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But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness Gal 5:22 |
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Dear
Friend,
If you do not already have a habit of gathering daily manna the first thing in the morning (we can look at the example given to us in Exodus 16 and find the pattern for make it a habit. Establish your life and your schedule to allow you the necessary time to do your daily collection first thing every morning to give you the strength to make it through the day. And remember that today’s manna will not be sufficient for tomorrow; tomorrow’s manna must be collected tomorrow morning. Thursday, May 19, 2022
Today's Passage : Today's Passage :The Keys Bible Verse:Matthew 16:16-20 (ESV) "Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.” “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ." Message:
Peter was the first Christian. To him was given the greatest gift of spiritual discernment, so that he recognized the Messiah, the Christ, without anyone telling him. The other disciples have a slightly attenuated version of the same gift, for they are able to recognize Christ, but only after Peter has spoken it.
fishers of men, Simon Peter Andrew
Fishers of men.
A spiritual gift, though, will continue to be a prerequisite for recognizing Christ, even to this day. We might speculate that this is why Jesus tells the disciples not to spread the knowledge. To use one of the more famous parables, Jesus wants to minimize the seed sown among the weeds; He does not want a vast crowd of people, who do not have the staying power that comes from the Spirit, forming a cult that will flame up hot and then burn out. He seeks, rather, to plant the seed among those who are capable of true, lasting faith.
The verses about binding and loosing sin are one place where a “dynamic equivalent” translation might serve us better, because these terms are no longer used; they were idiomatic to Judaism. To “bind” in Judaism meant to declare something forbidden, and to “loose” it, to declare it permissible. J.B. Phillips translates the verse, “whatever you forbid on earth will be what is forbidden in Heaven and whatever you permit on earth will be what is permitted in Heaven!”
Christ thus makes a declaration that will authorize the church to carry on his work after the Ascension. He ensures, and assures us, that his grace will be available even after He departs the earth to return to heaven, and He commissions Peter to be the head of it, the “cornerstone”. One might think of a master leaving his estate for a long voyage, who turns over the keys to his estate to his head steward. But the analogy is imperfect, because Christ instructed Peter to build a living estate that would expand and increase to every nation. It was the greatest commission in history.
peter_escape_prison
The “gates of hell” is another colorful anachronism. We understand a gate to be a portal, but we have to stretch our minds a bit to think of a doorway as something that we would worry about “prevailing” over us. Hell is not a fortress that we are storming! There are several possible explanations, but the most commonsensical is to picture the “gates of hell” as the gates of a prison. Many Jews believed that when people died, they entered a place called Sheol. It was more a place of death than a place of eternal punishment, as we conceive “hell” to be; Sheol to many Jews was rather like the Greek concept of Hades.
In this interpretation, when Christ says that the church will prevail against the gates of hell, it would mean that the gates would not be able hold those attempting to escape death, those who would have the eternal life promised by Christ. The church will be strong enough to allow souls to escape the prison of death.
Meditation : Prayer : All through this day, O Lord, by the power of your quickening Spirit, let me touch the lives of others for good, whether through the word I speak, the prayer I speak, or the life I live..........Amen |
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