Passover to Pentecost – Fruit of the Spirit

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Passover to Pentecost – Fruit of the Spirit        Week 7 Day 5

For the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness, and truth. Ephesians 5: 9

The fruit of righteousness will be peace; the effect of righteousness will be quietness and confidence forever. Isaiah 32: 17

The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life. Proverb 11:20 (NIV)

Gifts are given; fruit has to grow and mature.  Galatians 5: 22 list the nine fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  Again we have a list that we get to prioritize or should we?  Personally, I had developed a teaching that for any given situation if you wanted to be effective in that situation you had to start with love and develop all nine gifts, in order, for that situation.  Then you get to start all over again, but at a higher level.  Then I realized that there were other list like the one 1 Timothy 6: 11.  Well, that took a lot of the edge off of my great teaching.  I am not sure that one of the fruits is more important than the next, we need all of them.

I suggest that you do a word study on the one you thinking you may be weak in and expect to be tested in it as you grow that fruit to maturity.

Observations:

  1. Hope is not in this list. Personally, I think the effects of all nine of the Fruits have a part in hope.
  2. The list that is in 1 Timothy 6: 11, that list six fruits, are for a church as a whole, while the list in Galatians is for an individual. (My interpretation.)

There are other lists that are worth including.  In 1 Corinthians 12: 28 Paul gives a numbered list of the parts of the body of Christ.  This starts with apostles and goes to those who speak in tongues. (This could be the prophetic gift of tongues or it is everyone else in the church that has asked for the power of the Holy Spirit.  I will go with the second one, because we all have a “numbered” place in Jesus.)  The second list is found in Ephesians 6: 14 and is known as the “Armor of God.”  If you try to rank or prioritize the armor as to most or least important I think you would soon find that life is out of balance.

Passover to Pentecost – Gifts from the Spirit

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Passover to Pentecost – Gifts from the Spirit        Week 7 Day 4

We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. Romans 12: 6(NIV)    Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. 1 Corinthians 12:7(NIV)

Jesus ascended so he could send the Holy Spirit.  The disciples probably had a good idea of the workings of the Spirit because of the many things He did in the Old Testament.  The gifts of the Spirit are mentioned frequently in the New Testament.  Gifts are given to people and in the case of spiritual gifts the person receiving them is supposed to use them for the Church of the Living God, who by the way does not change.

Paul was a great list writer and sometimes those lists seem to change form epistle to epistle.  The problem with list is how people handle them.  The first thing in the list is the best, or you will “receive” them in that order, or any number of things that can be turned into hard and fast rules.  I have used two different lists from Paul’s writings, both are list of gifts.  Paul just put the word spiritual in front of the ones to a more gifted Corinthian church.  Brother Joseph Prince groups the nine gifts into three groups in order to help you learn/remember them easier:

  • Vocal Gifts – Prophecy, Interpretation of Tongues, and Tongues (personal prayer language)
  • Knowledge Gifts – Words of Wisdom, Words of Knowledge, and Distinguishing of Spirits
  • Power Gifts – Faith (for special things), Healing, and Miraculous Powers

The gifts in Romans I divided into two groups:

  • Building Up Gifts – Prophesying, Teaching, Encouraging, and Showing Mercy
  • Building Out Gifts – Serving, Contributing, and Leadership

These gifts are for the Church.  In the Old Testament when the Holy Spirit “came upon” someone it was for the good of the Nation or God was protecting someone in the Nation.  The phrase “came upon” is translated from several different words that might suggest different levels of anointing. (I will study this topic out in a later post.)

The judges Othniel, Gideon, Jephthah, and Samson are noted for having the Spirit “come upon” them so they could lead the Nation in times of trouble.  Several people are sited for prophesying because of the Spirit.  Moses operated in several gifts in the course of leading and freeing the People.  Bezalel is “filled” with knowledge for doing the Ark.  David also has several gifts: leadership, knowledge (plans for the Temple), and prophesy.  Yes, spiritual gifts are real and should be part of the believer’s life as well as part of the church service.

I have heard many positive and negative things about the gifts over the last forty years.  But I will go back to the words of Jesus in Luke 11 where He is teaching on prayer.  In verses 11 to 13 He makes the point that if you are asking the Father for something He will not give you a snake if you are asking for an egg.  He ends the session with, “How much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” Luke 11: 13b (NIV)

In both Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12 Paul shares about spiritual gifts and workings and then follows with a teaching/reminder on love.  I think the point is clear; love God and your neighbor, and part of that will be by using the gifts the Holy Spirit gives you for good.

Passover to Pentecost – Holy Spirit in the Old Testament

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Passover to Pentecost – Holy Spirit in the Old Testament        Week 7 Day 3

And will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever – the Spirit of truth.  John 14:16 + 17 (NIV)

I am telling on myself.  My paradigm had been the disciples were “in the dark” about the coming of the Holy Spirit and what that would mean to them (possibly because I don’t remember anyone ever teaching on this).  THEN I studied the topic.  There is so much about the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament that I will finish my study after Pentecost, I will try to stick to the season and the things that relate to this Feast.

