Basic Bible Commentary: Genesis

 I started to read the Basic Bible Commentary series published by Abingdon Press. This is an older series from the late 1980’s that I have been wanting to read for a while. I started with Genesis which was wrote by Linda B. Hinton. She has a Masters of Theological Studies from Emory University. She wrote a few other commentary books in this series as well.

The first thing that caught me off guard was her explanation of Genesis 1, verses 26-27. (26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” 27 So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.)

On page 18 the author states, “The plural our may refer to God alone as an indication of divine majesty. Our may also refer to a heavenly council or court with which God talks over this significant part of the creation process."

Interesting. I am not sure where she is going with the heavenly council or court discussion, but all of the commentaries I have read refer to "our" as the trinity. God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I understood this to be the case even before reading any commentaries.

The next thing that really stopped me in my tracks was on page 24. This is in reference to Genesis 3:1-13. (1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”).

The author states, "The serpent is not Satan or a symbol of evil or of death." Really? Let's jump ahead to Revelation 12:9,  "The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him."

So the author claims the serpent is not Satan, but in God's own word it refers to the serpent as the devil or Satan. 

Again in Revelation 20:2,  "He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years." Once again, God's word refers to the serpent as the devil or Satan.

I am not sure how valuable a commentary series will be if they can't even get the facts correct directly from the Bible. The author was clearly not comparing Scripture with Scripture in this instance.

Still reading here at Doe Valley.

Book Review

Parables by John MacArthur

The subtitle of this book is "The Mysteries of God's Kingdom Revealed Through The Stories Jesus Told." This book describes and explains in expository fashion several of Jesus's parables. To start with however, MacArthur explains why Jesus taught using parables and how we should interpret them today.

Some of the parables that are studied in this book are:

• The Parable of the Soils
• The Pearl of Great Price
• The Hidden Treasure
• The Workers in the Vineyard
• The Good Samaritan
• The Two Men at the Temple: The Tax Collector & The Pharisee 
• The Two Servants
• The Ten Bridesmaids
• The Parable of the Talents
• The Unjust Steward
• The Rich Man and the Beggar
• The Parable of the Judge and the Persistent Women

Like MacArthur's 50 years of preaching, he treats each parable with care and explains Jesus's words, why He said what He did and how it continues to apply to us today.

Overall, I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in a more in depth look at some of Jesus's parables.

Book Review

Is This The End by Dr. David Jeremiah

This is an excellent book regarding the end. It is separated into two sections: the end for America and the end of the world. Each section has five chapters.

In the section regarding the end for America, Jeremiah goes into detail regarding what has and will lead to the decline of America. This includes ideas of tolerance toward anything and everything, except the truth of God's Word. The author also goes into details about our borders and illegal immigration and how America has become apathetic toward what is happening. However, there is hope. And that hope can come only through a revival for God's Word.

In the section regarding the end for the world, Jeremiah reviews in detail the history of Israel, ISIS, and Russia. Finally, he pulls it all together with the Rapture of God's redeemed and a description of the Tribulation.

As stated in the opening, this is an excellent book that uses God's Word to explain what has happened and what will happen to the world. I highly recommend this book for everyone to read and learn a little bit more about the end of the world.

Thru the Bible with Dr. J Vernon McGee

I finished listening to Dr. J. Vernon McGee's five year thru the bible radio program last week.

The format of the program is simply McGee talking about, explaining, and giving his thoughts about the entire bible. This program is an expansion of his two year thru the bible radio program.

I started the program with Genesis 1 and went the entire way to Revelation 22. This is not how they air on the radio. At first, I found Mcgee's comments interesting and often times insightful. However, by the end o the program I found him to be rather annoying.

He seemed to tell the same stories/illustrations over and over again. I also found his pronunciation of several words annoying as well. For example, the word humble. Most people pronounce it with the 'h' as in hum-bull, but it is also acceptable to leave the 'h' silent and pronounce it um-bull. But not Dr. McGee, he liked to emphasize the silent 'h' so it sounded more like uuuummm-bull. After a while it became annoying.

