God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.
In Matthew 22 Jesus is bantering with the religious people of is day. One of these religious groups were the Sadducees, who did not believe in the resurrection.
They asked a question which we are all familiar with, the question about the seven brothers and the first one dies so the second brother marries the first brothers wife and then the second brother dies and the third marries the wife and so on until all the brothers have died and finally the woman dies. Who’s wife will she be in the resurrection?
Jesus answers them saying they have made 2 mistakes. They know not the scriptures (these learned men who studied the scriptures for a living) and they know not the Power of God.
Jesus answers them specifically and then generally, and the “multitudes were astonished at His teaching.” What was so astonishing? These are people who knew the Torah by the age of 5, the oral law by the age of 10. They had it memorized but they didn’t “know” it.
First, specifically. Don’t you know that in the resurrection we will be like the angels, immortal. When you live forever there is no need for procreation.
Then, and this is where it gets really interesting, Jesus quotes from Exodus 3:6 “‘I AM the God of your father – the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob’ Don’t you know the God is the God of the living and not of the dead?” When Exodus was written, these patriarchs were all dead, and yet Jesus is saying God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.
AM, present tense, God of these men, who evidently aren’t dead, or at least not what we think of as dead.
It Really Is Finished!
When you try to work for something that Jesus already worked for; you are negating the work of Jesus. Instead of resting in what He has done, you are trying to accomplish, (in unbelief) what Jesus has already done.
John 6:28
Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?
Vs 29
Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
To rely on food for your health or rules for your righteousness/holiness is carnal; works of the flesh and unbelief.
1 Corinthians 1:30
But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who is of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption:
Christ has been made unto us righteousness, sanctification, wisdom and redemption. When you believe and rest in His finished work, all these are yours. You are then in Christ. I am Holy, Righteous, I have all wisdom and I have been redeemed! I’m not trying to obtain these things. I already have them because of what Jesus did.
Eph 2:8-9
8 For it is by grace you have been saved, past tense(this isn’t something that is going to happen in the future, you are saved at the moment you believe in Jesus’ work) through faith —and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.
Eternal Life is the gift of God. What does God say about His Gifts?
Romans 11:29
For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.
Remember throughout the Word, God tells us salvation is a gift and you receive this irrevocable gift thru faith. You receive it immediately when you believe. Everything of God is received by faith. That is the currency, if you will, in which Gods kingdom works.
How do we receive this gift? By believing God. Then you rest, always, in the fact that it’s all been done for you. The work is done, now you rest; Just like God rested after His work was done. Under the old covenant He showed us a picture in the physical; Sabbath (shadow) of what we are able to have in the spirit. Every day, all the time, complete rest in what Christ has done. That IS the rest!! Not something in the natural, carnal. That physical rest was a picture of what the fullness in the spirit would be.
This is the Gospel, The Good News! And nothing, nothing nor no one shall ever take this from me! My savior did not die in vain on my behalf and His blood is better than the blood of bulls and rams. His blood is eternal.
His stripes are my health and I walk in the provision of that blessing and I enter into it by Faith. I don’t try to obtain health by what I do or eat. Why would I? When He Himself bore my sicknesses and diseases. Relying on something else? That is unbelief. When you rely on something other than Christ it is unbelief. Period.
What did Jesus say to Nicodemus? You must be born again! But Nicodemus too was carnal minded thinking only of flesh, body. How can I be born again? Climb into my mother’s womb?
John 3:5
Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and [of] the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
John 3:6
That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit
(Water refers to flesh, being born) (Spirit refers to your spirit, the new birth that happens at the point of Salvation to all who believe.. not later in the future) If you do not have a born again spirit you cannot enter into the Kingdom of God, let alone those who do not believe in the spirit at all how can you enter into the Kingdom of God?
When God said to Adam, the day you eat you shall surely die. Was God lying? Adam ate and he did not die? Or did he? Yes his spirit died, became fallen and separated from God that very day. God did not lie. You are a spirit, you live in a body (tent) and you have a soul (Mind, will and emotions).
Study what covenants are and study the role of the high priest. This was given so we would understand what Christ is to us. He is NOT judging us. He is our High Priest forever. He represents us to God forever!
John 1:29
The next day John (the Baptist) saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
1st John 2:2
He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.
