Daily Bread 9/14/2023

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Daily Bread – September 14, 2021 (The Fifth Day – Genesis 1:20-23) Acts 9:31 – Then, all of the churches had peace throughout Judea, Galilee, and Samaria, being built up and moving in the fear of the Lord and in the encouragement of the Holy Spirit, multiplied. Oversight and Guidance of the Church The comfort or encouragement, ‘paraklesis’, of the Holy Spirit is only one of the many different things the Holy Spirit does. He is called the ‘Parakletos’ in John 14:16. Parakletos is difficult to translate because it has such a wide area of meaning such as helper, encourager, comforter, mediator, advocate, intercessor, etc. The most outstanding reality of the ‘Parakletos’ is that He was sent to take the place of Jesus as another ‘Parakletos’. Now, instead of the Lord Jesus teaching the apostles and being their companion, it was the Holy Spirit. Although there was one governing body of the Church as depicted in Acts, of which the apostles were the overseers, there were many different local churches as expressed by the plural ‘ekklesiai’. The Old Testament teaches that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Psalms 111:10; Proverbs 9:10). The Psalmist taught how through the fear of the Lord we would learn to keep our tongue from evil and our lips from speaking guile, and how the fear of the Lord causes a person to depart from evil and pursue peace (Psalms 34:11-14). The fear of the Lord is the hating of evil, arrogance, and pride (Proverbs 8:13). The expression, “the fear of the Lord” is only found one time in the New Testament, but an equivalent expression “the fear of God” is found three times (2 Corinthians 7:1; Ephesians 5:21; 1 Peter 2:17). Peter, also quotes Psalms 34:12-14 in the context of inheriting a blessing. The most common characteristic of the fear of the Lord is the hating of evil and the loving of righteousness. It was Jesus, Himself, Who above all others, modeled this consecration to life and the ways of the Father, and was given this testimony, “You have loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore, God your God has anointed You with the oil of extreme joy above Your fellows” (Hebrews 1:9; Psalms 45:6-7). Blessings, Pastor Mark Spitsbergen