The Armor of God - The Abilities of Jesus - Part 5 of 10

"Finally, be strong in the Lord and the strength of His might." Ephesians 6:10

"The works that I do in My Father's name testify about Me. But you don't believe because you are not My sheep. My sheep hear My voice, I know them, and they follow Me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish--ever! No one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all. No one is able to snatch them out of My Father's hand. The Father and I are one." (John 10:25-30)

This is a response that Jesus gave to a crowd of Jews who surrounded Him at the temple complex in Solomon's colonnade. The Jews were wanting to know if He was the Messiah. If He was, they wanted Him to show them plainly. When one spoke like one who had authority(Matt 7:29) and healed different kinds of afflictions in people, how much plainer could Jesus have been? The reason that the Jews were unable to believe that Jesus was the Messiah was that they did not have ears to hear. They only wanted to hear the words from a Messiah that sounded like what they thought he should sound like.
When I was a children's pastor, I sometimes took the kids on different kinds of outings. One outing that we took was to a skating rink. An event that stuck in my mind, happened near the time we were about to leave. A couple of boys had taken off their skates and were resting on the side of the rink. Unfortunately, at this place they did not play Christian music but instead a bunch of secular-style music. The song that started playing was a rap hip-hop style song. All of a sudden, one of the boys jumped up and started dancing and singing every word of the song. He sounded like a miniature rapper. This is the same boy that during children's church talked during worship, did not know the words of the songs, and constantly created distractions. In that moment, the Lord told me why. He couldn't hear Jesus. The boy was not one of His sheep.
The fifth ability that I am going to focus on of Jesus for us to be strong in the strength of His might is Jesus' ability to heal the ears of the deaf. Although at this time this boy is deaf to Jesus' voice, the saints cannot be weary(Gal 6:9), but must focus on continually giving the Word. For faith comes from hearing and hearing by the Word of God(Rom 10:17). For God's Word says that, "For the Word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword,piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account."(Heb 4:12-13). For Jesus is the Word of God (John 1:1-15). We must be encouraged by His ability to heal the ears of the deaf and never become weary. We must never stop ministering God's Word to the "little boy" that we may have in our lives. One day, they may hear the true savior's voice.

The Armor of God -The Abilities of Jesus - Part 4 of 10

"Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might." Ephesians 6:10

I am continuing on the study of the abilities of Jesus. Knowing His abilities helps to create more trust in my Savior. That sounds terrible, but the more I find out about the abilities of my Jesus the more I trust Him and the more I fall deeper in love with Him.
In Genesis chapter two, God creates woman from one of man's ribs. Man's response to God was:
"This one, at last, is bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh; this one will be called woman, for she was taken from man."
Then the Bible reads:
This is why a man leaves his father and mother and bonds with his wife, and they become one flesh."

When a man and a woman become married, they become one flesh, one body. They are as one. How then, may we ask, may a body seperate when a man and a woman contemplates or consummates divorce. The problem is the body has allowed sin to enter. The reasons why may very from adultery to abuse to complacency. Whatever the reason, the body, consisting of the husband and his wife, slowly begins to seperate. In time, they may eventually become two entities again.
This is exactly the picture when sin enters our life and begins our seperation from God. The sin begins to fester and grow. In time, without repentance, we no longer abide in Him and Him in us(John 15:7).
In our fourth ability of Jesus, we focus on how He was able to cleanse the leper. Leprosy is a disease that eats way at the skin of the infected person. In the Bible, if a priest pronounced a person to have leprosy, that person was considered "unclean." When this happened, the "unclean" person was unable to be around holy places, holy people, or be part of holy ceremonies. They were unable to worship God. Although leprosy is a physical disease, the Bible often depicts leprosy as sin.

As we learned earlier, when sin is in our life, our seperation from God begins. In order to stop this seperation and become one with the Lord again, we need to become cleansed of our sin.
Chapters 13 and 14 of Leviticus deals with the laws surrounding the detection and handling of the disease. If a person was determined to be leprous by the priests, there were many procedures the infected person had to perform so as to warn others of his condition. How did the leper feel? Verse 46 of chapter 13 best describes the conditions of life surrounding a leper: "All the days wherein the plague shall be in him he shall be defiled; he is unclean; he shall dwell alone; without the camp shall his habitation be. For those to be cleansed of leprosy, an atonement for him was made before the Lord. The blood of animals was used as part of the atonement ceremony.

