Salvation Comes From God!

Salvation Comes From God

Life or Death is in the power of the choice!

There are two eternal destinies to which the eternal souls of mankind choose to spend their eternity by either choosing life or death.  We are able to live physically without choosing God, but we will be making choices to destroy ourselves physically.  The reality is if we are choosing not to choose God we are choosing Satan and his wages...his payment for being his minion is death.  Though you may be alive presently, you can not live on his wages and you will begin to die physically and of course you are already dead spiritually.

We all start out in this life as babies who carry the bent toward sin and death.  We will all carry this to our grave unless … unless there is a Savior, a Redeemer who is willing to take our punishment for the sins we have committed.  We do, and his name is Jesus, He is our Savior.  He is God, come in the flesh to take our punishment of death and save us from our sins and from the penalty of our sins.

As a means to clarify my previous statement, we are not punished for having the bent toward evil, but because of that bent we should choose evil.  That is what we will be punished for.

Salvation begins, only after you have reached an understanding that you are doomed, and that there is a Savior waiting on your acceptance of Him.  Though the purchase price has been paid; it is an advance payment waiting on you to claim it. As it begins to dawn on you that there is hope, that life doesn’t have to be meaningless; and you make your choice to accept the sacrifice Jesus made in your behalf, you begin to live!  

Life will take on new meaning, life will be something to look forward to, and life will now be eternal instead of being over at the grave.

Genesis chapter 15 lays out the covenant God made with Abraham for atonement for sin.  God appears to Abraham in a vision and gives him a message.  

God said, “I am your shield” and “I am your great reward”.  If we were to break this done a bit, it would look like this … I am your protection and your treasure.  What difference did this make to Abraham to have this declaration of God?  First of all, when the Word of the Lord comes to someone; it is to be shared.  Abraham, as the messenger of God, was a prophet of God.  Secondly, Abraham was a part of mankind; and this entire chapter deals with the sin nature of mankind and the redemption process that God had planned.  

Abraham showed his humanity by thinking of passing the blessings on to his household, but God had a much bigger plan in store for him.  God plainly showed Abraham, who was to benefit from this declaration that was given to him.  It was to be his children.  God began to tell Abraham all that He had done for him.  God said, “I have separated you from your land and your people, and brought you to a new place and given to you as an inheritance”.  This land was to be a place where Abraham’s children could serve the Lord without the influences of the wicked neighbors.  (Some of the details needed worked out and would be in God’s own good time!)

The meat of this passage now follows as Abraham, following God’s instructions, takes different kinds of animals and divides them laying them in an organized fashion.  This most certainly would have created a trail of blood as the life-blood flowed from the animals and mingled in a pool.

This was a sight that Abraham was never going to forget because of its significance, and while he waited on God to make the next step; Abraham maintained the purity of the sacrifice by not allowing any external contaminations to take away from the pure sacrifice.  Abraham had birds swooping to get their own piece of that tasty meat which he chased away while he waited.  These birds could be compared to the devil as he tried in vain to get between the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and the Father making it impure and thus ineffective.

The sun began to go down, and Abraham in his humanity began to become sleepy as God began to reveal Himself in this new and remarkable way.  It was as if the wickedness of the world had overtaken the light and extinguished it altogether as an unnatural darkness swept across him.

As God began His discourse with Abraham, He prophetically spoke of Abraham’s children being servants in a strange land and being set free when the time was right.  He spoke of the people of that land being judged for their sins, and Abraham’s children inheriting that land from the hand of God.

The smoking furnace that Abraham saw was representative of the suffering Abraham’s descendants would face, while the burning lamp would portray the great deliverance by which they would be delivered.  This has a two-fold meaning, one as in the children of Israel being delivered from Egypt, and two as in we who have been grafted into Abraham’s lineage have lived for many years in bondage to the prince of this world and have received our freedom through Jesus Christ.  This type of covenant could only be broken through one party not going through with his or her end of the covenant, which would require his/her death as the perpetrator of this broken promise.  

