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  THE SPIRIT THAT RAISED CHRIST FROM THE DEAD  On the day of the Resurrection of Jesus some of the Apostles heard the startling report of the women who had visited the tomb where the dead body of Jesus had laid and found it empty, so John and Peter ran there to see for themselves. John arrived first and let Peter go in before him. ‘Then John who had reached the tomb first also went in (after Peter jumped the queue), and he saw and believed— for until then they still hadn’t understood the Scriptures that said Jesus must rise from the dead. Then they went home. (John 20:8). (Why?) That account reveals the confusion and perplexity that the disciples of Jesus still carried in their minds and hearts even after following Jesus for three and a half years and witnessing his miracles and hearing his words of wisdom and receiving his direct instruction. They had also scattered and abandoned Jesus when he was arrested after the Last Supper, and they were devastated by his death on the cross. All their dreams of sharing

GOSPELS 6 KINGDOM WORDS OF BLESSING When we spoke about the wisdom of the words of Jesus in Gospels 5 we saw Jesus being confronted with criticism and antagonism by religious people who were threatened by his undeniable aura of authority. Even his own disciples weren’t quite sure why Jesus was doing the things that he did until they heard Jesus answering his religious critics, so Jesus was teaching them as well as the others – and as well as us, in those moments of enlightenment because of his words of wisdom - revolutionary words of a New Covenant reality that would supersede the Old Covenant religious tradition. This new kind of faith and freedom would be lived by people one day because of his risen life within them. But now we are going to read the next in line topic of revolutionary wisdom words from Jesus. These are words of the inner spiritual blessings of the Kingdom of God, and these words were spoken to the poor and needy, people who, because they had physical afflictions and infectious diseases or d

GOSPELS 5 THE WISDOM AND THE WORKS OF JESUS We are now going to look at some of those powerful works of Jesus in Capernaum and greater Galilee that led up to the homecoming visit of Jesus to Nazareth, and his subsequent proclamation of the Jubilee Year. Those events reveal a fascinating balance of the powerful works of Jesus and the unprecedented and challenging words of wisdom that stunned all those who heard them. The wisdom and the works of Jesus are recorded throughout all the Gospels but in the early chapters of the three synoptic Gospels of Mathew, Mark, and Luke there is a strategic cluster of some of these meaningful events that deserve a mention. Firstly, in Mark Chapter three, and Luke Chapter six and Matthew Chapter ten there is the significant account of the appointing of the twelve Apostles. And He went up on the mountain and called to Him those He Himself wanted. And they came to Him. Then He appointed twelve, that they might be with Him and that He might send them out to preach, and to have pow

GOSPELS 4 NAZARETH AND THE YEAR OF JUBILEE  After the six weeks of temptation in the wilderness Jesus made his way to Galilee on his way back to his hometown of Nazareth. That journey took quite a long time because he performed miracles and healings and regathered his disciples by the sea of Galilee.  The arrest of John the Baptist by Herod would neatly fit anywhere into those six weeks of Jesus in the wilderness.  Mark’s Gospel records in detail the story of Jesus on his journey from the southernmost end of the Jordan after his forty days in the desert as he heads home northward along the seashore of Galilee. He needed to regather his disciples as they had gone back to their fishing for those six weeks while he was in the desert, probably not knowing for how long Jesus would be absent.  Remember that Jesus had already chosen some of them at the time of his baptism by John when they left off being John’s disciples and decided to follow Jesus. Matthew tells the same story of Jesus regathering his disciples as

 GOSPELS 3 OUR IDENTITY AS A CHILD OF GOD. Luke 4:1 Then Jesus, being filled with the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, being tempted for forty days by the devil. It was into the farthest extents of the dry and almost uninhabitable region of the wilderness area where Jesus went, to come head-to-head with the powers of darkness and overcome the temptations of the devil in his time of forty days of prayer and fasting. He would have travelled beyond the low hills of scrubland down into a lifeless wasteland near Jericho where the Jordan river runs into the dead Sea, which is one of the lowest places on the earth.  That is where John the Baptist lived his life of prayer and fasting amongst a community of zealous Jewish disciples and from where John went out to prepare the way of the Lord. Moses and Joshua and Elijah also prayed and fasted for forty days and nights in wilderness areas. Moses and Joshua in their prayer and fasting went to Mt. Horeb, where the Law an