When Adam sinned, the act hurt all of mankind for we all became seperated from God. But God gave us the perfect sacrifice, His Son, Jesus. Jesus bore all our sins that we might be reconciled with the Father(Eph 2:16). When we give our life to Christ by believing in Him, we are again one with God. Jesus came with not only the ability to heal leprosy of the physical being, but also the ability to cleanse the leprosy of the spiritual being. When the Teacher(Matt 23:10) impresses upon our heart of our sinfulness, we must take our sin to the "High Priest"(Heb 7:26) and lay it upon His feet. He and He alone is able to forgive and cleanse us of our sin.

The Armor of God - The Abilities of Jesus - Part 3 of 10

"Finally, be strong in the Lord and in thestrength of His might". Ephesians 6:10

In the gospel of John chapter five is the account of Jesus going to Jerusalem for the purpose of a feast. Along the way, Jesus stops at a therapeutic pool at the Sheep Gate. At this pool lay many invalids including those that are blind, lame, and paralyzed. Jesus goes up to one man who has been unable to walk for thirty-eight years and asks him if he would like to be healed. Not knowing who was talking to him, the man tells Jesus about his troubles in trying to get to the pool. As the reader, you come to the understanding that this man's faith is in the pool. The problem that he is having though, is getting to the pool.



Jesus then tells the man to take up his pallet and walk. The man was healed at once. In today's study, we are going to look at the ability of Jesus to make the lame to walk. In the Bible, feet are sometimes depicted as how people walk in life. Do we walk in the paths of the righteous or the unrighteous? Do we walk a straight path or are we stumbling? In Psalm 119:105, the psalmist writes, "Your Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path." In this depiction, the psalmist characterizes a path as the direction we go in life, righteous or unrighteous, and feet as the motivation or drive on this path. The man at the pool was not only going down the wrong path, but he also didn't have the ability to get there. Jesus not only gave the man a new path to walk on, but He also gave the man the ability to walk on that path.

When people are saved through the blood of Jesus, He has healed the lame to walk. He has opened up a way for people to walk; on the path of righteousness. But not only that, He has healed the way we walk. We will not only walk on the path of righteousness, but we should also walk without a limp. We must consider each and every day and each and every moment of everyday a personal and loving relationship with Jesus. We not only want to walk on the right path, but want to make sure that the way we walk is not powered by the world or our own flesh, but by the strength of His might.

The Armor of God - The Abilities of Jesus - Part 2 of 10

"Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might." Ephesians 6:10

The next ability of Jesus that I will focus on is His ability to enable the blind to see. In each of us God has made Himself known(Romans 1:19). For since the beginning of creation, He has revealed His power and glory(Rom 1:20). Most people though, do not follow God but instead give in to their lusts and desires (Rom 1:21). They have chosen the wide gate of the world and not the narrow gate of God(Matt 7:13,14). They are blind to the ways of the Lord.

In chapter nine of the gospel of John is an account told where the disciples ask Jesus their rabbi, about a man who had been blind all his life. The question they asked was who had caused his blindness, the parent's sin or the man's. What the disciples didn't take into consideration was that first, God makes the mute, the deaf, and the blind(Ex 4:11). Second, that sin is not always the reason some are blind(John 9:3). Whatever the case, Jesus instructed His disciples that we must work the works of God while we are able to do so(John 9:4). Jesus then told His disciples that He is theLight of the world and in the world(John 9:15). Then Jesus did something curious. Jesus spit into the dust and created clay. Then He placed the clay on the blind man's eyes. Jesus told the blind man to wash in the pool of Siloam(which means Sent). Once he washed he was able to see.
In the Bible, clay is a symbol of weakness, especially the frality of the flesh. In this sequence of events, Jesus symbolized how we can open our eyes spiritually. First, our eyes are the lamps of the body(Matt 6:22). They determine if our whole body is full of light or full of darkness. Basically, what this means is that our eyes symbolize what we focus our lives on most. What Jesus did is to cover the blind man's eyes with clay, symbolizing the frality of our flesh. Then He told him to "go" and cleanse his eyes in the waters of Siloam(Sent). Jesus washed away the blind man's view of the flesh and opened his eyes to the new life in Christ. We are also given this same scenario in our life for the Father who enters our heart and tells us that we can go to the fountain of life, the One He sent, and be healed of our blindness. We also have the power(Matt 28:19,20) and the honor of telling others(Acts 1:8) how they can receive their sight in this world of darkness.
May we be empowered and encouraged by Jesus' ability to enable the blind to see.

