NEHEMIAH,
ISAIAH
(1126) Just
started Nehemiah, I always loved the restoration books of the Old Testament;
the prophets who were involved with the rebuilding of the walls and city of Jerusalem . Nehemiah hears
about the sad state of affairs back in Jerusalem ,
he gets permission from the king to go back home and build. He faces opposition
[of course!] and organizes the people to build their portion of the wall and
gate. You will notice that once he gets a system going that works, he sticks
with it! I recently read an article from David Brooks [writes for the Wall
Street Journal?] it was in my local paper. He talked about a recent study that
evaluated the top C.E.O.s of successful companies, the article was in keeping
with previous studies. It basically showed that the most effective [not
famous!] leaders were the old school guys who knew how to get the job done.
They were skilled in their field, they knew how to implement steady growth over
the long haul, and they were not ‘touchy, feely’ type leaders. They didn’t
spend time getting their people to like them, or tried to empathize with them.
They weren’t looking for the new fad thing to implement; they were steady, old
fashioned guys that did not fit the mold of ‘the new, big idea’. Nehemiah was
that type of leader. Once he organized the people and got them moving, he
simply stuck with the plan. The critics said ‘what in the world do you think
you’re doing!’ he just ignored them and moved ahead. I always get a kick out of
it when I run into some ‘preacher’ during my normal rounds with the homeless
brothers. My buddies will often introduce me as ‘John is a retired firefighter,
and also a minister’ I have asked them not to say ‘minister’ but they say it
anyway. I often look a little scraggly and the preachers will hear about ‘my
little outreach’ and sometimes I get the sense of like ‘bless his poor heart,
he’s trying’. They might say ‘and what do you do’ and it’s kind of hard to
explain it to be honest, but every now and then they realize I’m the guy
they’ve been hearing for years on the radio! Or they see the blog is all over
the place and then they kind of change their tune, like people treat you better
if you’re successful. I basically ignore the whole thing, it just hinders my
work to be honest. But Nehemiah had his critics, they laughed at him ‘oh, and
you think your gonna do what?’ One of the enemy’s strategies is to get you to
listen to the critics, now there are times when you need to hear reproof and
correction, but the critics are another thing. There the ones who can always
tell you what you are doing wrong, but never get anything done themselves!
These are the brothers that Paul called ‘busy bodies’ in the New Testament,
they weren’t working or providing for their families, and had all this free
time to critique everyone else. Let God give you the patterns and principles of
how he wants you to accomplish the task, once you implement it, the key to
success is sticking with it in the face of opposition. As the critics kept
laughing, the walls kept going up, eventually you won’t be able to see them
anymore!
(1127) let’s
see, I wanted to do Nehemiah, talk a little about the recent abortion debate,
and also discuss modern philosophy! Let’s see what we can do. In Nehemiah the
workers are scattered all along the wall, they are responsible for their
section. Nehemiah tells them that because they are so far apart, they need the
ability to be able to hear the warning from the main overseer of the work
[namely him!] so he has this trumpet guy next to him, if danger shows up he
will blow the trumpet and they will be forewarned, hey in a day without
electronic communication, this is a good idea! Recently [5-09] there have been
some debates over the abortion issue and some high profile cases as well. Just
2 days ago one of the most notorious abortion doctors in our country was shot
down in cold blood, his name was George Tiller. His abortion clinic was only
one out of three places in the U.S.
