The sword of the Spirit, the Word of God manifested in the Life of Jesus Christ, Introduction to a betrayer.
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Prepare yourself for learning the Word of God!
Before we begin, if you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ (that is; you have believed [trusted] in Him for His promised gift of eternal life), it is important to prepare yourself to learn God's Word so take a moment to name, cite or acknowledge (confess) your sins privately to God (i.e.; with your thoughts directed only to God the Father).
1 John 1:9 says: "If we confess our sins, He (God) is faithful and just to forgive us our sins (known sins) and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness [unknown or forgotten sins]." NKJV (New King James Version) [italics added]; we call this REBOUND, read the full doctrine as to “why” we need to use 1 John 1:9 to grow spiritually. REBOUND
If you have never personally believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, that He is the Son of God, the promised Messiah, as your Savior (that is, believed in Him for eternal life), the issue for you is not to name your sins; the issue for you is to simply exercise faith alone in Jesus Christ alone for eternal life; when you do, you will instantly receive Eternal Life: John 3:16, 5:24, 6:47, 20:30, 31.
John 6:47 says: "Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me [Jesus Christ] has everlasting life." NKJV [italics added]
Notice again what Jesus said in John 6:47: "…he who believes in Me (Jesus Christ) has everlasting life." It doesn't say, "will have"; it says, "has." Therefore, the very moment you believe in Jesus Christ for His promise of everlasting life, you have it (it's really just that simple; nothing more and nothing less), and it can never be taken away from you (John 10:28-29). Furthermore, the gift (Ephesians 2:8c) of everlasting life (also called eternal life in scripture) is available to every human being; there are absolutely no exceptions.
John 3:14-15, 16, 17, 18, says: "14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. 16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. 17 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. 18 He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God." NKJV
Let us now bow our hearts and take a moment to prepare for worship and learning God's Word. If there is any known sin in your life, this is the time to just cite it privately to God the Father with your thoughts directed towards Him. With your head bowed and your eyes closed, you have total privacy in your mind and soul:
Study to show yourself approved to God!
Grace Bible Church
Robert McLaughlin Bible Ministries
The Tree of Life is a weekly teaching summary:
God’s Word is taught Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday
God’s Word is taught Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday
STUDY TITLE:
The sword of the Spirit, the Word of God manifested in the Life of Jesus Christ, Introduction to a betrayer.
Our next passage we have begun to deal with when it comes to studying the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God as it is manifested in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ, is a very popular one, in John 13.
We have already noted that we are living in the Church-age, the dispensation of no prophecy and therefore, a dispensation which continues on the basis of historical trends.
This means that even though history is the record of man’s thoughts, decisions, actions and motivations, it is Jesus Christ who ultimately controls all of history, both human and angelic.
But, just because He controls human history that does not mean He is responsible for everything that takes place in human History. For we understand that because mankind has a free will, he is also responsible for many of the things that take place in human history as well. This is why it is important for us to understand that God allows certain principles of His divine will to exist.
Let me give you a few of them that are vital for us to understand:
1. The directive will of God means that God has a plan for each of our lives which is communicated directly through His Word.
2. The determinitive will of God where God has determined for the free will of His creatures to bring them to the place of blessing or cursing.
Deut 30:15-19, “See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, and death and adversity; in that I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His judgments, that you may live and multiply, and that the Lord your God may bless you in the land where you are entering to possess it. But if your heart turns away and you will not obey, but are drawn away and worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall surely perish. You shall not prolong your days in the land where you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess it. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants,
3. The permissive will of God where negative volition to God’s word is permitted, but also there is divine justice which provides a horrible life and death.
4. The will of God is also preventative, providing Bible doctrine, establishment laws, and discipline to keep human volition inside the will of God.
5. The overriding will of God which supersedes the directive and permissive will of God, and involves the frustration of man’s will and Satan’s will.
The point is that God controls the circumstances but does not interfere with the operation of one’s own free will or volition. And so, we not only call this time in which we live, the dispensation of the Church-age, but we also call it the dispensation of historical trends. We live in a dispensation where there were only two prophesies to be fulfilled.
The first prophecy was to be fulfilled when the Church-age began. At this time, there was the prophecy of the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ followed by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. And then, of course, the only other prophecy which we are waiting to be fulfilled is the prophecy at the end of the Church-age which is the prophecy of the Rapture.
1Th 4:16-17, For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and thus we shall always be with the Lord.
However, meanwhile, this is a period of time that is also known as a time of historical trends where we can observe the signs of the times by what is taking place in human history. We can observe and discern the times in which we live. For example, Dan 12:4, “But as for you, Daniel, conceal these words and seal up the book until the end of time; many will go back and forth, and knowledge will increase.”
This tells us that one of the signs of the last days and the historical trends is that we will see, in these last days, a two-fold manifestation of the will of God.
1. Many will go back and forth, which means the increase of travel.
2. Knowledge shall increase.
So we begin with John 13:1, Now before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He should depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.
His hour is a reference to the Cross and really it is His hour of victory in the angelic conflict, John 12:23; John 17:1, Mark 14:41.
He mentioned this victory in John 12:23, And Jesus answered them, saying, “The hour [His time of death on the cross] has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.
He also mentioned this victory of His glorification in John 17:1, “These things Jesus spoke; and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify Thy Son, that the Son may glorify Thee,”
He also knew that “the hour” that was about to come would come by means of a betrayal in;
Mark 14:41, And He came the third time, and said to them [that is Peter, James and John], “Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? It is enough; the hour has come; behold, the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners.