Abraham is considered the prophet of the Lord and the father of all who have faith.  Through this kind of representation we see from him we can understand that he is representing both God and mankind.  In a nutshell, this covenant states that if God doesn’t keep up His end of this covenant, He will die as part of that agreement; on the other hand, God is saying, that because no amount of mankind will ever be “good enough” as a sacrifice of death for failing in this agreement, He (God) would die for that scenario as well.

This covenant was fulfilled in Jesus Christ who is God and man both, and because man failed in his part of the agreement, offered up Himself as God on behalf of mankind.  It is critical that we recognize both the humanity and the divinity of Jesus and understand just what He came to do, for how can we appreciate His sacrifice on our behalf unless we understand the workings of this covenant and what was required for sin.

The only way to atone for the sin of humanity was for a holy God to offer Himself as a holy sacrifice for an unholy people.  It is clear, mankind had nothing to offer for its own redemption.  As this plays out in our lives, we have salvation by our faith in the grace of God which is available through Jesus Christ because of His offering.

Genesis 15:1-21

Romans 4:16

Romans 5:1,2

Romans 6:23

Where Does The Ability To Reason Come From?

The Capacity to Reason Comes From God!

The social push today is to have reason with no faith in an outside deity.  Their cry is to be left alone and not have their lives dictated by what they call an abstract god.  Their definitions of God have been a mockery to who He really is, because He isn’t an abstract dictator who really doesn’t care about them.  Reason, they say is to live a life that is lived in the here and now, with no thought for what you cannot see.

What if all Americans lived that way.  Just because you cannot see the government doesn’t mean that it’s non-existent.  Rather if we just open our eyes, we shall see the evidences of the government which resides in another part of the country.  Belief in God is a lot like that many of us can see the evidences of His presence, many of us can feel His presence; so come now and reason it out...look at the facts, the evidence, the truth and reason will no longer be ignorance, but will be reality.

When God implanted the seed of life into soul of man part of that included the ability to reason.  Without the ability to reason, there is no choice and we become robots following our instincts.  Genesis chapter 1 says that mankind was made in the image of God.  That means they had a spirit, a soul, and a body; all of which enabled them to make their own choices and carry them out.  As early on as Genesis Chapter 3 we see that capability acted on; which was the downfall of the world.

Reason is not always evil, but is a God given ability which He intended for us to use to choose Righteousness, but when we allow a humanistic approach govern our reasoning we will choose evil.

Humanity, as created by God, are highly spiritual beings so the idea that you can have freedom from religion is inaccurate, misleading, and is predicated on Humanism (the worship of humanity and their thought processes) and Atheism (the refusal to acknowledge a higher power) which is also a form of Humanism.  It is because of our wicked heart that we are able to rationalize wickedness and is possible due to a disconnect in our spirit.  When this happens we are making choices in our soul and the choices are based on feeling and not reality.  Even if we choose to disconnect our spirituality from our souls, inevitably we, either in this generation or in the following generations will revert to being spiritual again. Usually this will end up with the antithesis of Christianity and be outright devil worship.

Throughout the entire Word of God, there is a distinct call to look at the truth laid before you and reason or think it through.  Isaiah 1:18 Come Let us Reason together.  Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.  Joshua said, “Choose you this day whom you will serve”.

The ability to reason things out comes with a great responsibility to guard our hearts from what we cannot see.  Usually as humans, we tend to look at the here and now to base our judgments on, and our reasoning becomes flawed, skewed, and lop-sided because we haven’t taken into account the whole picture.  

There is a choice that each of us will make.  We will either choose to look at life through God’s eyes or we will look at life through the eyes of the god of this world.  When we choose to look at our lives through the eyes of God, we will become enlightened and our understanding will become enhanced; while if we choose to look at life through the eyes of the god of this world our understanding will become darkened.  When the path isn’t clear, we need light.

Can a person make an intelligent choice when all the facts whether seen or unseen are not taken into consideration? Determine in your own heart what evidence you may be missing.

