(#4 Session 5) Day 5 - Rhema of the Holy Spirit (The Apostolic Message 2 - Hope)

Shalom Aleichem and welcome to my bi-monthly blog!

In our last session, we looked at the Rhema of the Holy Spirit as spoken through the Apostles, beginning with the foundation of our Christian faith - Faith in Christ alone. This forms the solid rock on which we stand. But we are to do more than just stand still -

We are to walk with God in Hope thru the Spirit. Here, the Gospel is not only simple but is God’s wisdom and power enabling us to lead holy lives with the Holy Spirit’s help. The Spirit is “Christ in you, the HOPE of glory” (References).

We saw earlier how Jesus promised His disciples and those who believed in Him that He would not leave them alone but would send another Helper and Comforter to be with them. Ever since the day of Pentecost, believers had been baptised and infilled with the Holy Spirit to empower them in their lifelong journey with God even as God set them apart for His Kingdom work and purposes.

Now, the simple message of salvation by grace through faith alone had led some to mistakenly believe that they were “free” to live as they wished since they were already saved no matter what they did. This was the case with the Corinthian Church in Paul’s time and among Churches today that preach what we call the “hyper grace” gospel. Against this, James warned that faith without works was dead while Paul urged believers “to work out your salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12) and not use their freedom in Christ to become slaves to the flesh and sin again.

At the other extreme, there were those who insisted on the need to continue to follow the Law of Moses or to engage in some other forms of holy works or else risk losing their salvation. Paul made clear that such fleshly efforts would ultimately fail, or else Christ would have died for nothing.

So what is it? Do we or do we not work out our faith?

The solution to this apparent paradox of faith vs works can be found in Paul’s call for believers to walk in the Spirit so as not to gratify the desires of the flesh. It is true that faith without works is dead. But it is equally true that works without faith are bound to fail, because apart from the Spirit, we will not succeed. As Paul put it in Rom 7:21-25, “Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

Now, many of us will probably want to know how we are to walk in the Spirit and in so doing have a faith that really works.

If I could sum it up in one sentence, we have to continually strive against our flesh and turn away from the things of this world; saturate our mind with God’s Word, which is the sword of the Spirit to tear down our mental strongholds; and rest our spirit in God’s Spirit, learning to move according to His rhythm of grace and allowing our inner man to be ministered by Him, especially through praying in tongues.

The truth is, we are dependent on God to work in us through His Spirit, but we are still expected to do our part. God supplies, but we must still labour. Peter put it this way - God’s divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life; yet, and in fact for this very reason, we are to make every effort to live out this godly life (2 Pet 1:3-7). We can square this circle by heeding this simple rule of thumb - work as though everything depended on us, but rest and trust in God as everything ultimately depended on Him. It has to be 100% God and 100% man.

Finally, we are refined through trials and persecutions, for it is often only then that we experience how real and powerful the Holy Spirit is. When it comes to physical exercise, we have heard the phrase - “no pain, no gain.” If we don’t sweat it, we won’t get it. It is the same with our inner spiritual man - we only grow spiritually when the going gets tough, not when we are comfortable and complacent. James touched on this when he encouraged the early Jewish believers to boldly live out their faith despite the persecution taking place then. Paul explained how true spirituality and godliness was measured not by spiritual gifts and talents but a life that displayed God’s power amidst suffering and weakness. Peter, addressing Christians during the great persecution under the Roman Emperor Nero, spoke of how suffering was a part of God’s will to purify their faith for His glory.

Now may our Lord create in us a clean heart and renew in us a right spirit - His Spirit - (Ps 51:10) until we meet again in our next session, and until He returns to bring us home.

Link to presentation.

(#3 Session 5) Day 5 - Rhema of the Holy Spirit (The Apostolic Message 1 - Faith)

Shalom Aleichem and welcome to my bi-monthly blog!

We saw previously the acts of the Holy Spirit, as He directed the growth and development of the early Church. In the next three sessions, we will look at the Rhema of the Holy Spirit as He spoke through the Apostles, especially Paul.

In terms of God’s unfolding Rhema, we saw earlier the message of the Old Testament Prophets as summarised above. These Prophets ultimately pointed us to the Messiah and His Kingdom rule.

In God’s Kairos, Jesus came to partially fulfill this Old Testament promise. Coming as Messiah ben Joseph, the Lamb of God and Saviour of the World, Jesus revealed that His Kingdom was not of this world - it would be like a hidden treasure, a narrow door, where the last would be first and the least would be greatest. While the Kingdom would experience extraordinary growth, Jesus warned that it would comprise those who truly belonged to Him and those who didn’t. The Kingdom would only be made perfect when Jesus returned on the Day of the Lord which, though a long time in coming, would suddenly appear at God’s appointed time. Until then, believers were called to receive His Word, repent and be reborn in the Holy Spirit in order to enter this Kingdom. Jesus also prayed for his disciples to be united in His Spirit as one Body of Christ.

In the New Testament Letters, the Apostles built upon this progressive revelation of God’s Rhema found in the Old Testament prophecies and Jesus’ words. If we could summarise their Apostolic message, it was about living in the Spirit and Body of Christ in Faith, Hope and Love until Jesus returned.

First, Faith in Christ - this is the foundation of our Christian faith.

