FAITH:
IN OUR GIFTS OR OUR GOD?
Study Guide
by David Chadwell

Lesson 1  |  Lesson 2  |  Lesson 3  |  Lesson 4  |  Lesson 5  |  Lesson 6
Lesson 7  |  Lesson 8  |  Lesson 9  |  Lesson 10  |  Lesson 11  |  Lesson 12

Lesson Ten

Application Lesson One
Text: Matthew 7:21-23

In this familiar passage Jesus said that not everyone who said to him, "Lord! Lord!" would enter the kingdom of heaven. To enter the kingdom of heaven one must do the will of God. When many are rejected in judgment, they will protest. They will declare (and it does not say that they are lying), not only did they call Jesus their Lord, but they also prophesied, cast out demons, and performed miracles in his name.

Jesus will declare two things. (1) He never knew them. (2) They were to depart from him because they practiced lawlessness (NAS), iniquity (KJV), evil deeds [or were evildoers] (Living Bible, Phillips, RSV, TEV, NIV, JB, NEB).

Clearly, what they did was not God's will but was evil.

  1. Calling Jesus Lord: read the following
    1. John 13:13
    2. Romans 10:9
    3. 1 Corinthians 12:3
    4. Philippians 2:9-11

      Is Jesus Lord? Is it proper to call Jesus Lord?

  2. Prophesying: read the following
    1. Luke 1:67
    2. Acts 2:17,18
    3. Acts 21:9
    4. 1 Corinthians 14:3-5

      Did prophesying occur under the guidance of the Holy Spirit? Did prophesying play an important role in the first presentation of the gospel? Did some godly Christians prophesy? Did prophesying exist as an activity in the early church?

  3. Casting out demons:
    1. Read Matthew 4:24; 8:16, 28-33; 9:32, 33; 12:22; and 15:21-28.

      Did Jesus cast out demons?

    2. Read Matthew 10:8 and Mark 6:7

      Did the twelve cast out demons?

  4. Miracles: references in the gospels and Acts are too common and too many to cite.
    1. Did Jesus perform miracles?
    2. Did the twelve perform miracles?
    3. Did many in the early church perform miracles?

For your thought and consideration:

(1) Since Jesus was properly called Lord, (2) and since the three activities mentioned were common activities of godly, saved people, (3) and since everything was done in Jesus name, (4) and since there was only one church in the first century,

why were the people who did these things evil?

Option One:
There was something evil about their deeds.

Option Two:
Doing these right acts by the right authority was insufficient to do God's will.

Option Three:
Even though they performed common godly deeds by the right authority,
they misunderstood the definition of and the concept of God's will.

Option Four:
To reduce God's will to the performance of proper deeds by the proper authority is evil.

Are any of those options correct? Do you have an option that you wish to suggest? Does this have any relationship to the material we have studied? If your answer is yes, what is the relationship?


David Chadwell

Faith: In Our Gifts or Our God? (lesson 10)
Wednesday evening adult Bible class, Winter Quarter 2000
West-Ark Church of Christ, Fort Smith, AR
Copyright © 2000
Permission is granted to freely copy and distribute with text unchanged, including author's name.
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