The Master‘s Class, LifeChange Church Wichita

TO KNOW JESUS AS GOD (Acts 16:35 to 17:25)

In today’s lesson, the apostle Paul tells us how we can know Jesus as God.  Many people know about God, and they may know a little about Jesus, but they do not know Jesus as God. Others, know a great deal about man-made gods, but they do not know the Creator, the true and living God, nor do they know Jesus as God.  

They do not know the gospel message of the birth, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  They do not know that Jesus Christ has provided them with the very thing they need most of all, a perfect, completed salvation, which is given only by the grace of God.  

They do not know that Jesus is the Christ, the promised Messiah, whom the whole creation is groaning for, waiting for, and looking for.  This is what today’s lesson is about.  Bringing the gospel message to a world that does not know Jesus as God.  

Paul’s sermon takes place in Athens, which was the university city of the world.  Art, literature, philosophy, religion, mathematics, science, and democracy were all the stuff that Athens was made of.  When you think of the liberal theology and philosophy that exists in our universities today, this is what the entire city of Athens was like.  It was a place where the absolute truths of God’s Word had been replaced with the absolute chaos of man’s basest desires being met at his own whim.  For all its knowledge, Greek civilization was spiritually bankrupt.  

God’s Word tells us that Jesus came to reveal to men the true God, and Paul had come to Athens to proclaim Him.  Paul wanted to tell them about Jesus as God.  Paul knew Him as the Creator and Sustainer of the universe, as the rock of ages, the Shepherd of Israel, and the fountain of living water.  He knew Him to be the incarnate Word, God manifest in flesh, Jesus Christ the Lord.  

Click on the link below to hear a message on how you can know Jesus as God.

This is a live recording of The Master’s Class Bible Study at LifeChange Church Wichita, KS.

Amen.

THE SIMPLICITY OF SALVATION (Acts 16:23-31)

In today's lesson, I want to make the plan of salvation so plain and clear that we can share it with a world that is looking for something to fill that God-sized void in their lives.  

In the Bible, God spells it out in a simple way because He wants people to be saved. He wants people to come to know the Lord Jesus Christ. Today, I want to give you a story in the Bible that makes it clear how a person can know, beyond the shadow of any doubt, that he or she has been saved and that they will spend eternity in heaven with Jesus Christ.

To be saved, you must realize that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and that you have sinned and come short of the glory of God, and the penalty of that sin is death.  

Next, you must repent of your sin.  The word repent means that you agree with God that what you have done is wrong.  It means that you stop going the way you are living and turn 180 degrees around and head towards God.  You commit to God that you will not continue to live your life in sin.

Then, you must choose to receive, or accept, that Christ died on the cross so that you would not have to pay the penalty for that sin.  That Christ died in your place.  That He paid your penalty in full.  That Christ died, that He was buried, and that He rose again from the grave so that you could receive the free gift of salvation provided by grace of God.  Your faith is on the Lord Jesus Christ.  It is His blood, and His blood alone, that washes your sin away and clothes you in His righteousness.  

Your faith is on Christ, not your works, that is how you are saved, and the good news of the gospel is that this offer of grace is open to you.  The Bible teaches that “whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”  That word “whosoever” means “whosoever,” it means even you.

Click on the link below to hear a message on how you can spend eternity with God in heaven.

This is a live recording of The Master’s Class Bible Study at LifeChange Church Wichita, KS.

Amen.

WHAT MUST I DO TO BE SAVED? (Acts 16:11-34)

This question is asked by the Philippian jailer in our lesson today, but it has been asked by millions, upon millions, of lost people over the last two thousand years.  For it is the single most important question that a person must ask in their lifetime.  The answer to this all-important question is provided for us in God’s Word, and our response is what determines how we will spend eternity.

It is important to understand that it is not the amount, or kind, of sin in our life that condemns us; it is the fact of sin in our life that condemns us.  Yet, we will not be judged and sent to an eternity in hell because of our sin.  We will be judged and sent to an eternity in hell because of our rejection of Jesus Christ and the light of salvation that He has provided to us through the Holy Spirit.

Paul and Silas provided a two-part answer to the jailer.  The first part was “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” There is only one way to come to God, and that is by faith in Jesus Christ, and not works.

Charles Spurgeon stated the following: “It is not thy hold on Christ that saves thee; it is Christ.  It is not thy joy in Christ that saves thee, it is Christ.  It is not even thy faith in Christ that saves thee, though that be the instrument.  It is Christ’s blood and merit.”