Luke 20:9-18/Matthew 21:33-46/Mark 12:1-12

Luke 20:1-8

Ephesians 4:17-32

Psalm 119:105

The Wayward Heart

I shall never look at my heart the same again!  

Truth shall abound from an Almighty God who has declared that my heart is desperately wicked and exceeding sinful.  Though with great pains He created the heart of man as a perfect place of communion and natural integration of our spirit and His Spirit; we, as children of our ancestors, have inherited a nature that is devoid of love for God and has a natural bent toward a debased behavior.

• The Rebellious nature of our heart

One doesn’t have to look very far to see the effects of the sinful nature so generously bestowed upon us by the sins of our ancestors.  Personal weaknesses and struggles usually get handed down, not necessarily genetically, but spiritually (Exodus 34:6,7).  As Adam’s descendants (Genesis 1-3), his choice to hand authority in his life over to Satan has affected us in one way or another.  Life is now a struggle to take back that authority and give it back to God who is the real owner of authority anyway.  For some reason, by default Satan seems to always receive from us what should be God’s.

The carnality of the heart desires wickedness so when a person follows after wickedness, his focus has left God and has turned to following carnal things.  Even if we are not living in full rebellion we have been deceived and need to repent, otherwise we will be living off one deception after another.  The Word of God makes it clear; if it isn’t of God, it is of the devil and you will be following the devil making him your illegitimate father, which is sin.

The nature of our heart is selfish, yet because we are relational to one degree or another, we create the appearance of service toward others in hopes of getting something in return.  In other words, we are still selfish.  In many cases we desire approval of man, so we offer “approval” to them in order to gain it from them.  In reality, we are worshipping their opinions in order to receive their worship.  The only approval we really should need is God’s approval.  In other words, we are idolaters and have made ourselves gods.  We also deal with personal pride believing we deserve better than what we are getting.  When this happens, we have an over-rated opinion of ourselves and have made ourselves a god.  Pride is usually driven by selfishness, as is adultery, drunkenness, gluttony, etc.

God has shown us through the written text of His Word that though the Old Testament people experienced a promised blessing if they remained true to Him, it was not enough for them to remain true.  The wicked nature of the heart always seemed to show itself sooner or later and sometimes in very pronounced ways.  What was accomplished then by the promise of success for choosing to believe God?  We now have a clearer picture of the state of the heart of man.  Man could try to fit into God’s Plan and receive the success that was promised to them, but with an unregenerate heart the heart is still carnal and no amount of promises of success from God can take that away.

Romans 1:18-32

For some reason or other mankind has resorted to disregarding the evidence of the existence of God, and has chosen to take its own way and worship the created world over the Creator.  Even if we are sinning through deception, we are effectively transferring authority from God to Satan and Satan as a master will destroy us.  God has said that sin can only go so far before He will turn us over to a reprobate mind.  As we continue to transfer authority over to Satan, he becomes the way we think and we end up in complete disregard for the truth.  When this happens, our lives no longer have any room for truth and we become mockers and truth inhibitors.  Once we have a complete disregard for truth God can no longer speak to us and we become a destructive part of society (A minion of Satan if you will).

We are to blame for allowing our culture to desensitize us, for we are responsible to maintain a high alert against the sinful nature we possess.  It is as if the father of deception has set forth to deceive the very elect of God through incremental deceptions leaving us numb and ill equipped to fight for our souls.  Are we going to wake up before we drift away into eternal destruction?

Today, the promise of success has been removed, but God has a plan which involves Redeeming the heart through Salvation and Sanctification.

God as the Holy Spirit!

The Holy Spirit or The Holy Ghost as it is sometimes called, is the Person of God that interacts with all of Creation including the children of God.  He is always working under the approval of the Father and the Son, and His main objective today is to bring Life and Holiness to a fallen world.  He will always be involved in the Creation of something and in today’s world Men, Women, Boys and Girls can all be re-created through listening to His Voice and allowing him to overshadow their hearts and re-create them.