PRAYER OF PEACE  There is a beautiful Scripture of our spiritual communion with God in Philippians 4:6-7 which says ‘Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.’   The wonderful promise of the Prayer of Peace that God gives us in this Scripture is that he will guard and protect our hearts and minds through Jesus Christ. That is what overcomes the anxiety of a busy mind and a fretful heart that burdens our souls, and that is what allows us to pray the prayer of faith with thanksgiving in any situation. The Greek word for anxious is merimna?? which means to be overly troubled by too many concerns and needs at the one time (or all the time), whether these concerns are our own or for others we care for. This Scripture is a gracious appeal from God’s Spirit to our spirit – and our spirit is made up of our mind and our he

THE GOSPELS 2 THE BAPTISM OF JESUS  We saw in the previous story of the Gospels, which was about John’s baptism of repentance, that the four Gospels were written by four different men of different temperaments and backgrounds who wrote from different perspectives and at different times.  This means that there were variations in detail and emphasis in the narratives and there were certain gaps in some Gospels that end up being filled by other Gospels. Fortunately in the previous sermon the starting point in all the Gospels was John’s baptism. That is called the data point or point of convergence. After that event there is variation as to what happens next and that gets more complex as the Gospel story unfolds as the writers are not dedicated to a chronological order of events.  Commentators are astoundingly at odds with one another in agreement with the of the order of events so I’m having my own shot at presenting an order and attempting to give logical reasons - more logic than revelation - as the stories th

GOSPELS 1 BAPTISM OF REPENTANCE  The combined accounts of the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, give us a comprehensive narrative of the life of Jesus from his birth through to his resurrection and ascension into Heaven. The four Gospels are written by four different men of different temperaments and backgrounds who also write from different perspectives, so there are variations in details and emphases and there are certain gaps in some Gospels that end up being filled by other Gospels. For example, only Matthew and Luke write in their early chapters about the birth of Jesus and give genealogies of his ancestry.  The Christmas stories in the books of Matthew and Luke reveal the fact that Jesus and John the Baptist were cousins because of their mothers, Mary and Elizabeth, and would have met one another as families in their younger years when everyone visited the Temple in Jerusalem for the three major Jewish feasts of Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles. And they may also have enjoyed other family

ALL ABOUT DEDICATION  After Jesus was born in Bethlehem, Mary and Joseph had to bring Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem to be dedicated, and Luke describes the dedication ceremony of Jesus in the temple in symbolic detail. ‘Then it was time for their purification offering as required by the law of Moses, so his parents took him to Jerusalem to dedicate him to the Lord. The law of the Lord says, “If a woman’s first child is a boy, he must be dedicated to the LORD.’ (Luke 2:22). The Jewish rite of dedication was a re-enactment of the firstborn sons of Israel being redeemed from the angel of death when Israel was supernaturally released from bondage under Pharoah and the firstborn sons of Egypt were slain (Exodus 13:12). The dedication of the firstborn is called Pidyon haben, whereby the father presents the child with five silver shekels to the priest, returning his firstborn son to God. The priest then symbolically offers to accept five silver shekels instead of the child’s life, and once the payment is made the

THE GOD WITH US CHRISTMAS STORY God spoke to a man called Abraham two thousand years before Jesus was born a word of promise that through him all the families of the earth would be blessed, and the Hebrew nation that came from Abraham and that prophetic word of promise became the light that directed the path of the Hebrews.  That nation of Israel became the witness of God to the world through the covenant of the Law of Moses who established the temple worship and the temple priesthood. But for four hundred years before Jesus was born the light of the prophetic word to Israel and the supernatural witness of God through Israel to the world had ceased, resulting in a time of silence and darkness.  But God was about to give both his light and his Word of the promise of blessing to the world in the most perfect way. Jesus who was and is the Word (logos) of God would become flesh and dwell with us and would become the light of truth and the supernatural witness of God to this world through his Son Jesus. Father wou