Another aspect I found annoying was his constant mention that he uses his translation for many portions of Scripture, but he doesn't recommend it for others to use. It was as if his ego was creeping out each time he mentioned his translation.

When explaining certain verses he would often times say something like "many fine scholars believe it means this ..., but here is what it really means ... so you can go along with the other folk, but if you want to be right then you'll agree with me." I am sure he meant this to be humorous, but it just didn't work for him. In fact, he attempted to use humor throughout the five year program, but in my opinion in never really worked for him.

Overall, I would recommend skipping this program, simply because it wasn't very insightful. There are many other better programs to listen to. If however, you are just studying a book or passage, then you may want to listen to what McGee has to say.

McGee probably has about two years worth of material in this five year program. The rest is just banter and him blathering on about nothing in particular. This is just my opinion though.

Book Review

The New Testament - Recovery Version by Living Stream Ministry

I finished reading the New Testament Recovery version this past weekend. This version is a translation by Witness Lee and others that "attempts to provide the best utterance for the revelation in the divine Word, that it may be expressed in the English language with the greatest accuracy."

This bible contains the entire New Testament along with cross references and footnotes for many verses. Here is John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that everyone who believes into Him would not perish, but would have eternal life."

Overall, this is an acceptable translation. However, I didn't always agree with the explanation of the Scripture in the footnotes. In fact, sometimes, I didn't think a footnote was even needed and actually made the Scripture more confusing. Also, the print of this bible was very small and challenging to read. That being said, I would probably not recommend this version to others.

Family Radio Letter #2

As my regular readers here are aware, I recently sent Family Radio a letter recommending the removal of Harold Camping from the organization. While I didn't receive a response to that letter, I did receive another letter from Harold Camping.

Apparently, Camping felt the need to send another letter out to further clarify that they (he) was only wrong in his teaching about the exact date of Christ's return and the end of the world. Of course, he is still right about everything else he teaches.

In particular, Camping teaches that Christians are not to belong, attend, or associate with a Church. He has proven that the church age is over and God no longer uses the Church for his purposes and if fact the Church is actually under the judgment of God.

Here is a quote from his most recent letter.
"From evidence we have learned from the Bible, we remain convicted that God has finished using the churches as the earthly representatives of the Kingdom of God, and they remain under His judgment. Therefore, we do not encourage anyone to become part of a local congregation."

Once again, Family Radio sent a postage paid envelope along with a support card to return with your check or credit card number. No thanks Mr. Camping. I think I'll keep my money going to the local Church!

Letter to Family Radio

On Saturday I received a letter in the mail from Family Radio Stations, Inc. This is a radio Gospel ministry. I haven't received anything from them in many years, so I was curious to open the envelope and see what wonderful news that had for me!

For those of you that are not familiar with Family Radio, Harold Camping is the founder and President of the organization. He is the same person that predicted the return of Christ in May 2011 and the end of the world in October 2011. As we knew then and has been proven since then, he was wrong.

I opened and read the letter which basically says, we (meaning Family Radio) was wrong. You can read the letter online here. In the letter they admitted they were wrong and sinning with their actions. To me the point of the letter was "Yeah, we messed up, but look at all the attention the Gospel got, so send us some money."

I was simply going to pitch the letter, but then I saw there was a postage paid return envelope. So I figured I would write my own letter to Harold Camping and the Family Radio staff. Here is what I wrote to them:

March 27, 2012

Dear Mr. Camping and the Staff at Family Radio:

I received your letter the mail last week and I want to take this opportunity to tell you my story and involvement with Family Radio.

I don’t remember how I came across the radio station out of Johnstown, PA, but I did. I started listening to the good old Gospel Hymns. Then on my way to work I would catch the “Walk with the King” broadcast, with Dr. Robert A. Cook. I really enjoyed listening to his stories and explanations of the Gospel. I have even read a few of his books.