The Holy Spirit is referred to as the Seven Spirits of God, the Seven Lamps of God, the Seven Eyes of God, and the Seven Horns of God.  He is also referred to as water and flames of fire.  First of all, Let’s take a look at the number seven.  Usually when the number seven is used alongside of something in the Bible it means that whatever is being described is complete or perfect.

We will put to rest the notion that there are seven individual Spirits all working with the Godhead.  Except for in Revelation and a few choice places, the Bible always refers to the Spirit of God in a singular form.  Why then does God see fit to use the plural form of the Spirit in Revelation and does that change the tense of who the Spirit is?  

Let’s bring into the picture what Revelation really is trying to reveal.  God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are working with each other and among mankind to judge the world.  There are two differing types of judgment, one being the judgment of the believers who have released their sins to be judged before hand and the judgment of the wicked who have held onto their sin until the end.  If we look at the completeness of the Holy Spirit as indicated by the number seven, we will understand that nothing will be missed by the complete vision of the Holy Spirit, the complete authority of the Holy Spirit, as well as the complete light of the Holy Spirit.  He is complete to search out the depths of our hearts and dissect the intentions from our actions and illuminate the Word of God in our lives.

The Spirit of God as referred to as water and fire indicate the impossibility to pin down His exact method of working.  The Holy Spirit is free-flowing like water and flames and we as humans are unable to predict how He will actually get His Will accomplished.  We can of course see the evidence of Him spreading through the lives of those He is working on, and pray for Him to work in an area; but we will never box Him in by a designated a method of work.  He is All-Knowing so He knows how to work even in the hardest situations.

The Creation of the world began with the Holy Spirit breathing energy/life into the vast expanse of nothing.  The Creator team worked in conjunction with each other to produce a world that would need them for sustenance and guidance.  When you look at the various types of energy in this world, they are all here because the Holy Spirit has breathed them into existence.  

Our hearts are a desperate part of life without the work of the Holy Spirit, trying to find fulfillment among anything and everything.  When the Holy Spirit gets poured out something will get changed.  The fellowship of the Holy Spirit completes the human’s existence and fulfills the deepest longings in their hearts.

The are seven main aspects of the Holy Spirit which we need to look at.

• The Spirit of Justification

The debased actions of our flesh which lead to death, can be justified by our faith through the Spirit of God.  The word “justified” means to be declared righteous in the sight of God.  In effect, our eternal death sentence has been pardoned, and our eternal separation from God has been lifted because of our being justified by God.  This justification can only be ours by first the offer of God on our behalf, and second by us taking initiative and walking through the blood-stained door of Salvation which has been stained with the Blood of Jesus to atone for our sin.

• The Spirit of Sanctification

Sanctification is the act of being made holy.  Instead of being separated from God, we can now be separated unto God.  Sanctification is a kind of kinetic action where perpetually holiness grows deeper.  Though we have been justified previously, true holiness can only come by growing in the Lord and learning His Ways.  We need to dig into His Instruction/His Laws and learn who He really is.  In reality, Living in the Spirit will continue to Sanctify us for the Lord.

• The Spirit of Life

Modern Scientists have tried to discover the origin of life; but they come up dry every time.  Life is not something that can be discovered by scientific research.  The term science has often been used to define the study of matter, but it is so much deeper than that.   Science is knowledge and knowledge comes from God and the study of His Word.  God reigns with Omniscience. The study of life has led many well-meaning scientists down a rabbit trail looking for a god particle/Higgs Boson particle.  What they have not realized is that it is all in the Bible as the revealed nature of God.  God is that missing element in the study of life, because God and only God can create life.

Life itself has been breathed into each person by the Holy Spirit either at birth or at our New Birth.