Isaiah writes in chapter eleven that the Spirit that will rest on the Branch, will bear fruit is one of wisdom, understanding, counsel, power, knowledge, and the fear of the Lord.  This is a mixture of what we now call the fruits and gifts of the Spirit.  The Spirit is talked about approximately seventy times in the Old Testament. We will look at the times He is referred to in connection with those first two years of the Exodus.

In Exodus 31 and 35 He has “filled” Bezalel and Oholiab, the men who were to do the work on the Ark and Tabernacle.  The verb indicates they were “running over” with the knowledge, skills, and abilities to do the work.  The next mention is in Numbers 9 when the Lord gave the Spirit from Moses to elders of the people.  Even though it is never talked about Moses was filled with the Spirit, because He went from him to the elders.

The next three references are commentaries about the Spirit and Israel in the desert.  Isaiah 63: 10 -14, Nehemiah 9: 20 -30, and Psalm 106: 33 tell how the people acted toward what the Spirit was doing with them in the desert and His reaction to them.  He was teaching and testing, and they did not like it.

In looking at the references in my concordance I noticed that the Spirit is mentioned by Moses in Genesis, Exodus, and Numbers, but not in the Books that “cover” the Law – Leviticus and Deuteronomy.  I will let you ponder the relationship between the Spirit and Law.

Just because he is a topic in the sermon on the day of Pentecost by Peter I will mention that King David had a “forceful” relationship with the Spirit.  The King James Version says in 1 Samuel 16 that the Spirit was with David his whole life.  So the Spirit was very busy and mentioned many times in the Old Testament.

Passover to Pentecost – Pray

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Passover to Pentecost – Pray        Week 7 Day 2

“Lord, teach us to pray.” Luke 11: 1 (NIV)

These five words in Luke 11 are nestled in between two powerful pieces of information and are at the beginning of thirteen verses about prayer.  This example of how to pray is also found in Matthew 6: 5 – 15 that gives us another layer of facts about prayer.  The fact that the disciples choose to spend their time of waiting in Jerusalem in prayer is the natural extension of what they saw Jesus doing as He ministered.  The first fact in verse one is Jesus had finished praying when He was asked to teach them.  The second one is that these ex-disciples of John saw the need for teaching on this subject.

Many of the references in Luke to Jesus praying mention a quiet place or Him being alone or with a small group; Matthew records Him telling people to pray in private.  So when we read that the disciples are “hidden” in the Upper Room praying that makes sense.

What were they praying about?  A possible topic of pray for the 120 saints in the Upper Room may have been forgiveness.  I might guess that the period of ten days may have been pretty intense.  Jesus was killed, and then He was alive just too ascended, and be gone one more time.  He promised them to send a Counselor to them to walk with them as they spread His message.  Okay, why forgiveness?  Matthew records in 6:15 as Jesus taught about pray that if you do not forgive the Father will not forgive you; then John in 20: 22 + 23 that as Jesus breathed on them the Holy Spirit He mentioned about the forgiving sins.  These verses do make forgiving people a priority.

I will jump to Paul as he is teaching the Corinthians about things of the Spirit, chapter 12 is on spiritual gifts and how the Body is joined and related.  He ends that chapter by saying here is the most “excellent way.”  (For those you dismiss 1 Corinthians chapters 12 and 14 as not for this time.  Why would Paul/ the Holy Spirit bother to include it at all?)  Paul knew that you needed to use spiritual things in love in order to fulfill the Great Commission.

Forgiveness is something that we have to choose to do.  I am finding out that many times it is more important to the one doing the forgiving than the offending party.  In that highly charged atmosphere that they had just been in for two months forgiveness may have been on their minds; because to spread the message of the kingdom effectively you should not be harboring forgiveness.

Passover to Pentecost – John 5

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Passover to Pentecost – John 5         Week 7 Day 1

Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews. John 5: 1 (NIV)

Given the location of this story it is probable that this feast is Pentecost.  There is an Exodus connection with this healing.  The man who was healed had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.  This is the actual time the children of Israel wandered in the desert.  Please, between the construction of the Tabernacle and moving to the spot to send the spies out it was two years into the journey.  God actually spotted them two years when He pronounced the forty years of wandering.  (God is merciful.)

“Do you want to get well?” may seem like a strange question to an invalid. The man however did not answer, yes!  Instead he gave all of the reasons he could not get the water to work.  Jesus skips the “baptism” and just tells him to get up and walk.   If this was on the actual feast day it would have been Shabbat or no work.  This is why the Jews were really angry.

Verses 14 and 15 parallel the reaction of the grumbling Children as the months passed by and manna was the mainstay of their diet.  They were receiving a miracle every day, and they were not happy.  Jesus told the man to stop sinning or something worse may happen to him.  It seems like the man is trying to get even for being called down, or at least he trying to make brownie points with the Jews.

http://www.freebibleimages.org/illustrations/