From there, I started to listen to other programs, but then I noticed some started to disappear for some reason, like the teaching of Dr. Laterbach (not sure of the spelling). Then I started to listen to Harold Camping’s Open Forum. I was amazed at how well he knew his Bible, or so I thought.

In fact, I even enrolled in the Family Radio School of the Bible and completed about 10 courses. As I progressed in my course work though, I found that the instructors were not grading me on what I knew or what I thought about topics. They simply wanted me to spit out and regurgitate the information that they presented.

Finally, I got frustrated and gave up the course work and school because I wasn’t really learning anything and I didn’t agree with all of the material. At the same time I continued to listen to the Open Forum and found that often times Harold Camping would rudely interrupt the callers and even cut them off.

I felt that was not Christ-like and found that Harold Camping was really letting his ego get to him. I finally quit listening to him when he started spouting the nonsense about how he knew the exact time of Christ’s return. I have not listened to Family Radio since then.

I was glad in your letter that you called this error what it is, sin. However, I don’t believe that everyone at Family Radio blindly followed Harold Camping’s sinful error.

The only way to restore the public trust of Family Radio is to remove Harold Camping from the Presidency and Family Radio in a teaching capacity. He teaches his listeners and followers not what the bible says, but what he THINKS the bible says. This has been proven several times over the years.

I hope you will consider what I have wrote here today to help further your mission to “proclaim the TRUE Gospel to all nations around the world and ACCURATLY teach the Gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.”

God’s best to you,

Wesley J. Matthews

A letter to Money Magazine

Below is a letter I sent to the editor of Money magazine regarding an article in their June 2009 issue.



I was excited to see an article about the associated costs of living a faithfully religious lifestyle
("The Price of Faith" June 2009).

The Jewish and Muslim families seemed to adhere to their religion strictly and faithfully. The Christian family seemed to also, but the closing statement caught me off guard.

"'We used to feel that if we just did our jobs using the gifts God gave us, we would be taken care of financially' says Kent. Now they know it's up to them to take care of themselves."

If that is how the Koeman family really feels, I think the authors could have and should have found a more faithful family to represent Christianity.

My question to the Koeman family is this: When you were "poor" only making around $30,000 a year, did God not provide for you?

Maybe they didn't have everything they wanted, but I'll bet God gave them what they needed! Too bad they didn't realize it.




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Book Review

Matthew 16-23: The MacArthur New Testament Commentary

MacArthur provides thorough Scriptural commentary throughout this book.

MacArthur's commentaries are mainly expository. Meaning, he takes scripture and explains it with other scripture. His expository style, however, is easy to read and understand. He does digress into other scripture or theological topics at times, but I believe he does this so anyone reading this commentary would be able to understand the other scriptural passages that he references.

I would highly recommend The MacArthur New Testament Commentary Series to anyone looking for an in-depth Biblical explanation of Scripture.





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Book Review

Wild at Heart by John Eldredge

Wild at Heart claims to be a spiritual/christian living type book to help men discover who they are meant to be and help women understand what men need to be like.

Basically the author calls the men in churches today a bunch of sissy's or wimps. To be a real man they need to be wild and adventuresome; to follow their boyhood dreams; men need to fight!

The author quotes many other people throughout the book (which to me often times don't seem to fit in to what the author is trying to get at). He also uses movies to reference what real men should be like (like Hollywood knows what a real man is!).

The author does make an attempt to use scripture to prove his point. Often times, however, he seems to twist the scriptural interpretation to help prove his point. In reality, there are many correct scriptural references that prove the exact opposite of the author's point!

Overall, I cannot recommend this book for various reasons.

First, I believe the author to be wrong about Christian living. I won't go into detail about why, but you can read other reviews on Amazon that further discuss this.

