Ezekiel (Program #14) – God’s Recovery by Life

The Old Testament book of Ezekiel is broken up into four main sections. The first section is the amazing vision in chapter 1 of God’s move. Then from chapter 2 through 32 it covers God’s judgment and the degradation of God’s people. And then we jump to a very encouraging section – the third section which is God’s recovery by life from chapters 33 to 39. And this recovery by life will issue in God’s holy building from chapter 40 through the end of the book in chapter 48.

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Mark (Program #2) – A Word of Introduction (2)

Many people wonder why the Bible gives us four historical accounts of the life and ministry in Jesus. One of reasons is the each of the four gospels portrays Christ in a unique aspect.  For example, Matthew a book on the kingdom of God reveals Christ in His kingship. Luke shows us Christ’s perfect and upright humanity as a genuine man.  John on the other hand stresses the eternal, uncreated life of God as it is revealed in Christ. John is the gospel of Christ’s divinity.

Then what about Mark?  Well, chapter 10:45 gives us a clue,  “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many.” Mark is wonderful in that it uniquely reveals that Christ lay aside His kingship, His status as God and even His position as a high and honored man to become God’s servant and eventually to become a slave to all mankind giving His life as a ransom for many.

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Jeremiah (Program #21) – The Principle of Being One with God

Let me ask you, “What is sin?” As you ponder this great and universal question and before you begin enumerating any number of transgressions that would easily fall into the general category of sin, please consider that the Bible makes a clear distinction between “sin” and “sins”. Sins are the by products of the principle of sin. So, once again let me ask, “What is sin”? Well if we drop our own speculations and restrict our consideration to the clear revelation of the Bible, we realize that sin is fundamentally a matter of leaving God and doing something by ourselves and for ourselves. In other words, sin is to take anything other than God as our unique source. He desires to be the source of our life, of our living and even of our satisfaction. Any departure from taking Him as our source is sin and it will unavoidably result in innumerable sins. In that light, now let’s consider these verses from the very beginning of the Bible, Genesis 2:9, 16-17 “And out of the ground Jehovah God caused to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, as well as the tree of life in the middle of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And Jehovah God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden you may eat freely … But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, of it you shall not eat; for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

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Song of Songs (Program #9) – Sharing in the Work of the Lord

There are many ways to study the Bible. We may study it from a historical perspective or from a theological doctrinal perspective or we may study it as a book of moral precepts or as a pattern for our living. Surely the Bible is a book of truth but preeminently, the Bible is also a book of life. “I have come that you might have life”, the Lord Jesus said in John. And also in John He said, “The words that I speak are spirit and are life”.

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Song of Songs (Program #5) – Called to Live in Ascension as the New Creation in Resurrection

In the second stage of the Song of Songs, the lover of Christ learns three basic lessons: the power of resurrection, the riches of resurrection, and, the life of the cross. Today in our program, we will go on to the third stage of the lover of Christ in the lover’s experience of pursuing Christ which is the call to live in ascension as the new creation in resurrection. This covers Song of Songs chapters 3:6 – 5:1.

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Proverbs (Program #7) – Coming to Proverbs to Cultivate Our Regenerated New Man

Paul, the apostle tells us that the Bible has the potential to affect us when we read it in two very different ways. In 2 Corinthians 3:6 he says “Who has made us sufficient as ministers of a new covenant, ministers not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” Do we have this realization when we come to the word of God?  The same words can either become Spirit and life to us or they can become dead letters to us. It all depends on how we come to the Bible and what kind of persons we are that will determine what we receive. We’re all fallen creatures with an old fallen nature and an old life the Bible calls the old man. When this old man comes to the Bible in order to find help to improve itself before God, the result will be predictable, the result of death.

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Proverbs (Program #3) – The Detailed Precepts for Man To Live a Proper Human Life (1)

Whenever we come to God’s word, whether to a deeply spiritual book such as Ephesians or to a book with easy to understand, ethical and moral precepts such as Proverbs, the kind of person that we are will have much to do with what we take away from our reading of the Bible. In fact, the Bible itself tells us that the words of Scripture can be spirit and life to us as we see in John 6, “The words which I have spoken to you are spirit and are life”. But the same New Testament also provides a strong word of caution in 2 Corinthians 3, “Who has made us sufficient as ministers of a new covenant, ministers not of the letter but of the Spirit, for the letter kills but the Spirit gives life”. Spirit and life or dead letter, the Bible can be either. And the determining factor as to which we will experience has everything to do with us and how we approach this word of God.

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Revelation (Program #10) – Ephesus – Love, Life and Light

No doubt, hundreds of volumes and countless thousands of pages have been written concerning the 2,000 years of church history since the Lord Jesus established the first church in Jerusalem. Church historians have had much to say as they have looked back through time. But do you realize that the Bible, in just two short chapters in the Book of Revelation, gives an incredibly comprehensive summary of the history, and did it before that history happened.

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Psalms (Program #3) – Christ in God’s Economy versus the Law in Man’s Appreciation (2)

The Bible is not an ordinary book.  Though it surely contains a lot of history, we should not read it as a history book. It also contains scores of moral and behavioral imperatives but we should not take it as a book of ethics.  Neither should we approach the Bible as a book of philosophy . Because beyond all of these things, history, ethics, philosophy, The Bible is in its’ essence, God’s own breath revealing the Christ of God enable to convey God Himself as life into those who come to seeking nothing else but His very person.

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Jude (Program #6) – The Basic Structure of the Epistles of Peter and Jude (2)

The epistles of 1 and 2 Peter and Jude have occupied us now for the past nine weeks on this program. And today we conclude the life study of these three short but very significant books in the divine record. But not with the systematic or academically summary but rather by following the spiritual thread that links these three books. Though they are separated in the canon scripture by the three epistles of John in their subject and basic structure they bear a striking similarity and easily warrant being considered as a group.

All three were written against the back drop of the degradation and decline of the church, a time of apostasy. And therefore all three can be considered as an inoculation against the heresies that were damaging the testimony of the church at that time. Yet they also shared a basic structure that is one hundred percent positive and absolutely in concert with the central focus of the entire New Testament. And that is that we would all be brought into the real enjoyment of the Triune God. In order that through His operation in us we would be transformed that we would be built up into His spiritual habitation so that He could indwell us and that we would express Him for eternity.

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