Galilee of the Gentiles    Isaiah prophesied around 720 BC about a time and a place where great light would confront great darkness (Isaiah 9:1). The great light that he writes about occurred with the birth of Jesus, the first Christmas almost two thousand years ago, and the place was in the Middle east in a region called Galilee of the Gentiles, where the darkness of the tyranny of the Roman empire had overcome and subsumed all nations and cultures that opposed it.  There is a phrase spoken with a political emphasis today about the river to the sea which is totally unlike the meaning of when it was first mentioned in the Bible about a land between the River to the Sea and I’m now reading that Scripture.  Isaiah 9:1 But the former times of darkness and despair in the land of Zebulon and Naphtali called Galilee of the Gentiles, where lies the way from the Jordan River to the sea, will one day be filled with glory. The people who walk in darkness will see a great light and for those who live in a land of deep d

YOU ARE NOT ALONE We begin reading in Acts Chapter twenty-seven  Acts 27:1 Paul finally leaves Caesarea and starts his voyage of some two thousand seven hundred kilometres to Rome, along with Luke and another Christian named Aristarchus, and other prisoners, all in the custody of a Roman imperial guard named Julius. After battling headwinds, they landed at Smyrna on the coast of Turkey, and from there they sailed for Italy. Again they struck heavy winds along the southern coast of Crete, finally arriving at Fair Havens and staying there for several days, and Paul spoke to the ship’s officers about the weather being dangerous for long voyages and told them he believed there would be trouble ahead if they went on - perhaps shipwreck, loss of cargo, injuries, and death.  But the officers in charge of the prisoners took advice from the ship’s captain and the owner to go further up the coast to a safe harbour called Phoenix for the winter. Then a light wind began blowing from the south so they decided to sail alon

THE ENIGMA OF HOPE  We saw at the end of Acts chapter twenty-one, after the Turkish Jews tried to kill Paul and started a riot, the Roman centurion that rescued Paul from the angry mob gave Paul permission to speak to all the Jews from the steps of the temple of Jerusalem.  Acts 22:1 Brothers and fathers, listen to me as I offer my defence … Paul speaks in Hebrew to the Jews recounting his religious pedigree as a Pharisee and his dramatic conversion to becoming a follower of Jesus. The Jews fly into another rage and tear at their clothes and take Paul to the Roman barracks to be scourged with whips. And when Paul declares his Roman citizenship, the Roman Commander puts a stop to the scourging both because of Paul’s Roman citizenship and because he was confused by the behaviour of the Jews. He didn’t understand why Paul was being accused so he released him and commanded that Paul be tried by the chief priests and the council.  Chapter Twenty-three begins with the council trial and Paul declares to them all tha

GODS SOVEREIGNTY AND OUR FREE WILL 1 We read in the last half of Acts Nineteen how Paul sets up a Bible school called the school of Tyrannus and teaches both Jews and Greeks the Gospel there for two years, and God works powerfully through Paul, so that people who even touched Paul's clothing and handkerchiefs were healed. Many evil spirits came out of people through Paul’s ministry and many people who practiced witchcraft repented and burned their books of magic which were reported to be worth fifty thousand silver coins.  When Paul saw that God’s word was now sovereign and prevailing in Ephesus he decided to move on to Macedonia. Then he said, ‘from there I’m going to Jerusalem and then I'm off to Rome - I've got to get to Rome’. But before he left Ephesus, a man named Demetrius who manufactured and traded statues of the Ephesian goddess Artemis (Diana to the Romans) accused Paul’s teachings of destroying the glory of Artemis, whom the whole world worshipped and that her statues would end up a pile of rubbi

BAPTISM OF FIRE After Paul’s ministry to the Greek philosophers of Athens in Chapter Seventeen Paul left Athens and went to Corinth and met Aquila and his wife Priscilla and lodged with them, working together with them at their common trade of tentmaking. Aquila and Priscilla had just arrived from Italy after being expelled from Rome along with many other Jews by the Roman Emperor Claudius Caesar. For many years the Jews had been exercising political activism and resistance against the Roman oppression wherever it was. This was apparent in the time of Jesus, who had been perceived as the Saviour from the Roman oppression in Judea for many Jews, and this is why so many were disappointed when he declared that his Kingdom was not of this world and told Pilate to crucify him. And the Romans finally killed or scattered over a million Jews and destroyed the temple in Jerusalem in 70AD.  Then finally Silas and Timothy arrived at Corinth from Macedonia and joined Paul as he preached in the synagogues, but the Jews ar

