The third one was a good work. But I know what it takes. And of course my analogy breaks down because we have a tendency to think that somehow the potter’s work is easy. Well it’s easy if you’ve got malleable clay. It’s easy if you’ve got the water that’s flowing on this vessel. It’s easy if you understand submission to the potter. Now I think it’s interesting we have four principles. Most of you will have these in your Bible. If you don’t, you can just put them somewhere. Principle. Principle.

Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that the principle, starting point number one: God’s the boss. The supremacy and the sovereignty of God, His divine governing we saw in the Book of Ephesians. In the economy of God, the principle is that God had the absolute right to do with this piece of clay what He wants. And if He wants to mash it and throw it in the trash, that’s His business not yours. Likewise for every person sitting beside you. Same thing. We have this idea somehow and if we come to the conclusion that God’s the boss, “Hey look God, you’ve got a hard enough time with all these other pieces of clay around me. I think you should let me govern the wheel, let me adjust the speed. I can do that you know. I can be trusted to do that.” God’s the boss. The perfect illustration Isaiah says it, Paul says it, “Doth the clay say to the potter, ‘what makest thou?’ Does the clay have the right to talk back to the potter?” Well, don’t answer that. Too many times we can read by a passage in the Bible and say, “Well that’s somebody else.” But you start reading Romans 9 and really recognize what Paul’s saying, he says, God’s saying, “I’ll have mercy on whom I want to have mercy. One vessel made to honor, another to dishonor. Jacob I love, Esau I hated.” He had every single right to do what He wanted to do.

Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that he says now we’re walking according to flow of what’s going on. We’re in the world, just going with it. We are in that self-serving, do for me, profit for me, don’t tell me how bad I look, don’t tell me how tired or how fat or how skinny or bad or how good – Oh tell me that I’m good. Thank you. I love that. Right? That’s how we are.

“Among whom also we all” – notice it changed from “ye, ye walked, ye” he says, “and you, and ye.” Verse 3 changes, “Among whom also we all had our behavior in times past in the lust of our flesh.” There’s a very strange thing that happens here. Flesh, we know when we study the Bible; flesh is usually the antithesis of spirit. We know flesh covers my bones and covers everything. This is my covering.

Flesh as in the opposite of spirit and flesh as in according to the drag, this magnet that pulls me in to serve myself, serve the flesh, serve the devil. And by the way, the world, the flesh and the devil, this little trilogy of words that people just toss around so casually. You know the song You Can’t have One Without the Other? I know people that tune into the network. Most Christians that tune into our network and hear Dr. Scott teaching on demonology and Spiritual Warfare and Screwtape Letters, “My you folks really make a great deal about the devil.” Well read the record and the first thing that you’ll encounter about Jesus is the devil coming to tempt Him. So if the devil’s going to come tempt Him, what makes you think that suddenly when Jesus went to the cross everybody went home and it’s all good and there’s no more devil.

I mean you can say, “Poor Jesus died on the cross. I’m going to bring to you a list.” Well let’s make a list. Let’s write down a list mentally of all the things we could write down and do as good, to be presented and weighed in the balance. Here, let me make a list of good things I can do. I could do things for elderly people and I could be seen of all people as a humble worker feeding the poor.

I could do all those things, write them on a list and put them in a scale and let the balance weigh whether the shed blood of Christ and my little piddling things that I think I did, that, to me are like Mount Vesuvius, but God views those like a little ant hill. “You want me to accept that in place of what my Son did?” Talk about insulting God!

Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that now there’s a flipside. The flipside is if we’re not talking about salvation and we’re strictly talking about – and Paul’s going to go on and talk about this. This is what I love about the Bible. Everything you ever wanted to know is in there, and then some. The one thing that you can be sure of, he is talking right there about salvation. And when we get to the rest of this verse 10, I will show you by comparison other texts that will lead the way.

Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that when we start messing with His territory about who is and who isn’t; many are called, few are chosen. But what are the many? How many are the many? Are the many one trillion? Is that the many? And the few are five? Or the few five million? We don’t know so I don’t want to try and define God. And certainly in the time allotted, I don’t want to try and get into meddling in areas that too many people already meddled in. I’ve got boxes of books, boxes. Boxes and boxes and boxes of these very people including those Luther and Erasmus debates, the Calvin and Armenian debates. I’ve got Augustine’s letters here. I’ve got everybody under the sun in my basket.

Now, I tell you this because there has to be some theological footing. The concepts of omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence, those are the concepts that came out of the German idealist realm with some very mutually contradictive ideas about things. Now I’m not; I don’t want to tread and say, “I’m going to take a position.” I already know what the position is. God said it. The same time, the same God who spoke and gave His word can turn around and say, “Hey, that derelict over there that’s been such a putrid – or maybe that lady with the bun who’s pretended to be so good but she’s really a rotten egg underneath; I’m going to save that woman.” How do we know? This is the danger of the world we live in, the world of we play God, because we assume to know what God wants, who He’s going to save, which is an interesting thought.

