument as to why they should listen to him rather than these supposedly superior “apostles, the translators choose to translate it as, “You are judging by appearances.”, but they mention in the translators’ notes that it could also be translated as, “Look at the obvious facts.”  He then begins to lay out his credentials, but he clearly hesitates to appear to be boasting.  He makes it clear that he does not want to boast, but also that they need to be reminded that his credentials are in no way inferior to those who some of them were citing as authorities against him.  In the process of making his argument Paul paraphrases Jeremiah 9:23-24, “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”  The actual passage reads:

This is what the Lord says:

“Let not the wise boast of their wisdom
    or the strong boast of their strength
    or the rich boast of their riches,
 but let the one who boasts boast about this:
    that they have the understanding to know me,
that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness,
    justice and righteousness on earth,
    for in these I delight,”
declares the Lord.

I think that Paul’s paraphrase is a good summation of those verses.  Nevertheless, Paul does a little boasting here.  He concedes that he is not as polished of a speaker as those to whom some of the  Corinthian believers were turning.  However, he makes clear that we should not allow smooth talkers to deceive us.  Paul’s writing suggests that these “super apostles” whom he challenges here had alleged that Paul had taken advantage of the Corinthian believers.  Once again, Paul appeals to the obvious facts: he had accepted no support from the Corinthian believers when he was among them, and those whom he had sent later had behaved the same.  He had received less in material benefits from them than those who were accusing him of malfeasance. The point of all of this is that before we accept allegations against those who preach the word of God we should examine the facts, not take the word of those who talk a lot about themselves.  The Corinthians believed allegations made by people whose credentials were their claims about themselves.

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

Daily Bible Study

December 4, 2024 Bible Study — Do Not Be Yoked Together With Unbelievers

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Today, I am reading and commenting on 2 Corinthians 5-8.

There are a lot of things I thought about writing on from today’s passage, but  I felt like the thing I should write about is what Paul wrote in chapter six verse fourteen: “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common?”  Often I have heard this quoted in order to support the idea that a believer should not marry someone who has not given themselves to the Lord.  While that is a true sentiment, it is really only a small subset of what Paul is talking about.  A little further on in this passage, Paul quotes from the Old Testament where a prophet wrote that God’s people should come out from among unbelievers and separate themselves from them.  When Paul quotes that he is not saying that we should try to stay away from unbelievers. if we do that, how could we preach the Gospel to them?  The point here is that we should not enter into alliances with unbelievers in our efforts to do God’s will in this world.  If you are starting a business, do not enter into a partnership with unbelievers to do so.   I struggle with explaining this, because every time I think I have the words to say what I understand Paul to mean here, I come up with an example where the words exclude something which Christians are called to do.  The best I can do is offer some examples.  Some years back, some young women who were very committed to serving the Lord became active in an organization seeking to combat pornography, both because of the way in which it victimized its subjects and because of the way it destroyed those who viewed it.  The organization worked against pornography to bring glory to God.  At one point, they were approached by a secular feminist organization which wanted to partner with their organization to fight pornography.  The young women brought this partnership up to a Bible Study group which I was part of as well as praise for the hand of God working.  Having just read this passage a few days earlier I was struck by this being them yoking their organization with unbelievers and warned them to be careful about such a partnership.  They dismissed my concerns because the partnership was focused exclusively on fighting pornography.  A few years later, the once Christian women’s organization which had been formed to combat pornography was promoting abortion (the young women I had known were strenuously pro-life).  This is not an example of my wisdom, or anything of the sort.  It merely shows that the Spirit had provided a warning against what the Enemy would try to do.  When I started writing that I intended to follow it up with a second example, but it has slipped my mind, and this entry has gotten long enough.  The important point to remember is that, even when a secular group shares our concerns on a particular issue, they have a different agenda than that of those who follow Christ and may choose to morph the goals of our mutual organization into things which are contrary to the Gospel of Christ.

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

Daily Bible Study

December 3, 2024 Bible Study — Letting God’s Glory Shine Through Us

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Today, I am reading and commenting on  2 Corinthians 1-4.

In today’s passage, Paul writes about how the glory of God in the old covenant was such that Moses needed to place a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from being overwhelmed by the glory which shown out from his face.  He makes this point after writing that the glory of the Gospel is much greater than that of the old covenant.  Yet, he also tells us that when we turn to Jesus, the veil which hides God’s glory from us is taken away.  Therefore since we can look directly into the glory of God, we should not use deception or distortion in our effort to bring people to God.  Instead, we should set forth what we believe, and know to be true, plainly and clearly so that others can see the glory of God and be transformed by it, even as we are being transformed by it.  If we remain faithful and true to the message which God has given us, His light will shine through us so that even those who choose to veil themselves from His glory will see it shining out from us.

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