CORRESPONDENCE COURSE
Book B
Lesson One
by Rev Phil Dacre
Faith Ministries
Leeds
West Yorkshire
England
LESSON ONE
COURSE TWO
THINGS NEVER HAPPEN WITHOUT A REASON
The whole Bible shows us that there is a reason for everything. When Israel did well and honoured God and His word, then God blessed them and defeated their enemies. When they didn't do what they knew was right, then God could not help them and as a result they were defeated, hurt, smashed and thrown into captivity by some enemy or other. this was not God's intended plan but He has to allow it to happen when people disobey His stated plan for their deliverance. There is only one way - God's way!
But God does not intend our lives to be defeated in any way. Even persecution comes to the victorious army of God and not to the defeated army. It is love, based on strength that allows us to stand and endure persecution. Not because there is no other way and we can't get God to help.
God talks about "doing right" bringing a reward (or life) and doing wrong, even ignorantly, bringing a reward of death (of one kind or another). Whatever you sow you will reap. Sometimes in this life and other times in the life to come. God is good when He allows His judgement to come upon us in this life, so that it will mean no judgement in the life to come.
Galatians 6: 7-9 "Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will reap. For he who sows to his flesh will reap corruption but he who sows to the spirit will of the spirit reap everlasting life. And let us not grow weary doing good, for in due season we shall reap, if we do not lose heart". NJK (New King James version of the Bible translation).
STORY
In Isaiah chapter 38 the Lord told Isaiah to go and tell Hezekiah the king, that the sickness that he had contracted would cause him to die. This was very unpleasant news to Hezekiah the king and he was very distressed by it. He was not an evil king but God had told him to put his house in order because time was up for him on this earth.
Isaiah left the room and Hezekiah cried out to God and reminded God that he had lived right and had done everything that God had told him to do. To the best of his knowledge he had done what was right in life. God heard this cry and stopped Isaiah on the way out of the palace and told him that He had changed His mind and would give Hezekiah another fifteen years of life on the earth.
Hezekiah reaped what he sowed. Now this doesn't mean that good people don't die young. Why even innocent babies die before or at birth. But this is not the plan of God for their lives. Sin and sickness and heartache and pain accompany us in this life but God has a plan for His own who are redeemed from the curse of the law that has come upon planet earth.
SCRIPTURE TO READ: GALATIANS 3:13
THE CURSE OF DEATH
In the beginning Adam and Eve sinned. They represented the whole of humanity so that genetically when they sinned, we sinned. Were we in their place, we would have don the same. As a result mankind has inbred into them the seeds of a disobedient nature. It is easy for a child to be naughty. It takes no training whatsoever. They do it naturally. They don't have to be taught to be naughty.
So human nature is faulty before God. It cannot bring people into His presence because He is perfect and without fault and can only accept this way of life. He judges justly the earth that is His. As a result of the sins of mankind, which have by now compounded, the whole of humanity is fallen into the consequences of a disobedient walk against the counsel and teachings of Almighty God.
Now God knows the plight of mankind. Some of the sicknesses that have come upon us are the direct result of the sins of our forefathers and nothing to do with our lives. Time has brought more and more condemnation upon the earth so that now there are all kinds of deaths that come to us through the original curse caused in the Garden of Eden.
Even just men now receive sicknesses and destructive situations that they never brought upon themselves. they are under a sentence of death. In fact we all are, and even those of us who know Jesus Christ and walk with God, still have to physically die one day. The Bible says that the last enemy to be destroyed will be death. (1 Corinthians 15:26). However the way of passing through this life can be, to some extent, determined. The word of God says so.
SOMETIMES WE BRING IT UPON OURSELVES AND OTHER TIMES WE DON'T
Now God has a remedy, but this doesn't include eventually physical death. However it does include life after death and also life in abundance down here on earth while we still life it. God says that we shall receive what we deserve.
On receiving the Jesus nature and then beginning to walk by it, blessings instead of curses come into our lives. god begins the reversal of the curse brought upon us by our own humanity. He causes us to become redeemed from many of these destructive forces. For a start the Bible says that we are redeemed (totally set free) from the curse of the law. What is the curse of the law? We will learn this later.
then God says that in Christ we live victorious lifestyles. Ones that conquer sin, satan and the world's way of life.
FURTHER READINGS:
Romans 5:12-21
Romans 8:37-39
Galatians 3:10-14
Hebrews 9:27-28
Hebrews 8:6
2 Peter 3:9
TEST FOR LESSON ONE
COURSE TWO
