Spiritcode

So in letting Scripture interpret Scripture we go back to the first mention of leaven in Genesis and follow that word. We find it in Genesis 19 in the story of Lot in Sodom and Gomorrah, which is part of the earlier story of Abraham and the three loaves of bread that Sarah cooked for the three messengers that Abraham called ‘My Lord’ – Adonai. We saw how Abraham prayed to the Father to spare his cousin Lot’s family from judgement in Sodom, while the two other messengers as angels went down to Sodom. Lot’s family is spared the judgement of the city, and what we find in that story is that Lot prepares a meal of unleavened bread for the two visiting angels. In his urgent desire to escape and receive the supernatural deliverance of God Lot had no time to start doing any bread leavening process or baking – he wanted out of there!

And this sets the pattern for the next mention of unleavened bread which is in Exodus when Israel escapes from Pharaoh in Egypt. Moses told the Israelites to leave in haste because there was judgement coming upon all in Egypt and all Egypt’s first born were to be killed, but the Angel of death would pass over Israel because they had sprinkled the blood of a lamb upon the doorposts of each house, so they packed all their belongings and their food and they had no time to wait for bread to be leavened and baked.(Exodus 12:15). 

Paul brings the same message of the Passover Feast into the New Testament when he admonishes the Corinthian church for the immorality that they had let into the church, and he described that behaviour as leaven. He says ‘For Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed, let us therefore celebrate the communion feast not with the old leaven of malice and evil but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, and don't you know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump. 

So what does Jesus mean when he says that the Kingdom of God is like a woman (the Church) hiding leaven in three loaves of bread until the loaves are fully leavened? 

Yes there is – Praise God – hiding in Leviticus 23:15. And in this Scripture it says that at the feast of Pentecost the loaves will be baked with leaven as a holy offering to the Lord, and the leaven here speaks of The Holy Spirit. Let me explain.

In this Scripture Israel is told that they had to celebrate the Feast of Pentecost as a harvest Festival every year. In Israel the feast is called Shavuot, meaning ‘weeks’, referring to Pentecost as the feast that comes seven weeks and one day after the Feast of Passover – fifty days – and Pente is the Greek word for fifty. 

The two loaves that were leavened in the Feasts of Pentecost every year have now become three loaves of bread, and the reason for having to wait for the two loaves to become three loaves is that right up until Jesus had died on the cross and risen from the dead and ascended into heaven and sent the Holy Spirit, there were only two Persons (two loaves) operating in the earth upon the spirit of all of humanity - Jesus and the Father. The Holy Spirit had operated through prophets and kings and priests but was not being expressed into and through all of humanity until the Day of Pentecost.

Shavuot (Pentecost) was also a time for Israel to recommit to their covenant with God and to celebrate the giving of the Law to Moses on Mt. Sinai, which amazingly also fell fifty days after the first Passover of Israel in Egypt. The Law once written on tablets of clay is now written upon our hearts by the Holy Spirit – a New Covenant – part of the Third loaf blessing of the Holy Spirit.

And that is the leaven that is going to fully expand the Kingdom of God for the end time expression of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit in the Church and to the world before the Lord returns. The new leaven of the Holy Spirit will fill the Church in greater measure than ever before, and we will see him expressed in greater measure than ever before - into the world, and not remaining hidden. He is the one who sheds the love of God abroad in our hearts – he is the one who leads us into all truth – he is the one who takes what Jesus says and interprets it to us in an amazingly personal and individual way for our instruction and guidance. The Bible says that on the day of Pentecost everybody heard the good things of God being spoken to them in their own language. The Holy Spirit is going to be speaking to people in the way that they understand him no matter what their cultural or religious background. The Bible says for us to ‘Be being filled’ as a continuous mindset and process of faith, and as we continue to keep on being filled, we can expect his grace for the flow of the Holy Spirit in us to be imparted to those in our world. Your Kingdom come your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.

GOSPEL PARABLES 9 A WOMAN GIVEN EAGLES WINGS 

The word for ‘hid’ in that verse is egkrypto – encrypted and not the usual word– krypto. What is primarily hidden in the three loaves is the message of the three Persons of the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in the lives of God’s people. Jesus uses this word egkrypto which is the only time this word is ever used in the Bible and that compels us to diligently look at each word and ask God what Jesus encrypted for us to decrypt and understand. The only code that serves the truth of Scripture when following a particular word or concept through the Bible is that of letting Scripture interpret Scripture by looking at the first mention of that word or concept in the Bible and tracking it from Genesis to Revelation. 

We will start by asking who this Woman is that hides the leaven until the final stage of Kingdom growth is reached, and the first prophetic word about a Woman throughout the Bible is found in Genesis 3:15, where God judges Satan for tempting Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve’s judgement is that Adam faces hardship in tilling the ground, while Eve endures pain in childbirth. However, when God judges the serpent he introduces the Woman as a type of the Church because God says to Satan ‘And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.’  This prophecy is the archetype of spiritual warfare between the Church and Satan throughout the Scriptures.

Paul affirms this spiritual victory in Romans 16:20, emphasizing that ‘the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly’ (tachos). Tachos means "a short space of time," and it indicates a future event that will occur for a short space of time, rather than occurring in a short space of time soon after Paul wrote it, because  it is yet to occur. A word search reveals that tachos aligns with the British meaning of the word "momentarily," which means ‘for a short space of time’, while in American English, it means "soon or in a short space of time." The key point is the brief duration of Satan's defeat rather than its immediacy and it reflects a future distinct measure of time. (We will be at LA airport momentarily – why stay at LA airport for a short space of time?)