The Armor of God - The Abilities of Jesus - Part 1 of 10

"Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might." Ephesians 6:10

In the first part of our study, we found the purpose for Paul's writing about putting the armor of God on: to be strong in the Lord and to be strong in the strength of His might. Being strong in the Lord means to realize that He is our energy source. Being strong in the strength of His might is realizing the enabling power of His abilities. When we realize His abilities, our faith and our trust in His ways grows. Throught this growth, we begin to allow Him to guide our lives(Proverbs 3:5,6). Today, we are going to look at the first of ten of these abilities; the resistance to temptation.
An important aspect of the temptation of Christ (Matt 4:1-11; Mark 1:12-13; Luke 4: 1-13) is that Jesus was in the wilderness for forty days without food. When Jesus was at His physical weakest point is when the devil tempted Him.

Jesus was 100% God, but was also 100% man. Jesus has a human body. He was born as other human babies were born (Luke 2:7); He thirsted (John 19:28); and as we read in the temptation, He hungered (Matt 4:2). He also had a human mind for He increased in wisdom(Luke 2:52). Jesus also showed emotions for He was capable of weeping (John 11:35) and becoming upset (Matt 21:13; Mark 11:17; Luke 19:46). In the end, He was tempted in all points as we are yet did not sin(Heb 4:15). Although He was 100% God, He was 100% in God. He could do nothing on His own but only the will of the Father (John 5:30). Although each of us is tempted by our own desires and drwan away from God (James 1:14), He will aid us during these times (Heb 2:18). Jesus was our perfect example during the toughest of temptations. When He was at His physcially weakest ans saturated with hunger, the devil tempted Him with the thought that He could turn the stones into bread for He had the power(Matt 4:13). But Jesus' answer was that" man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." During His toughest trials, Jesus relied on His Father. As Jesus did, we must do. We must submit to God and resist the devil. When we do, the devil will flee from us (James 4:7).

Armor of God - Introduction

" Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might." Ephesians 6:10

Chapter six verse ten  of Ephesians begins Paul's last instruction to the church in Ephesus. The purpose of writing this epistle was for the church to come together in unity with Christ as the Head. This last instruction was not only for the church as a whole, but also each individual. To be strong in the Lord means to be enabled by Jesus (1 Timothy 1:12). The phrase captures the realization that the "wind in our sail" should be in Christ (John 15:4-5).
For example, when I was a child, I use to watch a show called Ultraman (yes, I know that I am dating myself). Ultraman was this super-hero who always came to the rescue to fight off the big, bad monsters that were always attacking Japan. Ultraman received his power and energy from the sun. Whenever his energy was low, the warning light that was plastered on his chest would start blinking. When this would happen, he would have to fly off somewhere and do some sunbathing in order to re-energize.
In the same way, Paul is telling us that our energy source or "sun" should be in the Lord. We must absorb ourselves in the things that give us energy from Him which is His Word, His work, and through our relationship with Him in prayer.
To be strong in the strength of His might means to be empowered by the vigor of His ability. What is it that Jesus is able to do? Thinking back to His ministry, His life, and His death, these are the ones that stuck out: resisting temptation, enabling the blind to see, making the lame to walk, cleansing the the lepers, healing the ears of the deaf, raising up the dead, preaching the Gospel to the poor, healing the broken-hearted, proclaiming liberty to the captives, and setting liberty to those who were oppressed. In the next few segments, we will take a look at a few of these to see how each of us can be empowered by the abilities that Jesus has revealed.