Why Did Paul Say Follow Me and Not Follow Jesus?

Welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick, a 30-minute walk through the Scriptures, teaching in-depth Bible truths that change people's lives. Now here's your host, Les Feldick. Okay, again, I want to welcome all of you here in the studio audience, and for those of you joining us in television, we always like to show our appreciation for your letters. My, I wish I could answer every one of them personally, but I trust you realize that's impossible. But we do enjoy hearing from you. We appreciate your financial help, because after all, we do have to pay the bills. But mostly, how we thank you for letters from you who have gotten a new enthusiasm for the Word and to study it by yourselves, with your husbands and family and so forth, because that's the only reason I teach, is to help people get interested in the Word of God. We are not building an organization, we are not just trying to build numbers, but oh, to get people into the Word. All right, we're going to cut all our announcements short, because again, we want to use every moment that we can in the Word. So those of you out in television, as well as you here in the studio, we'll be looking at 1 Thessalonians once again, dropping in at chapter 3, and where we just left off, which would be in verse 6. And remember from our last program, we were showing how Paul had such a heart-rendering concern for these new believers, fresh out of paganism, wondering how they were faring, and if they were holding true to their faith under the intense persecution, which of course he even warned them of as they made their profession of faith. Now then verse 6, now he's gotten some news, and now the flavor changes. But now, when Timothy came from you unto us, and brought us good tidings of your faith, and your love, and that you have good remembrance of us always, desiring greatly to see us, as we also desire of course to see you. My, can't you just feel the exuberance in the apostles reaction, how probably almost depressed with concern about these believers that he had to leave behind, knowing that they were under a lot of pressure, and then to get the good word from Timothy, that they were holding fast. Now then moving on, we'll wind up the chapter rather quickly and get into chapter 4. Ephesians 4, and that was his mental attitude, and he says, Now we were comforted in all our affliction and distress by your faith. Now they probably hadn't gotten to the place yet where they were just exploding with a But the number one purpose in bringing someone fresh out of a lost environment is to see their faith, to realize that they are taking to heart the things that God has spoken, either through the Old Testament or through the letters of Paul. Now again I always have to remind folks, you want to remember that at the time that Paul wrote these letters, there was no New Testament. Now maybe the book of James had been written, but even that certainly did not have a lot of doctrinal truth in it for Paul's converts. But see these people had no New Testament to draw on, and I imagine the pagan world had no access to the Old Testament. The Jewish believers would have, but not these pagan Gentiles. And so to start with the fundamentals of their faith was all that Paul really counted necessary at this point in time. And so even with us, as you see new believers come into the Body of Christ, the first thing we have to establish is, are they taking God at His Word? Are they resting on the Word of God, and not just on some feeling or an emotional thing, but faith is that taking God at His Word. Now then moving on into the next verse. Ephesians 2.1b "...for now we live, if ye stand fast in the LORD. For what thanks can we render to God again for you, for all the joy wherewith we joy for your sakes before our God, night and day, praying exceedingly that we might see your face? O, how he longed to get back, and once again see these new converts face to face, and that he says we might bring perfectness, or maturity, of that which is lacking in your faith." Now naturally a new believer doesn't have the whole understanding of Scripture. You don't expect them to. Many of you have been believers for years, and this again is so many of our letters. Many of you have been in church for 30, 40, 50 years, and they're just now seeing some of these deeper things that are not ordinarily taught in Sunday school, or used in a Sunday morning sermon. But it's all here for every believer to feast on, and so this is what Paul is referring to concerning these new believers. Now then verse 11. Ephesians 2.11b "...now God Himself, and our Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ direct our way unto you." In other words he was just hoping that providentially God would lead him back up to Thessalonica. Ephesians 2.11b "...and the Lord make you to increase, and abound in love one toward another." See there again that's one of the first steps of our faith, is not so much that we go out and become evangelists and missionaries right away, but that we can manifest our saving faith by love to those that are in proximity. Ephesians 2.11b "...my again, just in the last week we have had several have called or written how that the Word has transformed their home life." You know that thrills us, that's what just makes you want to carry on. How they can explain