Second, the book just isn't well wrote. There are many long paragraphs that don't seem to make sense. They are just a bunch of sentences piled together. In other places, the author seems to realize this problem and would just (seemly at random) split the paragraph into two paragraphs, neither of which make sense.

The scary part is the fact that this has been a best seller among christian books.

This is one book you can safely skip!





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Book Review

2 Corinthians: Finding Strength in Weakness (Life Guide Bible Studies)

The lifeguide series is a great series for group Bible study.

This study guide presents Paul's second (biblical) letter to the Corinthians in eleven group sessions. The questions are easy to understand and provide a lot of opportunity for discussion, not just simple one word or yes/no type questions. Each chapter usually had our group of 10-15 in discussion for about an hour.

I highly recommend this book and series to anyone wanting to start a Bible study group.





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Book Review

Give it All to Him by Max Lucado

This is a small, short book (only 58 pages) about giving all of your "trash" to God who gives you a new beginning through Jesus Christ.

I had to read this book through twice, because the first time I just didn't get it. Each "chapter" starts with a story from another of Lucado's books (I think this is what confused me the first time I read it). The chapter then expands on that story.

Lucado starts his book by letting the reader know that they are not alone; everyone has sin and burdens (trash) in their life. He describes that further by giving examples such as loneliness, worry, pain, resentment, revenge, and failure.

Lucado closes by describing a Way to take out our trash and get rid of it permanently. There is Someone who see and wants your burdens. As we confess our sins and give them to Him He forgives, cleanses, and gives us a new beginning.

I was looking for a quick inspiration/introductory book to give to people as a witnessing tool. I believe this books does that in a way that is appealing and understandable, yet it is true to Scripture.




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Book Review

Go Preach by John Gilbert

This book is an excellent "beginners" guide to preparing a worship service, paying particular attention on the message or sermon.

The author begins by examining a little history and theology of preaching and what preaching really should be like, which is not necessarily what you hear on Sunday mornings anymore unfortunately. In fact, Gilbert devotes a chapter to the (correct) idea of the sermon as a proclamation of the Good News, not just story time as is so often the case today.

Gilbert dedicates a chapter each to the initial preparation of the sermon, knowing about the congregation you are to preach to, and a more in depth look at sermon preparation as well as the use of the lectionary.

The author also has several chapters of topics such as: grammar, humor, practicing the sermon, and evaluating your preaching. Gilbert gives information about the actual delivery of the sermon and what to do afterward, such as, silent prayer or an alter call.

Finally, the author closes with ways of getting ideas for new sermons and a chapter on special occasion preaching, such as, funerals, weddings, baptisms, and so on. At the end of the book the author lists several other helpful books for a preacher to have in his collection.

Overall, this was an excellent book for the beginning preacher. I didn't agree with everything the author had to say though. For example, Gilbert writes "Do not wear white socks" (page 89). I wear white socks all the time and do not believe it detracts from the message at all!

Gilbert did get the main point of preaching across and that is to proclaim the Word of God! "Preaching is first and always the proclamation of God's Word" (page 12).

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in improving their preaching skills.





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Book Review

I finished reading Charismatic Chaos by John MacArthur last night.

This book is a thorough evaluation and examination of the Charismatic movement. As usual MacArthur backs up what he says with Scripture.

This book could easily be used as a textbook for a class, but it is also very readable for the person interested in learning more about the Charismatic movement on their own.

Each chapter is segmented into questions that MacArthur answers. For example, the question for chapter 1 is “Is experience a valid test?” While answering that question, MacArthur introduces other questions related to that main question of each chapter. A sub-question for chapter 1 is “Was Peter a Charismatic?”.

I found the presentation and layout of the material excellent and thoroughly examined.

Overall, I would recommend this book if you are interested in a Biblical evaluation of the Charismatic movement.




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Is this it for the world?

