2 Corinthians (Program #14) – The Ministers of the New Covenant (7a)

The apostle Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians chapter 5 that he and the other apostles had received a ministry or reconciliation. To reconcile one person to another is to restore the offending party to the offended party.

Of course in our case we all had offended God and the moment that we believed into Christ, receiving His work on the cross for us, we were brought nigh to Him and experience the first step or first level of reconciliation.

But actually 2 Corinthians reveals that there is a further step, a second level or degree of reconciliation. And that only someone fully in God can have such a ministry to reconcile others fully into God. This is the ministry of reconciliation that Paul was commissioned with.

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2 Corinthians (Program #11) – The Ministers of the New Covenant (4)

2 Corinthians makes a marvelous contribution to the New Testament because it describes so vividly the experience of Christ not from a doctrinal prospective but from the details of how the apostle Paul and his co-workers gain Christ experientially.

In fact chapters three and four may be the top chapters in the whole Bible in the experience of Christ. especially as this experience relates to how the genuine ministers of the New Covenant are produced. What we see in these chapters is that what these ministers preach, teach and minister is not based on what they have heard, studied or learned but upon what they themselves had been constituted with.

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1 Corinthians (Program #31) – Dealing with the Abuse of Freedom (2)

“But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit.”, 1 Corinthians 6:17

We are here today to touch a very critical verse from the New Testament, in fact, probably the most important verse related to our experience of the Lord.

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1 Corinthians (Program #16) – The Church, God’s Farm, God’s Building (1)

The first two chapters of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians are very rich in their presentation of Christ. Paul clearly was doing all he could to bring the troubled Corinthians to Christ in their experience.

But in Chapter three Paul turns his focus to the church. Though not in shallow or superficial language rather he speaks in marvelous profound expressions referring to the church in types.  First as a farm growing, producing a rich crop. Then as a building and ultimately as a temple, a divine dwelling place, build out of priceless materials such as gold, silver and precious stones. Of course these materials are not literally either but types of the transformation work that the Holy Spirit is engaged in with all of us, God’s redeemed.

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Acts (Program #70) – The Propagation in Asia Minor and Europe through the Ministry of Paul’s Company (36)

From the Epistles of the Apostle Paul in the New Testament come profound and inspiring passages such as “For me to live is Christ”, “Whether in life or in death, Christ shall be magnified in my mortal body,” and also “that I may be found in Him”. Where did these incredible utterances come from? Was Paul simply a mouthpiece of the Holy Spirit as the word of God came forth? Or where these phrases the expressions that flowed out of his own experience of the living Christ? We will view the living of the Apostle Paul under the most extreme circumstances as recorded in the pages of Acts on today’s life study of the Bible.

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Acts (Program #60) -The Propagation in Asia Minor and Europe through the Ministry of Paul’s Company (26)

Have you ever been discouraged after speaking to someone about your own experience of Christ? The Apostle Paul in Acts chapter 22 presents the truth of his own conversion and God’s charge to him only to elicit a reaction so violent, so full of anger that he had to be rescued by an entire division of the Roman legion. This account is as enlightening as it is fascinating. Stay with us today for another remarkable life study of the Bible.

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John (Program #49) – Life Processed for Multiplication (4)

Let us all let the wind blow where it wills. And, instead of trying to systematize or schematize the experience of the Spirit, let’s experience the Spirit for the carrying out of God’s economy, letting God truly be God.

John 20 is in many respects, a chapter of realization or actualization. By using these terms, I’m trying to say, that in this chapter we have the reality in actual experience of what the Lord revealed concerning His process elsewhere in the Gospel. He made it emphatically clear in chapters 14 through 16 that He needed to go, that is, die on the cross, and come again, that is come into the disciples as the pneumatic Christ in order to indwell them. He had, as the first half of the Gospel emphasizes, become flesh and tabernacled among human kind. But, God’s goal is to be in His chosen and redeemed people, not merely among them.

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John (Program #36) – The Dispensing of the Triune God for the Producing of His Abode (4)

This is so critical for our experience of Christ to continually say, “Lord Jesus, I love you.” And according to these verses, when you tell the Lord that you love Him, He says “I will love you also, and My Father will love you. I will manifest myself to you. And, not only that, the Father and I will come to you and make an abode with you.”

Thus far, we’ve seen that John 14 is a very mysterious chapter. In verse 2, the Lord says, “In My Father’s house are many abodes”, and this verse has been misinterpreted and misunderstood by many people. What we have seen from the Holy Bible is that the Father’s house is the Church. 1 Timothy 3:15 tells us the Church is the house of the living God. And, in the Church, which is the Father’s house, are many abodes. These many abodes are the many members of the Church as the body of Christ, who are the many dwelling places of Christ. Each believer in Christ, as a member of His body, which is the Church as the Father’s house, is a dwelling place to Christ…

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John (Program #32) – Life’s Washing in Love to Maintain Fellowship (2)

We need to be those who actually experience Christ as life meeting our various needs.  The more we experience Him this way the more we are constituted with Him as the life that washes our brothers and sisters.

Here at a certain point, as the Lord was acutely aware that He was leaving the world and going to the Father, He engaged in a very particular, significant, and touching action.  He laid aside His garments.  That’s a sign.  He girded Himself with a towel, another sign.  And, He began to wash the disciples’ feet.  This is still yet another sign.  And in particular He said, “What I have done to you, you should do to one another.  If I, who am your Lord and master, has washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet”.

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John (Program #9) – An Introduction to Life and Building (4)

God embodied Himself in Christ for our enjoyment.  John 1:16 tells us “of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace.”  The fullness of the Godhead dwells in this Jesus bodily, for our enjoyment. This is grace. Grace is just God Himself for our enjoyment. When you enjoy God, when you participate in God, that is grace. Grace is God for your enjoyment, not in doctrine but in your experience as your strength, as your life, as your comfort, as your rest, as your power, righteousness and holiness. Christ declared the Father to us in the way of enjoyment. The more we enjoy God, the more we know God…

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