Ephesians
1:13-14
"In
whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the
gospel of your salvation: in whom also* after that ye believed, ye
were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, Which is the earnest of
our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession,
unto the praise of his glory."
*that
is the center part of this Gospel, that Christ, died, was buried and
rose again within you, as promised by God to Adam and Abraham.
We that are members of the One Body of Christ, we
are now under the control of the Holy Spirit. Just as Jesus and Paul were and be it fully known and understand the first Adam was also. It is the Holy Spirit
that places us into the true Body, it is the Holy Spirit Who directs us
in our daily life, it is the Holy Spirit Who gives us comfort. It is
the Holy Spirit Who reveals the Truth of scripture, but we have to
make sure that we are listening to the right spirit. That is why
John makes it so plain that we are to test them, we are to try
them, lest we be led astray. For God fore knew that mere man would cave into the sophistry of mans fallen nature and not retain wisdom. That man would trust the visible phenomena than God. These are mans various opinions, which form conjectures on what is likely possible, of which the greater part is reasoning's which fall short of unadulterated Truth. It is these very things that cause us not to understand God or His prophets because we are programed from birth to resist the Living Spirit of Life, the heavenly Father.
The
next one is in Ephesians 4, verse 4, one of the seven unities is
hope.
Ephesians
4:4b
"...even
as ye are called in one hope of your calling;"
There are many verses dealing with hope, we hardly know where to
start. We will just trust the Spirit’s leading again to take us
where we need to go. Let’s go first to 1Corinthians chapter 13,
the love chapter, and we are going to drop down to the very last
verse. In this chapter Paul has been dealing primarily with love. The King James word for love here is charity, but coming
to verse 13, is found an amazing statement.
1Corinthians
13:13
"And
now abideth faith, hope, charity, (love) these three;
but the greatest of these is charity."
What is the second one? Hope. To the casual reader we are
sure would never notice it, but as we read Paul’s Epistles from
this day forward, we want you to be aware how often these three words
will just pop up. They will just jump off the page at us, and they
are, "Faith, Hope, and Charity". They may not do it all at once,
maybe only one or two at a time, but throughout his letters we are
going see a constant reference to Faith, Hope, and Charity. The
reason for this is this chapter 13 which says, these are the only three
that will remain. Everything else that is further up in the chapter
is going to fade off the scene, but these three are going to remain.
Scripturally
hope is not something that we say, "Well I hope it doesn’t do
such and such, or I hope I don’t get sick," or anything like
that. Scriptural hope is manifest Truth, the wisdom of God that we are to rest upon. We are going to take you back to Romans again to chapter 8 where we
just were, but we want to look at another part of it. We will almost
have to read these whole series of verses, because they are all
connected and even when we were there a little earlier, we hated to
jump in on verse 23 by itself. So let’s begin with verse 18.
Romans
8:18-19
"For
I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to
be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us*, For the
earnest expectation of the creature (creation) waiteth
for the manifestation of the sons of God,"
*remember the word we are honing in on is hope.
That is
when we come into the place that everything even today is pointing
to. When we are going to rule and reign with Christ in the earthly
Kingdom with the curse lifted. And we do not think it is that far
off. Why? Because believe it, are we not in the kingdom age now? For it began with the ascension and return of Christ, the Holy Spirit. It is this vary thing that has been a stumbling block not only for Israel but for the Religious world of mankind. Because as we have already said Religion resists the things of God, it holds man back from experiencing God, NOW! Our calling is into this Hope because true Hope has substance which is Faith and true Faith is receptivity of God within us through which He functions by Grace known as illumination of revelation of His divine activity. Something hidden with us and our soul but known by outsiders as we walk or speak His Life outwardly to the world of darkness and death that is all around us.
Romans 8:20-25
"For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body. For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it."
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