It is Christ’s blood that saves us, faith just grabs hold of it for us—that is all.  

The Word of God is the second part of the answer. The question for the jailer, and any lost person, becomes do you believe God or not?  Our faith comes from our heart.  It is by knowing that the Bible is the Word of God that our faith can be based on knowledge.  It is not some mystery that we cannot know.

Click on the link below to hear a message that answers the question, “What must I do to be saved?”

This is a live recording of The Master’s Class Bible Study at LifeChange Church Wichita, KS.

Amen.

THE HOLY SPIRIT LEADS (Acts 15:36 to 16:10)

Just because something looks like the right thing to do, just because all the circumstances point that way, just because one’s own desires affirm the move, and just because everyone else urges it as the sensible thing to do, it does not necessarily follow that it is the will of God.  The important question to ask is, “Lord, what do You want me to do?”  

Your great desire ought to be to know His will.  Your great delight will be to do His will.  Your great danger is to refuse His will.  

The truth about God’s will is that guidance is promised.  God wants you to know His will for your life.  He will make it known to you, if you are willing to fully surrender your life to Jesus Christ.

Now, it may sound simplistic, but the will of God for you is Jesus, just Jesus.  Jesus is the head of the church, and the church is the body.  What is the will of my body? My head.  Who is my head? Jesus. What is the will of the church of the body of believers? Jesus, the head of the church.  The will of God for your life is Jesus.  He is your Lord.  Know Him, know the will of God.

Here are three principles about the will of God:

• The will of God is for your welfare.  It is not something you have to do; it is something you get to do.  

• The will of God will never take you where the power of God and the grace of God cannot enable and keep you.

• You are free to choose.  God will never force His will upon you.  You are free to choose His will.  You are not free not to choose.  You have to make a choice.  When you say, “Well, I just won’t choose anything.” You just made a choice.  You are free to choose, you are not free to choose the consequences of your choice.  You make a choice and the choice chooses the consequences for you.  

Click on the link below to hear a message on how you can know the will of God for your life.  

This is a live recording of The Master’s Class Bible Study at LifeChange Church Wichita, KS.

Amen.

WHICH CHOICE HAVE YOU MADE? (Acts 13:40 to 14:6)

The Bible teaches that every person must make a choice about Jesus Christ.  It is the most important decision that you will make in your entire life.  Will you accept the offer of salvation provided by Jesus, will you choose eternal life, or not?  The alternative is to reject Christ and perish in your sin.  

For such an important question, the natural response is to try find the absolute truths about sin and eternal life.  Yet, if you turn away from Jesus, where will you turn?  Where can you go for truth if not to Jesus?

One of the places people turn to is the emptiness of atheism.  When someone turns to atheism, they choose to believe that in the beginning, the heavens and the earth created themselves, and then created man.  Now, this just doesn’t make sense at all, and anyone who tells you it does, is just not being intelligent.  

Another place people turn to is the buttery cloud of philosophy.  Do you remember your philosophy classes in school?  Did it seem like they provided answers, real truths about life or eternity, or did they just raise more questions than answers?

The next place that people turn to is the futility of materialism.  Do you think you can find absolute truths in the riches of the world?  The sad truth is that materialism can never satisfy the deepest longing of your heart.  God made you for Himself, and even if you have material things, you will still find your heart and life empty without Him.  

The next place people look for truth is the dead end of false religions.  Many turn away from Christ to another religion.  But remember what Peter said to Jesus: “To whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.”  You can go to another religion, but it is Christ alone that has the words of eternal life.  

So, who can you turn to for the words of truth and eternal life?  Nowhere, but Jesus.

Click on the link below to hear a message on the choice about Jesus Christ that every person must make.  

This is a live recording of The Master’s Class Bible Study at LifeChange Church Wichita, KS.

Amen.

ISRAELS MOMENT (Acts 13:30-43)

In today’s lesson, the Apostle Paul will present the nation Israel with a choice, a moment, when they must choose or reject the gospel message of Jesus Christ.  Paul is telling the Jews what the resurrection of Jesus meant to them.  It was an opportunity for salvation.  

This is the good news of the gospel message of Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection.  The best news this world has ever heard came from a graveyard just outside Jerusalem: “He is not here … he is risen” (Matthew 28:6).

