The Master‘s Class, LifeChange Church Wichita

JOSEPH THE BELOVED SON (Genesis 35:16 to 37:17)

JOSEPH, THE BELOVED SON (Genesis 35:16 to 37:17)

One quarter of the book of Genesis is devoted to Joseph.  God describes the creation of the universe in just five words when He said “He made the stars also;” but He uses chapter after chapter to tell the story of a man that is not even in the direct lineage of Christ.  Actually, more chapters are devoted to Joseph than to Abraham, or to Isaac, or to anyone else. More chapters are devoted to Joseph than to the whole first 2,000 year period of man’s existence from Genesis chapters 1–11. This should cause the thoughtful student to pause and ask why Joseph should be given such prominence in Scripture.

There are probably several reasons. One is that the life of Joseph is a good and honorable life.  God wants us to have whatever is good, virtuous, and great, before us, and Joseph’s life is just that.  The second reason is that Joseph was a true man of faith.  Joseph was a prince among a world of men.  The faith of Joseph was an undying faith.  Joseph’s faith was a faith that believed despite adverse circumstances.  The interesting thing about Joseph is that he had faith in the dream which was given to him, faith while in the pit into which he was placed, faith all the while he was in Egypt, and faith was what buoyed him up through all the problems in his life. Joseph believed that God was going to give the Promised Land to his family.  Joseph believed in the impossible: that God would move his people back to the land promised to Abraham.  Therefore, he commanded that his bones be taken back when the nation of his family returned to the land.  And when the children of Israel left Egypt, they took up his bones and buried them at Shechem in the Samaritan country.

There is a third reason that God would spend this much time on Joseph, and it is a great one. There is no one in Scripture who is more like Christ in his person and experiences than Joseph. Yet, nowhere in the New Testament is Joseph given to us as a type of Christ. However, the parallel cannot be accidental.

Click on the play button attached to this message to hear a message on one of the most famous men in the Bible, Joseph, and listen to how Christ is revealed to us in this man’s life.

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

Amen.

BACK TO BETHEL (Genesis 35:1-15)

BACK TO BETHEL (Genesis 35:1-15)

Today, I am going to challenge you.  If you have never listened to one of the messages that are attached to these blogs, if all you have ever done is just read this blog, then I am going to challenge you to listen to the recording that is found in this link, because it may be that God is using this message to speak to your heart.  

The message today is about Jacob, and Jacob needed to come back to God. And perhaps today you need to come back to God.  You may indeed be backslidden, just like Jacob was.  Let’s take the test today and find out if you are. Answer these two questions:  

The first one, “Was there ever a time in your life when you loved Jesus Christ more than you do at this moment?”  If the answer is yes, then you are backslidden. 

Alright, let’s say you answered “no” to the first question, then here is the second one.  “Was there ever a time when God was more real to you, and prayer was more precious to you, and the Bible was more valuable to you, than it is at this time, this day, this moment?”  If the answer is yes, then, you are a backslider.  

Today, we will see how we can come back to Bethel.  Back to that condition of your love for Christ like it was when you were first saved.  

Click on the play button below to hear a message on how God is the God of a new beginning. Our God is the God of a second chance. We find that is true all through the Bible. And the God that said to Jacob, “Jacob, come back to Bethel,” is the God that’s saying to you today, if you are away from Him, “Come on back! Come on back! I’m the God of a second chance.”

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

Amen.

HOW TRUE REVIVAL OCCURS (Genesis 34:1 to 35:11)

HOW TRUE REVIVAL OCCURS (Genesis 34:1 to 35:11)

Jacob’s story is a story that represents the story of many of us. It is a story of pride, of self-confidence, and of deceit.  Yet it is also one of God’s grace, God’s patience, God’s power to transform a life from one of a carnal nature to one of a godly spiritual nature, and ultimately one of God’s love for this man.  It is a story of God’s ability to see through all of the rough edges to find the diamond of the man of faith that Jacob was able to become.  

That is what God does with each of us, He sees past all of our faults to find the man and woman of faith that each of us can become if we will surrender our will to His. And that is what had to take place in the life of Jacob, he had to come to the place where God had broken his self-confidence in his own abilities, and, therefore, was ready to surrender to God.  This did not happen all at once, it happened over a lifetime.  For Jacob did not fully become that man of faith described in the Book of Hebrews until the very end of his life.  

Click on the play button below to hear a message on how God has challenged us to grow spiritually, and He has shown us that our pace should be lead by God, empowered by God, tested by God, and rewarded by God. 

God challenges us to disdain the veneer of religiousness, for the surrender of righteousness.  

God challenges us to make a choice, for we cannot live with one foot in the world and one foot in God’s will.  

