Bible Study

Hey Everyone,

We are coming up on Passover (Pesach) and Dr. Baruch Korman has done an outstanding video regarding how the Passover is done in Jewish homes. Remember, that to the Jewish people, believing in the blood of the lamb on the doorposts in Egypt, "stopped the destroyer angel". In the action of adding the blood of the lamb to the doorposts, the angel would pass over the house and not cause death to the firstborn. Many Egyptians and Jewish families who saw the mighty signs of God's destruction through 10 plagues, decided to participate and believed God by faith in the blood of the lamb on the door posts. On those households who decided not to participate or rather did not believe God's word, and stubbornly refused, someone died in their household in Egypt. The King of Egypt, "let the Jewish people go" into the wilderness and into God's care. The Jewish nation was born. A nation based on God's word. As Christian, (One who believes and follows Christ and His word) we recognize and remember His blood shed for our sin! That is significant. We can place our sin on Christ by faith, just as the Jewish believers did in the Passover lamb. 

As Christ said, "It is finished". That is all of our sins were washed away...if we put our sin on Him and believe in His resurrection. He literally trades us our sin for His righteousness! Doesn't that make you want to live for Him? On top of this wonderful gift, which is good news, Christ sent us the Holy Spirit to make us born again and to write the laws of God on our hearts! WOW! So turn to Him today and believe in His death, for your sin, and believe in His resurrection as our promise of eternal life. Through Christ, our sin problem was "fixed" with God and we have "Peace with God", and we now have the power to walk with our God and please Him. Titus 2:11-12. Make peace with Him today!

Pray this way: "Lord, Jesus there are only two ways to look at life. I can try to be a good person based on what I think is good or some other religion. Or I can place my sin on Your death and resurrection and ask You to forgive my sin which I do. I am so sorry for what I have done and the people I have hurt. I beg you to forgive me. Will you give me a new heart? Please send the Holy Spirit to live in me and give me new birth so I can be a part of Your Kingdom. The thief on the cross had minutes to live and asked You to remember him when You get to Your heavenly Kingdom. Will you do the same for me? Please save me by Your power. Amen."

Passover Demonstration from LoveIsrael.org on Vimeo.

We are having a Bible Study on What is Blessing?

We all want it. But what is it?

We all want health, wealth, and happiness. Right? Is being blessed a better job? More money? Healing? Notice that this definition is about us…getting what we want. The Lord Jesus Christ came to do the "Will of My Father." Our will or His Will? I want…or What He wants?

Grab a beverage (this is not to insinuate alcohol) and now read Deuteronomy 28, the full chapter. I will wait. (tapping fingers but not impatiently. Your eyes will light up)

Notice the first two verses. Read them again.

1 "Now it shall be, if you diligently obey the LORD your God, being careful to do all His commandments which I command you today, the LORD, your God, will set you high above all the nations of the earth. 2 "All these blessings will come upon you and overtake you if you obey the LORD your God: Now continue to read to vs. 15.

Let's do some observations:

1. Notice the conditions? Diligently obey, and careful to do… "all His commandments…" (the Word of God) THEN you are blessed.

2. Blessed are you in most areas of your life where you have influence. Can you do God's Will at work, at home, in your personal life? We are called to do just that. We live so short lives here on earth and then are headed to eternity. Does it matter how we live our lives on the earth? Youbetcha! As we say in Wisconsin. We only get one shot at this life. How will we respond to God? I want? Or what He wants?

3. Lest people think this is legalism to obey the Bible (His Word), let us remember the words of Christ to His disciples. "If you love me, you will obey my commandments." Let this sink in: IF YOU LOVE ME. YOU WILL OBEY. HMMM. That is a game-changer. "Hey BSC, my church says I am no longer under the law?". How will you know what sin is if you don't know the bible and what the law has to say? How will you know you are offending God? Did you know the law shows us our sin? And it shows us God's righteous character? How will you get to know God personally if you don't know His character? He sent the Holy Spirit to help us. see 1John 2:26-

Did you know you cannot keep the law? No one could. But He can help us if we ask. Yeah, let that sink in. Why? Because Grace is the power to change to God's will, in our opinion. Besides, think about this: John 14:15 is one of the verses that show us He is telling His disciples that HE IS GOD (they are His commandments because He wrote them!) And without the Holy Spirit's help, we cannot obey.

Now go read Titus 2:11-12 because this is the definition of grace. Waiting. Grace is Christ coming to save us and then empowering (blessing us) to be taught AWAY from ungodliness. What is ungodliness? What is evil? Evil is anything outside of God's will. Now ask yourself questions.