We will continue to follow this intriguing hiddenness theme that runs throughout the story of the Church. The Church of Jesus is hidden in Jesus, and just as the Woman hid the leaven in the three loaves, the Church that is hidden in Jesus remains concealed to the world. It is not observed under the banner of any denomination or doctrine but exists within and beyond what may or may not even resemble traditional or institutional church. Church has always been truly realised in gatherings of God’s people who express the unity of the Spirit in bonds of peace (Ephesians 4:1-3), and as a people not walking in the power or appearance of worldly influence but living by faith and love in the power of Christ and in intimate relationship with him and overcoming all darkness in the earth through him. Paul speaks of the Church as the bride of Christ and he says that this conceals a great mystery. Yet it reveals the truth of a loving unity of Spirit in people whose outward lives express the hidden life of Christ within. (Ephesians 5:25-27, 32)

The Church has been given a New Testament strategy for spiritual warfare, which means that we overcome darkness from our position of authority seated with Christ in the highest place - above the Heavens. This is unlike the Old Testament spiritual warfare that Daniel was engaged in when he prayed for understanding of what would happen in the End Times (Daniel 10). 

Gabriel told Daniel that he needed help from the Archangel Michael to overcome the prince powers of darkness in the Heavens. Daniel's prayer experience is directly reflected in a vision of the last days that we see in Revelation Ch.12 where a similar battle occurs between Michael and Satan who is called the dragon in Revelation. The dragon realizes ‘he has but a short time’ (Revelation 12:12), confirming Paul’s end time prophecy when he said that God would crush Satan under our feet in a short space of time (tachos). 

Whatever that final battle between the Woman and Satan that began in Genesis and ends in Revelation will look like, and however the protection of God for the Woman the Church in that short space of time plays out, remains in the realm of speculation as far as I’m concerned. But it denotes a type of supernatural protection and provision. We just read that the Woman is given two wings of a great eagle, which speaks about being in some way spiritually lifted above the peril of those days, which could mean in a spiritual sense of simply being uplifted in faith, or it could mean miraculously shielded from peril in the earth. 

I think Psalm 91 is the archetype of this supernatural protection that God has always given his people in times of battle against his enemies, as David says. ‘He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the LORD, “He is my refuge and my fortress; My God, in Him I will trust.” You shall not be afraid of the terror by night, nor of the arrow that flies by day, Nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness, nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday. A thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand; But it shall not come near you. Only with your eyes shall you look and see the judgement of the wicked because you have made the LORD, who is my refuge, even the Most High your dwelling place, No evil shall befall you. (Psalm 91:1-10)

What we do know is that the enmity between the Woman and the Prince of Darkness was prophesied in Genesis and reinforced in Romans and other epistles and finally in Revelation. And we know that the message is about the supernatural victories of the Kingdom of God over the kingdom of darkness, and we know that the Woman plays a great part in that victory in the end times. In the meantime, we can continue to live above and not under the powers of darkness without fear in our daily lives. This is how we are to see ourselves today as the Church. Paul teaches us concerning Jesus that God ‘has put all things under His feet and given Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. (Ephesians 1:22).

Paul O’Sullivan 22 Sept 2024 – Northern Beaches Christian Centre NSW Australia.

PARABLES 8 Leaven in three loaves

This is the shortest parable of Jesus in the Bible and it occurs in Matthew Ch.13 and in Luke Ch.13. Jesus taught this after he had taught the parables of the mustard seed and the growing seed. Reading now from Matthew.

Matthew 13:33 Another parable He spoke to them: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was fully (holos) leavened.’

Three measures of meal means three portions of flour made into three loaves of breadcake. The leaven is ‘hidden’ and the Greek word for hidden that Jesus uses here is (egkrypto – encrypted) and this word is not found anywhere else in the Bible. The usual word that is used for hidden in all other Scriptures is ‘krypto’. The word Krypto means something hidden but egkrypto means not only hidden but encrypted with a code, and there is a big difference between the two words.

Encryption is a two-way process because encrypted information has to be decrypted by someone who has the appropriate code or key. You can find documents hidden in a room if you look hard enough but if they are in a fixed safe in the room you need to know the combination or the code for the safe.

The phrase ‘three loaves of bread’ occurs in three stories in the Bible and in each story that phrase hides truth concerning the Trinity of the three Persons of God as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But there is also an encoded message of the ‘End Times’ beyond what is hidden in each story of the ‘three loaves of bread’ because Jesus was speaking in that parable of the loaves being fully leavened - speaking of the work of the Kingdom of God until it is being expressed fully (holos) in the earth in the last days before Jesus returns.

This parable of the leaven in three loaves of bread is followed in the Gospels by another ‘End Times’ ‘three loaves of bread’ parable in Luke Ch. 11 about the man who comes to his friend at the midnight hour desperately requesting three loaves of bread, and we will look more fully at both those parables in our next episode of the Gospel parables.

But today we will deal with the first ‘three loaves of bread’ story in the Bible in Genesis 18 where three men appear to Abraham to announce to Abraham and Sarah that Sarah will have a son in her old age, in a year’s time. When Abraham sees them, he greets them as ‘My Lord’ – Adonai – which is only ever used to mean Almighty God. That alone hides the fact that Abraham must have been given a revelation of God as being three persons. He didn’t say ‘My Lords’, plural. He then asks Sarah to make three loaves of bread for the three guests. The three loaves of bread was a visible representation of the Trinity of God as was the appearance of the three men.  This was a veiled appearance of God as the Father and Son and Holy Spirit in angelic form. That is called a Theophany - and this appearance of a Triune God sets the pattern of the three loaves of bread in the Scriptures as a symbol of the Trinity and it also unveils the three distinct natures of the different Persons of the Trinity.

To this day when Jewish families celebrate the Passover feast, they place three small cake loaves of bread on the table in front of the guests. They then hide the middle cake of bread somewhere in the room and the children have to find it. The feast cannot be completed until the second loaf cake is found. That piece of bread is called the ‘Ransom’ and the child who finds it gets the Ransom reward.

That of course represents Jesus as the second person of the Trinity who is currently hidden from the spiritual eyes of the Jewish people. This is an encrypted message to the modern-day Orthodox Jew, and the key to decrypting this message is in receiving the gift of faith and grace through the Holy Spirit that brings a revelation of Jesus into their hearts.

