The bible, Jesus, and you

We read our bibles and learn the history and events of God’s people through the ages. We see their weakness and find hope in God’s mercy for them because we also see our own need for His mercy. At times we read for understanding of that which we should be and what we should do. At other times we read to find comfort that we are not alone in our troubles and not forsaken for our failure.

Some read for love, some read for approval, and many read in case of emergency. One third of the population of the earth considers the bible as holy; yet many more consider it as a book of wisdom.

To us who have placed our faith on the things said in this book what is it? Some say it is instruction, some say a promise, to some it is a description and others say a warning with the truth being it is all of these things.

 One of the contributing writers said Gods people are destroyed when they cannot see and for just that reason he was instructed to write things down. What follows are some of the things that I have been made to see about this collection we call the bible. No other book has been cherished, loved, hated, and despised as much both through the centuries and through the seasons of my life.

When God speaks of what He has given men He does not say bible; instead He says “My word”. Paul almost two thousand years ago pointed out that the promise to Abraham was of a seed not seeds. He concludes that the singular seed was Messiah. In similar fashion we must see that Gods word is a singular. All of the promises, all of the instructions, every vision, and every parable is one description of the living word Yeshua the messiah, who we commonly call Jesus the Christ, the redeemer of Gods possession.

If we see this then we surrender our arguments of things such as election vs free will; for we understand that God is saying both are one. Such a thought silences us if we understand how one is true but not the other. Instead of debating with others who can only understand the opposite view we are brought to being humble before God and seeking true understanding of how the two are one.

Two being made one brings us to our next consideration about those things contained in the Word. Jesus said that He and those who trust, rely, and expect on Him are made one with Him. It is for this reason that we can see that when God poured out death on Messiah it was not to kill an innocent for the guilty but that our old man, who was guilty, could be put to death. We see that death could not have hold on our beloved because He was perfect and so by making us one in Him we also came into His eternal life on which death can make no claim.

Yet before I digress too far, the word of God is a description of who we are. We are in Messiah and He is in us and the bible is the story of our living. If we think of our bible as facts to be learned and unlocked it does not gender to life but if instead we see it is showing us the liberty and life in us then it contains all for life and godliness.

Jesus said that if one believed Moses and the prophets they would believe on Him for He was the life they had been the witness to. Jesus also told His apostles that they would be His witnesses. If you have placed your trust and expectation in Him then He abides in you through His Holy Spirit. The bible has become the story of you. If you use the things written there to strive to build yourself up toward heaven to be as He is then you have not seen that He is alive in you. If in the reverse you try to use those things to put the sin in you to death then you have not seen your old man is dead in Him.

How then you might ask do we see the sin die and His righteousness live in our living. We are told to have faith (trust, dependence, and expectation) on Jesus and what He has done. We are also told to add to our faith patience. Moses says it in this way hear o Israel (those joined to God in covenant) YHWH (the covenant name of God) is our Elohim (power denoting creation) YHWH is one (He does not work by separation but by all being in Him) and though shalt love (giving of self to another by faith)YHWH thy Elohim with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might and these words which I command (show, teach) thee this day shall be in thine heart (become who you are).

Revival is not in signs and wonders but in Gods life lived in us.

But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint (Isaiah 40:31)

But Jesus did not commit himself unto them, because he knew all men, (John 2:24)

When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? (Acts 1:6)

And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation (Luke 17:20)

Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you. (Luke 17:21)

Thou shalt have no other gods before me. (Exodus 20:3)

For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ (Galatians 1: 10)

Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life (Galatians 6: 7-8)

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates. (Deuteronomy 6: 4-9)

 

The believers of Jesus day where looking for a messiah. Yet despite Him standing in front of them they, as a whole, did not accept Him. Why? Their perception of what Messiah would be and the things He would do where not in line with the actions and message of the rabbi from Galilee.

They expected a messiah who would overthrow the power of Rome and make them the head of all nations. Jesus instead gave a message of the reign of God in their heart. Instead of showing God’s power and wrath against the infidels this Jesus kept telling the people of God that if they repented God would accept them.

The modern church does no better. We pray for revival and for God to move in this present evil age. Yet we ourselves must let God alone reign in our heart.