ABCNews is producing a special called Earth 2100 to broadcast this September. They ask a few questions to promote or hype the interest. Here are the questions:

"Are we living in the last century of our civilization? Is it possible that all of our technology, knowledge and wealth cannot save us from ourselves? Could our society actually be heading towards collapse?"

These questions were all answered long ago by One who is more knowledgeable than any so called scientist today.

Q: Are we living in the last century of our civilization?
A: This answer is impossible to know. In Matthew 13:32 Jesus tells us, “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”

Q: Is it possible that all of our technology, knowledge and wealth cannot save us from ourselves?
A: Correct, man cannot save themselves. In John 14:6, Jesus again gave us the way to salvation, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”

Q: Could our society actually be heading towards collapse?
A: Absolutely. We are in the end of times. Jesus is asked this question and gives a through answer as to what expect (Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21). There will be wars and rumors of wars. Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. Children will rise up against their parents. Brother will betray brother.

Don’t waste your time watching this or any other special that tries to answer or solve the problems to avoid the world’s destruction. The end of the world will occur at the designated time. There isn’t anything we can do about it, except to be prepared!

Biblical Women

As mentioned yesterday, here are some descriptions about each of the women in “The Extraordinary Mother” by John Macarthur.

Eve

• Mother, comforter, nurturer, & helper
• Deceived and cursed

Sarah

• Faithful, love for God & husband, hopeful
• Was also cruel

Hagar

• Trusts & obeys (initially)
• Didn’t nurture her sons faith
• Rejected God’s commands by taking an Egyptian wife for her son

Rebekah

• Kind service
• Believes God’s promises, but took matters into her own hands

Rachel & Leah

• Polygamy always causes trouble
• A legacy of faith was instilled in their children

Jochebed

• Entrusted her child to God’s care
• Hope, let Mose’s go twice

Deborah

• Wise & influential
• Obedience to God
• Mother to Israel
• Dealt with the world as it was, but instructed her Children about how it should be

Samson’s Mother

• Faithful & dedicated

Abigail

• Faithful in service
• Wise & humble

King Lemuel’s Mother

• If this is Solomon’s mother – teaches him about God’s wisdom

Mary – Jesus’ Mother

• Grace & courage
• Devoted & faithful

Mary – John Mark’s Mother

• Supporter of the church
• Supported her son through his troubles

Today's Question: Recession or Not?

The question on the mind of many people is: are we in a recession? If you were to ask most people that question, they would respond with a “Yes!” However, technically a recession is two or more declining quarters of GDP. So technically, no America is not in a recession. At least not yet!

However, this does not help if you have lost your job. In fact, that is the old saying. If your neighbor losses their job then it is a recession. If you lose your job then it is a depression!

While the United States, in general, is technically not in a recession, it may be different for you. My purchasing power has drastically decreased over the past several months. Food and fuel have cost much more. I estimate our food/household bill to be about $300 a month and our gasoline bill to be about $250 a month. Add in taxes and utilities and there isn’t much left at the end of each month. Home heating bills alone will be over $1,000 for the year.

In fact, some of the lower paid workers I have talked to are seriously thinking of quitting their job or at least looking for a job closer to their home. Of course, many of them do drive giant trucks or SUV’s. The cost of fuel and day care expenses no longer make it worthwhile to work.

It is nice to know there are non-profit organizations like the Angel Food Ministries to help all people provide food for their families. This is a program across the United States that provides a weeks worth of meals for a family of four for only $30. For more information or to find a local church partnering with Angel Food Ministries in your area check out their web site.

Lay Speaking Message #3

Here is the third and final Lay Speaking message.

Hebrews 11:29-11:32a

The author of Hebrews gives us some examples of faith.

In Exodus chapter 14 and 15 the Israelites reached the shores of the Red Sea and the people feared for their life. But after Moses spoke to them and told them God’s blessing was upon them, they went forward in faith.

Moving ahead to Joshua 6, the people didn’t do anything physically clever or militarily sneaky to knock down the walls of Jericho, they simply followed God’s instructions in faith.