After the three messengers deliver the message to Abraham about Sarah giving birth to Isaac they set off towards Sodom and Gomorrah, and one of them, whom Abraham calls ‘The Lord’, stays aside and declares to Abraham that he will bring severe judgement upon Sodom and Gomorrah for their wickedness, but Abraham pleads with him, finally getting him to agree to save the cities if ten righteous men are found there. Meanwhile the other two men have gone down to Sodom and Gomorrah as angels (malak – messengers). Abraham’s plea was a prayer to the Father, the Person of the Trinity who represents judgement and justice. The other two Persons represented mercy and truth, with Jesus being mercy - in saving Lot’s family, and the Holy Spirit being truth – in shining light and truth and exposing the deviant culture in that place.

So the reality of the Trinity was revealed in the three Persons of Father, Son and Holy spirit, but encrypted in that story was also the nature and activity of the three Persons of the Trinity. And what is even more deeply encoded in this story and in the other ‘three loaves’ parables is a prophetic message of what will happen in the last days before the return of Jesus.

We see that message in the story of Abraham and the three messengers at Mamre which finishes with the judgement on Sodom and Gomorrah, and the judgement on that wicked culture is spoken about in the Book of Jude 1:7 in the New Testament where Jude speaks of prophesies that liken the judgement upon the wicked culture of Sodom and Gomorrah to the ‘End Times’ dealings of God that will come upon the wickedness abounding in the world before Jesus returns.

The Holy Spirit who shone light and truth into the wickedness of that culture is shining light into our culture today. The Bible foretold that these days would come and that when they did there would arise a polarity between darkness and light in the earth. And that brings us great hope. Isaiah prophesied these things to Israel and was speaking beyond Israel to us as well as followers of Jesus all over the world. Isaiah 60:1 Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you (who follow Jesus). For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the people; but the LORD will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you, and people shall come to your light…

When we see the work of the Father as being the justice and judgement of God, we have to ask ourselves how we relate to that regarding our faith in a loving God. In fact my personal experience is that the judgement of the Father is critical to the final reality of my faith. We can easily relate to Jesus as being the author and finisher of our faith and as being the one who enables us with his grace, and we gladly accept that the Holy Spirit takes what Jesus says to us and reveals that to us and leads us into all truth. However, the judgement of the Father isn’t just about bringing us to account for the consequences of our wrongdoing – his judgement means his capacity to bring his absolute love and wisdom into what he regards as being best for our lives.

The question I ask myself is. ‘Can I trust the judgement of God to decide what is right for my life?’ and ‘Whose judgement should I trust to guide my life and bring the best future for my life to me each day? Should I despise and disdain and complain about disagreeable circumstances that come upon me? Should I question the integrity of God for letting me go through loss and affliction?

The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit all agree as one about what is right and good for my life. But it is the Father who supernaturally works the things that are good into my life experience. The Father takes all the imperfect things that I do, that have negative or nuisance consequences, and the testing things that others might do to me, and the unavoidable challenging tasks and difficulties, and he supernaturally works them all together for my good. But it is difficult to experience that goodness if I do not know or believe that that is what he is doing. ‘And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God ‘(Romans 8:28)

My faith is not about summonsing a more intense effort to believe that God will give me my judgement of what is good and right for me. Only the judgement of the Father is critical to the reality of my faith, and thanking the Father in all things is the greatest expression of my faith. Moments of thanksgiving to our Father are moments to be cherished no matter what. If God is hidden from us it is only because he wants to be discovered by us. Thank you Lord for drawing us aside to be with you even in the midst of all the other things that are going on round about us and thank you for reminding us that you are unceasingly working your good will into our lives as you have done from the very beginning.

GOSPEL PARABLES 7 THE GROWING SEED 

The parable of the growing seed is only found in the Gospel of Mark, and it comes after the Parable of the Sower who sows seed on four different types of soil – the wayside and the rocky ground and the thorny ground and the good soil. It follows the same Kingdom theme that sets the overall framework of the seed as being the word of God and the soil being our hearts of faith. Today we are reading from the Gospel of Mark.

We see in this story that the farmer or husbandman does his work and sows the seed and then sleeps and rises day and night while the unseen seed silently grows and then emerges into sight. This is how God began his work of creation in the world of the unseen. The Bible says that Jesus, the creative logos Word, spoke creation into being (John 1, Genesis 1). And that same logos Word is what speaks our spiritual growth into being. The Bible says this about us - having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word (logos) of God which lives and abides forever (1Peter 1:23) 

The ear continues to develop and fill out as healthy grain with the potential for full maturity, and with faith and patience it will become more robust before it reaches the final stage of ripening and being ready for harvest. For us this means that our spiritual growth is more about inner transformation than outward appearance, as we accept the sure and steady patient progress of spiritual development and do not become discouraged and lose hope.

Then comes the stage where the fruit of the Spirit which is our spiritual growth becomes more visible and develops into the full grain in the ear. This fruitfulness can now be seen in us as the love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. When the disciples asked Jesus to show them the Father he said ‘if you’ve seen me you’ve seen the Father’. And God is saying to us in this parable that he has placed his life-seed in us so that as that seed grows we may be able to say ‘if you’ve seen me you have seen Jesus’ (John 14:9) Jesus expresses his life in our soul as the expression of our unique God-designed spirit.

The parable said ‘The earth produces by itself’ The earth is the soil of our hearts of faith in which that seed is embedded. The seed of the life of the Spirit of Christ in us contains all the DNA of the essential nature of God as the spiritual fruit of our lives. Jesus is the life in which our life exists, but our soul gives it a unique expression through the work of the Holy Spirit in growing the fruit of the spirit in our lives. 

The fruit of the spirit of peace is ours when we know that once we have placed everything in his hands our oneness together with him stands guard over our hearts and minds and banishes our anxiety concerning our future.

Longsuffering is our faith in his mercy upon our shortcomings that takes away the fear of judgement and replaces it with grace filled opportunities to be transformed into our true and destined selves - in his likeness. We can learn to withhold judgement upon others also and see God bring about change in their lives. 

Kindness comes from the word kindred and expresses the kind of compassion and protective care that we would have for the most defenceless person in our family.

Goodness is not just a display of virtue but is simply the effect of making a person feel better off after having known us than they did before. Jesus said ‘only God is good’. His goodness works itself into us and flows out as us being a blessing to those who know us. 