that they had a life of drunkenness, husbands and wives both addicted to the curse of alcohol, and then the Word of God came into their family and their life. And what a difference it makes. Well this is what Paul knew. He saw people come out of those same kind of backgrounds, paganism and the drunkenness. Don't think for a minute that drunkenness is something unique to the 21st century. It's been a plague of the human race from day one. And so these people certainly had the same kinds of temptations, but as they came out of that background and into the love of Christ, then Paul says that they would increase in their love one toward another, and then to the community around them, even as we do toward you. Now verse 13. Ephesians 2.13b "...to the end." Now everything has an end. You know there's that old cliche that the means justify the end, or the end justifies the means. Well Paul is using that same concept. That the end of all this, there has to be an end. The end is that He may establish your hearts. What's the next word? Unblameable. Oh no, a lot of people don't like that. They don't like to have the idea that a believer, if the Lord should come this afternoon, we've probably all got some unconfessed sin in our life. Maybe we've had some bad thoughts, even since we got up this morning, and the Lord comes. Are we suddenly going to be shaking in our boots and say, Oh I've got unconfessed sin? Not according to my Bible. We're going to be what? Unblameable. Now that's not license, that doesn't say that I can be free to sin, and have my evil thoughts and just glibly go on my way, oh well I'm unblameable. No that's not the idea. But it's that comforting aspect that even if we have failed the Lord in the last 24 hours, and He should come today, we're not going to stand before Him with all that sin on our back as I've said so often, because He says even here that He may establish you unblameable in holiness before God, when? At the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now let's go back and use a comparative Scripture, because after all that's what this is. This is a Bible study, and I'm not up here just to see how much ground we can cover. Come back with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 1. And I've seen it in my class, my, we're somebody that doesn't agree with this, they just all the time burst their blood vessels. But I can't help that, I go by what the Book says, not what some denomination may be preaching or teaching, and even my own. I can't go just by that, I have to come back to what does the Word of God say. Now before we even start reading, what kind of a congregation was the Corinthian group? Carnal, oh they had all kinds of problems. They had morality problems, they had attitude problems, and so always remember that as you read these things, it helps so much to know the background of the letter. And here He's writing to a group of carnal believers, they're still hung on the things of the flesh. Now verse 6, "...even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you." They too had come out of paganism, they too had come out of the horrors of the lifestyle of Corinth, with all of its excesses. But now they had stepped out of it, but they were still slipping occasionally, they were human. Now verse 7, "...even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you, so that you come behind in no gift." In other words, God had given them all there was to give, and they too were waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now I think you all realize that the Apostle Paul honestly thought that the rapture would take place in his lifetime, he certainly wrote with that in mind. And then of course it wasn't until he was about to face martyrdom, and he realized that he was not going to see the coming of the Lord, that he changes his tune. But I always say, if Paul thought the Lord was going to come in the 1st century, then we better be ready in the 21st. That's the only way I can put it. Now look what he says, "...they were waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." Now verse 8, "...but also write in the margin, This is not license, but this is comfort, that even though we fail, and we do, and we will, and if the Lord should suddenly blow the trumpet, and we're translated out of here, here will be our position, who shall confirm you unto the end, that you may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ." Now that's comfort. We don't have to go to sleep at night, shaking in our boots, thinking, Oh if the Lord should come before morning, have I got something that He's going to hold against me? No. It's all under the blood, and beloved rest assured of that. That the blood of Christ, even John says in his little epistle, "...has cleansed us from all our sin." And these are the very fundamentals of the faith then, that as a believer, even though we're still in the flesh, and we're going to fail, yes, we want to keep a short account. I certainly believe in confessing as soon as we realize we've sinned, but I've also said over and over, you don't have to be groveling in the dirt, and begging God to forgive you, because that's already a done deal. Our forgiveness is complete, it's done, but our comfort is that even if we fail, and have failed to confess it, and the Lord should come, we're not going to stand before Him, and have to answer for unconfessed sin. We