that performed late term abortions. This is the procedure where you insert a
forceps into the womb, pull apart the legs and arms of the baby. Then you
position the forceps over the head and squeeze till the brains come out [I know
this is graphic, if you want to learn more about it, go to the Priests for life
icon on my blog roll]. While we in no way shape or form condone the murder of
doctor Tiller, it should be noted that he took part in the most wicked act that
can ever take place, the murder of unborn children. Now in this debate some
Christians [Catholics] have brought up the recent speech by president Obama at
Notre Dame, some boycotted the speech. The problem was that Notre Dame actually
honored the president with an honorary law degree. It is one thing to allow
both voices to be heard, quite another to honor the most anti life president in
the history of the untied states! He has made more pro death decisions than any
other president in history. The U.S. Catholic Bishops had passed a resolution a
few years back that stated no Catholic institution should give honorary degrees
to those who are in violation of the churches teaching on major issues,
obviously Notre Dame violated this rule. Now, some Catholic media persons were
defending Obama, they even criticized their own church for hypocrisy! They were
saying that honoring Obama was no different than honoring any other leader who
might be pro capital punishment. These Catholic media persons were equating the
churches stand on abortion with her stand on capital punishment; these two are
not in the same league! The Catholic church teaches a sort of hierarchy of
offenses [as a boy I still remember being taught mortal and venial sins] the
church sees abortion as an intrinsically evil act, the outright murder of
innocent defenseless persons. The church also teaches against the death penalty,
but the execution of a criminal is not to be equated with the murder of unborn
innocent children [some 4 thousand per day!] so these Catholic believers were
wrong on the stance of their own church. Today’s ‘post-modern’ philosophy will
argue that truth and morals are relative [subjective] they see truth thru the
lens of ‘that might be wrong for you, but not for me’ or ‘I personally am
against abortion, but I don’t want to push my views on others’. In the world of
postmodern thinking, this is considered acceptable. This view of right and
wrong is based on the view that there really is no objective truth, that is
truth does not correspond to any outside reality. Truth, in their view, is
simply the way various cultures perceive and understand things at different
times in human history, but it’s possible for other societies to interpret the
data coming into their senses and arrive at another view of truth, and who am I
to say that ‘my truth is real and yours is false’. Obviously in the field of
theology this would be [and is!] disastrous. Paul himself would say ‘if Christ
be not risen [a real fact!] then we are of all men the most miserable’. The
biblical worldview of truth is objective; truth is something that corresponds
to something else that is real. This does not always mean material, but real
never the less. For instance mathematical equations are real truth, or feelings
of love are real, but not material. This would be the foundation for saying
‘the murder of babies is wrong, always has been, always will be’ whether my
view is contrary to your view is meaningless, the act itself is wrong! Your
view of that oak tree might be different than mine, but if you run into it with
your car, the only view that counts is what reality is. It really was a tree
that was there, it was not simply my perception of ‘a tree’ my perception
corresponded with reality and the truth was that the tree really was a tree,
whether you like it or not! The modern philosophers would say ‘the only real
question left for philosophy to answer is the viability of suicide’ [either
Sartre or Camou said this] When philosophy severs itself from true moral reason
and foundational ethics, it has no leg to stand on. When society can accept
that murder might be wrong for you, but not for me, then the basic fabric of
civilization is no more. Well I think I covered all three of the things I set
out to do at the start, hope it helped.
(1128)
Let me share a few testimonies; I type all this stuff
from my laptop, I never work from a desk top. I have 2 laptops that I use, one
as a backup if the other goes down [I realized a while back that it disturbs
things too much to not type until it gets fixed!] One laptop misses letters as
you type, I used to think it was my novice typing skills [I am bad! My daughter
caught me doing the one finger thing while looking at the keys and couldn’t
believe it] that was the problem, but I actually started looking at the screen
while typing and realized certain letters don’t show up, you have to backspace
and do it again. The other laptop has a mouse problem, it won’t always respond,
this is frustrating for someone who cuts and pastes all over this blog! So when
one computer gets me mad, I switch to the other one. Yesterday as I was
battling with the mouse problem, out of frustration I said ‘Lord, give me a
break! I can’t deal with this’ and it immediately started working, for the
first time ever since I got it [it was a used computer when I bought it]. I
also prayed about it these past few days while typing, sort of like seriously believing
the Lord could fix it, you know you forget stuff like this at times. Then the
other day I told you guys how I had an old buddy from prison write me, I had a
package of teaching stuff I was going to send him. In the old days I would
write the brothers in prison while at the fire house, you have time in to sit
around and do this stuff. But it’s really been a while since I regularly wrote
any prison buddies [I have written many hundreds of letters in the past, no
exaggeration] but I had the letter and stuff in the truck and kept putting it
off. Finally the day I sent it was the same day my daughter got hired for a job
with the state. My two oldest daughters attend college and have had good jobs.