God challenges us to seek the revival of the Spirit of God in our lives.  

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

Amen.

JACOB'S NEW NATURE (Genesis 32:28 to 33:20)

JACOB’S NEW NATURE (Genesis 32:28 to 33:20)

Jacob is now going to have to face his brother Esau.  As we look at this scene, we see a difference between a believer and a non-believer.  Here we have Esau, the all-American male, he was an outdoorsman, noble, probably the best athlete in the land at whatever he tried, he was generous, and likeable, yet he was a non-believer.  Then, we have Jacob, who was devious, a schemer, hated by almost everyone he dealt with, yet he had a desire for the things of the Lord, and he had met with the Lord, and now he had a new nature.  

Robert Laidlaw asked this question in his book “The Reason Why.”  He said “I know a polished, cultivated, gentlemen, who is not a Christian, and I know a rather crude, uncultured, man who is a Christian.  Do you mean to tell me that God prefers the uncultured man simply because he has accepted and acknowledged Christ as his Savior?”  That was his question, and it certainly fits the way that most non-believers would look at things.  People are drawn to successful people, to jovial people, and to polished people.  But God is not.  

Robert Laidlaw answered his question in this way “A Christian is not different in degree from a non-Christian, he is different in kind.  Just as the difference between a diamond and a cabbage is not one of degree but of kind.  The one is polished, the other is crude, but the one is dead while the other is alive, therefore the one has what the other has not in any degree whatsoever—life!  And such is the difference God sees between a Christian and a non-Christian.” 

That was the essential difference between Esau and Jacob.  As a man, Esau was a far more open, honest, out-going, person than Jacob.  He was a terrific person, but he was spiritually dead.  Jacob was a natural-born schemer, but he had spiritual life.  

It was a difference of kind, not degree.  

Click on the link below to hear a message on how Jacob found out that not only was there no good in his old nature, but there was also something you may not realize; there was no strength or power in his new nature.  Our new nature, given to us by God, cannot, by itself, enable us to live the Christian life.  Simply being saved does not make you stop sinning.  Jacob found out that it is through Jesus Christ that your help is going to come.  Our strength and power come through Him. 

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

Amen.

LEARNING TO LEAN ON JESUS (Genesis 32:1-28)

LEARNING TO LEAN ON JESUS (Genesis 32:1-28)

The title of the message today is “Learning to lean on Jesus.” Now, in order to learn how to lean on Jesus, there is a battle that each of us will face, and it is a battle that I hope you are going to lose.  It is that battle that we will be talking about today. 

We have been studying about the man Jacob and how God loved him.  Why did God love Jacob? It is for the same reason that He loves you. God did not love Jacob for what he was, but for what He knew He could make out of him. For, in spite of all of his faults, Jacob had a heart for God.  The question that you need to ask yourself today is, do you have a heart for God?

Secondly, I want you to notice that God did not change Jacob so that He could love him; He loved Jacob in order to change him. And I’m so glad that God loves us today. With all of our weaknesses and with all of our faults, God sees something in us that He wants to make out of us. And so, He just loves us, and He keeps working with us. Thank God for His infinite, marvelous patience.

God wants us to come to a place of total, absolute, dependence upon Him.  Most of us have never come to that place. Most of us still have enough Jacob in us to say, “Well, we hope He’ll bless us, but if He doesn’t, we’ll figure out a way. We’ll figure out a way somehow.” 

God had to bring Jacob to a point where he was leaning on Jesus instead of his on self-confidence.  It is the place that God wants to bring every one of us to. Paul said we are those who “have no confidence in the flesh.” (Philippians 3:3) 

Do you know what most people want to learn? Self-confidence. You go into any bookstore, and there will be a wall of books on self-confidence.  Having self-confidence sounds so good that to speak against self-confidence sounds terrible.  But, the Bible tells us that the one thing we don’t need, is self-confidence.  Ok, when you hear me say that, right away your mind threw up a wall and you said, “Oh, yes, we do”—“yes, we do.” Everybody wants that self-confidence. We’ve been taught everywhere that we have got to have self-confidence.

Yet, Paul tells us that, “[We] have no confidence in the flesh.” (Philippians 3:3)  We have no confidence in self.  Now, understand that I am not saying you should not have confidence, but, if you are going to have confidence, then you just have it in Jesus, have confidence in the Lord.  That doesn’t mean that you are going to go around like a doormat. You go around like a real person.  If your confidence is in Jesus, then you will really have confidence.  Jesus is someone you can have real confidence in.  Jesus is someone that you can truly lean on.