Faithfulness describes God’s devotion to ‘being there’ for us without wavering, even when we waver in our being there for him. Our faithfulness to God and to other people grows within his loyal faithfulness to us.

God’s gentleness to us creates a safe and accepting space for our feelings of vulnerability and is part of the healing of the soul we can offer to someone who has been mistreated in their lives. 

Self-control is giving place to God’s control over our lives, spirit, soul and body. It is the highest form of spiritual authority that we can possess in this life. When we give this place to God nothing of darkness can overcome us and no weapon that is formed against us will prosper.

This fruitfulness is a final stage of maturity, where the fruitful grain (kartos - fruit) is ripe and ready for harvest – But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”

James 5:7 Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the latter rains. You also, be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.

One barrier to allowing that fruitful seed to grow in us is that we can feel that we are too prone to making mistakes and failing short in our dealings with life and our attitudes. 

GOSPEL PARABLES 6 THE MUSTARD SEED 

The birds in the mustard tree parable symbolize the Gentile Nations coming to find shelter in the kingdom of God, a theme rooted in Old Testament prophecy and fulfilled in the New Testament. There are two Old Testament prophesies in Ezekiel (Ch.17 and Ch.31 about Lebanon and Assyria) and one in Daniel (Ch.10Babylon) that speak of kingdoms as trees growing to a great size so that the migratory birds of the air come and take shelter in the branches, symbolising those birds as foreign nations becoming included in those three kingdoms. The mustard seed parable highlights the inclusive nature of God's kingdom, where all nations and families of the earth are invited to enter in by faith and become part of God's family.

With the framework of the seed as being the word and the soil as being the hearts as our reference point, we see that the lesson in the parable of the mustard seed is that the seed of the word of faith can be of the smallest size and yet it can grow to be a faith of great magnitude. 

In this way our surrendered faith has the ultimate hope of God’s will coming to pass for us. And this is in contrast to non-surrendered faith which demands its own result and gets confused and somewhat surprised that it doesn’t get what it thought the Bible said it would. But surrendered faith never demands its own results and is always surprised by the astonishing results that God grants to that greater mustard seed faith. Surrendered speaks the word that Jesus gives us to say, like when Jesus on the Mt of olives said if you have faith like a mustard seed you will say to this mountain be removed and cast into the sea (Matthew 17:20). 

There are two striking examples of people exercising that kind of surrendered faith in the Gospels that Jesus praises as being ‘great faith’, where both of these people receive a miraculous answer to their request - and both of them are Gentiles and not Jews. This is prophetic of the New Testament gathering of all the Gentile Nations of the world into the mustard seed tree of the Kingdom of God as told in the parable.

One ‘mustard seed great faith’ story is of the Gentile mother who asked Jesus to heal her demon possessed daughter, and Jesus refused, saying I was only sent to the lost sheep of Israel (Matthew 15:21).  He was letting her know he was here to fulfill the mission of his Father to Israel. He even told her that Gentiles were regarded as dogs by the Jews.

In the situation with the Gentile mother with the demon possessed daughter, when she hears the remark about the Jew’s calling Gentiles dogs, she says ‘even the dogs are allowed crumbs from the table’. She took a lowly place and accepted that she had no place in claiming anything from God, but something in her heart also trusted totally in Jesus and she surrendered everything to him. Jesus as a Jewish man under the law whose heart was to please his Father had made a just reckoning of this situation and obediently aligned himself to what his mission to Israel was. However, when the woman spoke about dogs getting the crumbs Jesus was faced with having to give her an answer. 

And she did not realise or understand that Jesus would also surrender everything he did to what his Father might want to do in the matter. ‘The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner’ (John 5:19). The Bible says that Jesus did change his mind and the woman’s daughter was healed from that hour. The woman’s faith was rewarded not just by her daughter being delivered and set free, but also by the unexpected praise of Jesus for her great faith. The Father wanted that woman’s prayer answered. Is that where ultimate surrendered authority ends up? Did 

The other ‘great faith’ story is of the Gentile Centurion who asks Jesus to heal his paralysed son. Jesus says he will go to his home but the Centurion counters that decision of Jesus and says ‘no Lord I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but just say the word and I know he will be healed.’ because I am also a man under authority having soldiers under me and when I say ‘go’ they go, and to another come and he comes and to another do this and he does it. (Matthew 8:8). The Bible goes on to say that Jesus marvels at this and says that he has not found such great faith even in the children of Israel. Here is another example of ultimate surrendered faith and surrendered authority. 

But even though the Centurion understood the principle of authority and believed that Jesus was in charge, he did not know that Jesus did nothing unless he heard his Father speak to him. As the Bible says ‘As I hear, I decide; and My decision is just, because I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me (John 5:30). Jesus knew that the Father was in command of that situation, and when Jesus heard his Father speak into that situation, even perhaps through the Centurion’s own words, Jesus decided to not walk in his own strength to the Centurion’s home but to allow his Word to do the travelling. This is all we need to know – how to surrender to the authority of Jesus and the authority of Father God in our struggles and prayer burdens – and we can enter into the rest of faith. This is the mustard seed faith that grows into a great tree of hope.

God the Father was always in Jesus doing that work in the world of the unseen, and the Holy Spirit always empowered the word that Jesus spoke. The Holy Spirit communicates God’s words to us in ways that so often seem like natural occurrences, like the Gentile woman’s statement about the dog getting crumbs or the words of the principled Centurion entreating Jesus to save himself a long walk and simply send his Word. This was a work of the Three in One Trinity of God - This was the way The human and Divine work of Jesus took the burden of the peoples’ needs and heard the Father in Heaven and left the manifestation of the outcome in the hands of the Father. This is how God has ordained that we now are to connect with the Three Persons in One God. Their loving care and attendance to the lowly Gentile woman outsider and the principled Gentile Centurion is the same loving attendance they give to our struggles and needs with our mustard seed faith.