My oldest [24] is now a teacher at the high school she graduated from. My
second oldest was a veterinarian assistant, but was looking for something else.
She applied for some counselor thing with the state, a job that you usually
don’t get unless you have connections. Sure enough the day I sent the packet,
she got it! The bible says if you help the poor, reach out to the hurting,
spend your time and resources freely for others, that God will reward you. I
felt like the Lord returned the favor. As I just read Nehemiah chapter 5,
Nehemiah rebukes the leaders for charging interest from the people. The Jews
were mortgaging their lands and homes and going into debt trying to accomplish
Gods work. The leaders were profiting from the situation. Nehemiah rebuked
them, he even sounds like Paul when he says ‘all the time I was with you as
governor [type of an apostle] I never took a salary, I provided for myself and
my staff’ Paul says the exact same thing to the elders in Acts chapter 20. I
think we as leaders need to re think some things. I was thinking the other day
how that I have no Christian relationships with anybody in which I ever ask, or
receive any financial reward. No offering thing, never speak in ‘a church’ and
take an offering. I simply have the freedom to by pass the whole mess. One time
the homeless brothers told me ‘brother, if you need your yard cut, or any work
done at your house, let us know’ I could tell that they talked about it amongst
themselves, sort of like ‘hey, the brother spends a lot on us, lets help him’.
I turned down the offer anyway, they are used to local contractors hiring them
at slave wages, I wanted them to know I wasn’t trying to get something from
them. Although I have kidded about it at times, one time one of them finally
got accepted for social security, they were gonna get a big check. I told them
‘you know I sense the Lord telling me that I am supposed to start hanging out
with you a little more’! In the long run God will reward you if you really do
stuff for free. Leaders, do you have regular friendships with people whom you
never bring up money or offerings with? Are the people who know you most always
being challenged in a financial way? Always needing to give more? Nehemiah
rebuked the nobles because the ‘laity’ were being consumed with having to pay
their own bills, plus support the nobles financially, and pay for the
structures! Nehemiah said he wouldn’t charge the people, that God would reward
him instead, I think he did.
(1128)
yesterday I got with a few homeless buddies, found out that Eddy got arrested
and sent back to San Antonio, some sort of serial killer charge, KIDDING! A
child support thing, it is funny, the guys have picked up my morbid sense of
humor. One time I had Tim with me, a good friend who has been homeless for
years. We picked up my daughter from school, they know my friends and all,
sometimes as they were growing up they would drive by them with their high
school friends and all, see them at the corners. They would be like ‘oh, those
are my dad’s friends’. So when I had Tim in the truck as we were picking up my daughter,
I tell her ‘this is my friend Tim, he has spent many years in prison [she looks
at me like ‘are you kidding me dad, picking me up from school with these bums
in the truck!’] Tim tells her ‘yes, I had some serial killer charges that I was
dealing with at the time’ he was kidding too! But anyway Eddy got sent to San Antonio , and the cops
have been harassing some of the guys. I also wanted to talk a little bit more
on Nehemiah chapter 5, Nehemiah really gets on the nobles/elders, he tells them
that they were putting too much of a burden on Gods people, some of them were
going into debt to simply pay the required taxes to the leaders. Nehemiah
rebukes them strongly! He says ‘all the time I was laboring among you as a
governor, I turned down the normal pay governors get. I also paid out of my own
pocket for the expenses of my team and staff, plus I did not purchase any real
estate of my own, but totally dedicated myself to the cause’. The nobles were
engaging in the building up of their own financial fortunes, understand this
wasn’t forbidden in and of itself, but at the same time the average people were
being told to do and give more, to the point where they were actually going in
debt as the leaders were increasing in wealth, Nehemiah felt this was wrong.