will be declared unblameable in His sight. All right, back to 1 Thessalonians. Now these are all words of comfort for the believer, and you know for years, up until I guess these last few years on the television program, I've always made the statement, that I felt that the Lord had more or less given me a ministry of teaching believers. I never felt that I was a great soul winner, but I still feel primarily inclined to teach believers, because when a believer is well taught, he's going to be a good witness. And you can't be unless you're taught. I've said that so often, if you were to talk to a real good mechanic, a guy who just loves engines, do you have to twist his arm to find something out? Oh, he is so ready to share whatever he knows. Why? Because he knows it, and it's true with anybody. I know MD's don't like to be caught at a social function, and have somebody ask them a bunch of questions, but on the other hand most of them have enough ego that when they're asked something concerning the medical profession, they're only too willing to share their knowledge. I mean it's just human nature that when we know something, we're comfortable in sharing it. Now that's the key to being a witness and a testimony as a believer. Know your subject, and this is the subject. Now let's go on to 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, and again he starts right out with a word almost like wherefore, but now he says, "...furthermore we beseech you, brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as you have received of us, how you ought to walk, and to please God, so you would abound more and more." Who is he setting up as our example? Himself. Himself. He is the example of the believer. I just had a phone conversation with someone again last night, and I thought we were supposed to follow Jesus. No. We follow Paul who follows Christ. Come back with me to 1 Corinthians. We looked at this a few weeks ago. 1 Corinthians chapter 4, I'll just use one, we've got many of them that we normally use, but I'll just limit it to one, and it's because the Lord Jesus was God. He was deity. He could walk a walk that we humans couldn't begin to follow. But this apostle is just as human as we are. He had the same reactions, he had the same emotions, he had the same whatever, and so he becomes then the perfect example of one who was willing to suffer and die for his faith, one who was always ready to leave a witness and a testimony. You know when I taught back in Philippians where he had the Roman guards at his side, and I taught how that whenever they rotated in their tour of duty, by the time they had spent a few days with the apostle Paul, they didn't leave just another pagan Roman soldier. What were they? Believers. And they would go to the ends of the empire sharing their faith, and that's why the Scripture could tell us with all honesty that the age of grace, or the doctrines of grace had covered the Roman Empire, and I'm sure that's how it happened. Here it is now in I Corinthians chapter 4, verse 16. Just a simple little verse that I suppose most people miss entirely. I Corinthians chapter 4, verse 16 Now he tells the Thessalonians the same thing. I Thessalonians chapter 4, verse 16 So he says, "...as you have received of us..." Now again I read in a commentary just a while back that confirmed what I have taught over and over. That when Paul uses the plural pronoun, it wasn't that there were several others involved. Sometimes of course it was Barnabas or Silas, but he uses the plural pronoun only as a mark of humility. He just didn't like to use the big I. And so always remember that. That when he uses the plural pronoun, he's speaking of himself. And so he said, "...as you have received of us..." Or he could have said, "...of me, how you ought to walk, and to please God, so you would abound more and more." See God never intended the believer to just be a little wallflower, that he could say, Oh my, look what I've bought with my blood. No, God wants people who are willing to grow in grace and knowledge, and to be witnesses and testimonies of His grace. Now remember when Paul speaks of himself as he does, it isn't that he is the one that they were to worship. He is not the one who died for them. He is merely the one that the Lord Jesus Christ commissioned back there in Acts chapter 9 to take all of this to the Gentile world. And so here again he tells these Thessalonians how that in that three or four weeks he was with them, he gave them all these commandments that came by way of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now in order to qualify that, we have to go back to Galatians a moment. Galatians chapter 1. I'm afraid there are so many people out there that think that Paul simply wrote from an egotistical attitude, that he was the one who had dreamed all this up. In fact that's what a lot of times the Judaizers would accuse him of, of him being an imposter. He was dreaming up all these things, and I think that's why a lot of Christendom today will not pay attention to the letters of Paul. I had a comment again just last week, that they doubted that the apostle Paul should even be in our Bible. My, we would be destitute of everything if we didn't have Romans through Philemon. But see he qualifies it now in Galatians chapter 1, starting with verse 11. It's been a long time since we looked at these, and this