I praise God daily for the undeserved privilege of His calling to teach His word. And I regularly pray that He will make me a better teacher. I have faith that He will grant that prayer.
Meanwhile, I am blessed to have recordings and the internet to fill you in on the pieces of the message I left out.
When I listened to the message, which I had titled “3 Keys to Salvation,” I realized I had only covered two of them because I got carried away with #2, my testimony.
Without #3, my reading in Hebrews is out of context and non-sequitur, and the clock made me stop before I wanted to. Praise God that the promised blessing in this book is unaffected by such things.
It is a good thing I don't have to make a living creating videos. Here's Week 4:
Here's the PowerPoint slides: Slide PDF
And here's the end of the lesson:
So, we were looking at the fact that the book refers to its intended audience as bond servants or slaves of Jesus Christ and what was required gain that high position. We discovered it was love, blood on wood and scars when we looked at the scripture in Exodus 21. In Hebrews 9 (and many other places) we saw that shedding of blood was required for the forgiveness of sins. ( See slide 12)
Then we looked at the 3 keys to salvation that get us into heaven in Revelation 12, in verse 10, after Satan is thrown out of Heaven by Michael,
“10 Then I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, “Now salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down. 11 And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death. “
We looked at #1, the Blood of the Lamb starting in Genesis 3, and I shared my testimony as an example of #2, the word of their testimony, but I skipped #3 completely. Oops - Here it is.
Our first impulse when we read, “they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death” is to think of the many Christian martyrs who would face death instead of deny Christ. That is true, but it is not complete.
In my testimony I described how giving my life to Christ was for me like jumping off the Skyway bridge. There are dozens of verses about “dying to self” resulting from or resulting in being Born Again through the Holy Spirit into eternal life through Jesus Christ.
Here's just a few:
Colossians 3:5
Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.
Luke 9:23-24
And He was saying to them all, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. "For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it.
Galatians 5:24
Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
Romans 6:8
Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him,
So when we are saved, we put to death our sinful nature. Before we are save, our sinful nature contained our soul. We skimmed over the anatomy of a human that we got from The Greatest Commandment:
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
I am NOT implying Christ’s intention in these words is to give us complete anatomy lesson, but these are the parts He mentioned when implying “Love God with ALL you’ve got.”
“Body” is glaringly absent from the passage, but it is clear we all have one.
It is worth noting that it is impossible to locate, identify or measure any of the three components He did mention with any mechanism in the physical universe.
With you finger, point to the Heart Jesus is talking about. You know it is not that muscle in your chest. Point to your mind. No, it is not your brain, but it controls your brain (and your brain can control it from time to time.) Point to you soul.
The point is these critical parts of us do not exist in the physical universe, they exist in the spiritual universe. That is “the Heavenly Realms” where all the battles are.
So here’s the anatomy chart I see from that scripture:
Body (Brain: computer that controls body)
Mind (Computer Operator) (Controls brain via quantum computing)
Heart (Emotions – Love -can change communication between Soul and Mind)
Soul (What you consider I AM)
We noted in our study that God does not see death the way we do. Man considers death separation of soul and body. EEG flat line = soul has left so mind not controlling brain and brain flat lines. God sees “death” as separation of soul from God. See Genesis 3. We are dead to God before we gain life through Christ. Also note that in Revelation, "death" is an entity that can ride a horse and be thrown into the Lake of Fire.
So, “shrinking from death” in this sense could mean holding onto things of this world, things of your old self that hold you in this world through your body and keep you from spiritual freedom and spiritual gifts for your heart ,soul and mind. Even for one truly born again, this is a daily occurrence as long as you have a body.
But to the degree that your heart and mind and soul are in the spiritual realm, you will be blessed with the gifts of the Holy Spirit spoken of through MANY scriptures. But of particular interest to those studying Revelation:
“But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, HE WILL TEACH YOU ALL THINGS, and bring to your remembrance all things that I have said to you.” (John 14:26)
“However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, HE WILL GUIDE YOU INTO ALL TRUTH …” (John 16:13)
“But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.” (1 Corinthians 2:10)
Paul, used by the Holy Spirit to pen the verse above, also said in the same letter (15:31) “I die daily” (NKJV) or “I face death daily” (NIV) or as I would liberally translate it in reference to our study, “I do not shrink from death but give up to God each new day He gives to me.” And in his next letter to the same Corinthians he said, “I tell you, now is the time of God's favor, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2)
We looked at Hebrews 3 before I went over all that.
“Today, if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.” (Hebrews 3:15, Deuteronomy 1:26-38; Psalm 95:6-11)
In my testimony I spoke of a “moment of salvation.” However, that was 20 years ago. Today is the day of salvation. So, when was I saved? The last time was about 4 hours ago.
And that was the end of the message. I decided to finish here so it is with the video.
Next week, we will cover all of Chapter 1 in one session. Then, in later sessions, we will go back over some of it to more fully unpack some of the verses.
I hope to see you then! Count your blessings!