Like the apostle Paul, he would lay down the right to build wealth [purchasing
his own land] while working and leading Gods flock. He simply felt it to be a
wrong example for him to be gaining in wealth while the people were going into
debt; he laid down his own right to prosper for the sake of the people. One of
the things Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for was they were putting heavy burdens
on the people, but they themselves were not willing to bear the same load.
Often times in the world of ‘full time ministry’ we see good men get into
scenarios where they unwittingly fall into this mindset, they fall into
patterns of becoming wealthy, receiving large salaries at the expense of many
low wage supporters, they often see this as a legitimate expression of ‘church/ministry’
while the scripture warns against leaders profiting from the people, while the
people themselves are under a burden. I like Nehemiah’s example, he willingly
gave up the right to grow his own portfolio while the average church goer was
struggling, although he had a right to the governors salary, he saw it to be
more noble to donate his time and skills at his own expense, freely he had
received, freely he gave back.
(1129)
I am somewhat hesitant about sharing this, but will do
it anyway. This morning I had a dream, I was back at the fire house and we had
a major wreck. Somehow I found myself preserving the severed hands of a victim.
Either his hands were purposefully amputated to save the limb, or maybe just
severed. My job was to preserve the hands [to be honest, I think I also might
have been used to remove them?] I wasn’t sure if this had any meaning at all.
Then I read Nehemiah chapter 6 and he says ‘oh God, strengthen my hands for the
work’. I also felt like the words of Jesus ‘if your hand offends you, cut it
off’ applied. While we know the Lord doesn’t mean this literally, it does speak
of removing the things that are in the way, getting rid of the trash, so to
speak. One of the verses in Nehemiah says ‘the workers are tired and there is
much rubbish’ speaking of the hindrances to the work. In this chapter the
critics are trying to get a message to Nehemiah, they keep sending signals, but
he won’t bite. They want him to come to them and justify his work. He says no
way ‘I am doing a great work, I don’t have time to set it aside and go justify
it to my critics!’ The critics went out on a limb already, they publicly
prophesied of failure, now they have a personal reason to make their prediction
come true! In this chapter we also read of a bunch of ‘prophets’ and a
prophetess who tried to hinder Gods work. Let me make a note here, in Gods work
in general you will always have people who feel that they are personally called
to be ‘your prophet’ that is they become consumed with how you personally respond
to their views. Some of these people mean well, others do not. In Nehemiah’s
case the men who publicly reproved him were trying hard to stop him. They
finally send an open letter accusing him of wanting to build the wall so he
could become the new king! The charge was ‘he’s in this for himself, self gain’
now be careful here, Nehemiah thwarts this charge by actually not ‘being in
charge for good’! there are many contemporary challenges to present church
structures that do say ‘the modern view of church leadership is geared towards
the promotion of the talented leader’ in many cases this reproof is accurate.