We can now see our life experience of faith as being not just about us, but as an extension of the very life of God. The life of Father God is in Jesus and of the life of Jesus in us and we are in them, working together through the power of Holy Spirit and into our world. Our world can be touched by God through a mustard seed of faith that grows into a tree of the Kingdom of God. And we will see many people in our world blessed and healed as they dwell in its branches.

PARABLE OF THE HUMAN DIVINE SPIRIT BARRIER 

Today we are revisiting the last parable that we looked at where Jesus was describing the four types of soil that the Sower sowed the seed into, symbolising the four states of the human heart in receiving and understanding and acting upon God’s word to us. Seed was sown by the wayside, some on stony places, some on thorny ground and some on good soil. 

The type of heart soil that spoke to me the most was ‘Some fell on stony places, where they did not have much earth; and they immediately sprang up because they had no depth of soil. But when the sun was up they were scorched. Jesus explained that these hearts receive the Word with joy; yet they have no root in themselves but endure only for a while and because they had no root in themselves, they withered away. This speaks of our human heart needing more resilience or staying power when life gets difficult and our faith gets tested at the root level of who we are.

I would like to explain that seemingly impassable barrier between the Divine Spirit and the human spirit. the Bible says ‘For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace (John 1:16). The faith and grace that Jesus brings into our world crosses the Divine Spirit to human spirit barrier and allows the Divine nature to supersede and achieve what our human nature is unable to achieve. The material world and the Divine Spirit world are two distinct worlds and two distinct realities. God lives in the Spiritual world of the unseen as an uncreated being and we live in the world of the seen, as created beings. We can comfortably occupy this magnificently created world and see it and hear it and measure it and use it and appreciate it, but we need different eyes and ears to see and hear the unseen world.

God had to cross from the unseen world of the Spirit into the world of created humanity and find a way to get humanity into the world of the uncreated unseen world of the Spirit. The Bible says ‘God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.’  Jesus entered into humanity with his Divinity, and we enter into his Divinity with our humanity. This is a two-way transaction. This was God’s plan to make us partakers of his Divine nature and to create what the Bible calls the ‘New Creation’. 

The Bible tells us what this supernatural two-way transaction is and how it takes place. It is called ‘Reconciliation’, and Paul is the only one who explains what that means and how the supernatural miracle work of reconciliation acts upon humanity through Jesus.

Katalasso means that two things act upon one another to become one new thing. The supernatural miracle of God’s act of reconciliation for us is that he caused both himself and us to experience a change of Being to become a New Creation Being through Jesus. This miraculous mutual exchange is catalysed or enabled by the faith and the grace of Jesus that he brings into the equation. The Bible says we were saved by grace through faith and that was not of ourselves, it was the gift of God (Ephesians 2:8). And that is what it means for us to have our new spiritual being in Christ.

2Cor 5.17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away, all things have become new. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself… 

DIVINITY + HUMANITY + CATALYST (faith and grace of Jesus) = NEW CREATION.

Paul teaches about reconciliation but Jesus did not need to teach a parable of Reconciliation because the whole Bible is that parable - the story of the plan of God from before creation to send Jesus into the world to finally bring humanity through that impassable Divine barrier by the grace and faith of his Son. 

When Jesus crossed the Divine/human barrier, through his faith and grace, the Bible said ‘All this is from God’. That supernatural work allows the Divine nature within us to supersede and achieve in us what we are not able to achieve in our own strength. Jesus brings Divinity through that human barrier so that he becomes the being and doing within us, and we can understand who we are and what we can do. That barrier is called the ‘veil’ in the Bible (Hebrews 10:x19) and on our side we need the faith and understanding of God’s miraculous work of reconciliation – the mutual exchange of our humanity with his Divinity. (Roman 5:10).

We play a role in this New Creation spiritual journey by cultivating a surrendered faith, believing that Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith (Hebrews 12:1). This involves "labouring" to enter into the rest of faith (Hebrews 4:11), which means ceasing from our own efforts and enduring the limitations of our humanity with patience. While we might often rely on our own strength to try and feel worthy of achieving this fulness of God, the gifts of faith and grace we have in Jesus says NO to this approach. Instead, we must practice holding together at the one time the reality of our world of human *struggles and the reality of our world of New Creation faith – it takes practice – and neither of these worlds can be denied or avoided. 

The Bible says that Faith is the evidence of things NOT seen (Hebrews 11:1), and what is not seen is the supernatural work of God on our behalf in the world of the unseen. The more we learn to endure the afflictive nature of this world upon our damaged souls the more we can enter into the rest of the faith of Jesus in his real world of the unseen (and that takes more practice). It is here where we can say ‘I can do all things through Christ that strengthens me’ because we are doing his things and yet in an awesome kind of way, they have become our things. We thank you Lord that we can cross that human Divine barrier because we have been invited to live life together with you in the true reality of your healing and saving world of faith no matter how the other reality of the material world tries to disrupt our peace and oneness with you – in Jesus’ name - Amen.

GOSPEL PARABLES 5 THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER 

We have come again to the place where the three Gospels all write about the same parable and it is about Jesus teaching the parable of the Sower. (Matthew 13:3 Mark 4:1–9 Luke 8:4).

Jesus then explains that last statement about having ears to hear which is found many times in many books in the Bible. He does this because the disciples interrupt him to ask him why he has to speak to the people in parables. He then says ‘Because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. Jesus then speaks that challenging riddle - For whoever has, to him more will be given, and he will have an abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. And in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled. (will look at that in a minute)

God has blessed them even more than the prophets of the past and had given them the grace to understand the hidden or deeper meaning of what Jesus said about the Kingdom of God because of the yielded state of their hearts. Jesus then explains that challenging riddle – It is that that their attitude of submission brings even more grace for them to receive even more understanding. That is entering into the ‘more for more’ equation of grace - as the Bible says ‘For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace (John 1:16). The grace that Jesus brings into the world crosses the Divine Spirit to human spirit barrier and allows the Divine nature to supersede what our human nature is able to understand and to do. But to the others who do not have hearts of submission to God, they will have their understanding taken from them because of the resistance in their hearts that stops them from ‘hearing’. 