just says it all. And when he says, Be ye followers of me as I follow Christ, here is the basis of his authority as an apostle. Galatians 1, but I certify you brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man, for I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ." Now do you know what that says? That means he didn't learn all of this that he's writing now in his epistles from the feet of Gamaliel. Now he learned the Old Testament, but he didn't pick up these doctrines of grace from Peter, James and John, because the Spirit purposely directed him in another direction. So he wouldn't be polluted by any of the things that Peter, James and John or the others might say. So he was kept insulated from them, and so he received all of these basic truths for Christianity from the Ascended Lord, and again I can't emphasize that enough. Everything that Jesus and the Twelve taught were primarily before the cross. Everything that this man teaches is after the cross, and so it had to come by revelation from the Ascended Lord. Then in the next verse, verse 13. You have heard of my manner of living in times past, in the Jews religion, and how that beyond measure I persecuted the church, or the assembly of God, there in Jerusalem, and wasted it. And then how he made havoc of the church, and profited in the Jews religion. Then in verse 15, when I pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by His grace, to reveal His Son in Paul. That's where we have the further revelation of who Jesus Christ really is. You know, so many folks in Christendom today really don't know who Jesus Christ really is. They just don't know it, and you know why? They haven't studied Paul's epistles, because we do not get a concept of who He really was until we get to Paul. We don't get a concept of what we really are until we get to Paul. Now yes, Jesus referred to sinners, and He referred to the problems that the Pharisees and the Sadducees had with their pride, but never are we explained in Scripture that our basic problem is that we are sons of Adam, for as by one man sin entered, and death by sin, who is the one man? Adam. And so you don't get that until we get to the letters of Paul. So these were all things that were revealed to this man from the Ascended Lord, to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the heathen, or the Gentiles, consequently. Since he is going to be a designated apostle to whom God is going to reveal things that have never been revealed before, the Lord isn't going to muddle his brain by sending him back to Jerusalem and check in with Peter. Isn't that amazing? And most of Christendom misses this, but instead what did God do? Set him the other direction. He sent him into Arabia instead of down to Jerusalem, and this is what He's making so plain. Verse 17. "...neither did I go up to Jerusalem, to them who were apostles before me, but I went into Arabia." Now direction wise, what is that? The opposite. Just the opposite from going to Jerusalem, God sends him into the desert. And I've already made why. So that his mind wouldn't be cluttered with everything that Peter and James and John would want to put on him, but that he could get alone with the Lord in heaven, and have these doctrines of grace poured out on him. And that's why he's constantly then taking credit for being the one to whom were revealed the mysteries or the secrets of God. And this is what you have to constantly keep in mind, that until you get into the depths of this apostle's letters, you're going to miss most of the basic doctrines of Christianity. There's nothing wrong with studying Christ's earthly ministry, to be able to see His miracles and all the things that He accomplished. But listen, you don't find our basic doctrines back there in the Gospels. You have to get in to this section of the Book that a lot of people would like to throw away, which is Romans through Philemon. Well I think our time is just about gone, but let's come back a moment to I Thessalonians chapter 4, so we'll have a place to kick off from in our next half hour. I Thessalonians 4, and so he says, "...that which ye received of us," in verse 1, "...how ye ought to walk..." You know I hear the statement all the time lately, walk the walk and talk the talk, or something like that. Well, see this is what Paul is talking about. That as a believer we are to walk, and to please God, so that we would abound, or grow in grace and knowledge more and more." Now we all know how heart breaking it is to have a child, maybe 4 or 5 years old, who never matures. They can be 30 or 35 years old, and they still have the physical attributes and the mental attributes of a 4 or 5 year old. And it is, it�s heart breaking. Iris as a nurse has come across them. But listen, how many believers aren�t in that same state in their Christian experience? They are still infants in their faith. Thank you for watching Through the Bible with Les Feldick. Through the Bible is a partner supported ministry. If this program has been a help to your study of the scriptures and you�d like to see others enjoy the teaching, your support would be greatly appreciated. Write to us at Les Feldick Ministries, Route 1, Box 760, Tinta, OK 74552 or call 1-800-369-7856. Remember all programs are available in printed form, audio cassette and videotape. Be sure to tune in next time to Through the Bible with Les Feldick.