We say we love God but we have forgotten the second commandment. As long as we accept psychology, sociology, and political correctness in our churches then we are guilty of showing respect to the power of man. We say God is our king then try to bend who He is to become acceptable to men’s approval.  We say we are separate from the world but we reap the same divorce rate, same depression rate, and same sins in our churches that are in the world.

We fear what men can do, but we claim we are not our own. If we are the body of Christ then let us consider did Christ bow to Pilot and the power of Rome, did He bow to the High priest who had corrupted his office for political and worldly gain, did He bow to the Pharisees and the traditions they upheld?  No; despite Him knowing they would torment and kill His body He bowed only to God alone.

If we desire revival we must come back to the simplest truth; that God is our maker. We must abandon completely Adam’s thought that we ourselves can make who we are. We must never again use our own labor, as Cain did, for an offering to God. Let it not be said among us that we have as Balaam made a crooked path to attempt to please God and men for our own gain. Do not fall into the madness of Kora who by swelling pride said that the spirit in him was sufficient without Gods chosen witness (of both Moses and the apostles for us).

Men are self-seeking without mercy, so let the church abandon all delusion of acceptance from them; and instead let us fall at the feet of our first love. If he strikes us it is only to remove the chaff of Adam from us. If he makes us pass through fire it is to make us pure silver reflecting the image of our Father.

 If we wish to save any in this present age from wickedness and the wrath to come then judgment must begin in the House of God whose house we are. We know that with our God there is mercy and compassion because of this let us no longer hide in our fig leaves. We are naked before our God, so if we are naked then let us not be ashamed. If we come before Him He will deal with our sin but also He will cover us with His promise.  

How the blood must be applied

Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.  Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice. Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free Spirit. (PSALM 51: 5-12)

If I were to ask you to think with me of a glass you would have a picture in your mind. This picture would vary from person to person and could well be nothing similar to my own thoughts. If my description was a champagne glass not only would our picture become more alike but your mind also begins to fill in why I am asking you to think about this glass; coffee may mean I want you to wake up and see a certain thing but champagne is an indication I want you to celebrate something with me. This is the power of imagery and symbols in our communication.

God uses these two powerful tools to help us to understand His redemption and life in us. The symbolisms of the scripture are seen by some as a way of hiding the truth but in reality they are meant to be a way to better explain to us the things of God. Yet to understand them we must study the way in which they are used by the scripture and allow the scripture themselves to define them.

I set out to discuss our need for being purged of the thoughts and ways generated in us by the world, the flesh, and the devil in order to experience the fullness of the life of God shared with us. The Lord it seems has taken me into a different perspective of discussing the symbolism of hyssop in scripture.

Hyssop in scripture is used to symbolize the work of the Holy Spirit in our salvation. If we look at this symbol we can better see the way in which we trust in God as our master and maker and how we become what God has told us we are.

And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt saying, This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you. Speak ye unto all the congregation of Israel, saying, In the tenth day of this month they shall take to them every man a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, a lamb for an house: And if the household be too little for the lamb, let him and his neighbour next unto his house take it according to the number of the souls; every man according to his eating shall make your count for the lamb. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year: ye shall take it out from the sheep, or from the goats: And ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month: and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening. And they shall take of the blood, and strike it on the two side posts and on the upper door post of the houses, wherein they shall eat it.  And they shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire, and unleavened bread; and with bitter herbs they shall eat it. Eat not of it raw, nor sodden at all with water, but roast with fire; his head with his legs, and with the purtenance thereof. And ye shall let nothing of it remain until the morning; and that which remaineth of it until the morning ye shall burn with fire.  And thus shall ye eat it; with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and ye shall eat it in haste: it is the Lord's passover. For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the Lord.  And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are: and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt. EXODUS 12: 1-13

And ye shall take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood that is in the basin and strike the lintel and the two side post with the blood that is in the basin and none of you shall go out until the morning EXODUS 12: 22

It is the life blood poured out that saves us from the destruction, it is faith in God’s word that makes us to trust in the blood, but for the blood to be effective it must be applied. It cannot be applied by a man’s hand, for it is not by might (works) or by power (will) of man, that God’s salvation comes but by His Spirit. The blood must be applied by hyssop (the Spirit).