• The Spirit of Truth

Truth unveils itself when we call upon the Lord.  God is Truth and Truth is God.  Our society has come to the place of disregarding truth as an absolute because of its disbelief in God as the Father of Truth revealed to us through the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit of Truth can become a part of our lives and change us from a cursed disregarder of Truth to a Blessed vessel of Truth.  “The Truth shall set you free!”

• The Spirit of Wisdom

Wisdom and Truth are inseparable, because wisdom without truth is meaningless and truth without wisdom is non-existent. Wisdom is a part of who God is, and God when asked for an infilling of wisdom will give to everyone who asks more than they can imagine.  As the Holy Spirit comes down on an individual they become wiser in their decisions and their interaction with other people.

• The Spirit of Deliverance

Every child of Adam has to some degree lifted himself/herself up in rebellion against God.  This is sin or wickedness from which we all need deliverance and God has offered us the deliverance we need through the blood of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit.

• The Spirit of Prayer

Prayer is such a vital part of our spiritual lives that we are commanded to pray without ceasing.  This really is our spirit communing with the Spirit of God who translates to the Father our prayers even when we cannot always speak what is in our spirit.  When we pray in our spirit through the Spirit of God we are worshiping God in Spirit and in Truth.

The Holy Spirit is such a vital part of our lives, either by sustenance or by new birth.  When we have received the new birth that means that we have received the Holy Spirit into our heart and lives for direction and comfort.  The Holy Spirit, at the time of our new birth, will overshadow our sinful human spirit and create a new spirit that will bear a resemblance to the Father.  We find ourselves at times producing thoughts and actions that are not of God, and though we may not intend to stage a rebellion against our Father, we have succeeded in listening to the father of rebellion (the devil) and becoming his illegitimate child.

The Holy Spirit is a pretty misunderstood part of the Godhead, due to the well-meaning Christian who tend to focus more on the Holy Spirit and His gifts than on the rest of the Godhead and how they work together.  There are “christians” on both sides of this issue and some choose to either ignore the the whole person of God named the Holy Spirit.  They may just refer to God working in their lives or may even become guilty of attributing the work of the Holy Spirit to the devil.

The Rebellious Son/The Prodigal Son

Luke 15:11 Jesus also told them another story:

Once a man had two sons. 12 The younger son said to his father, “Give me my share of the property.” So the father divided his property between his two sons.

13 Not long after that, the younger son packed up everything he owned and left for a foreign country, where he wasted all his money in wild living. 14 He had spent everything, when a bad famine spread through that whole land. Soon he had nothing to eat.

15 He went to work for a man in that country, and the man sent him out to take care of his pigs.[b] 16 He would have been glad to eat what the pigs were eating,[c] but no one gave him a thing.

17 Finally, he came to his senses and said, “My father’s workers have plenty to eat, and here I am, starving to death! 18 I will go to my father and say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against God in heaven and against you.19 I am no longer good enough to be called your son. Treat me like one of your workers.’”

20 The younger son got up and started back to his father. But when he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt sorry for him. He ran to his son and hugged and kissed him.

21 The son said, “Father, I have sinned against God in heaven and against you. I am no longer good enough to be called your son.”

22 But his father said to the servants, “Hurry and bring the best clothes and put them on him. Give him a ring for his finger and sandals[d] for his feet. 23 Get the best calf and prepare it, so we can eat and celebrate. 24 This son of mine was dead, but has now come back to life. He was lost and has now been found.” And they began to celebrate.

25 The older son had been out in the field. But when he came near the house, he heard the music and dancing.26 So he called one of the servants over and asked, “What’s going on here?”

27 The servant answered, “Your brother has come home safe and sound, and your father ordered us to kill the best calf.” 28 The older brother got so angry that he would not even go into the house.

His father came out and begged him to go in. 29 But he said to his father, “For years I have worked for you like a slave and have always obeyed you. But you have never even given me a little goat, so that I could give a dinner for my friends. 30 This other son of yours wasted your money on prostitutes. And now that he has come home, you ordered the best calf to be killed for a feast.”

31 His father replied, “My son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. 32 But we should be glad and celebrate! Your brother was dead, but he is now alive. He was lost and has now been found.”