John didn’t say that just to fill up pages in the bible. It’s true. Man had a sin problem and that separated man and God. (Pictured by the Vail in the temple) Jesus came to deal and put away sin (problem) for the world. Did he do it? Yes! He died in the worlds place for sin. Offered His blood and obtained forgiveness for all of sin (all sin). The Father accepted the offering of His Blood, and sin has been forgiven.
Your proof it was accepted is the fact that God raised Jesus from the dead. Like in the old testament when the High Priest would come out alive, God accepted the offering and Israel was “covered” for one more year. If the high priest didn’t come out of the Holy of Holies then the offering wasn’t accepted and Israel was in trouble. His resurrection was our proof that sin was forgiven. As far as the east is from the west, never to be remembered again.
1 Cor 15:17
And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.
John 3:16
For God so loved the WORLD that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God sent not His son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world thru Him might be saved.
How then can Jesus be judging our sin now? That would make God a liar if you believe this. Where does it say that He is judging? That doctrine doesn’t agree with the word. The offering was accepted and forgiveness given at time of offering.
Before the cross God spoke to prophets, priests and kings. God and man was separated (pictured by the Veil in the temple) but when Christ died offered His blood the veil was torn. No more separation! An end to sin! We can ALL draw close to God. No need for a prophet because sin has been dealt with! Each and all believers are priests and kings! We all have a relationship with Him directly. We are no longer servants, but sons!
Col 2:6
As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him:
How do you receive Him? By faith, how do we operate in the Kingdom? By faith. As you have received walk in the same fashion. Faith in Christ’s work. That is the rest.
Deut 5.
To whom and when was the Law given?
Why was the Law given?
Which covenant are you under? I’m under the covenant of peace. You have got to learn covenants or this covenant part in the bible will just go right over your head. Just like the Abrahamic covenant God put Abraham to sleep and Jesus walked in Abrahams place between the animal halves. That was Jesus saying I will do your part Abraham. So God does His part and Jesus fulfills the requirements for Abraham. What ever Abraham is supposed to do to to fulfill his part, Jesus will do it for him. Understanding this will help you understand the offering of Isaac on Mt Moriah.
The Ram was a picture (shadow) of Christ. That is why Jesus said when Abraham saw my day he was glad!
The covenant of the Law requires the Jews to perform before they can receive. God will bless them and keep them IF they… Keep the law. They have to do their part and then God will do His. Not so in Abraham’s covenant with God and not so in the New covenant written at the cross. Like Abraham, we receive all the blessings by believing, not by doing! The israelites could not do their part of the Law and God knew that and that is why God instituted the priesthood. (Study this) To cover their sins until The Messiah came.
Then He fulfilled the requirements of the Law and died in the worlds place. So now we all can be under the New Covenant written in His Blood. (before this, Gentiles were not in covenant with God) He said this is the New Covenant. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. So in this covenant God too fulfilled both roles of requirement. Jesus took your place just like He took Abrahams. You cannot be married to both. That is adultery.
New car in the driveway
Went and bought a ’95 Land Rover Discovery last weekend. Yeah yeah, I’ve heard the horror stories about the electrical demons and I still bought one. The price was right and I have the time and ability to work on it.
The 2-hour trip home was pretty much uneventful. One episode of the ABS mysteriously kicking-in at a 4-way stop and another of the engine temp creeping up while driving slow.
The day after arriving home I knew we had a problem with engine temp. The fan clutch was very week and every time we stopped the engine temp went up. A quick look at craigslist and a phone call to Nigel and we located a used clutch just a few miles up the road. Cooling problem solved!
Yesterday, being the good husband that I am, I took the Disco to fill it up with gas so Dee would enough gas for the work week. Gas tank full, key in ignition, engine running and …. couldn’t get the tranny out of ‘Park’. What? Tried and tried. Turned the motor off, then back on numerous times. Still no go. Then, after 15 minutes, it slipped into gear just as suddenly as it stopped working.
Land Rover, not just a vehicle, an adventure.
Our Sabbath Rest
I believe that we DO need the Sabbath! Not the sabbath of the Jews or SDA’s though. The Sabbath as they observe it is a shadow of things to come. What is a shadow? If you are standing on a sidewalk at the corner of a building and you see a shadow coming toward you from around the corner you have an idea if it’s a car or person or dog, etc. But you don’t really have a clue about the actual object until you can see it directly. A shadow is a 2-dimensional silhouette of the real object. It IS NOT the object!!! The 7th-day sabbath as well as the feast sabbath’s and many other things in the Old Testament are shadows pointing to Christ. Everything about God’s Word points to Christ.
