I would also like to add that when I began writing the OP I wrote it using my own Bible, which uses the title 'Seven Parables of Christ' in the margin next to Mt 13. For reasons I cannot fathom it does not recognise the last parable of the Householder as a parable. So if I could, I would rename my post 'Eight Parables of Christ from Mt Ch13'
I received a message from someone concerning this post, and actually I can see why they had problems with the OP;
"10-17 After his disciples question his insistence on speaking in parables Jesus explains that some teachings are too hard for those who will not want to hear, and if they are told them bluntly, they will become more Gospel hardened. That if he says straightly that some love their sin too much, for instance, they will be forever lost because no one wants to hear that they must let go of that which they think they cannot do without! (this teaches us that we need to let the spirit guide us how we share the Gospel)"
I actually understand your problem here, I think that because Jesus is speaking in parables (particularly the parable of the Sower) I felt that His Spirit gave me other things to say. concerning evangelism, since that is why we are all still here in the world after all!
1) "if they are told them bluntly, they will become more Gospel hardened."
I honestly cannot tell you where this came from, Jesus actually 'appears' to be talking of purely children of disobedience actually, of those who are simply too hard hearted to hear. But the Spirit tells me that God doesn't want us to simply give up on everyone and to listen to Him all the times so as to ensure we say the right thing.
2. "That if he says straightly that some love their sin too much, for instance, they will be forever lost"
3. "because no one wants to hear that they must let go of that which they think they cannot do without!"
I think in fact these ideas come more from John 3:19-21
I can elaborate on that if you like, but would hope you understand already. Perhaps you were just questioning why I put the ideas in an exposition of the verses in Mt 13, I really cannot say. I just found myself typing it and then when I read it back I did think to myself 'hold on, was that what Jesus was saying?' But then because it made sense in and of it's self I decided to keep it it!
You asked 'Does Matthew 13:10-17 say Christ insisted on using parables, or does it say He spoke in them?'
and then
4. "After his disciples question his insistence on speaking in parables"
Mt 13:10 And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables?
Obviously the word 'insist' is not here, I was paraphrasing. To me it seems pretty clear that the disciples are wondering why he is speaking so much in parables. Just to be clear, I haven't suggested that Jesus himself insisted that he or we should speak in parables either. Perhaps I chose the wrong word! I was merely pointing out that his disciples had noticed he spoke a lot in parables. Clearly this was not something teachers of the Law did often, if at all.
5. "this teaches us that we need to let the spirit guide us how we share the Gospel"
Okay, it isn't explicit, but perhaps implicit that Jesus wants us to be careful of who is hearing his message. I just don't think Jesus would condone us thinking we should not even try with 'certain' people because we think;
Mt 13:15 For the hearts of this people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, And their eyes they have closed,
Which is what some people might get from it, as a way to ease their conscience for not even trying...
So I guess I was moved to interpret it in this way.
Thank you again for the message though, all blessings in Christ!
I could find no specific place for testimonies, and this has nothing to do with dating or relationships, but I just thought that this is the biggest miracle I've ever had in my life and it is truly Gods hand in my life, so I hope it blesses someone if they are low in their faith!
Before I go into the testimony I feel there needs to be a little context.
I had struggled with my walk with God at times for some months, dealing with sins from my past. I am convinced that it was because of the presence of these unrepentant sins in my life that God was not blessing me and my Brother with whom I share a house.
All praise to the Most High God, for he is a living God and for over a month before this testimony I began to feel, through His Spirit, that I'd made a break-through. I'd begun to more easily rebuke the devil when he tempted me with sin and felt so much stronger in Christ than I'd done for a season, because of the Lords faithfulness.
Now, for some time we had been struggling to pay the rent on our house, we had had no choice, through lack of funds, to allow the situation to escalate to the extent that our landlord had applied to have us evicted. I should point out that we had not ignored the landlord, we were in contact and trying to pay, and in fact as far as our verbal communications went, we were under the impression that we were just about doing enough. However, out of the blue we received notice of an impending court date, the Landlord, through the agents who dealt with the house, had filed for our eviction!
This is why God removed my sin, he knew we just had to remove this mountain, and that we clearly would not be able without Him, but with Him anything is possible!
Well, the day of the court hearing came my Brother and I were due in court. We were very low in the Spirit and I'm quite ashamed to admit that we had little faith and feared the worst. We had faith, but it was, I think, limited. We both knew that God would find a way for us, but as we were technically in the wrong, we just couldn't see how.