***

The first thing we see in the story of the prodigal son is one of the sons is selfish.  The father apparently decided to allow the selfish son to continue in his selfishness.  When someone is self-centered, they are identifying with the father of selfishness who is Satan.  

There is a certain amount of humanity in each one of us that encourages selfishness to occur, but when a soul makes a deliberate choice to be selfish, he is choosing to follow an illegitimate father.  When a person deliberately sets himself under another father, he begins to exhibit the character of the father he is under.  In the life of a Christian the ideology of John the Baptist becomes negated, because instead of ourselves becoming less prominent than Christ, we actually are becoming more prominent than Christ.

The prodigal son was making his plans to deliberately walk away from his father’s house while trying to feign devotion to his father.  His heart was to get out of there and be his own boss and live wild and free.  The son finally took off making his break from his father’s house and though he took his inheritance with him lost it all living in full rebellion.

The lost inheritance the son experienced was something that was given to all of the sons the father had.  He was having so much “fun” that he didn’t see the inheritance slipping away.  In a spiritual application it was the gift of salvation and eternal life.  The inheritance that we have been given by our father needs to be guarded intensely or it will slip away.  To many people take the approach of seeing how much they can get by with.  That is a purposeful deliberate sin.

Now that he had lost everything...his identity as a son, his inheritance, and his dignity; he tried working his way back to have status in the society.  The regional famine had taken a toll on the job market and all that was left for him was feeding pigs the corn stalks and slop.  He was literally starving, but could not even eat the pigs food.

It is here that he remembered his father! He knew full well that he was probably disowned as a son; but thought he could go back as a servant.  He is beginning to humble himself, and recognizes that he isn’t worthy of being called a son and maybe not even a servant but it was worth a try.  He thought it would be better to serve his father as a servant/master scene and be able to partake of the crumbs of food and righteousness than nothing.

The son, emaciated though he was started the long arduous journey back home to submission, love, and care.  As he was approaching the father extended his arms of love once again as he ran to greet him.  The son, though he was happy to be back, came forth with a message he had saved up for this meeting.  He acknowledged that his father had disowned him and he was willing to take that burden even though it meant he wouldn't be respected in the family or society.  He was willing because he knew he would be fed physically and spiritually, that he would be protected, and that he would be home.  He had seen the real world and had determined that it was a harsh world and that any entertainment he had found in it had ultimately led to his destruction.

The father, having felt sorrow in the loss of his son; though he had disowned him, was prepared to take him in again as a son should the situation should arise.  The father lifted the burden from the disowned son and reinstated him as a son in the family and also socially.

The older brother, however, returning from a hard day’s work in the fields hears the noise of an unscheduled party and wants to know what is going on.  Catching a servant of his fathers, he urged him to fill him in with the meaning of it all.  After having heard that his brother was home; he became jealous and stubbornly refused to enter into the party.  The younger brother, in his mind was still disowned and he would not take any part in welcoming him home.  

As the father realized the stubbornness of the older brother, he encouraged him to join in.  The father recognized the issue of the younger son being disowned in the eyes of the older brother and went right to the source.  He said to the older brother, “This your brother was dead to us and is alive again; He was lost, and is found”.

***

The Jewish people full well knew what happened when a son left the family under these circumstances.  The father would say, “You are dead to us”.  The family wouldn't mention his name any more and would act as though he hadn't existed.

The willingness of the father to receive the younger son back into the family, indicates his merciful nature which was driven by his love.  Imagine the grief the father must surely have felt when his son turned his back on him and his family.

God The Son

The prophets in the Old Testament prophesied about the time when God would come as the Savior.  Isaiah says “Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight a path in the desert for our God”.  John the Baptist, who was the last prophet before Christ, took up that cry and declared to the people that Jesus Christ is both Lord and God.