We saw earlier the demands made by the Judaizers on Gentile believers and how Christianity might have remained a Jewish faith that would live or die along with the nation of Israel. Against this, the New Testament writers - especially Paul in his letters to the Galatians, Romans and Ephesians - as well as the Jerusalem Council affirmed this simple yet central truth that we were saved by grace through faith in Christ alone. This freed Christianity from the clutches of Judaism just in time before Israel was wiped out for the next 2,000 years. However, when Rome became a Christian empire two centuries later in 312 AD, the Church became more and more “of this world” as Church and State, religion and politics, got entangled. The Church started to exert power and political influence over believers and the State by imposing all sorts of unbiblical religious demands, until the Protestant Reformation set Christianity free from these chains.

Today, this important truth of the Gospel continues to be attacked both from inside and outside the Church. In response, we need to remember that the Gospel of Christ is simple, sufficient and supreme.

Our Christian Faith is simple - let us not be caught up in endless futile intellectual arguments that take us away from the plain message of the Gospel, or go in pursuit of some special knowledge or revelation like the Gnostics of John’s day. It is not the increase of “knowledge” but knowing Jesus through a personal and intimate encounter and relationship with Him that matters.

Our Christ is sufficient - Jesus has done all that is necessary for our salvation. There is nothing we can do that will make God value us more than He already does, and no sin that we can commit that will make Him love us less. Our identity and worth is found in being His child by faith alone. Jesus is also more than enough for every situation we face - wisdom for understanding and discernment, grace and strength during trials and temptations, and courage, peace and joy under persecution.

Our Christ is supreme - Jesus is ruler over all and therefore victorious in all our battles and deserving of our wholehearted devotion.

Link to presentation.

(#2 Session 5) Day 5 - Acts of the Holy Spirit (From Jerusalem to Rome)

Shalom Aleichem and welcome to my bi-monthly blog!

Let us consider the first 70 years of the Church, during which time the entire New Testament was written.

Christianity actually began as a Jewish religion. The first believers were Hellenistic (Greek-speaking) Jews present in Jerusalem for the Pentecost who heard the Gospel in their own dialects. At that time, there was a wider shift in influence in Jewish society from Hebrew to Greek-speaking Jews. These Hellenistic Jews, who came from outside the Promised Land, were even more “Jewish” than the native-born Jews in their insistence on Temple worship and following to the Jewish customs. They were the ones who stoned Stephen, the first martyr or believer who was killed for Christ, for undermining traditional Judaism. The Apostle Paul was one of these Jews, born in what is today South-Central Turkey, who actively participated in Stephen’s death and led the subsequent persecution of the Church. Even among believers, these Jews would later become the “Judaizers” that harassed the Gentile Christians, insisting that they be circumcised and become Jewish converts before they could be accepted into the Faith.

Looking back however, we clearly see the Spirit at work in the growth of the early Church, for had it not been for the persecution then, the Church would not have been scattered and forced to bring the Gospel throughout Judea, Samaria and beyond. Even then, we see the Apostles staying put in Jerusalem, while Philip the Evangelist only went as far as Samaria - the Samaritans being half Jews - and to the Ethiopian eunuch, who was likely a Jewish convert (References). It took the conversion of Paul - “a Hebrew of Hebrews” and therefore one most qualified to challenge the Judaizers - to fulfill Jesus' commandment for the Gospel to go beyond Israel and the Jews to those living throughout the known world then. Paul became God’s Apostle to the Gentiles - His chief evangelist and theologian of this new and distinct Christian faith (References).

The next major development in Christianity was the convening of the Jerusalem Council in 50 AD. As Paul embarked on the first of his missionary journeys to bring the Gospel across the Roman Empire, many Gentiles came into the Faith. However, they would soon be harassed by the Judaizers mentioned earlier. The Jerusalem Council overruled these Judaizers and upheld the central Christian doctrine that we were all saved (justified) by grace through faith in Christ alone and not through circumcision or following the laws of Moses as a Jewish convert. As a result, Christianity broke out of its Jewish shell to become a distinct faith that will one day transform the Jewish people and nation according to God’s eternal plan and will. This truth - justification by faith in Christ alone - would also rescue the Church during the Protestant Reformation from spiritual bondage.

A final significant event that shaped Christianity was the destruction of Jerusalem and the Jewish Temple in 70 AD. This marked the end of Israel as a nation and the beginning of the “Times of the Gentiles”. It set into motion God’s timetable to bring in the summer harvest of the fullness of the Gentiles as the Spirit, through the Church, moved across the nations. But now that God has brought Israel back to life in 1948, we can expect the end of the summer harvest soon.

What remained were the events that marked the closing years of this Age of the Apostles, a time of persecution under the Roman authorities and emergence of false doctrines such as Gnosticism, which denied that Christ really came as a human being and advocated instead salvation through the pursuit of Gnosis or “special knowledge.” This period gives us a taste of what it will be like in the end times as widespread tribulation and apostasy sweep over the Church and the world with the rise of the end-time Babylon/Rome and Rule of the Antichrist seen in the book of Revelations.

As we reflect on these early developments in the Church, we are reminded of how God is always sovereign and His will is always done often in spite of our weaknesses and failings and even our outright disobedience and rebellion. It was so with Israel, and it remains so with the Church. May this knowledge comfort us as we faithfully await the return of our Lord and King.

Link to presentation.