After the Cross our eyes can be opened and we can now see the plan of salvation and The Christ in our 3-dimensional reality. We don’t need the shadow anymore because we have the real object, The Christ. We can now sabbath (rest) 24-hours a day, 7 days a week, in the assurance that He paid the price for MY SINS.
Keeping the 7th-day Sabbath is irrelevant, yes. But we need to understand that we CAN (must) rest in Him continuously. We need to rely on Him for our salvation, health and prosperity. Jesus Christ is our shalom and we need to understand that He paid the price for much more than just our salvation. His sacrifice and redemption of mankind assured the believer of good health and prosperity in addition to our salvation.
Once a believer understands these concepts it becomes painfully obvious how anti-Christ the whole “health-food” consciousness of the SDA’s really is. We are to rely on Christ for our health, not soybeans or “clean meats” or lack of spices. Jesus, the Good Shepard, takes care of His sheep. There is not one indication that the disciples were ever sick or lacked for money. Think about that………not once! Jesus took care of them, just as He will do for us once we allow Him to.
I would love to go on…but I’ll leave that topic for another post 🙂
Shalom
Surely He has borne our griefs…
Isaiah 53:4 “Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows;”
700 years before Christ was born the prophet Isaiah prophecied of Christ and His work for our salvation.
The English translators didn’t do this verse much justice though. “Griefs” litterally means sicknesses and “sorrows” means pains. Christs completed work on the cross not only provided for our eternal salvation but also for our physical healing and health.
This verse begins with “Surely”, so we can be confidant that He bore our sickness, disease and pain.
Shalom
I’m leaving Babylon!
On Friday October 3rd, my husband and I attended Word of Life Church in St. Joseph Missouri. Brian Zahnd is the Sr. Pastor and has been the only Sr. Pastor since the inception of the church 27 years ago. Eric Stark is the Worship Pastor. He is the most amazing and talented worship leader I have had the privilege to ever see. I always say that the “world” has Elton John and the Kingdom of God has Eric Stark and we got the better of the deal!
On Friday night the worship team did an incredible rendition of “All Along The Watchtower” by Bob Dylan. It was a dramatic way to teach the passage’s in Isaiah 21.
Below is the link to a audio of the service. It’ll take you to the archive of all of WOLC audios of their services. Go to the Oct 3rd link: “The door of hope in time of trouble” and listen. God used this sermon to once again teach me to repent (change my mind on how I look at things) and trust in Him. Babylon isn’t only a physical location in the Mideast, but a spiritual system that opposes God and his people. I have left Babylon…
http://www.wolc.com/sites/v2/index.php?sitearea=special&subarea=podcast
Dee
Who was Abraham?
Was he the first Israelite? The first Hebrew? Is he the Father of Many Nations? What does this all mean?
To begin with, Abraham was the father of 8 children. Ishmael, Isaac, Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak and Shuah. He was the father of children that ended up as Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions. Muslim through Ishmael and through Isaac the Christian and Jewish faiths.
Abraham is the patriarch of the Israelite, Ishmaelite and Edomite tribes.
So, to call Abraham an “Israelite” is not correct. This terms did not come about until Jacob his grandson was given a new name after his struggle with God at the brook. God said at that time “…Israel, for you have struggled with God and with men and have prevailed”. When did Abraham ever struggle with God? Never!
The term “Hebrew” is correctly referred to a descendant of Eber, but it seems it is also been used to label the Children of Israel before the conquest of the land of Canaan and the term “Israelite” is generally used after the conquest. The term “Jew” is used to describe someone of the Jewish faith whether or not they are directly descended from Jacob.
I believe that the Church is descended from Abraham because we obtain righteousness by faith as Abraham did and therefore enter into the promise. (Rom. 4:11). And right there in Rom. 4:14 the Holy Spirit writes that if those who are of the law are heirs then faith is made void. Who was of the law? The Israelites were given the Law but there are those today who want to be under the Law. They will not accept the free gift of Grace. They do not believe it God is that good and think they can add to the work of Christ by their works for salvation. So those who live by the law cannot be heirs to the covenant of Abraham. A clear distinction is made, and this is post-cross.
Show me anywhere in the bible where the law is given to anyone other than the Jews?
