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Faith! The final frontier!

Do you know, to reserve a place for yourself in heaven, that’s all you need? That’s right! Just have faith in Jesus that He died for your sins and you will go to heaven. You’ll find that in the Bible in Romans 10:9-10, “9) That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10) For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.”

Do you want to know something even better? That’s not God’s best for you! Yeah! That’s right, there’s more great news. Oh sure, being saved is GREAT NEWS! But, that’s not all God wants for you. Do you know if you or someone you love is sick, you can be healed; Do you know if you have financial difficulties, you can overcome them, guaranteed! Don’t believe me? Just pickup your Bible; a prophecy in Isaiah 53:4-5 reads, “4) Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. 5) But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.” This is a prophecy referring to Jesus, as we read in Matthew 8:17, “This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: "He took up our infirmities and carried our diseases.”

Infirmity, is defined as “sickness and/or disease,”  another meaning is “character flaw”, and in verse 4 it is used in reference to disease; based on verse 5, the word iniquities is used in reference to sin, which is a result of our character flaw. As we continue on in verse 5, we see that the punishment for sin is no longer necessary, since Jesus took that punishment, in His own body, to the Cross. This is an interesting point, because many today believe that God punishes man for sins committed, for example many believed September 11th was a punishment for the United States. One thing you can be sure of, is that with every tragedy, the dooms-dayers will be prophesying God’s wrath.

The truth is, God’s punishment is reserved for the end time when all his true followers will be taken out of the world in the rapture to protect those He has promised. Unfortunately for some, there will be those who do not accept Jesus as their personal savior until after the rapture, which means they will have to suffer some of God’s wrath.

To assure you of this point we read in Luke 2:14, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom His favor rests." This verse follows the birth announcement of Jesus, and “peace to men” is what He brings to those who accept Jesus as their personal savior. Here is another powerful verse that reflects God’s plan for peace with men, because Jesus paid our penalty on the cross, 2 Corinthians 5:19 says, “19) that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.” Through Christ God is committed to peace with man.

At that point in Jesus’ ministry, the Holy Spirit was not yet available to mankind, still, Peter walked on water. Prior to this event, in Matthew 10:5-8, Jesus instructed the disciples whom they should give the Good News to, He also gave them power and authority to perform miracles—in verse 8, He said, “8) Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give.” This by the Holy Spirit, but not the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, that wasn’t available to the disciples until pentecost—this account can be found in Acts chapter 2. But, as you can read in my study "Who is the Holy Spirit", the Holy Spirit does not come in portions, it is up to us to utilize the full powers of the Spirit.

Colossian’s 2:2-3, “2) My purpose is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, 3) in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” A very important point here is that the “full riches of complete understanding” are “hidden.”; where are they hidden? In Christ!

I am going to make a bold statement here and tell you that the Body of Christ today (the Christian Church in general), does not have the full riches of complete understanding”; as a matter of fact, it is so lacking that I believe if Jesus were here today, He would say the same thing He said to the disciples in Matthew 15:31, and speak it directly to His church, “You of little faith.” The Church has so little influence on the condition of the believers lives, it’s no wonder why Christian’s are no better off than non-believers. Christian’s struggle just as much as everyone else and this shouldn’t be the case, and the blame has to be put squarely onto the shoulders of the Church leadership.

Now, I understand there are multiple denominations within the Christian circle, and that’s a discussion for another topic, but there are very few Christian’s who are effectively using the Holy Spirit to the fullest potential. Let’s take a look at some Scriptures so hopefully you will understand what I am talking about.

Since we’re in Colossians 2, let us start there with verse 9-10, “9) For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, 10) and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority.” This is a powerful statement, that the Church misses today. When we receive Jesus as our savior and are baptized into the Holy Spirit, we are given the fullness that is in Christ, and if Christ is the head over every power and authority, well than, so are we!

We also know that this power includes power over Satan as well because there are many cases in which Jesus and the apostles cast out demons from people. In this example in Luke 4:33-36, we read, 33) In the synagogue there was a man possessed by a demon, an evil spirit. He cried out at the top of his voice, "34) Ha! What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!" 35) "Be quiet!" Jesus said sternly. "Come out of him!" Then the demon threw the man down before them all and came out without injuring him. 36) All the people were amazed and said to each other, "What is this teaching? With authority and power he gives orders to evil spirits and they come out!"

We also know that demons fear Jesus as well, in James 2:19 we read, “You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.” We truly can have the same effect on the demonic world, if we would only utilize the authority that we have available through the Holy Spirit.

What is the significance of that? Well, let’s look at additional Scripture to see; In Matthew 10:1, we read, 1) He called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out evil spirits and to heal every disease and sickness.” In order for Jesus to give this authority, He must have had this authority; so, if we are given “fullness in Christ”, than we have this power and the authority to use this power, even today!

Let’s pickup the story in Matthew 14:13, Jesus had just found out that John the Baptist was beheaded. Verse 13, says that Jesus “withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place,” (NIV). Now, that’s all the Scriptures say; it does not tell us if Jesus mourned John’s death or not, but, you would assume that’s what He intended to do by withdrawing from the people. The account in Mark chapter 9 says that, Jesus took the disciples with Him. Jesus and His disciple’s weren’t in solitary for long, because the end of the same verse says, that the people heard, and “the crowds followed on foot from the towns.” Verse 14 says, that the crowd was already there when Jesus and the disciples arrived.

The one problem that did arise however, was that five thousand followers decided to tag along, and the disciples only had enough food for themselves; this created a problem. How are they going to feed five thousand people with only five loaves of bread and two fish? The disciples were telling Jesus that He should dismiss the crowd, so they could go back into town and buy food, because it was getting late in the day.

Could you imagine the look on their faces when Jesus replied, “They do not need to go away, you give them something to eat.” Because they weren’t counting on serving five thousand people, they replied, “We only have five loaves of bread and two fish.” Jesus than ask them to bring the food to Him; He gave thanks to God and broke the loaves, he gave it back to the disciples and they started passing it out and there was enough for everyone with basketfuls of broken pieces left over.

Now, Jesus knew that the disciples did not have enough food for that amount of people, but He said it anyway. Why? Because in Matthew 10:8, He gave them the same power and authority to do the same thing He was about to do, bless the food, so there would be plenty to go around. This right here is evident that it was not the Holy Spirit that they had in them, because after the events in Acts chapter 2, when the Holy Spirit descended upon them, they immediately had a greater knowledge and understanding, there was clearly a noticeable difference in their authority.

I point this out, only because many teach that the disciples were given a portion of the Holy Spirit, and this, as I explained above, is not true; it is up to us to utilize the full potential of the Holy Spirit.

I haven’t done the calculations myself, but I’ve heard it said, that if Jesus were to have continued to break the bread and continue to keep given it to the disciples and they would go back and forth to feed the five thousand people, it would have taken about seven to eight hours to finally feed each one of five thousand.

Since the Bible tells us the hour was already late (Verse 15), then it would have been midnight or later when they finished serving the people. So, what probably took place was that Jesus broke the initial bread and then the disciples took over and continued to multiply the bread and fish themselves until everyone had eaten. So the disciples, each would have witnessed this miracles in their own hands.

I elaborate on this point because, now this will become important as we finally move into what this commentary is about, Peter walking on the water.

Continue to Part 2, click here.

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