There are some popular religions that believe Jesus was a re-incarnated Michael the Archangel or that he was just a prophet that taught a good moral message, but what does the Bible have to say about that?  Was Jesus an angel picked out for the job of being Savior or was He, as God offering Himself as the ransom for the sins of the people or was He just a prophet?

The Son has existed forever, even before the Father prepared Mary as a surrogate.  The Bible says “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God”.  The Prophet Micah prophesied that a Ruler would come out of Bethlehem who had neither beginning nor end, and the book of Hebrews says that Jesus Christ is a High Priest after the order of Melchizedek, who had neither beginning nor end.  Jesus is an eternal being who rules forever and is a priest forever.  The Priesthood begins with Jesus and ends with Jesus, therefore it was He who commissioned the priests out of the tribe of Levi.

Though we often view Mary as the mother of Jesus the Son of God, and so she is in respect to the fact that she cared for Him as a mother would, God had chosen through His Sovereign Nature to come into the existence of mankind  through the portal of humanity .  The Son of God, though He chose to come to the earth as a baby that would need a mother’s care; pre-existed as God throughout eternity past.  It is through coming like this that it can be said of Him “He was tempted in all points such as we are, yet without sin”.  Jesus, after taking upon Himself the form of a human, opened Himself to being able to feel the depraved feelings of mankind, but yet purposed in His heart not to defile Himself by indulging into self-pity, feelings of rejection, feelings of lust, or any other thing known to mankind.

So what really does it mean when you see or hear Immanuel?  Immanuel or Emmanuel is a word used to describe the incarnation of Jesus Christ.  First of all “incarnation” means “taking on the flesh”.  The words Immanuel or Emmanuel mean literally “God With Us”.  Isaiah brings these words into his writings (under the direction of the Holy Spirit) to give hope in a time when there was none.  The meaning was clear God was going to visit His people. The Word of God was going to become flesh!

The messages that God had spoken in times past were clear, Mankind deserved to die for its sin; yet God, the merciful Father that He is offered to take our sin and our punishment for sin in exchange for a relationship with Him.  A life of sin always will end up with someone’s death and there is no getting around that fact, so when God declares that he is willing to take it on Himself, He is declaring that you (we) have been pardoned if you allow His blood sacrifice to atone for your sin.  Physical death is not yet eradicated, but it will be as Jesus will come back to this earth destroy the rest of His enemies.  Sin will always take a person to the point of self-destruction unless God steps in to reverse that path through Salvation.  Though many of us live our lives with seemingly “good morals”, unless we choose Jesus our lives are headed for destruction in the Lake of Fire which was prepared for the angelic enemies of God and those they have deceived.

The Ministry of Jesus Christ began at His Baptism.  Baptism was always a sign of entering into a life of service for God and when Jesus was baptized the meaning hadn't changed.  It is here that the three person Godhead is present in either visible or audible form.  Those around Jesus had no doubt as to what had just happened unless they just chose to ignore the truth.  John the Baptist, the man doing the baptizing at that point interpreted that to mean that Jesus was (is) the Sacrifice of God.  The crowd that was standing around heard, saw and heard the interpretation so they really were without excuse.

As Jesus received His ministerial initiation ritual, it became evident that He was set to become a leader of an entirely different stripe.  His physical leadership was going to be short, and divisive; yet it was going to be a leadership that was focused on His love for His followers rather than some selfish agenda.  It was unheard of for a leader to seek to give life to his followers by dying for them.  Usually the leader would spend years discipling his followers and hope they would catch it by the time he could no longer lead them.  Jesus discipled His followers a mere 3 years and then offered Himself up as a sacrifice on the cross to give them life (spiritual).  Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

The life and ministry of Jesus the Son of God on this earth had more purpose than just to create some amazing stories to teach good morals.  Many people view the stories of the Bible this way; but in reality the Bible is the story of God rather than just independent stories of people or even an isolated story of Jesus.

