Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Ephesians Lesson 24 of 39 part 9

The offspring of the three sons of Noah, have already by God been delineated into two actual lines of the human race that would develop, but they have all stayed together. Looking at what God has made so clear. 

Genesis 11:4
"And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth."
They were saying, "we are not going to be scattered." We have to back all the way up to when they first came off the ark, and that would be in chapter 9, and this is what they were making reference to. Remember those people were just as human as we are. They knew what God had said, they had a memory, they had passed it from one generation to the next. Although in this case there was only 200 years time that had elapsed since the flood, and back then most people lived that long. Look what God told them in Genesis chapter 9:1.

Genesis 9:1
"And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth."
God did not say replenish the Middle East, He did not say replenish the fertile crescent, but rather replenish the earth. And what did that imply? That they were to move out, they were to pioneer the very fringes that would become civilization. He told them the same things that he had told the essence of man in Genesis 1:28 'be fruitful and multiply, replenish the earth'. What was the response of these people at chapter 11? We are not going to do it! We are not going to be scattered, we are going to stay here and be one. Okay, but God had said in so many words, be scatter. Look at the Church today. Come back to the book of Ephesians, you will get what we are driving at. Now the admonition is that the Body of Christ is to be one. Singular in purpose around the whole planet, the Body is to be one, but what has happened to the Church?

When we say the Church, we are talking about the whole gamut of Christianity. It is fragmented, with thousands and hundreds of groups, and denominations and divisions and so forth, and that is not what God intended. See what has happened. God told those people in Genesis to scatter, and they said, "No, we are going to stay together and be one." What God has said in Ephesians? For us to be one, to be of the same mind, spirit and now there are many. Man (under Satan's watch) have fragmented the Church. It is amazing how Satan can always bring about just exactly the opposite of what God intends. In Ephesians, God’s first intention for the true Church is for it to be made up of born again, regenerated, blood-bought believers and is to be one. One in mind, one in purpose, and instead we have thousands of fragmented groups all claiming to have some sort of Christianity. But they do not teach or even believe this Gospel. For they resist the good, to do evil. Which is the direct opposite of what Jesus' teaching says, He said to turn the other cheek and not to resist evil.

There is only One true Body of Christ, a congregation of those who have chosen God's spiritual Life in which there are no unbelievers, and no longer any babies here. In the One true Body there are no professing Christians without redemption or lacking the entry into their salvation in the One Body of Christ. Only a true believer ends up in the One Body of Christ. For they have choosen the needful thing, the willful surrendering of the flesh life in order to gain the God Life which resides within all men. Allow us to show what we are driving at in the verses that we have used before. Come with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 12, and starting at verse 12. Here Paul is using the analogy of the human body.

1Corinthians 12:12-13
"For as the body (the human body) is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ*.  For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body*, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink (partake) into one Spirit*." 
*the Body of Christ, the true Church as seen in Genesis 1:27and 2:7



 

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