Read: 1 Corinthians 12:12-26
“The Bible has lots of commands and exhortations to believers. Obedience is automatic in the sense that it always follows from true faith. It is it not automatic in the sense that it just happens without any effort on our part.
And so it is here, when it comes to this principle of the whole body suffering when one part suffers. In one sense it is automatic because that is what it means to be a body. And yet we are also exhorted to weep with those who weep.”
Read: Genesis 49:22-26
“The bottom line is that believers are all undeserving and all spiritually powerless in their own strength. Anything that is commendable in their lives comes from God’s grace working in them. And yet that never comes without effort on their part. In order for us to do good things by the grace of God we still must do them. That takes effort and exertion. And then that effort and exertion is rewarded by God even though none of it was possible without the grace of God.”
Read: 1 Corinthians 1:18-31
“The terrible reality of suffering in the world makes it hard for some people to believe that God exists. If God exists and is good and all powerful, how could he allow all of the terrible suffering that we see in the world. The cross sheds light on this question as well. The cross was the greatest evil; the creature murdering the creator! And yet it was God’s way of bringing about the greatest possible victory. This is what God does. He does not operate according to human expectations. He pursues his purposes through ways and means that seem foolishness to men. And we must see suffering in that light...”
Read: Genesis 49:13-21, 27
“One of the wonderful things that these verses show us is how God preserves his people through the generations. 500 years after Jacob uttered these prophecies, the offspring of these men still made up the people of God. God was in control of all of that history. And even though this was a sinful people, God preserved them through the centuries. And finally, from this people, Jesus Christ was born who was and is the heart of God’s plan for his kingdom and for the world.”
Read: Genesis 1
“It is common to associate pleasing God with not enjoying the pleasures of the creation. And we will see in a moment that because of sin, self-denial is an important and necessary part of pleasing God. But this does not take away from the fact that the way of serving God that is the design of the creation is everyday life in the world lived to the glory of God. The Bible affirms the goodness of life in this world and it is a huge part of the way that we are to live for the glory of God.”
Read: Genesis 49:8-12
“Psalm 27:4 says, “One thing have I asked of the LORD, that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple.”
This is what Jacob predicts of the king who would come from the line of Judah whom we know as Jesus Christ. He is beautiful to his people. And the beauty is not a physical beauty, but the beauty of holiness and the beauty of the glory of God and the beauty of the victory that he has won.”
Read: Romans 3:21-31
“It is important that we see that this is a legal declaration. We have not become righteous in ourselves. We are still sinful. We have not lived a perfect life. We have lived a sinful life. But we are declared righteous. As far as our standing before God the judge is concerned we are righteous. We are counted as righteous.”
Read: Genesis 49:5-7
“In all of this history leading to Jesus, God was teaching the world the horrific consequences of the sinful natures that we all share and in that way preparing the world for the one who came from heaven and became a man so that as the God-man he could break the power of sin in the lives of a chosen people. He did that by living a life of perfect obedience and love. He did it by dying on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins. He did it by rising from the dead and thus obtaining the forgiveness and new life that would enable his people to gradually learn to love rather than to hate.”
“Jesus is uniquely qualified to be our Saviour. The Bible makes it clear that he had to be holy, that he had to be a perfect human being and that he had to be God. The Bible goes to great lengths to show how Jesus was unique and that that uniqueness was necessary for Jesus to do the saving work that his Father had sent him to do. No one else comes close to that. No mere human being is able to even come close to adding to what Jesus has done.”
Read: Genesis 49:1-4
“Those with weak characters are unstable
in their inner beings and so winds of temptation or foolishness push
them this way and that. Those with strong characters are steadfast and
stable who are not easily deflected from what is right and what is wise
and what is godly. In the context of the Bible we must understand these
differences in the light of sin and grace. We are all weak by nature, but
Jesus died so that those who trust in him might be gradually changed to
be people of strong character who have learned self-denial and self-control and to “walk by the Spirit” and are learning “not” to “gratify the
desires of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16).”