The ministry of God incarnate drew to a close as the Religious Leaders declared Jesus a blasphemer of Himself as God, and through which they became the true blasphemers of God.  They thought they had enough evidence against Jesus to destroy Him by death and He willingly offered Himself up so that His message would spring to life through His death.  His physical death on the cross was the beginning of a new era for the world as within three days He was raised bodily from the grave and an earthquake made the empty tomb visible to those who came to see it.  The Power of God is the only force that is capable of raising the dead body of our Lord to life.

God the Son is the person of the Godhead through whom all things are issued.

God As The Father

He is the father to the fatherless

He is a mother to the motherless

He is the Creator of the world

He is an orchestrator of Redemption, Creation, Life, etc...

He is the Giver of the Law

He is the orchestrator of Holiness, righteousness, Truth, Revelations, etc…

He is the Giver of all Blessings (Good Gifts)

He is the beginning of Wisdom, Glory, Promises

There is very little distinction between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  As we proceed into this study, we shall see many similarities between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

God the Father begins to reveal Himself to us in the beginning of His Word.  We have already mentioned the word El-ohim in which The prefix “El” translates as Father God.  As mentioned in a previously, the suffix “ohim” gives the pre-fix a plural meaning.  The word El-ohim is a singular word for Father God with a plural meaning.  This indicates more than one person having the name as Father God.  (Genesis 1:1)  We are not trying to say that there is more than one God but that the term God is made up of three persons; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

God is a Living Father.  Hosea 1:10 indicates that there are those who hadn’t been Children of the Living God, but that He would become their Father.

The Father always refers to an authority that has brought into existence or gives life to a son or daughter.

The Old Testament makes various references to God the Father, but though it has been mentioned; it becomes a reality in the New Testament.  The New Testament has shown us that the Father is a personal Father instead of a vague reference to Him being our Father.

There are two aspects of the Father.  One of these aspects is God the Father as He issues the decree for us to be His children.  The other aspect of the Father is in Christ, who though He is our “Elder Brother” through our adoption, He initiates fatherhood into each one of us.  It is because of Creation that we have a part of God instilled into us as men to be fathers to our children and show them the true character of God the best we can.  There are many parts of this that we will need to ask God to help us as there is no way a fallen being can exemplify a holy, and righteous God to their children.

A  father also continues to breathe life into his children’s hearts by blessing them or offering them the Living Truth though it may be hard for them to swallow.  A father will speak to his children about the dangers in life and will do everything in his power to protect them from those dangers.  A father whose child has taken its own way of destruction, will work with his child to redeem the situation in which they have found themselves.

Through Creation, we are called the children of God.  Adam, the first man, was referred to as the son of God in Luke chapter 3:38.  When mankind fell into rebellion, it seemed as though we were losing our place as the children of God until the time of the Israelites.  God stepped in and set them apart and re-initiated them as His Children.  Since the Israelites were human, their desires and pride would often get in the way of a true meaningful relationship with their Heavenly Father.  God the Father was always there to re-establish them as full children.

As time moved along, between the on again off again relationship of the Israelites and God and the ever increasing de-moralization of the rest of the population, the world continually was getting worse.  God’s plan under the Old Covenant was for the Israelites to be a type of the true Children of God and to set the stage for the initiation into the church or His Bride.

Just as the physical father cares about each of his children, our Heavenly Father cares deeply about each of His Children.  When we as children of our Heavenly Father are rebellious, He still loves us very deeply; and though we are enemies of His plan for us, He has gone to great expense to redeem our relationship with Him.

Sometimes we may feel like orphans, but we can be assured; God is our Father and is just waiting for us to reach out and take hold of His hand.  The Father is actively working on behalf of all of mankind, searching out all of the dysfunctional children who are His because He created them.  God has given us life at our birth, but we still need to make a conscious choice to remain a dysfunctional child or become a part of the inheritance of His Righteousness.

As physical fathers, we look to our heavenly Father for an example in how to be a good father to our children.  It is through us as fathers that our children will see God for who He is.

1 John 1:31 The Love of the Father

Hosea 1:10 Children of the Living God.