The gospel is good news. The bad news is that we are sinners.  Sinners by birth, sinners by nature, sinners by choice, sinners by practice, and sinners under condemnation. All of us, without the Lord Jesus Christ, are in debt to God, defiled by sin, and sin has dominion over us.  That is the bad news about sin.

So, what is the good news that obliterates the bad news?  The Good news is that Jesus died for our sins. Jesus died because of our sins, and for our sins. It was our sins that were the nails that held Him to the cross. Our hard hearts were the hammers that drove those nails into His quivering palms and feet. He died for our sin.

When Jesus said on the cross, “It is finished” (John 19:30), that literally means “it is paid in full.” Jesus paid it all. The sin debt is blotted out by the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus also deals with the defilement of sin. It is not enough to be pardoned from our sins, for there is still that defilement, that sentence of death in our body.  Jesus, by His sacrifice, not only pays our sin debt, but Jesus also deals with our sin defilement.  And then, by His resurrection, Jesus conquers death, and sin no longer has dominion over us, and we will have eternal life with Jesus in Heaven.

Click on the link below to hear a message on the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. If you will believe it, and receive it, then you will be saved. There is no other way that you can be saved apart from the gospel.  

This is a live recording of The Master’s Class Bible Study at LifeChange Church Wichita, KS.

Amen.

THE HOLY SPIRIT KNOCKS (Acts 12:16 to 13:13)

Let me ask you a question, how long has the Holy Spirit of God stood outside the door of your heart, knocking, asking that you let Him in?  You can just imagine His thoughts while He waits on you to respond, “I know he is in there, I know he has needs, if he would just open the door I could answer all of his prayers, but he has to open the door first.”  The Holy Spirit will never overpower us, even though He easily could.  The Holy Spirit will patiently wait for our response.  

2 Peter 3:9 says, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”

God’s desire is that you will accept His offer of forgiveness of your sins and eternal life.  He is patient as He waits for you to choose to open the door of your heart to allow the Holy Spirit of God to become the president of your life.  

Yet, God also tells us in His Word, that those who refuse to answer the knock of the Holy Spirit, those who reject the light that is Jesus Christ, will face an eternity in the fires of hell, separated from God, and all that is Holy.  The only unforgivable sin is rejecting Jesus Christ as your Savior.  

But, the Holy Spirit not only stands outside the heart of the lost person knocking, He also knocks within the hearts of believers.  The Holy Spirit is always present within the heart of the believer, and when He wants to fill another area of the life of the believer, or when He has some task for the believer to fulfill.  It is then that the Holy Spirit knocks and the believer must choose whether to respond or not. 

Let me ask, is the Holy Spirit knocking on your heart, either from the outside for the unbeliever, or from the inside of the heart of a believer?  If so, respond, open the door and let the blessings of a gracious God fill your life.  

Click on the link below to hear a message on how the Holy Spirit knocks on your heart.

This is a live recording of The Master’s Class Bible Study at LifeChange Church Wichita, KS.

Amen.

TO PRAY EXPECTANTLY (Acts 12:1-15)

Prayer is to be a central part of our Christian life.  The Bible tells us to pray unceasingly, for prayer is the vital breath of the Christian.  God communicates with us through our prayer life. We also bring our needs before God during our prayer life.  And the main theme of our lesson today will be how we pray expectantly for God to provide answers to our prayers.  

If you want God to give you the things you pray for, the very first thing you must do is to find out what the will of God is for the matter that you are praying about.  

“The prayer that is answered is the prayer that begins in heaven.”  

This means figure out what God wants for your life, pray for it, and then receive it.  To even think that God is going to give you things that are not in His will for your life, is naive at best, and arrogant at worst.  If you as a parent will not give your children things you know are not good for them, then why would you think that your Heavenly Father would do so.  The prayers that we bring before the Almighty, Sovereign, God of the universe, must come from a surrendered heart.  This is not a heart that commits to God for a couple of days a week.  This is a heart that has fully, and totally, surrendered its will to the will of God. It is this surrender, this faith in the desire of God to give us all things that are for our good, the faith that God will do as He has promised in His word, that allows us to pray expectantly that God will answer our prayers.  

There is not a failure in your life except that which is really a prayer failure.  

There is not a sin in your life that proper prayer would not have avoided. 

There is not a need in your life that could not be met if you learned to pray with power, praise, and with an earnest expectation.

Click on the link below to hear a message on how to pray expectantly.  If you do not have power in your prayer life, then come to the Lord today and say “Lord, teach me to pray.”  God will answer that prayer.

