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| UConn Meeting Recaps 2009-2010 School Year
Feb-2-2010
We had our first Bible study meeting in Student Union 312 on
Wednesday 2/3/2010 this semester. A brief (over 30 minute) review was
done to bring us up-to-date from last semester to John chapter 6
The highlights of our review included that the Lord as God became
a man and tabernacled among men in order to be come life and light to man in
chapter 1. In chapter 2, we heard that Jesus performed His first sign of
changing water to wine, showing us that Jesus changes people’s shortage
of life (death) into fullness of enjoyment (life) by receiving Him. In
chapter 3, Jesus told Nicodemus, who was looking for teachings to improve
himself, that he needed to be regenerated, i.e. to be born again with the
divine life in addition to his human life. We also saw that He can
satisfy those seeking satisfaction and become a source of living water in their
being (Jn. 4:14) through the account of the Samaritan woman in chapter 4.
Then we saw the weak, impotent man (he had been lying down
sick for 38 years) enlivened by the Lord’s living word to make him well
from his sickness so he could follow Jesus in chapter 5. Truly, Jesus can
meet every man’s need.
The remainder of the time was spent in John chapter 6, where
Jesus came around the time of the Passover to feed over 5,000 people with 5
barley loaves and 2 fishes. This signified Jesus coming to the hungry
world to be the feeding Christ to meet their need. The barley as the
first grain to ripen is of the vegetable life and signifies the generating life
in resurrection and the fishes of the animal life signified the redeeming life
of Christ. Just as the fishes live in the water and are not salty, the
Lord Jesus lived in the satanic and sinful world and was not sinful. This
life redeemed the believers.
Past Meetings
Nov-14-2008
Last week we saw in Hebrews 1–5, the superiority of Christ over many items of Judaism.
Christ as the Son of God, the expressed God, who reaches us, received by us, experienced by us, and becomes our enjoyment is better than the objective God of Judaism.
Additionally as the Creator, He is much superior than the angels (part of the creation), who are just our servants.
We also saw that since Christ has both the divine and human natures, He is both the house and the Builder of the house, possessing more glory and honor than Moses who was only a part of the house.
In addition to the above, we saw that Christ was ordained by God to be a High Priest according to the order of Melchisedec, whose function is not to offer the sacrifices for sin but rather to minister the riches of God for our supply, by virtue of resurrection and eternal life able to continue in His priesthood forever. This is far superior to Aaron who was established to be a high priest only in his lifetime, for he was prevented by death from continuing.
And lastly, we saw that the new covenant is superior than the old covenant, because the new covenant brings us the inward life of Christ with all its reality in contrast to the old covenant of the outward letters of the law.
So just like the Hebrew believers who highly esteemed the outward God, angels, Moses, Aaron and the old covenant, we may esteem persons and things other than Christ and have need of seeing that today as He was to the Jews in the first century, Christ is far superior to all things and can be experience and enjoyed by us as our daily life supply.
Nov-07-2008
In our last meeting, we saw that Peter received two major revelations in Matthew 16. First it was revealed to him that Jesus was the Christ the Son of God. The Christ referring to the anointed One of God, speaks of the Lord’s commission to accomplish God’s eternal purpose through His crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, and second coming. The Son of the living God, referring to the Second of the Triune God, speaks of His person which embodies the Father and consummates in the Spirit for a full expression of the Triune God.
Second, the Lord also revealed to Peter that upon this rock, the revelation of Christ, He would build His church and the gates of Hades would not prevail against it. This signified that the revelation concerning Christ is just the first half of the great mystery, which is Christ and the church (Eph. 5:32). This indicates that God not only wants to have Christ manifested but also have Him enlarged to include His Body, the church. The entire New Testament unveils this great mystery, Christ and the church, which is the goal of God’s eternal purpose.
Oct-31-2008
We saw in Acts the commission given by the Lord to the apostle Paul “to open their eyes, to turn them from darkness to light and from the authority of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in Me.” (Acts 26:18). All people apart from the Lord are in darkness blinded and usurped by Satan and need to be freed into the marvelous jubilee of grace in Christ Jesus. Paul receive this commission to preach the good news of God’s economy, the dispensing of the Triune God into the regenerated tripartite people, so that people could receive, enjoy and live God for His glorious expression.
We saw Paul not only as a preacher but a witness (martyr) of the Lord Jesus, in his imprisonment voyage to Rome in Acts 27 & 28. The Lord kept the apostle in His ascendancy and enabled him to live a life far beyond the realm of anxiety. This life was fully dignified, with the highest standard of human virtues expressing the most excellent divine attributes, a life that resembled the one that the Lord Himself had lived on the earth years before. This was Jesus living again on the earth in His divinely enriched humanity! This was the wonderful, excellent, and mysterious God-man, who lived in the Gospels, continuing to live in the Acts through one of His many members! This was a living witness if the incarnated, crucified, resurrected, and God-exalted Christ! Because our Lord has become such a indwelling life-giving, imparting Spirit, we also can live such a reproduction of His life on earth for His glorious expression!