Those who do not ‘hear’ God end up with wrong perceptions, wrong logic, wrong reasoning, wrong conclusions, and wrong ideologies and belief systems - as is happening today. This lack of hearing accumulates and it is currently accumulating, and only harsh reality can put a dent in that kind of delusion. Driving on that highway results in nasty bumps and dents, and there are many people on that highway today and there are more bumps and dents to come.

The word in the Greek that Jesus uses for ‘hearing’ is akouo which in its simplest sense is to physically hear something that is said and to pay attention to it. A further intended sense of ‘to hear’ in the words of Jesus here is to understand what is said. But the ultimate intended sense in what Jesus is saying is for something to happen in our hearts when we do understand, and to turn towards God and to do what he says. It is interesting to note that the word for ‘obey’ in the Greek is hypakouo, and hypo means ‘under’ which explains the meaning of the word ‘to obey’ which means that we ‘hear under’ – or rather that what we hear is over our life like a banner or a flag that says that our heart has chosen to yield to what Jesus says to us.

Jesus then goes on to interpret the parable. He explains the meaning of the four different types of soil as representing four different states of the heart which are heart resistance, heart resilience, heart anxiety or heart submission. The seed sown by the wayside that the birds pluck out of the mind describes the state of a resistant heart that hears the word of the Kingdom and allows the Wicked One to take away any perception of its truth - because of a heart of inattention or indifference. 

The seed sown on stony ground, where the root cannot take hold because of a lack of soil for any roots to go down, describes the state of the heart as one of lacking resilience or staying power when life gets difficult, testing our faith in what we have heard. The parable says that he receives it with joy; yet he has no root in himself but endures only for a while. This describes an impulsive or emotional heart that is enthusiastic and fascinated by something that sounds new and helpful but who can’t hang on to the truth of what he has heard deep within himself. 

There is something deep within that he does not understand about himself which is fearful of suffering too much loss or disappointment and so he ‘endures’ for only a while. He thinks within himself ‘can I really trust God to be with me and for me in this situation?’ The Greek word for ‘endures’ here is eimi which means ‘I am’ – that is our sense of identity - so this person does not know the depth of his ‘I am’ with God and can only feel okay about his ‘I am’ with God for a little while. God can redeem this state of the heart by digging around that shallow rocky place and enriching the soil and letting him know that his ‘I am’ by the grace of God which crosses the human/Divine Spirit barrier allows him to be found within the ‘I am’ of Jesus. I believe that God is dealing with all of us graciously in these days in this way.

The seed sown on thorny ground where the thorns choke off the word describes the state of a heart that is distracted and anxious concerning the things of the world. Heart anxiety is not about resilience or resistance or even submission to God. It is just a state of not finding the place of inner stillness that allows us to ‘be still and know that I am God’. There is too much that has to be done and there’s just not enough time to ‘be still’ because something is likely to go wrong when it shouldn’t and that will make me more anxious. So I’ll just have to complain or protest even though that makes me even more anxious but at least I feel I’m doing something and that’s what counts. 

The seed sown on good ground describes the state of a heart which is in submission to God and hears the word and understands it and obeys it (hypakouo- to hear under). We can be that person who ‘hears under’ – so that what we hear is over our life like a banner that says that our heart has chosen to yield to what Jesus says to us – we choose to yield and we produce the yield that God brings forth in us. 

GOSPEL PARABLES 4 THE FIG TREE

Luke 13:6 And he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vinedresser, ‘Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?’ And he answered him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and fertilise it. Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’”

This parable tells a different fig tree story to the other parables about fig trees that Jesus taught later in Jerusalem which were all about the signs of the times and his returning to the earth at his second coming (Matthew 24:32; Mark 13:28–31; Luke 21:29–33). However, there are certain similarities in the stories because of the fact that fig trees in the Bible are symbolic of God’s people Israel, and one of the major themes of fig tree narratives is about them bearing fruit, and we will look at those similarities at another time.

This parable tells a story about a healthy fig tree that showed potential but was not bearing fruit. In Bible days people would often grow fig trees in and around vineyards because the soil was good for growing vines and other trees. But the owner was also diligent about the use of the limited space that was available in the enclosed vineyard, and he wanted whatever was there to produce fruit otherwise it was a waste of space. There had been inspections with the vinedresser each year for three years and the owner thought that was enough time to make a final decision on whether it could stay or had to go.

There are some interesting peculiarities to this parable. One thing is that it has no real ending and in fact we have to write our own spiritual ending because in the end this parable is about hope and faith winning over despair, but it doesn’t discount the consequences of presumption or carelessness – like presuming that our fig leaves alone look good enough, and also not caring about anyone being blessed by the fruit that the tree is designed to produce. 

The story says that the tree is getting to the point of having to be cut down, but then it graciously gets given an opportunity to become fruitful and to stay fruitful from that time on because there is someone there who wants to save a tree rather than lose a tree. Another peculiar fact is that the outcome will depend on not just the quality of the tree but on how intent the vinedresser is about giving the best to the tree for the tree to give the best of its fruit, and that would also involve what the vinedresser finds when he does some digging up and how nutritious the fertiliser is.

This parable can firstly be applied to the prior three years of ministry of Jesus to Israel and their failure to bear any fruit from all his teaching to them in those three years of the goodness of the Father and of his plan for their salvation and of the blessing of his mighty works of healing and provision as he lived amongst them and went about doing good. And at the end of those three years of the training of his twelve disciples plus the many other disciples most of whom we don’t have names for, there were some around him that wrote a wonderful ending to their ownstory as a fruitful tree. But there were some that sadly became offended or failed in their faith or were afraid of being associated with such a controversial person as Jesus. And there was the tragedy of Judas who took his own life rather than letting his old life die in exchange for the new life that Jesus would have given to him.

Jesus was the ultimate compassionate vinedresser who dug around the tree of Israel both corporately and individually and went deep into the soil of the hearts of each one to find wherever he could, a heart like that of King David who said to God ‘Search me, O God, and know my heart, Try me, and know my anxieties; And see if there is any wicked way in me, And lead me in the way everlasting’. 