Yet, the very same one who was about to betray Him, we are told that the Lord even had love for Him unto the end. He knew it because of the fact that in His humanity, not in His deity, but in His humanity, the Lord studied passages like Psa 41:9 “Even My close friend, in whom I trusted, who ate My bread, has lifted up his heel against Me.”
Judas fit right into the divine master plan. Judas’ betrayal was predicted in detail in the Old Testament as noted here in Psa 41:9.
It was David’s grief over his own betrayal by his trusted adviser and friend Ahithophel and David’s perverted son named Absalom.
Absalom decided to put down his father, judge him, speak evil about him and then he tried to start a rebellion to overthrow his father, and take over the throne. Ahithophel turned against David and joined Absalom’s rebellion.
The picture of David and Absalom in Psalm 41 is fulfilled in a greater sense in Jesus and Judas. The phrase “lifted up his heel” portrays brutal violence, the lifting of a heel and driving the heel into the neck of the victim. That is the picture of Judas. Having wounded his enemy, who is lying on the ground, he takes the giant heel and crushes his neck.
Psalm 55 contains another clear prophecy of Judas and his betrayal.
Imagine the Lord Jesus Christ speaking these words:
Psa 55:12-14, “For it is not an enemy who reproaches me, Then I could bear {it}; Nor is it one who hates me who has exalted himself against me, Then I could hide myself from him. But it is you, a man my equal, My companion and my familiar friend. We who had sweet fellowship together, Walked in the house of God in the throng or the midst of the crowd.”
The point is that the Lord knew about the betrayal of Judas because He had learned about it from the Old Testament passages.
In fact, not only did He know someone was going to betray Him from the twelve because He studied the scriptures concerning this betrayal. He even knew the amount which the betrayer would receive for the betrayal as well as what that amount would be used for.
Look at what the prophet Zechariah said and taught that our Lord, in His Humanity, would also study and learn from. If we were studying the book of Zechariah I would prove to you that Zec 10 and Zec 11 actually predict the betrayal of Judas to our Lord, the amount Judas would receive for the betrayal, the thirty pieces of silver and what the money would be used for called purchasing a burial lot called the “Potter’s Field.”
Zechariah contains a prophecy about the betrayal of Christ by Judas in even more detail.
It gives the exact price he was paid for his treachery, just as it is recorded in the New Testament.
Zec 11:12, And I [Judas is prophetically in view here] said to them, “If it is good in your sight, give {me} my wages; but if not, never mind!” So they weighed out thirty {shekels} of silver as my wages.
Taught in Matt 26:14-15, Then one of the twelve, named Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests, and said, “What are you willing to give me to deliver Him up to you?” And they weighed out to him thirty pieces of silver.
In Zec 11:13, Then the Lord said to me, “Throw it to the potter, {that} magnificent price at which I was valued by them.” So, I took the thirty {shekels} of silver and threw them to the potter in the house of the Lord.
That describes what Judas did after the death of Jesus Christ. He took the thirty pieces right back to the house of the Lord and threw them down. Matt 27 says that the thirty pieces were picked up and used to buy a potter’s field, exactly fulfilling the prophecy of Zec 11.
Long before Judas was ever born, his hatred of Jesus Christ was planned by divine design–predestined [foreknew] in the plan of God from eternity past. In John 17:12, the Lord Jesus Christ was praying and notice what He said; John 17:12, “While I was with them, I was keeping them in Thy name which Thou hast given Me; and I guarded them, and not one of them perished but the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.
Back in John 13:1, Now before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He should depart out of this world to the Father,
“out of the world” is the prepositional phrase “ek tou kosmou” which refers to the fact that His body went into the grave, Luke 23:53, His soul went to Paradise in Hades, Acts 2:27, His spirit went to the Father, Luk 23:46. This is known as the first and only trichotomus separation. Trichotomus refers to the body, soul and spirit. Dichotomous refers to just the body and soul. Notice that the emphasis is on His soul and spirit and that He went out of the world. His body went into a grave and the grave was on the earth. Paradise, at this time, was a part of the underworld and is not accessible from this world as the grave is.
Out of the trichotomus separation of Christ at His physical death, it is the soul and the spirit which are emphasized and definitely not the body. In fact, it’s important to note that the emphasis on the death of Christ is on His soul and His spirit, not His body. He didn’t die a physical death for us, but a spiritual one. So, the body was buried on the earth and the body is emphasized in resurrection not in the death of Christ because Christ died spiritually for us not physically.
John 13:1, Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He should depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.
“He loved” is an aor-act-part, agapesas, which of course refers to His impersonal unconditional love.
The amazing thing about this love is that this indicates His mental attitude toward His disciples even though in the next 16 hours they rejected listening and concentrating on our Lord’s teachings.
As soon as they left this upper room, they really blew it, all of them with the exception of John.
They all blew it but agapao expresses our Lord’s mental attitude toward those that He knows are going to fail completely, and that’s grace. He knew when He taught that they wouldn’t listen to what He said but He still said it.
He knew that they would not really understand all the implications and principles behind Him washing their feet when He taught them it, but He washed their feet anyway. He knew that they were going to go out and fall apart as they did, but that didn’t change anything, that’s grace.
John 13:1, Now before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He should depart out of this world to the Father, having loved
Who is it that He loved? “His own” is a reference to His disciples, the word for His “own” is an accusative masculine plural, idios, and it describes His disciples.
“having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.”
While our Lord was going to the cross and while our Lord was on the cross His attitude never changed toward the disciples….that’s grace.
The following link is to a good news message describing how one can receive eternal life: Ticket to Heaven, it was written for anyone not absolutely certain about their eternal future.
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