Watch how everybody discounts him. Ananias says, “this is the man that was breathing out threatenings. Don’t trust him!  He had such a reputation. So for him to invent this cockamamie story that the Lord knocked him off of a horse and he got converted and had this Damascus road experience and now the Lord tells him to get up and to go somewhere and wait for somebody to come and give him his sight.

Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that it’s the most preposterous story in the whole Bible or the greatest proof of the power that comes in to any container to take over and can take the most hardened, worst person in societies’ eyes: Saul of Tarsus, accuser of and destroyer of the church into the greatest evangelist and responsible for the bulk of the New Testament. Here’s not a man like, you know some others say, “well now this particular disciple and head of the church, the early Church heard from another witness who heard from another witness that he had exposure to the risen Lord.” you’re getting it straight from an eyewitness to Jesus. The greatest testimony of the power of God to change a person comes in by way of this. These forces, they’re unseen forces and they change your inside.

Now there’s going to be people saying, “Well do I have this power? Yes, you have this power. From the moment you first faithed in Christ and the Spirit comes in, that deposit that we’ve already taught on, you are endued with that power. You are endued to say turn around, it’s the power that lets you open your mouth and say, “I rebuke you, Satan, in Jesus name.” you rebuke those things that come upon you. It’s that power an ordinary man would say, “that’s foolishness. That person’s lost their nuggets.

Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that the fact of the matter is that no one wants to discipline themself to say, “what is entailed in bringing about that ideal man?  Hearing the word of God, living the best to the best of my abilities – I’m not talking about do-do and the don’t-do. I’m talking about what we’ve been taught: faith, faith, faith.

And then what? My trials, my tribulations, good times, bad times. The ideal man is what this church exists to bring forth. And God help me if I helped one person understand why we’re here. It’s not to have an entertaining service. I don’t want to entertain you. I want to bring forth people. I want t be able to stand on that day and say, “to the best of my ability, God, what you enabled me to do that I might help others that, just like Dr. Scott did” he tried to lead people the right direction and get away from those traditions that make void the word of God, to lead people to cross the finish line. Not just “I might make it in just because I believe.” “I’m charging through. Move out of my way.” now, you may be seated. You may be seated.

Now I’ve done a whole bunch of review for you. Now I want us to focus on something. Everything that I just said for the last whatever minutes that I said it, will be confirmed in Paul’s writing. Now I want to take you back to the book of Ephesians today and we’re going to finish off the first chapter. I gave all this background because Paul is going to show us that this is not some invention of a brilliant mind. Dr. Scott had a brilliant mind. But this is not some invention of brilliant mind. In fact this is more biblical than most anything you’re going to find. This taxonomy breaks it down for us to understand. And Paul’s writing will confirm that. Now I want to focus in.

After the sixty-ninth week of Daniel there is a gap of time. But the most important thing is not the time that has elapsed; the most important date for interpreting this prophecy is its starting point: the time of the going forth of the decree. In verse 25, it says “from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to rebuild Jerusalem.” Different interpreters use different dates for this event: there was the decree of Cyrus, the decree of Darius, the decree in Ezra’s day, and the decree to Nehemiah.  But there is only one that qualifies as the decree to rebuild the city.  That was the decree issued to Nehemiah in 444 BC; it is the only decree that fits the text.  And if you calculate the seventy weeks of years using the starting point of 444 BC, that brings you to 33 AD.

Now my husband, Dr Gene Scott, has taught extensively on this. There are many books you can find of this subject which use a number of different calculations to arrive at the date of Jesus’ crucifixion. The problem with their calculations is that these books do not recognize the correct date of Jesus’ death. So all of their calculations are a hodge-podge. I’m really not that traditional, but it took me a long time studying with Dr. Scott to break some of those traditional ideas. There are some who will hear this teaching and they’ll say, “Well, I like all that teaching but that’s not what I was brought up, so it must be wrong, because that’s not what I know.”  I remember I was devastated to find out that certain things didn’t happen when I thought they really did, because that’s what I had been conditioned to believe. But it didn’t happen that way and anyone who takes the time to examine the facts will see that it is true. Because if you’re like me you’re going to want to see it for yourself and that’s okay. As long as once you see it you say, “I know what the truth is now.”

Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that one challenge is to find the birth date of Jesus. Some people have the idea that He must have been born in the year 0, but there was no “year 0.” If He was thirty-three years old when He was crucified, then He had to either be born in 1 BC or in 1 AD, but some records say He was born around 5 BC.  Given the fact that there is no “year 0” and from 1 BC to 1 AD makes only one year, if you are trying to determine the time interval between 444 BC to 33 AD, you come out with 476 years, not 477 years.