And of course, Jesus is also talking about all of us as fig trees in a good vineyard and looking to see if we are bearing fruit. And Jesus remains as the compassionate and dedicated vinedresser, and the vinedresser had lots of work to do back then for Israel, and he has lots to do now for all of us. There is a digging up around the tree of each one of us and there is the lifegiving and fertilising nutrient of his love and truth that brings life into each wounded and dying thing that is hidden deep within our roots. Jesus looks to see what kind of damage may have been done to those roots in the soil of our hearts as we first began attaching ourselves to our world around us.

Jesus looks at our roots now to see if they are grounded in his love, as the Apostle Paul says ‘that you, being rooted and grounded in God’s love, may have the strength to comprehend with all those who believe what is the breadth and length and height and depth of that love, knowing the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.’ (Ephesians 3:17)

Paul encourages us to be renewed in the spirit of our minds, and to welcome home the new and true self which is created after the likeness of God and aligned with his heart and is devoted to him (Ephesians 4:19). Our faith allows us to see our true self the way God sees us and to live our new life as God created it to be lived. Each part of our vulnerable heart that has been wounded can now be healed, and each false image of our self that has covered us with shame can now be divinely remade in all its dignity. Every lie that we have wrongly believed about ourselves is now able to be corrected and brought into line with God’s idea of who we truly are. And whatever other peoples’ negative ideas have done to us to devalue our true worth are being erased by faith and truth, as the Holy Spirit recomposes our heavenly narrative. Our life was written by God for us in eternity by the Father, as David wrote in Psalm 139:16 ‘Every day of my life was recorded in your book.’ Amen… 

GOSPEL PARABLES 3 BUILDING BIGGER BARNS 

We have been reading in chronological order the Gospel parables that are common to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and there are also some that are only recorded in two of the three Gospels. And the next small group of parables that come in chronological order that we will do are only found in Luke. Today, we are looking at a parable in Luke 12, where Jesus teaches about a man building a bigger barn for more grain. We begin with Jesus answering a question from somebody in the large crowd. 

Luke 12:16 Then one from the crowd said to Him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” But He said to him, “Man, who made Me a judge or an arbitrator over you?” And He said to them, “Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses.” 

In disputes like these, an arbitrator appointed by the synagogue would legally apportion property or wealth, and Jesus was not interested in this legal role. His mission was about people’s hearts and not about possessions or positions of power, and coveting was about possessions and power. Jesus taught people to have a good conscience and to be aware of the consequences of being covetous about those things and he now illustrates this by teaching us the nature of covetousness in the parable of the man driven to build a bigger barn.

Then He spoke a parable to them, saying: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded plentifully. And he thought within himself, saying, ‘What shall I do, since I have no room to store my crops?’ So he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build bigger barns, and there I will store all my crops and my goods. And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; take your ease; eat, drink, and be merry. “But God said to him, ‘You foolish man! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will all those things be which you have stored up for yourself?’ So is he who lays up treasure for himself and does not find fulfillment in God.”

In this verse Jesus is addressing the issue of people having plenty of goods in store that they could easily sell off and convert into money that could be given to the poor who begged on the street or in front of the temple. This challenges people like the covetous rich man in the parable who accumulated his goods, thinking that what he owned defined who he was in order to feel fulfilled in his life – but he wasn’t growing in the grace and compassion that God wanted to grow in him, to be really fulfilled in his life. 

Coveting comes from a feeling of unfulfillment and a mindset of insufficiency and scarcity. This mindset of never having enough shrinks our soul which now searches for fulfilment with yearnings for things that other people have, or for more than we already have and would ever need to have. 

This parable is about understanding the difference between what the true inner treasure is of the good things that God has for our lives and the things we store up for ourselves because of that empty sense of inner unfulfillment and desolation. 

The human mind and heart became deceived about good and evil from the moment that Satan crafted a lie about God. Satan said to Eve You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of that tree you will be like him, knowing good and evil. (Genesis 3:4)

The human mind and heart became deceived by the Prince of darkness concerning both the nature of God and the nature of good and evil. We as Mankind had now inherited the covetous mindset of confusion about what was good and what was bad and so from that time on whatever or whoever spoiled the getting of the good thing that we covet is bad, and that would even include God. 

Lucifer, the mighty dark angel was there when God said ‘let us make man in our own image and after our likeness’ (Genesis 1:26). Lucifer was the first being to commit the sin of covetousness because he believed in his heart that he should be like God and not these puny human creatures. He has weaponised his corrupted knowledge of good and evil against humanity and has tempted them ever since with the same sin of covetousness. And that also became his resentful war against God.        

He coveted the place that Jesus had, and that pride made him fall, and Jesus saw him fall. Luke 10:18 ‘I saw Satan fall as lightning’. Satan resented that he was created as a lesser being than God and he resented feeling insufficient and unfulfilled. He had deceived himself about who he should be and about what he wanted for himself and his eyes were opened to his own evil and his pride has kept them open.

Lucifer was also there when God summed up the disastrous beginning for humanity’s journey in life. He now comments on the effect and the cosequences of disobeying him and of heeding the lie of darkness. had observed the effect that their  - Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, it may well be that he will reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden (Genesis 3:22) (paradeisos - an enclosed garden, a place of protection (Luke 24:33). Satan would now cause Mankind to struggle in a world full of human covetousness, outside of the protected paradise of the Garden of Eden - a world that he had damaged with his lying darkness. 

God knew that mankind could not handle their corrupted knowledge of good and evil but he had to cast them from the Garden of Eden or Paradise – because if they disobediently ate from the Tree of Life before humanity was ready for that Tree, then they would live forever trapped in their corrupted covetous confusion about good and evil. And God knew that Jesus, our Tree of Life would come and bring eternal life to humanity at the appointed time and then we would understand the true meaning of fulfilment and know that God is ‘good’. He desires to fulfill the lives of his children with his goodness toward them and not have them live trapped within their own interpretation of what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’. 