In order for this charge ‘not to be accurate’ you must ultimately do the John
the Baptist thing and decrease! John said ‘he must increase and I must decrease’
so here we see that Nehemiah had no problem using his skill and position to
accomplish Gods work, but he will eventually walk away and leave the city in
the hands of the people, he is not building the wall and city so he could have
some permanent type of leadership position, he was not trying to ‘become the
king’. Nehemiah finishes the wall in 52 days, quite a feat. He faces
accusations, false prophets and much criticism, if you read the one liners from
Nehemiah, you get the sense that he was so occupied with the work that he
didn’t take a lot of ‘down time’ to think things out. He just shoots up a quick
prayer ‘strengthen my hands’ or ‘look upon the critics and help us’ he simply
rolls along and finishes the work as God ordained. He listens to good advice,
but manages to discern between the good and bad. He refuses self preservation,
one of the schemers tries to get him to hide in the temple [use Gods work for
self preservation] and he refuses to do it! It would have taken away from his
radical reputation as someone who was not seeking self gain. He asked God to
strengthen his hands, to help him have the sufficient skills to complete the
task. He, like the apostle Paul, will eventually walk away from the work, he
will not create a ‘church/ministry’ that will become a lifetime financial
source of income or personal prestige, he will simply build Gods work and then
move on, how bout you? [note- this does not mean all Pastors have to eventually
leave town! You did have elders who stayed in the communities of the new
testament, but as an apostle, Paul functioned in an itinerant way. He was not
looking to the churches as a permanent source of income or position]
(1130)
Nehemiah gets the walls up, the doorways [gates] are in
place, all that’s left is to put the doors on the hinges! The bible says ‘the
wall was built, the spaces were large [broad in space] but the houses and
people were not established yet’. As a man of wisdom Nehemiah knew that he had
to get the walls up before he could build the town. Often times in ministry
leaders read these verses and apply them to actual building plans for, well
buildings! The better way to view these is thru the paradigm of Gods people
being a glorious city, the ‘city that comes down from God out of heaven’ and we
as leaders are given skills to help get Gods city established. One of ‘the
walls’ that needs to be repaired is the basic lack of belief in the authority
of scripture. Many believers struggle with the concepts they learn at college,
the things the public schools teach ‘as fact’ that seem to contradict what they
were taught as kids. Okay, let’s hit evolution again. I was reading an article
from a scientist [I don’t believe he was a Christian?] who simply said that
enough time and research has passed in the effort to prove whether or not life
can simply spontaneously appear from dead matter. In order for the most popular
form of atheistic evolution to have happened, you need spontaneous generation.
Now, science has two major problems when it comes to trying to prove that atheistic
evolution can actually happen; the appearance of matter from nothing, and the
appearance of life from dead matter. Both of these things have been shown thru
science that they never happen, not once! The scientist mentioned above simply
was saying there comes a time where enough evidence comes in and you have to
admit that the possibility of your theory is simply unworkable. Evolution
[macro-Darwinian] has seen its day come and go. It is interesting that the
foundational belief for many evolutionists, the science of ‘abiogenesis’ [the
belief that living organisms can spontaneously come about from decaying matter]
was actually disproved by Louis Pasteur in 1861, just a couple of years after Darwin published Origin
of Species. Pasteur showed that the common belief that life sprang forth from
dead stuff was false! This has nothing to do with religion or faith; this is
pure scientific fact that simply states that the spontaneous generation of life
springing up from some type of primordial soup can not happen! Now, is it still
possible that matter came into existence from nothing? Or that life, living
cells came forth from dead matter? Can ‘chance’ make the impossible happen?
Chance is only a word that describes the odds of a certain thing happening, chance
in itself can not make anything happen! The point is we as a society have
swallowed the prevailing secular view that Darwinian evolution is a scientific
fact, and the biblical worldview needs to be adjusted. This wall of secular
thinking needs to come down, while the ‘wall’ of true biblical and scientific
reason go back up. True science is in no way an obstacle to biblical faith, the
problem is false science is too often peddled as true!
(1131)
Nehemiah 8- This is really a key chapter. After the
walls are built the process of reviving the community can move ahead. Nehemiah
already gave the ‘charge’ of the city to two men who he could trust [last
chapter] sort of like a Timothy, Titus deal with Paul. Now he lets Ezra do the
pulpit preaching! Ezra begins reading straight from the law and gives the
understanding, read this chapter and see how many times it says ‘they gave the
understanding, the people were very attentive’ it reminds you of the
description of the people who heard Jesus! I want to emphasize that Ezra and
the teachers [Levites] were simply giving the people Gods word in context!