ONE BLOOD  Continuing the narrative in Acts seventeen from verse one we see that Paul and Silas and Timothy arrive at Thessalonica in the northern part of Greece, where Paul preaches in the synagogues as usual, teaching from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah, and many Jews and devout Gentile Greek men and women believed. But Paul and his company encountered the usual opposition from unbelieving Jews who stirred up a rowdy mob that attacked the house of Jason, Paul’s host in Thessalonica, and arrested Jason for shielding Paul whom they charged with ‘turning the world upside down’ because he taught that there was another God greater than Caesar. Jason finally helps Paul escape the city and Paul and Silas and Timothy travelled to Berea where their Gospel is welcomed by the discerning Bereans who searched out and verified the Scriptures that Paul taught them – and again many devout Greeks, both men and women believed. However, the angry Jews from Thessalonica heard that Paul was preaching his

THE MIDNIGHT HOUR  We are continuing in the narrative of Silas now becoming Paul’s partner instead of Barnabas as Paul goes on his second missionary journey back to Lystra and Iconium  We now read in Acts Chapter sixteen and verse one that Paul and Silas go to Lystra where they meet a new Christian named Timothy, who had a Jewish Christian mother and a Greek father. Paul was so impressed with Timothy that he asked him to join them on their journey. They set off together and tried to go into Asia Minor but the Holy Spirit told them not to, so they travelled through Galatia deciding to head north for the province of Bithynia, but again the Holy Spirit said no. Paul then had a vision in a dream where he saw a man over in Macedonia in Greece, pleading with him, ‘Come over here and help us’, and it became clear to Paul then that God was sending them to preach the Gospel in Philippi, a Roman colony just inside the Macedonian border. When they got there, they preached to some women by a riverbank where they would co

GOD  ISRAEL  PAUL  US  We saw in the first part of Acts fifteen from verses one to eighteen last week how James interpreted the prophecy of Amos concerning the rebuilding of the Tabernacle of David. That prophecy foretold the future history of Israel and also that there will be a restoration of the house of God’s presence in the earth called the Tabernacle of David – and also called the church of the firstborn by Paul in Hebrews. This would be a place of faith in Christ in the liberty of the Spirit for all of mankind that would now be gathered to God from all over the world. I now want to comment on Acts 15 from verse 19 to verse 30. (The Scriptures are at the end of these notes). After James had declared the prophesy of Amos concerning the Tabernacle of David he speaks on behalf of the Jewish elders and apostles including Paul and Barnabas, to the congregation, and he summarises the decision of the council regarding salvation as being through grace and faith in Christ and that they should not make the Gentil

FREEDOM OF FAITH  Acts 15:1 While Paul and Barnabas were at Antioch, some men from Judea arrived and began to teach the believers that unless they adhered to the ancient Jewish custom of circumcision, they could not be saved. Paul and Barnabas argued and discussed this with them at length, and finally the believers sent them to Jerusalem, accompanied by some local men, to talk to the apostles and elders there about this question. 4. Arriving in Jerusalem, they met with the church leaders and Paul and Barnabas reported on what God had been doing through their ministry. But then some of the men who had been Pharisees before their conversion declared that all Gentile converts must be circumcised and be required to follow all the Jewish customs and ceremonies. This was a history changing moment – The first great Church Reformation - from one Covenant to another. The biggest issue for the Jewish Christians was that Gentile Christians should get circumcised, as that was the seal of the Hebrew Covenant through Abrah

THE FIVE SENSES OF THE SPIRIT  Just as we have five physical senses we also see those senses mirrored spiritually as spiritual senses of blessing and faith. The eyes of the Lord go to and fro…I have stretched out my hand to you…These Old Testament sayings were from a pure Spirit God without a body (Yet to come in the form of Jesus) THE SENSE OF SMELL  Philippians 4:18 I have received from Epaphroditus the things sent from you, a sweet-smelling aroma, an acceptable sacrifice, well pleasing to God. 2Corinthians 2:15 For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are dying on the inside (perishing). The sense of smell is linked to the part of the brain called the olfactory system which affects our emotions and our memory. The blessing of God to us through the spiritual sense of smell is through adding a richness and a depth to our spiritual perceptions and our remembrance of certain occasions. The Bible says that our praise and prayers rise up to him like a sweet in