1 Corinthians (Program #19) – Growth in Life Needed (2)

In first Corinthians the apostle Paul confronts the difficult situation in the church there in a very wise way. He first identifies that their problems would due primarily to a shortage of the growth in the divine life. Although they had received the initial gifts of the divine life and the Holy Spirit they were still infants or babes in Christ.

He then unveils to them the marvelous progression of God’s economy. First they need to realize that they are all plants growing on God’s farms. Then the goal is to be built up together into a building and finally that this building is destined to become God’s dwelling place, His temple.

How about you and me? Have we received such a vision, such a revelation or are we like the Corinthians satisfied to remain in our spiritual infancy and hang on to personal preferences in our own traditions?

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John (Program #18) – The Need of the Immoral – Life’s Satisfying (2)

There is quite a sharp contrast between the Lord’s way and the way I would call religion severity. His way was gentle, wise, divine, and I would say humane. What a wise Savior we have!

In our last program, we fellowshipped about the first part of John 4 and the woman at the well not being satisfied. The Lord told her that if she continued to drink of that water, she would never be satisfied. This is evidence by the fact that she went from husband to husband. And even the one that she was with at the time, she was not married to. This is a thirsty, thirsty woman. And what the Lord offered her was not religion, but Himself as another kind of water, living water. Isn’t this what the Lord is saying to all of us in that we never seemed to be satisfied?

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John (Program #17) – The Need of the Immoral – Life’s Satisfying (1)

Many people today have a hunger inside of them. They can’t be satisfied. So the second need of man after we receive the eternal life is to enjoy eternal life, and to drink of the eternal life until the eternal life becomes in us a well of water springing up.

In yesterday’s broadcast, Witness spoke from John chapter 3, concerning the increase of Christ and the immeasurable Christ.  Today we continue our life study of the gospel of John with the case of the Samaritan woman in chapter 4, showing how the divine life meets the need of the immoral by the satisfaction of the living water.

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Haggai (Program #1) – The Building of the House of Jehovah in Relation to Israel’s Welfare and Messiah’s Coming

Some of the most penetrating words in all of Scriptures are found in the Old Testament Prophet, Haggai. They are penetrating because they have immediate relevant to every believer. And they touch us in some of the most carefully guarded places in our hearts.

“Is it time for you yourself to dwell in your paneled-up houses?” he writes, “while this house,” God’s House “lies waste?..Consider your ways, you sown much but you bring in little, you eat but there is no satisfaction.”

Haggai was a prophet raised up by the Lord to accompany His people on their return to Judah and Jerusalem following the 70 long years of captivity in Babylon. And when they returned they faced the temple, God’s house in ruin and in desperate need of rebuilding. But they like so many of us today have become completely preoccupied and engrossed with their own needs and situations. And the result as imply by Haggai probing questions is that, in spit of all of their effort and dedication without God’s hand of blessing in their lives, they and we would never be satisfied regardless of how much material wealth or possession we acquired. These are questions that must be asked again and again among God’s people.

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Job (Program #13) – The Final Outcome, Under God’s Consummation

Job was a man fully absorbed in seeking to be upright, perfect and righteous before God. And without dispute, he had obtained much of what he sought after. Yet the book of Job reveals that God would never be satisfied by having His people obtain just a high and ethical condition such as Job’s. And so bit by bit Job was led progressively to lose all his natural attainments and with their loss also came the loss of his trust and reliance upon himself. Listen to Job 42:5-6, “I had heard of You by the hearing of the ear, But now my eye has seen You; Therefore I abhor myself, and I repent in dust and ashes.” Not until so much of his self has been stripped away did Job begin to gain something of God and to have God Himself added to his being. This is the ultimate revelation of the book of Job and the ultimate revelation of the entire Bible.

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1 Peter (Program #10) -The Full Salvation of the Triune God and Its Issues (8)

As believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, we accept the Bible as truth.  John 17 says specifically, “Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth.”  And so when we come to verses such as John 3:16 for example, “for God so love the world that He gave His only begotten Son.”  We take that as truth without question.  But are we satisfied merely to accept the objective fact that God surely loves us or have we  in fact experienced His love in a personal and subjective way? 

The apostle Peter was one, whom no doubt knew the objective teaching of God’s love.  But it must have been his deep and personal experience and appreciation of the loving Savior that prompted him to write in the deeply and experiential manner that we find in his New Testament epistles.

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