Anyway, we'd prayed hard in the weeks before, the night, and the morning before and we arrived outside the court. We were appointed a court solicitor, who after reviewing our case, told us in no uncertain terms that the judge would in all likelihood grant possession of the house to the landlord and we would have, in the least, a couple of days to move out. He did however say that he would petition for a 28 day grace period, that was a maybe though...So we were thinking in our Spirit 'please God, let it be that!'. After all we'd receive money from our employment within that time and would be able to sort accommodation with that. So that was the extent of our faith after consulting our Solicitor, it was certainly of less than that of a mustard seed!
We were all called to the court, me and my Brother, the Landlord and the housing agent; and we all sat down. Now my Brother and I were clearly just expecting the Judge to start laying out all this damning evidence as to why we were in the wrong and the Landlord was in the right. Obviously so were the landlord and his agent. But this is what happened.
The Judge proceeded to say 'Can I just understand who is present' I thought this probably formality, but as he went on, it became clear that there was a reason for him asking it. Anyway he confirmed that the Landlord was present, that the housing agent was present and that My Brother and I were present, but then he asked about a fifth person who happens to be another partner of the property agency. This man, who is a lawyer in his own right, filed the eviction order with the court, but is not present because he is on holiday.
Now my Brother and I are starting to wonder what's going and on, but the Judge proceeds to say that the reason he asked about this other man is that, in his opinion the eviction order has not been legally drawn up...it all seemed complicated, but the long and short of it is that the partner of the agency firm was in some kind of breech of his profession! The Judge was saying that he couldn't even look at any merits of the case at all, because the order was illegally drawn up!
Now I'm sitting there thinking this is incredible, I was expecting this to be all about us with the Judge siding entirely with the defendant, but by the end of the proceedings (ending up with him 'throwing the case out') the judge had ended up only talking about the complainants wrong doing and not mentioning us at all! My Brother mentioned to me afterwards that, as he was watching the Judge speak, he thought it was like God was sitting there, speaking on our behalf saying something like 'Look I know that these two boys owe you some money, but they are MINE and because I know they will pay you what they owe you in good time, you WILL give them some space because I am the LORD and I uphold my children!'
All this means that as far as the matter goes, the housing agent has to redraw the notice properly and above board and apply for it to the court again, meaning that we're blessed by God with at least three more months, probably a deal more, certainly we can enjoy a stress free Christmas!
When we left the court we spoke to our solicitor who was amazed, he had never witnessed anything like it before, in fact, he looked a little pale and was quite speechless. We tried our hardest not to burst out with joy (we were, after all, in the wrong other than this technicality, it would have been wrong to put Gods grace to shame like that).
So we faced our Landlord outside of the court and assured him we will still be making payments, up-keeping the house and making payments on the arrears. We are certain when he walked out of the court, he probably expected us to be gloating and taking advantage, but we showed him that we will not put him to shame even if the judge did :-D
We cannot begin to thank the Lord for his works in this matter on our behalf, we count ourselves lowly servants of the Most High God and we usually tend to Worship His splendour instead of asking Him for anything specifically. But He truly did lay hold over our affairs when we asked him to and it has certainly increased our faith that with only the faith of a mustard seed, we can remove any mountain!
God spoke on our behalf in that court room and we just exalt his glory in all our lives, he has proved himself in control of our destiny and we just confirm our commitment to not sin against him for how can we spit in his face when he has done so much for us, even on the cross with his righteous blood. Praise you Jesus, Lord of all and Cornerstone of our lives. Amen!
Mt 17:20 And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.
Our God is mighty to do anything it if is to his Glory.
I'm going through the Gospels making notes about what God gives me as I go
I'm not going to make it 'sermon worthy for the moment, it takes long enough just to do this, and it was just for myself really, but there are some things that I thought God would want me to share...
Matthew 13
Seven Parables about the Kingdom of Heaven; 1 The Sower, 2 The Tares, 3 The Mustard Seed, 4 The Leaven, 5 The Hidden Treasure, 6 The Goodly Pearls, 7 The Net
1-3 Jesus stops at the sea of Galilee sits in a boat and begins teaching the multitudes (Christ attracts multitudes)
3-8 The Parable of the Sower
9 He who is ready to hear will hear
10-17 After his disciples question his insistence on speaking in parables Jesus explains that some teachings are too hard for those who will not want to hear, and if they are told them bluntly, they will become more Gospel hardened. That if he says straightly that some love their sin too much, for instance, they will be forever lost because no one wants to hear that they must let go of that which they think they cannot do without! (this teaches us that we need to let the spirit guide us how we share the Gospel)
18-23 The Parable of the Sower expounded (The seeds are the hearers of the Gospel, the type of ground is how they receive it, the 'wayside' are those who hear but don't understand, the stony ground hear, understand and begin to live by it but because of trouble cannot endure, the thorny ground are the same but because of temptation cannot endure, the good ground are those who endure).
