779 - Les Feldick Bible Study - Lesson 3 Part 3 Book 65 - The Body of Christ How do we get in? - 3

https://lesfeldickbiblestudy.com Through the Bible with Les Feldick LESSON 3 * PART 3 * BOOK 65 BUT GOD! – (The Body of Christ - How do we get in?) - 3 MATTHEW 6:33 and Various Other Scriptures Okay, good to see everybody back. We’ll go into program number three this afternoon. For those of you joining us on television, again, if you’re new, we want you to know we’re just an informal Bible study. We’re not associated with any particular group. We do appreciate your letters, your prayers, your financial help, everything, because we are getting a lot of folk to understand that this is not a closed Book. It’s readily read and understood if you just know how to rightly divide it. That’s where most of Christendom has missed the boat. They mix it all up and then wonder why people are confused. Our whole premise is that we want to separate these things out – what’s for Israel is Israel’s. What’s Law is Law. What’s grace is grace. The difference between Paul’s Apostleship and the Body of Christ and the Twelve, with them dealing only with the nation of Israel. Then, everything just falls into place. We’re going to continue on where we’ve been, in the Kingdom of God. We’ve shown that in the Kingdom of God we have the earthly Kingdom promised to Israel since day one. It is yet future. When Christ returns at His Second Coming, He’s going to set up that glorious Kingdom here on earth. But, while the Nation of Israel has been set aside, God is calling out a people for His Name from amongst, predominately, the Gentile world. Called the Body of Christ, which you and I as believers are part and parcel of. Now, Jews can be saved, of course they can, but they’ve been judicially blinded nationally. So, it’s kind of hard to get our Jewish people to understand that their Messiah has come, and He has gone the way of the cross. It becomes, then, salvation for the Jew as well as for the Gentile. But now we’re talking about the Body of Christ. I’m always emphasizing that you will never find the Body of Christ mentioned in any other portion of Scripture. You can’t find it in the Old Testament. You can’t find it in the four gospels. You won’t find it in the little epistles of Peter, James, John, Jude, or the book of Revelation, because it is something unique to Paul’s apostleship. So consequently, only Paul gives any directions for those of us in this Age of Grace. Now, that doesn’t mean you throw the rest of your Bible away. Not by any stretch! I’m always making the point that if you read something in the Old Testament and it’s in accord with what Paul teaches, it’s the Word of God for us today. Absolutely. But if you’re reading in Leviticus that if you touch a dead animal you will go and get a lamb from the flock and take it to the priest…hey…you can’t do that! But that’s what people try to say. You know, "I go by what the Bible says." Well, now wait a minute, you can’t always go by what the Bible says, because some things are inappropriate for us today, although they were appropriate for ancient Israel. We have to learn to separate these things out. It is the same way with Christ’s earthly ministry. Jesus said some things that are absolutely contrary to our doctrines of grace, because He was under Law. He was dealing with Israel. On the other hand, He makes statements that we can certainly use. That’s the way we have to approach Scripture. But always use the Apostle Paul’s letters as the benchmark of our doctrine, and all the rest of Scripture, then, becomes background, or as Paul puts it in Romans 15:4 "all these things were written for our learning." In other words, they are for foundation. But when it comes to basic doctrine, how to be saved, how to live the Christian life, the hope for the end, it’s – Romans through Philemon. Now, one of the basic understandings of the Body of Christ is the teaching of the Holy Spirit. It’s totally different in His modus operandi compared to the Old Testament, because now Paul, through the revelation of the mysteries, can teach that the Holy Spirit will indwell the individual believer. As Colossians puts it, it’s "Christ in you, the hope of glory." All right, so we’re going to start this half-hour with I Corinthians chapter 12 verse 13. I imagine this is why the Holy Spirit has chosen the term the Body of Christ. It is such a perfect parallel with our physical body. That’s what Paul does here in this chapter. He draws a parallel between the Body of Christ composed of the believers from, I think, the Apostle Paul himself up until the Church Age ends, which will be at the Rapture, the great resurrection day. On the other hand, we have the working of the Holy Spirit in times gone by, the Old Testament and so forth. But here the Body of Christ and the human body form a parallel. I Corinthians 12:12 #LesFeldick #BibleStudy #Bible