There is a trend going on right now where some of the ‘flashy, young’ pastors
are returning to the historic gospel and preaching the word IN CONTEXT! These
past few years many of the mega churches focused on a ‘be all you can be’ type
message, but there is a new focus going back to the ‘old word’ and simply
teaching it in context. You don’t need Paul’s ‘new perspective’ on
justification to make it interesting, while some of these viewpoints have stuff
to add to our learning [I like N.T. Wright personally] yet the classic Pauline
doctrine of justification by faith is more than enough to satisfy the hungry
heart! Ezra gave the ‘sense’ and meaning of the law, and the people soaked it
in. They are all gathered together at the ‘water gate’ [too much typology to do
it all] and the people as ‘one man’ receive the word. Let me quickly quote a
bunch of scattered verses ‘the people will come up like a river who overflows
her banks and pour out into Judah’ ‘the people will be like fountains dispersed
abroad’ ‘out of our bellies shall flow rivers of living water’ ‘pour out your
Spirit on our seed’ ‘let your doctrine drop down like rain, your speech distill
like dew’. God pours and flows his Spirit thru his people to the nations. The
fact that Ezra is pouring Gods word into the people, before the temple
[building] is even rebuilt is important. In this picture Gods people are the
temple! A few points; Nehemiah willingly functioned as the governor [a type of
an apostle] when it came time to hand over the leadership to others, he did it!
Often times in modern church scenarios we don’t practice this part well, we
feel like ‘geez, I spent my time building this thing, I deserve to be the main
person’! In the New Testament churches there were no ‘main persons’, that is
the communities that Paul was building were not ‘local churches’ that were
providing him with long term income. These communities were the people of God
who had the ability to function on their own after Paul left. The local leaders
[elders/pastors] were simply men who had a stable grasp of doctrine that the
local believers knew they could look to for support. Elders were more like
facilitators of the corporate/communal experience, they were not professional
speakers that the people listened to week after week! So this distinction is
important to see. To all you ‘church planters’ out there [we have a lot of
contacts from Kenya, some from Pakistan] understand that the apostles/governors
played an important role in setting doctrine, letting the elders and people
know what was true and what was false, but the apostle/church planter doesn’t
have to be ‘the weekly’ speaker to any specific group of people. It’s okay to
have a routine forum in which you can communicate on a regular basis to the
communities that your are planting [I use this blog and radio] but don’t think
you personally have to ‘be there’ every week! Nehemiah had the self security to
hand the daily functions over to trusted men and allow them to ‘get the glory’.
I find it interesting that after many years of church planting the apostle Paul
wound up living in a rented room in Rome
and preaching to those who would listen. Was poor Paul ‘devaluing himself’ by
not setting a high salary! [silly things that preachers fall into by using the
standards of modern business as opposed to the New Testament] Paul purposefully
told us time and again why he did not set up for himself a steady ‘cash flow’
from the communities he was establishing [read Acts 20]. Leaders today need to
re evaluate what their doing and why their doing it. Leaders need the self
confidence to be able to ‘walk away’ from the communities they are building and
to allow the saints themselves to learn how to become dependant/interdependent. Governors
[apostles] need to have the self assurance to let the Ezra’s [scribes/teachers]
come in and ‘get the glory’ leaders need a basic overhaul in why they do the
things they do.
