Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #3 of Genesis 31, and we will read Genesis 31:7-9:

And your father hath deceived me, and changed my wages ten times; but God suffered him not to hurt me. If he said thus, The speckled shall be thy wages; then all the cattle bare speckled: and if he said thus, The ringstraked shall be thy hire; then bare all the cattle ringstraked. Thus God hath taken away the cattle of your father, and given them to me.

I will stop reading there.  In our last study, we looked at the word “hurt” in verse 7:  … but God suffered him not to hurt me,” and we saw how that was used in a few different places, like Psalm 2:9 where it was translated as “break.”  It says in Psalm 2:9:

Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron…

That lets us know that the word “hurt” has to do with the Lord Jesus destroying the wicked in the Day of Judgment.  So that lets us know that this word “hurt” can be used in a very serious way in the ultimate sense of destroying someone, and that is how we understand it spiritually.

Historically, as far as Laban’s treatment of his son-in-law Jacob, it was not ultimate destruction that was in view.  We learned that Laban is a type of Satan, and Jacob is a type of Christ, as well as the elect.  Here, it is especially the elect, as Satan is seeking to destroy God’s elect people.  He is seeking their ultimate harm, which would be that they would utterly perish, and yet, God says that He suffered them not to hurt Jacob.

We saw that was a consistent theme throughout the whole Bible.  We saw that in 1Chronicles 16, and we could say the same thing of Psalm 105:11-15:

Saying, Unto thee will I give the land of Canaan, the lot of your inheritance: When they were but a few men in number; yea, very few, and strangers in it. When they went from one nation to another, from one kingdom to another people; He suffered no man to do them wrong: yea, he reproved kings for their sakes; Saying, Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm.

The word “harm” is our same word.  God said, “…do my prophets no harm,” or no hurt, and this is the watchful eye of God and the protective care He provides for His prophets.  No – it is not just prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, but it refers to all the people of God because all of God’s people are prophets, priests, and kings.  And this declaration to “do my prophets no harm” is true of all of God’s people.  There is no ultimate harm that can come to an elect child of God.  We can experience pain, affliction, and trouble from the hands of the wicked of the world as Satan stirs up individuals to come against us.  Maybe they injure us in various ways, but today it is mostly done with words.  In times past, it has been done physically, and enemies have taken the people of God and thrown them to the lions or cast them into fiery furnaces, or burned them at the stake.  And yet, it was still true, even while their bodies were burning, and even while the flames swirled around them, consuming their flesh, and burning them to death.  This declaration was still true that God suffered Satan and his evil forces to do His prophets no harm. 

I know this is incredible to think, and individuals that are natural-minded might say, “What are you talking about?  Are you unable to see what is right before your eyes?  They were burned to death.  They died a gruesome, painful death, and you are saying that no harm was done to them?”  Yes – in the ultimate sense, that is exactly what the Bible is saying.  No harm can come to an elect child of God in the ultimate understanding of what that means.  Physical hurt can come.  Physical pain can come.  Physical destruction can come, but not eternal destruction of the soul.  Remember what the Lord says in Matthew 10:28:

And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

An inability exists in the enemies of God, His kingdom, and His people, to do ultimate harm, and ultimate harm would be the destruction of both body and soul.  That is, one’s whole being consists of body and soul.  They can destroy the body.  That is true.  It has happened, and it will likely continue to happen somewhere in the world concerning some of God’s people that encounter evil men, and they will kill the body and cause them to die physically.  But in killing the body, they are unable to touch the new, born-again soul, the righteous soul that is the resurrected soul of the elect child of God.  It is a soul that lives eternally, and that is the location that God acted upon through His Word and brought to life.  It is why the Lord Jesus declared in John 8:51:

Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.

And the Jews began to mock, as they said in John 8:52:

Then said the Jews unto him, Now we know that thou hast a devil. Abraham is dead, and the prophets; and thou sayest, If a man keep my saying, he shall never taste of death.

You see, they were natural-minded.  They could only think of the flesh of the body.  They did not understand the soul, and God’s salvation in this world and that which He accomplished through the sending forth of the Gospel was the salvation of the soul.  This is why the statement is made in 2Corinthians 5:8:

to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.

That is, when an elect person dies his body goes into the ground, but his soul at the instant of death is immediately translated into the heavenlies into the presence of God, and the spirit of that person will live on, waiting for God to complete things on this earth on the very last day.  And that wait is very short at this point, and it is soon to happen.  They will live in their soul existence in the presence of God until that last day, and then on the last day, it is the day of resurrection of the dead.  The body will come up that had died, whether they were sick or aged or killed by evil men, and it will be translated and transformed into a new resurrected body.  And then what was true of the soul upon salvation will be true of the body – it will never die.  And in body and soul, the person comes back together, and they are joined as a whole personality for eternity to come.  They will never die in body or soul in the glorious eternal future that awaits.  This is the wonderful promise of God, an almost unbelievable promise.  And we know that God is a God of promise, and He is also a God that cannot lie, and He will bring to pass every Word He has said, and every promise will be fulfilled.  His people will experience salvation in that ultimate sense.  Wow!  Who can imagine it?  We cannot imagine the wonders that await us and are soon to happen to each one the Lord has truly saved.

This is why God, “Do my prophets no harm,” or the why Jacob said that God suffered Laban not to hurt him.  Again, God’s people are spiritual prophets, and they have certainly suffered affliction, tribulation, and harm in this world.  They have been abused.  They have been victims of the sinful acts of others, and they have been persecuted for the Word’s sake, and even put to death, but never was there an instant or moment in all the things they went through where their soul was in any kind of danger.  Satan did his best, and he is a great destroyer.  He is excellent at destroying, and he did everything he could to destroy just one of God’s chosen elect people.  He gave his best effort, and he always failed every single time.  There is no ability to “hurt” God’s elect, ultimately. So if we go back to the New Testament, we read in Mark 16:16:

He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.