This is a live recording of The Master’s Class Bible Study at LifeChange Church Wichita, KS.

Amen.

THE GRACE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT (Acts 10:24-48)

THE GRACE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT (Acts 10:24-48)

In today’s message, we have two men, one lost, one a man of God, and we have the Holy Spirit of God, and the Word of God, all coming together to bring about the conversion of a group of Gentiles.

What I like about this section of verses is that they are a tremendous example of how to witness to a lost person that has been prepared by the Holy Spirit to receive the Word of God. Peter is given the chance to answer the question of why he believes in Jesus Christ, and then he tells Cornelius why it is important for him to accept Jesus Christ as his Savior, as well.  Peter proclaims that he saw what Jesus did, he saw the miracles, he saw Him crucified, and then best of all, he saw Jesus resurrected from the dead, walking amongst us.

It is with this foundation that Peter brings Cornelius to the decision point of choosing to accept Jesus, or to reject Him.  It is the same decision that each person must ultimately make, for it is our acceptance or rejection of Jesus as our Lord and Master that will determine our fate in eternity.  

Christianity is not just a creed, a code, a cause, or a church.  It is a vital relationship with Jesus Christ.  He alone has the words of eternal life.  In Him dwells all the fullness and the wisdom of God.  Only Jesus can meet the deepest desires of the human heart.  

Peter declared that God raised Jesus up on the third day, and it is this resurrection fact that sets Christianity apart from all of the other religions.  We do not preach a religion filled with rituals and rules.  We preach a risen, living Christ.  

Christianity does not say, “Come and keep these commandments,” or “Observe these ordinances,” or “Worship these relics,” or even “Perform these penances.”  

Christianity says, “Come meet the risen, living Jesus Christ in whom salvation rests.”

Our relationship as believers is with a risen Savior, and it is that relationship that determines our eternal destiny.  Jesus died for our sins, and He was raised again for our justification.  It is the blood of Jesus Christ that purchased our redemption, and it is the living Christ that sits at the right hand of the Father.  It is the living Christ that will clothe us with the robes of righteousness and proclaim us to the Father.  

Click on the link below to hear a message on the grace of the Holy Spirit.

This is a live recording of The Master’s Class Bible Study at LifeChange Church Wichita, KS.

Amen.

THE HOLY SPIRIT PREPARES THE HEART (Acts 9:32 to 10:23)

THE HOLY SPIRIT PREPARES THE HEART (Acts 9:32-10:23)

Today’s lesson is a continuation of the three conversions that we began to study with the salvation experience of the Ethiopian eunuch, followed by the conversion of Saul of Tarsus as he met Jesus on the road to Damascus.  

In each of these examples, we looked at the three elements that brought these men to the feet of the Savior.  It is through these three elements that we can see how God works to bring a person to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.  It is through these three elements that man is given the choice to accept Christ and make Him their Lord and Savior, or reject Him.

First, the Holy Spirit of God who begins the work in the heart of the lost person.  This is essential, for without this work nothing will happen.  We will see a tremendous example of this as the Holy Spirit prepares the heart of Cornelius.

Second, the Word of God.  This is also essential, for it is the Word of God that provides the basis of our faith.  It is because we know that its promises are true that our faith in Jesus rests.  

Third, the man of God.  When God gets ready to save somebody, He uses human instrumentality.  God doesn’t reach out of Heaven and simply convict, and convert, and save a person without human instrumentality being involved someway. That is the plan of God.  Now, I am not saying that God couldn’t do it by Himself, for He can do anything He wants, but that is not His plan.  Listen, the ministry of the Holy Spirit of God is primarily a ministry of cooperation. He will not do it without you, and you cannot do it without Him.  He will not do it without you, and you cannot do it without Him.  The Bible tells us that faith cometh by the hearing of the Word of God, and in today’s lesson it will be Peter that the Holy Spirit prepares as the man of God.  

It is important to understand the concept that as a lost person it is our sins that condemn us, but that is not what sends us to an eternity in hell.  We will be judged and condemned to the fires of hell for the light of Jesus Christ that we have rejected.  It is the rejection of Jesus as our Savior that sends us to hell, not the fact of our sins.  

Click on the link below to hear a message on how the Holy Spirit works to prepare the heart of a believer.

This is a live recording of The Master’s Class Bible Study at LifeChange Church Wichita, KS.

Amen.