Click on the play button to hear a message on how God is battling with you to learn how to lean on Jesus.  I hope you lose this most important battle with the Lord. This is a battle you cannot afford to win. And when God the Holy Spirit is striving with you today, why don’t you just throw in the towel and say, “Lord, I’ll not let you go except you bless me,” and no longer be dependent upon the flesh.

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

Amen.

GOD TEACHES JACOB TO DEPEND ON HIM (Genesis 31:19 to 32:18)

GOD TEACHES JACOB TO DEPEND ON HIM (Genesis 31:19 to 32:18)

In our message today we will talk about God teaching Jacob that he must depend on God to lead him and solve the problems that Jacob will face.  Jacob’s whole life had been about conniving and deceiving others to solve his problems.  But that is not where God needs Jacob to be in his spiritual relationship with God.  Jacob must be dependent on God.  

Jacob was a man who was clever, who thought that he could get by with sin, but God didn’t let him get by with it because God has made it very clear that whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap. Jacob had refused submission to God at home; so he was forced to submit to his uncle. Jacob came to receive a wife in dignity, but he was made a servant because God respects the rights of the firstborn. Jacob had deceived his father; so he was deceived by his father–in–law. He revealed a mercenary spirit that displayed itself in the way he got the birthright, allowing his mother to cover his hands with the skins of goats. Later on, we will see that his own sons will deceive him in very much the same way. 

Jacob deceived his father about being the favorite son, and he will be deceived about his favorite son, Joseph.  In all of this, we see that God’s truth is that whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap. 

Click on the link below to hear a message on how God wants us to depend on Him rather than on our own efforts.  Many of us take our burdens to the Lord in prayer. We just spread them out before Him. Then, when we get through praying, we get right up and put each little burden right back on our back and start out again with them.  What does this say about the trust we have in the Lord?  It says that we don’t really believe Him.  We don’t really trust Him as we should.

Jacob will struggle with this almost until the day he dies.  I pray that the study of Jacob will bring this truth home to your heart, and it will make a difference in how you trust God.  It is not easy, as Jacob illustrates, but the reward of a life that is fully trusted to God, is a life that is a testimony to the lost souls of this world.  A testimony to the power of God to transform, a finite life here on earth, to an everlasting life with Him.

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

Amen.

GOD TELLS JACOB TO GO HOME (Genesis 30:25 to 31:18)

God needed to get the attention of Jacob, and He did.  It had been a long time since Jacob had heard the word of God in a clear voice.  Now, with the world becoming suddenly menacing, the voice and words of God became suddenly clear and meaningful.  Many times, that is exactly what we need to get us out of our comfort zones.  When things are going good we reason, why do we need to listen for the words of God?  Yet, when things start going bad, our first question is, why God?  Why is this happening to me?

It is then that we begin to listen to what God has been saying for a long time.  In Jacob’s case, it was “Return unto the land of thy fathers, and to thy kindred.”  Suddenly, the words of God had a meaning for Jacob.  For twenty years Jacob had been away from the land that God had promised him.  During that time Jacob had prospered.  Yet, Jacob testified to his wives that his prosperity resulted not from his own cleverness, but from God’s grace.  This was quite a change from the arrogant, self-sufficient, man that had rolled the stone from the well and chose his own wife, confident in his own wit and wisdom.  

This was an important step for Jacob.  Because it is not until we recognize that our success, our blessings, our strength, come not from ourselves, but from the grace of God, that God can truly begin to use us to do His work.  

Click on the play button below to hear a message on how true prosperity is spiritual, not material, it does not reside here, but where God is.  We have to look higher than this world for true prosperity.  

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

Amen.

JACOB AND LABAN (Genesis 29:1 to 30:30)

JACOB AND LABAN (Genesis 29:1 to 30:30)

As we study Jacob, we see a man who is confident and sure of his ability to handle anything this world can dish out.  Jacob knows God, and God has promised to be with him at all times.  Yet, Jacob has not learned to be led by God.  Instead, Jacob is leading and expecting God to back him up.

That is the way many believers treat God.  When times are good, they choose the way they want to go, and what they want to do.  Yet, just as soon as things turn bad, they turn to God to get them out of whatever mess they have gotten themselves into.  They never think to ask God to lead them; they never ask God to choose the path they will go down, and they never humbly surrender their life to the will of God.  

In today’s study, Jacob will find himself deceived by his Uncle Laban, trapped in a job he wants to leave, caught in the middle of a battle between two wives for his attention, and ultimately with 13 hungry kids looking at him for food and provisions.  Sounds like a normal day in one of our own lives, doesn’t it?