Back to Deut 28. The first 15 verses discuss the blessings. I showed this to my daughter, and she looked at me and said, "Dad, the Lord is doing the work!". I said, "I knowwwwww! And I don't think we were designed by Him to live in this world without His help. Do we want to live our lives in our own strength?

But please read the curses now, which is the next part of this chapter. He wants us to be fruitful, and the curses section is about people who reject His commandments (His Word), to do their will, and are now on their own. Curses should bring us to the fear of the Lord. As we read the curses how should we respond? How can we ask God to help us to obey? Did you notice that perhaps there was some pushback in your heart to obey His word? That is the war that goes on that Paul spoke of in Romans 7. Go read that too. How can you ask Him to help you? Hint. Read Romans 12.

We can conclude that for us to be blessed, God's purpose is for us to carry out His will which is revealed in His Word. So, it is about Him and His Will. Not about you or what ministry you will have. Just serve Him right where you are. How should we respond to God to live a praiseworthy life? Perhaps we can drop to our knees and ask for His help to obey His will, and His word BEFORE WE ASK FOR HIS HELP FOR OUR NEEDS.

To finish our bible study today, here are new testament promises about the blessing from God, which is Matthew 6: "Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? 27 "And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life? 28 "And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin 29 yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. 30 "But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith! 31 "Do not worry then, saying, 'What will we eat?' or 'What will we drink?' or 'What will we wear for clothing?' 32 "For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 "But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. 34 "So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Notice vs 33. Yep. Seek first the Kingdom of God. Have you lost your first love? The one in revelations? What if it isn't emotionalism but actually that we stop putting the Lord Jesus Christ, first in every area of our life? Can we repent and ask for His rulership in all areas of our life?

If you are like us, and struggled to know how to study the bible to live a praiseworthy life to God, our blog has many resources and tools. Your life will never be the same. https://biblestudycompany.com/blog

Love to know your feedback. Share, please.

In lieu of our podcast/video this week we are recommending a great sermon by Dr. Gerry Breshears on SPIRITUAL WARFARE. Mary and I highly recommend this talk as it "snapped" into place many pieces of a puzzle that we saw about spiritual warfare in our studies. For example, why was the earth in a state of chaos (Gen 1:2) if everything God made was "good"? Are we approaching prayer of binding and loosing or tearing down strongholds correct? Was placing Adam in the garden an act of war? Against whom and what? These are all great questions and ones that "snapped" into place. It will make Christ's comments about loving our enemies make sense and why the cross was so important. Adam was as a gardener and so was Christ. When you click the link there is a download for notes. Grab those. 

You have heard it said: “Obedience is better than sacrifice”. What is obedience to God?

We were created in Gen 2 for the purpose of serving God. Our worship and ministry are to HIM ALONE. Just like Adam and Eve. He then put them in His garden. This garden contains His rules and His boundaries. He gave us free will. True love always is about choosing to love or not. God considers those who obey His Word... those who love Him. (John 14:15) Look at your own children. When our kids obey us and the boundaries, we set for them, we swell with pride and want to do all we can to help them to achieve.  But Adam and Eve chose not to obey the Word of God. We are Adam and Eve. We/They decided they would live their own life apart from dependence on God. This caused sin to enter the world and sin creates death and SEPARATION FROM GOD. Their "sin" affected billions of people and the entire creation.  Can we say that the original sin was disobedience to the Word of God?

What hope do we have if they died because of their disobedience to the Word of God? They were separated from God...dead spiritually. We have a clue in John 3 that Christ said we must be born again. How? So this is our study and podcast. There are so many nuggets of biblical truth to help us obey. God answered a question we had of whether He will speak to us because we were not professionals? YES! Proverbs 1 says He is shouting to the world, yet we won't have the ability to hear Him if we are in the mindset of disobedience to God aka sin. Do we want to take that risk in the only life we have to live? Basically, turning from the One Who created us? NO!

Why study the Bible? We are all called to be disciples of Christ if we are born again and have accepted His sacrifice for our sin. Then we are born new in our spirit and now can understand the Word of God. Christ is the Word of God. (John 1). As untrained professionals, how do we approach the Word of God to learn His ways? (Heb 3:10) The disciples were not trained bible teachers. So what was different about them? What can we learn from their lives and why did Christ's focus on them? With the help of the Holy Spirit, they obeyed His Word. (John 14:15) We can too. We need to change our approach from gaining knowledge ABOUT God to OBEDIENCE to God. Join us for Podcast for Pewsitters Bible Study Step 1 Obey God vs Gain Knowledge. Come and join Ric and Mary Joyner for our first weekly series on Bible study of studying the bible to obey God not just gain knowledge about God.