24-30 The Parable of the Tares
31-32 The Parable of the Mustard Seed
33 The Parable of the Leaven (both are about how great an effect the Gospel can have if sowed effectively into the world)
34-35 Prophesy fulfiled (Ps 78:2)
36 Multitude is sent away and attention is given to the disciples who then ask for his council (We have a special privilege in Christ to have his undivided attention, so let us seek him in every thing we need)
37-43 The Parable of the Tares expounded (we need to beware of the enemy who will come into the church and sow weeds, children of disobedience, amongst the wheat, children of God)
44-46 The Parable of the Hidden Treasure and The Parable of the Goodly Pearls (We need to treat anything in our lives that is not helpful to our 'path to heaven' as expendable just as the men who sold all they had for the treasure and the goodly pearl)
47-50 The Parable of the Net (Just like the angels in the Tares parable, the net will gather everyone, but the unjust will be cast back into the sea, or hell.
51 Jesus asks especially if they have understood these things (It is important that as disciples of Christ we fully understand these parables)
52 Jesus likens us disciples to a man who is fond of both his newer treasures and older treasures (We ought to be careful to keep on reminding ourselves of all of the spiritual teachings we have learned constantly, Jesus is reminding us that as we grow in Him there will be milestones and markers, lessons we will learn and barriers overcome, this is great as we can not only rejoice at the older, weaker person we've left behind, but also look forward to the newer stronger person we can become as we hope for the future breakthroughs we will have. But, in order to make sure we don't remake old mistakes and fall back to such an extent that we have to go over the same ground all over again, we need to constantly remind ourselves of the past spiritual lessons we learned. So, just as the man is as fond of his older treasures as he is of his newer ones, so ought we be as fond of our older lessons as we are of our newer ones...In fact, the man may be more fond of his older treasures...)
I may be off the mark with some things, if so please reply with your own thoughts, or even add your thoughts if there was something else you got from the scripture , I do so pray that some small thing I have been given proves to be beneficial to some ones walk with Almighty God. It is important that we help each other, what is family for!
I was reading this encounter Jesus had with satan, actually before his ministry proper, and I believe God gave me a couple of points to meditate on.
If anyone can expand that's great, even if anyone has a different take on things that's also great of course. I sincerely hope that it blesses you in some way though!
Mt 4:1-11
- Jesus is 'supposed' to be tempted by satan, he is led by God 'to be tempted'
- Jesus only says what is necessary, and always has something to say.
- Jesus orders satan away from him after the third temptation, implying that he could have done so from the begining, but because it was Gods will, he endured.
- The first temptation was of materialism, the second was of misusing gifts from God, the third was of usurping Gods authority
- The first two temptations have satan somehow trying to put doubt into Jesus' mind by questioning whether he really is the Son of God. Jesus is not even trying to argue this so satan gives up the tactic and seems to admit that he is the Son of God by asking Jesus to switch his allegiance (clearly how could Jesus switch his allegiance from God if he wasn't already the Son of God), showing that even as satan knew this all along, Jesus has openly put him to shame as the blatant liar he is.
- As soon as Jesus orders satan away, he goes away, and as soon as satan leaves, angels of the Lord minister to Jesus. I feel that God is trying to tell us something important here, we know that where there is God, satan cannot be, where there is light there is no darkness, and where darkness there can be no light. I am trying not to suggest that because Jesus was entertaining a conversation with the devil he was at all sinning, clearly not! And likewise, if we are 'tempted' like Jesus was, we are also not sinning; it is of course the 'giving in' to the temptation that is enmity from God. But I still feel there is something important to learn here from verse 11. This whole time was clearly an intense experience for our Blessed Lord Jesus, there is a definite similarity with this experience and the harsh time that Noah and his family must have had in the Ark for the same duration. Jesus 'endured' this time, just as we must endure any time in which we are tempted; but just as God sent his angels to minister to Jesus when he successfully endured satans temptations, we are likewise promised angels from God to minister onto us when we successfully endure satans temptations.
We can ask God for a hedge of fire to protect us from attacks, we can ask for Gods armour and shields for a defence from demons and the long tongues of our enemies. In fact, it is in this writers strong opinion that as children of God we must do so! But ultimately, sometimes we will have to endure temptation whilst we are still in the flesh, even the most Holy person will, just as Jesus did!
May Jesus, who even abides in you as you walk this life in the flesh, be your strength; may he help you to renew your minds as you are transformed more and more into his glorious image; and may you withstand the fiery arrows of the enemy with His two edged sword, in Jesus' mighty and everlasting name! Amen.