Oct-24-2008
We saw in Luke 15 the love of the Divine Trinity working to bring sinners back, through the Son by the Spirit, to the Father. The Son came in His humanity as the Shepherd to find the sinner and bring him back home. This He accomplished though His redemptive death accomplished on the cross. The Spirit seeks the sinner as a woman carefully seeks a lost coin until she finds it. This refers to the inward sanctification of the Spirit resulting in the sinner’s repentance and obedience unto faith in Christ (see 1 Peter 1:2). And the Father receives the repenting and returned sinner as the “certain man” here received the prodigal son. This is the result of the outward redemption of the Son and the inward operation of the Spirit to bring us, the saved sinners, to the Father (Ephesians 2:18). What love expressed! What grace enjoyed! We are not only meet the Father’s requirements but also are satisfied as we eat and are merry with God.
We also saw that the losing of the soul life in this age is our cooperation to put aside the enjoyment of the soul to enter into the work of the Lord. So every time we turn to our spirit to contact and serve Him, (which may involve a termination of our own desire and preference), we are losing our soul. But this is not discouraging, but rather enjoyable as we discover the real enjoyment is not in the things of this present (worldly) age but found in Christ. We lose our soul by not enjoying the world, but rather by enjoying Christ which is far better. This truly is the reality of 2 Corinthians 4:17, “For our momentary lightness of affliction works out for us, more and more surpassingly, an eternal weight of glory”.
Oct-17-2008
We saw from Romans 6 – 10 that we, who have believe and been baptized, have an organic union in which growth takes place, so that one partakes of the life and characteristics of the other. So whatever Christ passed through has become our history. This is referred as grafting (Romans 11:24). Such a grafting (1) discharges all our negative elements, (2) resurrects our God-created faculties, (3) uplifts our faculties, (4) enriches our faculties, and saturates our being to transform us. By this we are matured in His life and nature to be the many brothers of the Firstborn Son (Romans 8:29).
We see this dispensing of God clearly in Romans 8, where spiritual life is revealed in a fourfold manner. First, it was the divine life in the Spirit (Romans 8:2). Second, it becomes life in our spirit through regeneration (Romans 8:10). Then from our spirit it saturates our mind for the transformation of our soul, to which our mind belongs, and becomes the life in our soul (Romans 8:6). Eventually, it will permeate our body and become the life in our body (Romans 8:11), ultimately issuing in the transfiguration of our body (Philippians 3:21). Since life is just God in Christ Jesus (1 John 5:11-12), this shows how God is able to dispense Himself as life and everything into His believers.
We also saw that this dispensing process happens whenever the requirements are fulfilled for the law of the Spirit of life to operate. This is much like the illustration of electricity installed into a building. The riches, power and expression of the power plant is available to the people in the building needing only their cooperation of turning on the switch. When we switch on, the operation of the law of the Spirit of life brings the riches, power and glory of God into us for our enjoyment and the fulfillment of His purpose (Romans 8:28). In Romans 8 the requirements are: (1) to walk according to the spirit (v. 4); (2) to mind the things of the Spirit – to set the mind on the spirit (vv. 5-6); (3) to put to death by the Spirit the practices of the body (v. 13); (4) to be led by the Spirit as sons of God (v. 14); (5) to cry to the Father in the spirit of Sonship (v. 15); (6) to witness that we are the children of God (v. 16); and (7) to groan for the full sonship, the redemption of our body (v. 23).
This dispensing was also revealed in chapters 9 & 10. In chapter 9, it is revealed that we are vessels of mercy which God had prepared unto glory (Romans 9:23). And in chapter 10, the way to receive the Lord through believing in our heart and confessing with our mouth is described. What a wonder man not only can receive the life of God but God Himself is dispensing Himself into us! This is His plan and desire that we receive Him and even the more allow Him to dispense Himself into those whom we speak the good news (the gospel) of God’s dispensing.
Oct-10-2008
We saw that 1 Timothy is a book that unveils God’s economy concerning the church. For the accomplishment of this economy, God to work Himself into His believers, seven basic and crucial matters are stressed in 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus: The faith (objective), the truth, healthy teaching, eternal life, godliness, faith (subjective) and the conscience. The faith equals the contents of the economy, the household administration, the dispensation, of God. The truth is the contents, the reality, of the faith according to God’s economy. Healthy teaching, healthy words, and healthy speech are the ministry of the truth, ministering to people the reality of the divine truths. Eternal life is the means and the power to carry out the divine realities of the faith. Godliness is a living that expresses the divine reality, an expression of God in all His riches. Faith (subjective) is the response to the truth of the faith (objective); such faith receives and participates in the divine realities. The conscience is a test and a check to preserve us in the faith. By the working and interrelated operation of these seven basic matters we are brought into the enjoyment of God’s economy to work His life, nature, and expression into us the believers for His expression in godliness as the church in this age and the New Jerusalem for eternity.
We also discussed how a believer can have a pure heart. We saw from Jeremiah 17:9 that the heart is deceitful above all things, and is incurable. This means that it is impossible for us to have a pure heart in our natural life. But the word also tells us that God will give us a heart to know Him and return to Him (Jeremiah 24:7). God also will give us a new heart and new spirit and take away the heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26). So we concluded that the only way to have a pure heart is to be in God’s economy, receiving Him to allow Him to work on and give us a new pure heart that seeks Him solely. This is shown in the Matthew 5:8, which says blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. Lord, keep us enjoying You so we can be transformed in our entire being and that You can come and make Your home in our heart (Ephesians 3:17).
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