2 Corinthians (Program #24) – The Essence of the New Covenant Ministry (1)

The apostle Paul’s writings in the New Testament are rich with the use of metaphors. He frequently used metaphors to help convey the deep and profound meaning of the highest spiritual truths contain in scriptures.

Two such metaphors are found in 2 Corinthians chapter 3. In this chapter we, the believers are first liken to letters, letters of Christ been written or inscribed by the apostles with the Holy Spirit as the ink. How about that?

Later in chapter 3 we become mirrors that both behold and reflect the glory of the Lord. Metaphors like these inspired by the Spirit Himself do help unlock the unsearchable riches of Christ both in our experience and in the working out of God’s great plan, a full salvation.

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2 Corinthians (Program #23) – Transformed into the Image of the Lord by Beholding and Reflecting (2)

There are many marvelous word pictures or metaphors in the Bible. Without which the task of comprehending many of the deeper truths and thoughts of scriptures would be difficult indeed. But most of those whom were used by the Holy Spirit to bring God’s divine revelation to man were very adapt at the used of such metaphors and for those of us who love the Bible, the riches that it contains. We come to love the types and shadows and metaphors as well.

2 Corinthians, Paul’s autobiography in a sense is a book that is replead with such metaphors. And as we’ve seen in chapter 3 are among the most significant.

Listen once again to Paul’s word again in 2 Corinthians 3:

16 “But whenever their heart turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.”

17 “And the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”

18 “But we all with unveiled face, beholding and reflecting like a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord Spirit.”

Just how is it that we can be transformed as spoken of in these verses?

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2 Corinthians (Program #17) – Attached, Anointed, Sealed, Captured, Subdued, and Led to Scatter the Incense of Christ

In one short passage in 2 Corinthians chapter two, the apostle Paul uses two striking metaphors that give us a marvelous insight into his understanding of the Christina life, his service to the Lord and what it means to be a pattern to the believers.

14 “But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in the Christ and manifests the savor of the knowledge of Him through us in every place.”

15 “For we are a fragrance of Christ to God in those who are being saved and in those who are perishing:”

The first metaphor that of a possession, of captured folks. We, who were previously God’s enemy are been captured and subdued by Him and now are following His victorious possession willingly.

The second metaphor is that of incense bearer, those who accompany such a possession, scattering the sweat fragrance of Christ. A fragrance that affects all who come in contact with it. May we all be such one, captured, subdued and led by Him and now those who even scatter His very fragrance.

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2 Corinthians (Program #6) – The Ministry of the New Covenant (2)

Metaphors play an important role in Scripture. Webster says a metaphor is the use of one set of words to describe or illustrate a similar point.

John uses the technique when he speaks of Jesus approaching him in the gospel. “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” Surely he wasn’t saying that Jesus was a literal “lamb”. But the metaphor or picture gives us a much richer and clearer understanding.

The apostle Paul was also very fond of metaphors, particularly when conveying his deepest thoughts in teachings. We see it used intensively in 2 Corinthians. For example in 2 Corinthians chapter 2:14 he says “But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in the Christ”  Here, the metaphor is the triumphant possession of captured and vanquished folks after a Roman battle. And Paul says that we, the believers had become such vanquished ones in the train of the victorious Christ.

Now, we come to another marvelous metaphor in the very next chapter, chapter 3 of 2 Corinthians begins this way:

1-3 “Are we beginning again to commend ourselves? Or do we need, as some do, letters of commendation to you or from you? You are our letter, inscribed in our hearts, known and read by all men, Since you are being manifested that you are a letter of Christ ministered by us, inscribed not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tablets of stone but in tablets of hearts of flesh.”

Living letters of Christ. This is our topic today.

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Exodus (Program #44) – Drinking the Water of Life (2)

Not all divine secrets in the Bible are revealed in a clear and evident way.  Sometimes God reveals His secrets in a hidden way.  The Bible contains many such hidden secrets that require the Lord’s shining to see clearly.  For example, the Bible commands man to believe in order to be saved, but where does it tell us how to believe?  The Bible also tells us to eat and drink of Christ, but how do we eat and how do we drink?  Don’t miss this classic presentation on this life study.

Yesterday, we saw very strikingly that eating and drinking in the Bible are not simply metaphors for us to contemplate.  They are genuine, crucial matters revealed in Scripture.  The Lord clearly said in John that if we don’t know how to eat and drink, we will not have the eternal life in us in a practical way.  It seems that all of us as Christians need to pay our full attention to these matters.

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Joel (Program #3) – On Joel (2)—The Content (1)

The Old Testament Prophets Daniel, Zechariah and Joel all speak prophetically of 4 great empires that would come against God’s chosen people Israel to consume and devour. This consuming had been going on for more than 27 centuries now. History tells us that Daniel got it right when he prophesied in Chapter 2 that these 4 empires that would rule the world and wreck havoc upon Israel would be the Babylonian, the Medo Persian, the Greek and the Roman Empires.  Zechariah saw them as 4 horns. And the Prophet Joel described them as 4 kinds of locusts as in Chapter 1 : 4 “What the cutting locust has left, the swarming locust has eaten; And what the swarming locust has left, the licking locust has eaten; And what the licking locust has left, the consuming locust has eaten.”

Whatever metaphor we use to depict these 4 great empires, the fact is, Israel had been sustained through this long period of suffering and ultimately will turned back to God, and receive a salvation and a restoration. For us, God’s New Testament people these consuming locusts representing all of human government had also been used by God for His specific purpose and goal, and that is the Christ might be manifested.

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Psalms (Program #18) – The Mixed Expressions of the Psalmist’s Sentiment in His Enjoyment of God in God’s House (4 & 5)

The Bible is The Book.  It is one book yet it is made up of 66 books.  All of God’s people love this book and yet to one person it may be a book of laws, to another a book of ethics and morality, to others it is just a book of stories and metaphors.  Actually, the kind of book it is to us depends mainly on what kind of person we are as we read it.  May we be those who have come to the end of keeping the law, the end of human ethics and story-telling.  May we be those who had been brought to the end of ourselves and have discovered that we truly have been crucified with Christ and that it is no longer I that live but Christ who lives in me.

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1 Peter (Program #12) -Growth in Life and Its Results (2)

At times the apostle Peter’s way of writing in his New Testament epistles seems very strange.  Though his content is quite high, he breaks many rules of composition by mixing metaphors and awkward use of grammar.   For example in chapter 2 of 1 Peter he describes the spiritual nourishment in the word of God by comparing it to the nourishing milk of a nursing mother for her new born babe.  But then without any apparent transition the metaphor changes to Christ being a stone for the building up of God’s house.  As a work of literature we might have a ground to criticize Peter, but as a conveyor of rich spiritual content, we will see today that Peter’s writing is full of the divine thought and deep experiential enlightenment.

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