It is the blood of Jesus that gives us life but it is the Spirit that quickens our mortal bodies. The blood applied to our life is the only effective power we have part of. To make a comparison to the natural the scripture tells us that the life is in the blood. We know thanks to modern science that this is true because the blood transports the oxygen which is vital to all our bodily functions. What cannot be overlooked is how the oxygen gets to the blood. This is facilitated by the breath.

Now the Hebrew word for breath and Spirit are the same. In this carnal world the blood cannot be sustained and made effective without the breath and the breath is of no use without the blood. The same is true of our life in God; without the Spirit the power of the blood is not applied in our life and of course without the blood the Spirit can only serve witness to our death.

Jesus said that when the Spirit came He would show us all things and also that He would not speak of Himself but only those things of Messiah. So it is with great humbleness that the Spirit, which is the life of God and Jesus, that raised both Jesus and those who believe into a life that is shared of the Father, joins the pillars and post of our body soul and spirit with the blood of the sacrificial lamb of God to the end that we are kept of God.

Though it is important to understand the symbols of unleavened bread, and the lamb and the blood, the doorpost of our habitation are not joined with these things without hyssop.

In my next post we will look at Leviticus and cleansing of a leaper.

 

Our words, deeds, and heart must be one:pillars part 19

1 John 3:18-24

 18 My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.

 19 And hereby we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before him.

 20 For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.

 21 Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God.

 22 And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight.

 23 And this is his commandment, That we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave us commandment.

 24 And he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, and he in him. And hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us.

Multiple libraries could be filled with all the words men have wrote and said about love but a real love is not in description but in how we live.

 Furthermore if the deeds that we say come from love are not in accord with the witness of scripture then it is not Gods love through us. However deed and truth goes far beyond simply acting in accord with what the scripture tells us to do. For example if we see a person in need and though we don’t wish to be bothered we know it would be the “Christian thing” to help so we force ourselves to help this is not deed and truth.

We are being conformed to the life of Jesus and He was the truth. Jesus did not live in obedience to the Father because He knew He should but instead because it was who He was. In the same way His life in us is making us into His living word, living truth and living love.

YHWH is the truth and when He spoke all things into existence they took their true form; this is directly opposed to the teachings of the Greek thinkers who said the thought was the perfect form but the manifestation was always corrupt. Adam in His original created form was the perfect man until iniquity was found in Him. It is because of man’s fall and separation from God that though he may learn the righteous way of being; the manifestation in his living (deeds) is a corrupt version.

Jesus has redeemed us back to a oneness with God. When we by faith are joined to Messiah then the old man who was separated by the generating power of his own flesh ability is crucified in the crucifixion of our master. We die in Him but the breath (Spirit) of God is shared with us and in Jesus resurrection we become a new creation whose generating power for life is the shared life of our God.

It is by this that Paul declares in Him we move and breathe and have our being. So we see that our love of God and our neighbor is generated by the living truth abiding in our heart. God is one He is not fractured as Adam became. So while Adam may say one thing and do another God only speaks and does what He is.

The carnal man may comfort himself with the idea that he has a perfect understanding despite his actions needing to be tweaked and brought as close to perfection as possible. If a child of God adopts this same thinking about their faith or living then they frustrate the grace of Gods life in them. We as children of God must be as our Father is one in the word of our mouth, deeds of our life, and truth in our being.

When we live in this manner we know that it is our Fathers life in us and we are assured that we are His children. The natural question that comes to the mind is what does it mean if I see the truth in my heart but my deeds do not match what I know? John says it in this way “For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.”

Remember in the first chapter John has said if we sin we have an advocate with the Father and that if we confess our sin He is booth faithful and just to forgive our sin. We must throw ourselves onto Jesus; for He is the author and finisher of our faith. If we strive to fix ourselves we become as Cain; offering a work of our own hands to please God and forgetting that He is our maker and redeemer. Paul said this I know in whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day.

We ask Him to both forgive us and show us those things which we must cast upon Him. We do this in full assurance and expectation that He is our maker, our Father, and that He is giving us His promise of His life and life more abundant.

When we are fully persuaded of His will and work in us all confidence in our flesh passes away and is replaced with an expectation of God to love through us and to live through us and to do through us. As we walk in this oneness with God we find His life becomes our life, His works become our works, and His love becomes our love.

Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it.

And a man's foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it. He that receiveth you receiveth me, and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me.