Rahab was not killed with everyone else. She acted in faith. These are just some examples of faith that we see in this chapter and throughout the Bible.

But what is faith? How do you define it? How do you describe it?

Thankfully, God gives us the definition of faith in Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

So, faith is the substance of things hoped for. That is simply the current assurance of the future reality. This is making Christ Lord and Savior of your life, thereby giving you eternal life in heaven.

Faith is the evidence of things not seen. True faith is not based on empirical evidence, but on divine assurance. It is a gift of God. It is difficult to describe faith and as the author of Hebrews realizes it is much better and easier to show it.

Faith is a common attribute of God’s servants since the beginning of the world. God will do what He says He will do. The Bible gives us the true account of creation. Everything in it is true and we are to believe it. We aren’t to change or adjust what the Bible says to meet our needs or today’s standards. The Bible says what it says and God means what it says. So believe it, trust it, and obey it. It is the Word of God. We accept it and believe it through faith.

Great. How do I get faith? Romans 10:17, “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.” In order to have faith you must hear the Word of God. This doesn’t involve simply having someone read it to you, but encompasses your reading, studying, meditating, and praying through the entire Bible. This is something that needs to be done regularly, preferably daily. You also need to realize that the Word of God is Christ. John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

How about you? It takes only a few minutes a day to read some scripture and then think about it throughout the day. Try it for a week or month, and you will indeed notice a difference in your life. Take time to be with Christ and hear the Word.

Prayer: Lord, we thank you for your Word and that it has been so well preserved over these many years. We ask that you continue to enable us to serve you and proclaim your Word to your people. AMEN.

Lay Speaking Message #2

Here is the second short message prepared for my Lay Speaking class.

1 Samuel 15:34-16:13

Context:
Before we read the scripture, I want to provide some background. Saul is King during this time and is sent by Samuel to “utterly destroy” the Amalekites. But Saul spared the life of Agag and kept the best goods (sheep, ox, lambs).

God tells Samuel the things Saul did in direct disobedience to God. When Saul sees Samuel, he greets him by telling him that he obeying God’s command. In the background Samuel could hear the bleating of the sheep. Samuel has Agag brought to him and Samuel “hacked Agag in pieces before the Lord.” (1 Samuel 15:33)

God then tells Samuel to go to Bethlehem and anoint a new king.

(Read verse 16:4-7)

Message:
So we see Samuel going to the house of Jesse in Bethlehem and anointing David. This is the first of three anointings for David, with his family here, later before his tribe of Judah (2 Samuel 2:7) and finally before the nation Israel (2 Samuel 5:3).

Looking at the process though, Samuel thought the first son he saw, Eliab, was the one. He must have appeared strong and “kingly” looking. But God reminds his prophet Samuel that He knows the heart of a person. The heart embodies your will, your desires, emotions, and intelligence.

A good heart does good things and an evil heart does evil things. Now that doesn’t mean a person with a good heart is perfect. Look at David’s life while he was King. Sure, he had some great victories, but he also sinned. He had an innocent man (Uriah) killed so he could take his wife (Bathsheba). David confessed his sin, he did not make excuses like Saul. God forgave him, but he had to suffer the consequences of his actions.

Forgiveness does not always remove the earthly consequences of your sin, only the eternal consequences.

But what about Saul? He confessed his sin too right? Well yes, but he blamed the people and his confession sounds more like regret or sorry that he got caught, not necessarily sorry for what he did by disobeying the Lord. See the difference?

What does your heart say? When you get caught sinning by others or have wronged others are you sorry because you got caught or does your heart truly and genuinely ache for forgiveness from your sin?

Prayer:Lord, we ask that you cleanse our minds, bodies and souls, so that we may have a pure heart. Enable us to forgive others as you have forgiven us. AMEN

Something Different

For the past 6 Sunday's, I have attended Lay-Ministries school as part of the United Methodist Church. The purpose of the program is to train and education lay-people for service in the Church. The course I took was the basic layspeaking course. Below are my “notes” from my first message/meditation.

