(#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.

(#1 Session 5) Day 5 - New Life in the Spirit & Body of Christ

Shalom Aleichem and welcome to my bi-monthly blog!

In our last session, we saw how no one could enter the Kingdom of God unless they were born again in the Spirit. On the night before He was to be crucified, Jesus prepared His disciples for His soon departure, promising them that He would not leave them as orphans but would send them “another advocate … the Spirit of truth.” Jesus reassured them that He would come to them - because the Holy Spirit is none other than the Spirit of Christ Himself.

The Holy Spirit - from the Hebrew words Ruakh (meaning breath/wind/spirit) and Hakodesh (meaning Holy) or the Greek word Pneuma (which also means breath/wind/spirit) - is the third person of the Holy Trinity after God the Father and Jesus. The Holy Spirit is the very breath or spirit of God.

Now, the Holy Spirit is not new or the result of Jesus’ finished work on the Cross. He is mentioned in the Old Testament and is the channel through whom God most often worked in history. In His Spirit, God initiates and accomplishes His will through men. In fact, we cannot please God apart from His Spirit working in us to do so.

Jesus was conceived, baptised and ministered in the Holy Spirit (References). In Jesus, the Holy Spirit accomplished God’s divine will where Israel had earlier failed (References).

And now, through Jesus, we receive the Holy Spirit and are born again into the new life as promised by God in the Old Testament (Ezek 36:25-27). This new life marks the start of the Fifth Day of Creation.

It is worth noting that the Fifth Day of the original Creation Account concerned new life in the water and sky. Throughout the Bible, we see the Holy Spirit described in relation to these two elements - as living waters (here, we have the words baptism/cleansing/pouring out of the Spirit), wine (to contrast against the infilling of the Spirit), or oil (symbolic of the anointing of the Spirit), and as wind or breath (making up forty percent of all Old Testament references to the Holy Spirit; being born again from above, the wind in Pentecost), tongues of fire or dove. It is only on the Sixth Day of Creation that we speak about life on earth - the earthly rule of Man (being literally formed from dust) in contrast to the divine rule of the Spirit.

As mentioned earlier, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ in us, through whom we are born again into the new life. We receive the Baptism of the Holy Spirit usually at the point of conversion when we are convicted of sin by the Holy Spirit, repent and receive Jesus as Lord and Saviour (References).

Thereafter, as we grow in our spiritual walk with God, we continually experience the Infilling of the Holy Spirit as He cleanses, transforms and empowers us for His work and purposes (References). The Holy Spirit is our Comforter/Helper/Counsellor who leads us into all truth - teaching, bringing to remembrance Jesus’ words and glorifying/testifying of Him; who intercedes for us; who adopts us into God’s family - restoring our true identity; and who guards our salvation until the day of redemption (References).

But beyond being just individuals, we are also joined with the larger Body of Christ by the Holy Spirit, to be used by Him to bring the Body to maturity with the fullness of the Gentiles. I want to stress this very important point - our new life in Jesus’ Spirit cannot be separated from our new life in His Body the Church, regardless of its imperfections, challenges and failures, especially as Christ’s return draws nearer.

As we turn next to study the book of Acts, we will see how the Holy Spirit grew the early Church as He empowered both the Apostles and ordinary believers, baptising them into the Body of Christ and equipping them for service, building up the Church to be a fitting dwelling place for God, bringing about true unity, raising up leaders and commissioning and making competent those to be sent out (References).

Link to presentation.