Now we know that we have to understand this statement in light of everything the Bible says, and we know that the one who will truly believe are the ones that are saved by the faith of Christ, and they believe “in the heart” because God has given them a new heart.  And the baptism is not water baptism, but it is the baptism of the Holy Spirit that occurs through the spiritual process of salvation as the Word of God is applied to that soul and the sins are purged away.

Then it says in Mark 16:17-18:

And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.

So all these things are true of God’s elect, and only God’s elect.  It is only those that have truly believed, which is only by the grace and faith of Christ.  Only those that are truly baptized in the spirit (not by physical baptism) will be able to drink any deadly thing, and it shall not hurt them.  And that “deadly thing” would be a false gospel that a true believer might partake of, for whatever reason.  False gospels are deadly and bring ultimate harm to multitudes of people, but not to God’s elect – we will not be hurt or experience ultimate harm.  As I mentioned before, God has a watchful eye out for them, and God will make sure of that, whether it was prior to a person’s salvation when they wandered into a church that spoke in tongues, but God would have led them out to the truth of His Word, and led them to salvation.  Or perhaps at the end of the church age, there was someone in a church that was elect, but just prior to May 21, 2011, the Lord led them out of the churches where the Latter Rain was falling.  They heard the Gospel, and God saved them, and the “deadly thing” they heard in their church was unable to hurt them.  It is a glorious truth that the Bible tells us.

In Revelation 6, we read in Revelation 6:5:

And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.

This third seal identifies with the Great Tribulation period.

Then it says in Revelation 6:6:

And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.

The “oil and the wine” are the fruit of the harvest that came through the rain and, therefore, they are a figure of God’s elect.  So during the Great Tribulation God took care (as He always takes care) to specifically command His people at the time He was bringing great harm to the corporate church by the loosing of Satan, the terrible destroyer. 

You know, Satan destroyed Adam, and then he came against the camp of the saints to wreak spiritual destruction upon the entire Christian church world, and he did an excellent job of causing spiritual destruction in the congregations.  Of course he was operating as a servant of the Lord.  He was the instrument of God’s judgment.  But in all that destruction that Christ describes as “not one stone being left upon another,” the Lord commanded, “See thou hurt not the oil and the wine.”  He watches over His people and protects His people. 

We find the identical thing in Ezekiel 9, which is also describing judgment beginning at the house of God and the wrath of God upon the city called by His name, the corporate church.  We read in Ezekiel 9:5-7:

And to the others he said in mine hearing, Go ye after him through the city, and smite: let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity: Slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women: but come not near any man upon whom is the mark; and begin at my sanctuary. Then they began at the ancient men which were before the house. And he said unto them, Defile the house, and fill the courts with the slain: go ye forth. And they went forth, and slew in the city.

We see here that God put a “hedge” or a Word of protection as He gave instruction to the Destroyer, who is Christ, ultimately.  He is the Judge.  He was the Judge of the churches, and now He is the Judge of the world.  And yet, the Word of protection was round about His people: “but come not near any man upon whom is the mark.”  There was said to be a mark upon the forehead, and the forehead is where the mind is, and in the Bible “mind, heart, and soul” are synonymous.  So it was “marking” the soul.  “These are my living ones.  These I have determined to save.  They were predestinated to receive it.  Do not harm them.” 

“See thou hurt not the oil and the wine.”  You see, it is an equivalent commandment where God was keeping watch over His people.  And it is impossible – and it has always been impossible – for an elect of God to experience ultimate harm.  It just cannot happen.  And, of course, if we cannot experience ultimate harm, it means we have ultimate safety and security.  We have ultimate assurance that we will live, and we will not die.  We should not waste time concerning ourselves with temporal injuries to the body.  That will happen one way or the other.  Maybe we will get our feelings hurt or our bodies hurt by the enemies of God, but they cannot penetrate what is within this vessel of our physical body.  Our body is an earthly house, in that sense, just like the corporate church was an earthly house.  And yet, we have an eternal house where we are a living stone that is a part of that house, and our soul is just temporarily staying in our body until it moves to its eternal spiritual body.

Again, we must keep our thoughts on things above, and keep our thoughts on God who is the Eternal Being with an eternal perspective.  And if we learn to do that even a little bit, we will be much better off.

Let us look at just one last verse in this study.  It says in Revelation 11:3-5:

And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth. These are the two olive trees, and the two candlesticks standing before the God of the earth. And if any man will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and devoureth their enemies: and if any man will hurt them, he must in this manner be killed.

Here, we are learning a couple of things.  One is that if anyone does seek to hurt the people of God…and the two witnesses are the “law and the prophets,” the Word of God, the Bible,  but it is also those that carry that message as the people of God…and if any man hurt the people of God, they will perish.  They will be killed, ultimately, and not the people of God.  Someone might say, “Hold it, does this statement not imply that God’s people will be hurt, and does it not contradict everything you said about it not being possible for the Lord’s people to be hurt?”  No – because the word “hurt” is actually subjunctive, and it would be better to translate it as “should will” or “should wish,” so it would read: “If any man should will to hurt them (or should wish to hurt them), fire proceedeth out of their mouth and devoureth their enemies: and if any man should will to hurt them, he must in this manner be killed.”  You see, it is really expressing or revealing the evil intent of the enemies of God to hurt God’s people, and we know that exists everywhere.  They have that desire or intent, but they have no ability to actually carry it out.