Lay-Speaking Message #1

Mark 1:1-8

Verse by verse explanation:
(1) Mark begins the Gospel abruptly and authoritatively. This is “the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” BOOM! He skips over the birth and starts with the beginning of Christ’s public ministry.

(2-3)To further explain what he is writing about, he mentions two portions of scripture, Malachi 3:1-6 and Isaiah 40:1-11. Malachi refers to John the Baptist preparing the way for Christ and Isaiah is referring to Christ as the shepherd.

(4)Now we see John in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance. John’s baptism signified cleansing and purifying, repentance from sin, but also forgiveness from that sin. Whenever we witness to others, we need tell people to repent or turn away from their sin, but also explain and give them hope in the fact that when they do turn from their sin, they will be forgiven.

(5) We then see the initial response and impact of John’s preaching. Many people were coming to John, listening to him and repenting of their sins. There was a lot of religious enthusiasm, but John had to warn the Pharisees to change their actions to go along with their words of repentance. (Matthew 3:7 – Brood of Vipers)

(6) Verse 6 describes John’s appearance, there is some symbolism here. John is wearing a coat made from Camel’s hair, according to the Levitical law, a camel was an unclean animal. This showed the Israelites were in rebellion against God and needed cleansed. John ate wild honey. Usually, honey is associated with salvation, however, in this case it is wild honey and shows that the Israelites were feeding on things other than God. Of course, locusts always signify God’s wrath or judgment.

(7) We see that John is a humble man and knows who is about to come.

(8) Mark finally tells us about the baptism that will occur. As we know, the word baptism means to wash, cleanse, or purify. It indicates that our sins have been washed away. Baptism with water and the Holy Spirit, are there two baptisms? No. Our sins are cleansed when we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 1:13). Water baptism is an outward sign of the internal, spiritual washing that has been completed by Christ (1 Peter 3:21-22).

Going Further:
Another aspect of baptism, one that many people overlook, is the fact that you are part of God’s family and it is now your duty to proclaim His word. You are now “qualified” to declare His message of salvation to the world. Every believer has the responsibility of building up and motivating and comforting mankind (1 Cor 14:3).

In the Old Testament, there were only a few prophets, so there were few faithful believers. When Jesus came he trained the twelve and sent them out. They had limited success. Then there were 70 and then 500 after Christ’s resurrection, so there still weren’t many believers.

Then we read in Acts 1:4-5 about some final information Jesus gave His disciples. “He commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the Promise of the Father, which, he said, you have heard from me; for John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”

Even though, they were believers, they still lacked something. The Holy Spirit was not poured out on them yet. When they did receive the Holy Spirit remember what happened? Peter preached one sermon and 3,000 people were saved (Acts 2:41). This shows the dramatic difference between their past and future ministries.

When you were saved, the moment you accepted Christ into your life, the Holy Spirit came to live with you. You were filled with the Holy Spirit. All Christians have the Spirit of God dwelling in them (compare Romans 8:9 and 1 Corinthians 6:19). The goal is to let that spirit, the power of God, to work in your life.

Everyday we make decisions in our life. The Spirit-filled life yields those decisions to the control of the Spirit dwelling in them. The only way to activate the power of the Holy Spirit is to ask. We are told in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 to “pray without ceasing.” This simply means to pray about everything that is happening in your life as well as the life of others. As you ask God for guidance and direction, He activates the Holy Spirit inside of you and empowers you. The Spirit-filled life is like living every moment as if Christ were standing next to you. Because He is!

All believers are qualified and commanded to share God’s word. Have you?

Prayer:

We thank you Lord, for sending us your Son, who is that Good News. Enable us to use the Spirit that you have placed in each of us to proclaim your Word to your people. We ask this knowing that this is what Jesus wants for our lives. AMEN.