God becomes to us the source of all blessing and fulfillment in our lives. This allows us to pursue a mindset of inner peace and fulfillment in God within our spirit, which releases us to give out to God and to others graciously from that inner spiritual fulfillment. That movement of faith towards God further expands the inner spiritual life and expresses that fulfillment in our soul as a disposition of contentment where we trust that God will provide enough and we can say ‘I have enough’. God reaches out to us to heal that sense of forsakenness and desolation that turns our souls into an inner wilderness. He wants to awaken us to his promise to prepare a table of his goodness ad provision for us in our wilderness and to bless and fulfill our inner and outer lives and the lives of those around us. Amen

GOSPELS PARABLES 2 BUILDING ON ROCK OR SAND

The next parable that Jesus taught was about a man who either builds a house upon a rock or builds his house upon the sand.

When we look at the final comment in that Scripture, we see that it says that the people recognised that Jesus had authority when he spoke, not like the scribes. The scribes would quote other well-known rabbis, but Jesus never quoted a single rabbi. His authority meant that he knew that what he said was true and what he said is what he lived, which is the basic theme of the parable about building your life on the right foundation, the rock and not the sand.

There are seven ‘sayings’ starting from Matthew Chapter 7 and verse 1 that Jesus speaks before teaching that parable about building a house on the right foundation, and they are; Do not judge others. Vs 1. Throwing pearls before swine vs.6. Asking the Father for good things Vs.7. Doing for others what you would have them to do for you Vs.12. Entering through the narrow gate.Vs.13.  Recognizing people by their fruits not their advertising campaigns (false prophets). Vs.15. Saying to Jesus Lord, Lord but not living our life for him as our Lord. Vs.21

Jesus then talks about the forces that come against the house that you build, which is your life. ‘And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. (That Rock is Christ)

The story is about building a house that will stand through the times of natural affliction of wind and storm and floods, and the spiritual application of that is for people’s lives being able to last through the experiential and relational afflictions of life, because the house represents our life being built on a firm foundation – the rock of faith in Jesus and not the sand of human effort. These inner afflictions of life are like high impact forces of nature – they come and go and leave some maintenance work behind and some attendance to any weak spots but life goes on and we end up stronger because of the faithful resilience we are taught at these times. 

But what about the house that is built upon the sand? Sand is made of the same material as rock, and is the result of the breaking down of the cohesive and reliable structure of rock over a long time into the non-cohesive unreliable form of sand. the ground of Galilee where Jesus was teaching had large, basalt rock shelves buried just below the sandy soil surface – just the right place the perfect place for a house to be built. However foolish people who didn’t check below the surface might expediently choose a cosier location near the palm trees closer to the river or in a sheltered valley where there was no rock underneath - and the house would not withstand the floods and wind and storm.

Our society has chosen the sandy soil of its expedient self-serving choices and much of the rock of Judaeo-Christian culture has been discarded or despised over the years, so that much of what has been built cannot stand the social and political and economic storms and raging winds – the house is not standing strong and things need to change and the strong foundations be reestablished. 

But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall.”

We said earlier that there were seven ‘sayings’ (logos – creative foundational design words) starting from Matthew Chapter 7 and verse 1 that Jesus spoke that had to be put into practice to give meaning in his teaching of the parable about building a house on the right foundation. 

The first one was ‘Do not judge others, in verse 1. This speaks about seeing the spot in our brother’s eye and not seeing the big blob in our own eye. Not seeing the big blob in our own eye means that we are blind and cannot see who we really are and yet we think we know exactly what is wrong with someone else. It is a sign of a defensive ego trying to feel better about itself by making someone else look worse. That brings disconnection with other people and there is no real peace or fulfillment in that. Disconnection with others in this way also means disconnection with our real self and disconnection with God - and that robs us of the great gift of God’s mercy and forgiveness to us which brings peace and fulfillment into our lives. God want us to not crush into sand his rock of compassion and mercy that comes from him and is then extended to another imperfect person. His amazing grace wants us to be able to say, ‘Was blind but now I see!’

The second one was ‘Don’t throw your pearls before swine’ (verse 6) and that could sound a bit mean, but it simply means not trying to please or impress someone who despises what you aspire to as a treasured value in your life. It is what you do and not your impressive talk that finally makes the difference to what can be built upon.

The third one was about asking your Heavenly Father for good things (verse 7) - if a son asks his father for bread, will he be given a stone? We can expect that our Father God will give us the best thing for our need and this is the wisest way to learn how to trust in God and to learn the true lessons of his giving us what is really good for us and not what we sometimes think would be best. Not knowing what that good thing is for us has caused many a house to collapse and also many a nation to fall. Our current culture builds on that sandy foundation with its negative bias and confusing social experiments and the wearing away of our principled cultural foundations. But there is an answer for us in these perilous days, and that is to pray for God to expose what is toxic for our nation and to show us what is his good for our nation and then to live within his principled goodness. That will allow the bedrock of a godly foundation to emerge for this nation to build on. 

The fourth one was ‘do for others what you would have them to do for you’ (verse12).

The fifth one was ‘enter through the narrow gate that leads to life’. (verse 13). This was not designed to make life burdensome or oppressive to enter a life of the blessings of God. It is designed to minimise going down all the blind alleys of self-serving interests that cause all the unnecessary regrets and disappointments. Going down blind alleys wastes opportunities for getting God’s guidance and wisdom, yet he faithfully waits to give us the best life that waits for us to choose it. 

The sixth one was ‘recognizing people by their fruits and not their advertising campaigns’ There were many false prophets speaking from their own hearts and minds at that time. The world even penalises people that practice false advertising because it corrodes community trust until people stop believing in promises that are claimed to be true. The internet is an unrestricted playground for anyone to speak their prophesies from who knows what ego agenda or background. The Bible says ‘despise not prophesying but test all things and hold fast to what is good. (1Thessalonians 5:20). Testing all things means examining the track record of false predictions, especially of religious political activists, as well as testing the track record of the character and moral and ethical behaviour of the people doing the promising. There is one foundational rock of truth – Christ alone, Cornerstone.

The seventh one was ‘calling Jesus Lord but not living our life for him as our Lord’.