A book could be written on the differences between the Abrahamic Covenant and the Old Covenant with the Children of Israel. How about showing me a text where God considers them one and the same? Where they are inter-changed with each other? In II Cor. 3:11 it talks about what is passing away. It is the ministry of death, written and engraved on stones (verse 7) so that the Ministry of the Spirit could come which was much more glorious. What the Holy Spirit is saying here is that if we hang onto the law then we cannot move onto the more glorious ministry of the Spirit.
Speaking of the Spirit, Jesus said in John 16:7-11 that it was for our advantage that He leave so that the Helper could come, the Holy Spirit. Sometimes verses 8-11 in chapter 16 is misread. I had a discussion about this with our pastor this last summer and even he had a poor understanding of it. The Holy Spirit doesn’t convict the Believer of sin, it convicts the world of sin because they do not believe. Do you believe what Jesus did? Then you are NOT convicted of sin. We (the believers) are convicted of righteousness BECAUSE Jesus went to His Father and we see Him no more. And Judgment of Satan, the ruler of this world, is complete. It’s so plain and yet so often people think the Holy Spirit convicts the believer of sin. The Holy Spirit guides us into ALL truth, He will Glorify Jesus.
Shalom
An Honest Man
I heard Billye Brim say the other day that “you may not agree with everyone. But if you are an honest man, when someone says something you disagree with it’ll drive you to the Word. If you find out that you were wrong and change your thinking then you are the better for it. If you go to the Word and find out that you were right then you have been strengthened. But either way always go to the Word!!”
In Romans 4, Paul says that before the law sin was in the world, but where there is no law sin isn’t imputed against man. What does that mean? Man sinned but God didn’t charge it to his account? Yep! That’s exactly what that means.
Take Abraham for example. He twice lied and gave his wife to a king because he was scared the king was gonna kill him!! That doesn’t sound very sinless of him does it? Yet never do we see God rebuking him or punishing him. On the contrary, God protected him and then caused the kings to bless Abraham. That sure doesn’t fit in with “religion” does it. Why? Because there wasn’t any law (10 Commandments) or any law at that time. The covenant between God and Abraham was all on God to perform not Abraham. and all because Abraham literally believed what God said. It wasn’t based on how “good” Abraham was at all. No conditions put on Abraham. Go back and read it. Look to see if the covenant between God and Abraham was conditional. Also, only God passed between the two halves of the animal. That meant God was the only one obligated to “do” anything.
We know that Jesus fulfilled the law for us. And He redeemed us from the curse of the law. We have therefore died with Christ and then we were raised again and are now seated with him in heavenly places. Without bloodshed there is no forgiveness of sins. So if the blood offered by Christ 2000 years ago, “once and for all sins” didn’t cover or forgive any future sin of the believer then nothing will. Jesus is not going to shed more blood and blood is the only thing that gets forgiveness of sins. The blood He has offered covered past, present and future sins.
If God were to punish Jesus for your sins and then punish you for those same sins He would not be righteous. In the Psalms 32:1&2 David saw and prophesied about our day. He said two separate things:
1) Blessed is the man in whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered. (while he was under the law he committed sin. So by the blood of Christ they are forgiven and covered.)
2) Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin. (1st John 3:4 defines sin. Now that the law is fulfilled no more law, no sin inputed)
If Jesus blood didn’t cover all sins, His blood wasn’t really any better than the blood of bulls and rams.
Did you know that that sounds almost too good to be true! Do some research on the word “Gospel” in the Greek. That word is such an extraordinary word. It is such a special word it was rarely used. Before the bible time there isn’t other written account of that word being used. The Gospel means more than “good news” it means more like “To good to be true news”. Greek is very exact and expressive. They didn’t use words carelessly.
“Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John the Baptist in John 1:29).
I know this has gotten long but it is something God confirmed in my heart fairly recently as well, and it makes the whole bible “make sense”.
Here is a link to a short video of a very anointed man of God. God used him to share this very truth with my wife and I. Joseph Prince is his name.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10lue7bhcK0&feature=PlayList&p=99D82584E99EA695&index=7
Now, when you read I John 3: 4-9 it makes a whole lot more sense! Jesus is in the Father, The Father is in Him, He is in us, and we are in Him. In Him there is no sin! The Holy Spirit is talking to you right there in I John 4:9 Whoever! Are you born-again? Then you are in included in “whoever” and you cannot sin. Not because you are “perfect” but because sin is no longer imputed to you. You are no longer under the law so you are blameless. The law no longer applies to you once you have believed and are under the covenant of Grace, the New Covenant.
Lest Any Man Should Boast 