Just some random questions... Read at your own risk
Posted : 1 Nov, 2015 02:35 PM
H Aimee,
1) I wouldn't know how to answer this, personally race doesn't matter to me but I'm not sure what your asking...some people lie I guess!
2) Honestly, either.
3) Well, the truth is always good,though of course one doesn't have to actually lie in order to with-hold the truth, and I wouldn't hold it against anyone who does that. I'd by lying if I said I don't with-hold the truth about myself all the time! We all have things in our past (or sometimes even present) that we would rather keep to ourselves - at least until we are more comfortable with the person we are about to confide in.
4) The only ridiculous messages are the obvious scammers, giving phone numbers, emails and such, or asking for them...Other than that, I can't remember a 'real' person asking anything that was ridiculous.
My advise to you is just be yourself Sister, let the Holy Spirit in you guide your search for a husband. Don't be impatient for the 'right man' from your own POV, wait on the Lord and do not settle for a husband who doesn't put God first. (Ec 3:1)
Is Christmas Pagan?... So What's the History Behind Christmas?
Posted : 29 Oct, 2015 09:21 PM
Hark quoted
Je 10:2-4
Thus saith the Lord, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not.
Firstly. I'm not sure why you started with verse 2 any way, why would it be necessary to warn a Christian who celebrates Christmas against astrology. it's fixed (certainly nowadays) by the Julian Calender, not by the winter solstice.
But more to the point, I believe Jeremiah is refering to the sort of idol-statue crafting prophesied by Isaiah a generation earlier;
Is 40:19,20
The workman melteth a graven image, and the goldsmith spreadeth it over with gold, and casteth silver chains. He that is so impoverished that he hath no oblation chooseth a tree that will not rot; he seeketh unto him a cunning workman to prepare a graven image, that shall not be moved.
It is rather striking how similar the two descriptions appear.
Speaking strictly for myself, I am not so concerned with hanging on to something clearly 'of the world' and clearly not biblical when the Holy Spirit tells me to let go of it, I have done so with many things since I received Jesus into my life.
But I am however not compelled at this time to make the decision to throw my Christmas tree away, I have not celebrated Christmas as a Christian yet, but the thought of doing so in December does fill me with Joy. And if, when the time comes, the Holy Spirit does condemns me, of course I will heed him! I also enjoy a cup of coffee every so often, the occasional game of chess and pool, and though none are biblical; they simply bring me joy and do no harm to my walk with the Almighty!
I do think though, that striking as the Jeremiah scripture you quoted earlier is to a logical mind, I see it as more of a warning against fashioning idols from wood, to worship them...I do not plan worship my Christmas tree!
It seems to me that in your zeal to condemn Christmas trees you've taken a piece of scripture that could 'to secular ears' sound like the description of a Christmas tree and used it for your own agenda. When in fact it was intended to be used against the kind of idolatry (for instance - since my Brother is a Nigerian) practised in some African countries even today, where wood is carved into idols; decorated, and worshiped.
When I read the Word of God I tend not have an agenda, I let Him give me what He wants me to know. Instead of having a goal and trying to back it up with scripture, I pray that God searches my life and shows me what I am missing or what I need to dismiss.
A short exhortation based upon some points from a Brother of mine in Christ, Sheum.
1Sam 3:1-3
...And the word of the Lord was precious in those days; there was no open vision. And it came to pass at that time, when Eli was laid down in his place, and his eyes began to wax dim, that he could not see; And ere the lamp of God went out in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was...
'The word of the Lord was precious in those days' the days mentioned here were not unlike today, idolatry was rampant, traditionalism and religiosity the norm; such that God had very few men in whom he found favour, with whom he could fellowship, with whom he could share his word.
'There was no open vision', again it is stark just how history seems to repeat itself and even when it's recorded for us, we still fail to see when the devil uses the same tactics time and time again! In those days like now, the people who should have had their spiritual eyes open, were blind.
We are then told how Eli, the head Levite Priest, was 'laid down in his place'; that is laid down at his post. He wasn't doing as he should have been doing, his spiritual eyes were heavy and he was blind. And so what happened next...disaster! The lamp of God, in the Holy of Holies, the lamp that ought to burn always (Ex 27:20), went out. This is what we're in danger of doing when we grow spiritually dim, the light that Jesus shines in us, our bodies being the temple of God, is likewise in danger of going out.
Let us pray that the Lord our God help us to keep his light burning in our lives. Jesus, please give us open vision in these these last days by your Holy Spirit, such that your church will not lay down but arise because of the grace you give it. Holy, mighty Lord God, let your word have a resurgence in these days, even in a complete turnaround so that it resounds and reverberates around this fallen world and becomes not precious any more but common. In the righteous name of Jesus we pray, amen.