But once you cross that Rubicon and you have examine the facts and have become convinced of the fact of the Resurrection, you are then free to go into the book with the eyes that see the risen Christ. You can look at Scripture with a mindset that says that God is faithful to perform what He said in the past, such as the prophecies and the words spoken regarding the coming of Jesus Christ, like the prophecy in Isaiah 9, “For unto us a child is born.” With all of those things having been fulfilled, then how much more will He fulfill His word in other prophecies? But there is a series of things that must happen in order for everything else to be lined up.

Now there will be people that will say, “Do you think everything then is wound up in God’s word? It’s all wound up and then somebody pulled the chain so now it’s just going to start unwinding until the end time?” No. I believe God has a plan. Perfect case in point: God had a plan when He put Adam in the garden. To prove that His creation is not a wind up toy, God allowed Adam to make a choice. Adam made a choice and it was a bad choice; he made a choice to disobey. So is everything all wound up? No, but God’s plan is laid out for a road map of the redemption and the return, the restoration to what we were supposed to be that Adam messed up. God loves freedom, but God has established set times and patterns for us to learn from.

Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that in the book of Revelation, chapter 1, verse 10, Jesus begins to talk to John, and John says that he heard the sound as of a trumpet speaking behind him. And then Jesus begins to tell John certain things. Now this picture is important, because if you step away from reading John’s writing in the book of Revelation and you go back and fix your eyes on the Old Testament, you begin to see the meaning. We know that everything in the Old Testament is a shadow and type. The New Testament is infolded in the Old Testament, and the Old Testament is unfolded in the New Testament.

Zerowath, if you remember in Isaiah 53 we read “to whom the arm of the LORD is revealed,” zerowa, from the word oze which has a military use and connotation. ‘The arm of force,’ so the Septuagint wasn’t too far off in using ischun in its translation ‘strong arm,’ ‘strength.’

“Underneath bottomless,” ōlam which is being translated ‘bottomless,’ ‘endless.’ How far is bottomless? I have no idea, but you’ll know when you’re falling…it’s going to be far down. To me it also means however far I fall, He’s going to be there. I remember the first time I heard my husband speak on this passage and the first time I heard it I said “You know,” forgive me, “but it reminds me of Superman.”

Remember how Superman managed to always be around and had a place to change? He always knew where Lois Lane was and every time she found herself in a bind he would catch her. I know that’s a comic book hero, but the God we serve is real and He really does see us right where we’re at.

We can fall into the trap where we think our deliverance will be a certain way; when God comes in on the scene, it may not be the way we thought God would deliver us. Our ways and God’s ways are not the same. He comes in to deliver, He comes in to catch, He comes in on the spot but it might be different than what we thought.

Back to the Hebrew text, garesh, this word is the translation of our English ‘to throw out.’ ‘To thrust out’ is used in Genesis when Adam and Eve were ushered out of the Garden.

Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that “Underneath are the everlasting arms,” just to go right out of the King James, but when it says “Israel then shall dwell in safety alone” really it should read ‘tabernacle.’ Once God is done kicking out the enemy from before your face, the ‘tabernacle,’ the ‘tabernacling’ means the presence of God is going to be with you.

We were reading in Revelation, Jesus is in the midst of the Churches. Now I want you to follow my line of thinking. Jesus is in the midst of the Churches and yet—the letter being sent to the seven Churches in Asia, which is the universal Church, which is the Church through history, through time—yet evil still crept into the Church with Jesus in the midst.

I want you to think about that because a lot of people will say “Well, a House of God should never have that.” Well, go back to the Garden, that’s the original House of God. Satan still found a way in there. That’s why we have the Parable of the Wheat and Tares, not only applying to you and me in the world but underneath the canopy of the Church. It says ‘Leave it to grow there until harvest time. The wheat I’ll put in my barn; the tares will be burnt up, but leave it there until then.’

Pastor Melissa Scott tells us that there are places in God’s Book where Faith can’t work until He activates it. Let me explain. Read Philemon, in the letter written by Paul to Philemon you’ll read something that probably most of us—including myself until I read it, really read it—overlooked. Onesimus stole something from his master, Philemon, and ran away.

Philemon’s house was an ekklesia, it was a Church and under his master’s roof where Onesimus lived, where he served, he couldn’t be saved. He stole something and he ran away. Divine providence, believe it or not, made him run to where Paul was—in prison. I don’t know how Onesimus heard Paul, but he heard the Gospel preached by Paul and he was saved. It couldn’t happen in his own household where he lived and served but it happened there.