That is what makes the study of Jacob interesting, because Jacob is a story about us.  Think about your own life, are you retired but forced to work a job to meet your financial needs, are you stuck in a job you feel taken advantage of in, are you having marital problems, do you feel deceived by those you should be able to trust, or do you have hungry kids, sometimes adult children and their kids, looking at you for dinner and a house to live in?

Do you ever ask yourself, how did I get myself into this mess?  Do you ever ask yourself, and honestly answer, did God lead you, or did you lead God?  

As a believer, God has promised to always be with you, and He always will be, wherever you drag Him, but the real question you need to ask is, have you totally surrendered to the will of God in your life?  Are you following God as He leads you, or is God following you as you lead Him?  Have you ever seen the bumper sticker that says “God is my copilot”?  Listen, if God is your copilot, then you need to move over and let Him be Captain.  God is to lead you.  

Click on the link below to hear a message on the importance of living a life fully surrendered to God.

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

Amen.

JACOB'S LADDER PART II (Genesis 28:10-22)

Here in this story about Jacob’ dream about a ladder to heaven, we see God’s provision of salvation, we see a picture of the sinner, a picture of the Savior, and a picture of salvation.  

Jacob pictures the unconverted man.  He is the picture of a sinner.  Incidentally, I believe this is where Jacob got saved. I believe that up until this time Jacob had known about God, but he had not known God. His father was a godly man; his grandfather was a godly man, but Jacob was not a godly man. He was religious, but he was lost. Jacob pictures every unsaved sinner surrounded in darkness, surrounded by desert, and sentenced to death.  Jacob is sentenced with death, a poor, lonely old boy, without God, without hope, out there in the wilderness.

In this dream Jacob saw a ladder. The bottom of it was on the earth, and that ladder went up all the way to glory, and God the Father was at the top of that ladder.  Jacob saw angels coming down, and he saw angels going up. That ladder is a picture of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Jesus is the One upon which the angels ascend and descend. He is the link between heaven and earth. Jesus Christ is the One who connects heaven and earth. He is that ladder that reaches into glory. There is the reach of the ladder: it goes all the way to heaven. There is the reliability of the ladder: God is over it. There are the resources of the ladder: God’s promises, God’s protection, and God’s presence, are all wrapped up in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Then, we see this ladder as a picture of salvation.  Before this night, Jacob was separated from God.  Jacob was in a place of separation, and then he saw the ladder, the staircase to heaven! He understood some spiritual truth. He understood that God had made a way for him, and that the blessings of God were to be mediated to him. And he’s now aware of God for the first time in his life.  That howling desert, that wilderness, that hard place, has now become for him the very house of God. And what a blessing, what a transformation, it was in his own heart and in his own life! 

Click on this link to hear a message on how Jacob’s dream is a picture of the gospel message of Jesus Christ. 

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

Amen.

THE BATTLE WITHIN-PART I (Genesis 25:1-27)

It is interesting to note that while the Holy Spirit goes into great detail about the lives of Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph, most of the story of Isaac is told by attaching it to another person.  For example, Isaac’s Mount Moriah experience was told through Abraham, and his marriage was seen through the eyes of Abraham, Abraham’s unnamed servant, and Rebekah.  Even with the birth of Esau and Jacob, which are Isaac’s sons, we will see this event through the eyes of Rebekah.  

This is a story of two opposites.  Here are two boys, born at the same time, born in the same place, of the same parents, to the same advantages and opportunities.  Yet from the outset one of them set out in his own stumbling, full of errors, way to please God, while the other set out to please himself.  One was ruled by a heavenly vision, the other by worldly and carnal things.  

As with each of our lessons in Genesis, there is the primary interpretation of the events, in this case it is the development of the seeds of the nations of Israel and Edom.  But, we also have the spiritual interpretation of this story, and this interpretation discusses the battle that rages within each believer.  The battle between our carnal nature, and our new, Holy Spirit created, nature.  The carnal nature is the one we are born with, and the new nature is the one we receive once we are reborn in Christ.

It is a battle that is only fought within the heart of a believer, for a lost person only has one nature, his carnal, or fleshly nature.  He has no choice but to serve Satan as his master, so there is no need for a battle.  It is when we become saved that we must then choose between our two natures, and it is then that the battle for supremacy within our heart rages.  

As a believer, you have three enemies: the world, the flesh, and the devil. The world is that value system that is out there. We call that the external foe. The flesh is that old Adamic nature. We call that the internal foe. The devil: we know who he is, for he is the infernal foe.  So, we all have three enemies that are warring against us. 

Click on the link below to hear a message about that internal foe, the flesh; and we’re going to be talking about victory over the flesh, as we study our lesson today, and next week, on Jacob and Esau, these two twins.

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

Amen.