(1132)
Nehemiah 9- as the people repent, they stand, fast,
confess their sins and read from God’s law for a quarter of the day! There is a
real renewal that takes place thru the reading of the word. In the last chapter
we saw the emphasis on the teaching of Gods word, the bible says the Levites
not only taught/read, but also gave the sense, the meaning of it. Jesus rebuked
the religious leaders of his day, not because they weren’t ‘reading/quoting’
bible verses, they were doing it all the time! But because they weren’t really
grasping the principles behind the word. In this chapter the people were not
only hearing, but also understanding. Now they also do an historical
remembrance of Gods great past works. They recount his promise to Abraham, the
story of Egypt
and Gods great deliverance. The giving of the law to Moses and the rebellion of
their fathers during the time of the judges. It’s a great retelling of their
history, sort of like Stephen in Acts 7. They also praise and worship God as
the creator of all things. I have been reading a good book on the current
debate between ‘young earth’ and ‘old earth’ creationists. Though I personally
lean towards the old earth idea, yet the book brings out very good arguments
for a young earth. They show the historical development of the geologic table
[the levels of earth and the dating of these levels] and the book also brings
out the fact that though many of the church fathers spiritualized the days of
creation, this did not mean they were old earth creationists! Augustine
believed in ‘instantaneous creation’ in a moment. So his idea was really young
earth, even though he did not take the creation days as literal. One of the
points brought out is the basic belief in God as creator, man seems to have a
difficult time simply believing in the fact that God made all things out of
nothing [Ex-Nihilo] whether you are an old earth or young earth advocate, the
fact is God made it all by his word! The people in Nehemiah’s day praised him
for his great works as seen in creation. It’s important to see the role that
the reading of the law played in this national revival. We see this happen a
few times in Israel ’s
history. Times where they rediscover the law after many years and repent as
they return to Gods precepts. Recently I have been reading/studying from around
11:00 am to 3-4 pm. Not every day, but a few days a week. I found it
interesting that the people were giving one fourth of their day to reading the
law; God saw it as vital for the restoration of his city and people. I want to
encourage all my Pastor friends, as you build Gods people, don’t underestimate
the importance of good bible teaching. Don’t just give people verses to
memorize/hear [what the Pharisees were good at] but give them the understanding
too. God used his law [word] to revive the people after the walls were built.
(1133)
Nehemiah 10- Because of the reading of the law, the
people reform. They were ignorant of many of Gods commands, after they had
their minds renewed to the Word, they made adjustments. The scripture says they
separated themselves and walked according to God’s wisdom. Let’s talk a little.
What does it mean to be ‘separated’ from the world? I have mentioned in the
past that right after becoming a believer I attended a Fundamental Baptist
Church for a few years.
The church and the Pastor/people were and are great people. After leaving the
church [and while attending as well] I came to see that certain groups practice
a form of ‘separation’ that can be legalistic. This view sees current dress
standards, watching movies [or TV] and other cultural trends as being worldly.
Now, there is no doubt that movies and the media bombard the Christian with
images and ideas that are contrary to Gods Word! But my view is these things
[forms of media themselves, or changing dress codes] are not the heart of the
matter. But there is a ‘worldly’ mentality that people can embrace. The current
debate on abortion has the pro abortion groups lobbying for changes to the law
on who has to provide abortions. President Obama is changing the standards that
have been in place for years. There is currently a loophole for Christian
doctors to abstain from this procedure because of conscience sake. Obama is
trying to change that. They want to make it where if there are no other
providers around, that the Christian doctor must ‘kill your kid’. Think of this
for a moment; some people are so influenced by the culture of death that they
would see it as a great victory to make a Christian doctor dismember their
baby! The world’s mindset can be deadly. Now as the people in Nehemiah’s day
repent, they restore the practice of the Sabbath year forgiving of debts. Israel had both
a 7 year ‘bankruptcy’ type thing, where after 7 years the books are cleared.
They also had a 50 year Jubilee, at the end of 50 years the title deeds to
properties went back to the original owner. Once again, lets examine our
mindsets; what would you say if Obama tried something like this? Would you rant
and rave about socialism? Would Rush and Hannity fall over dead? Yet Gods ways
are not ours, he is neither a Republican, Democrat, Socialist or any thing
else. His kingdom is a Divine monarchy for heavens sake! He is the King and
what he says goes, that’s it. By the way, this principle of letting things go
back in the 50th year engrained in the community that they really
didn’t own stuff. They were just stewards of Gods stuff. The biblical picture
of land and homes and farms was that people simply were taking care of these
things, God was the true land owner. That’s why Jesus and his men ‘picked the
corn [grain]’ and ate it. God had already instilled this command in the law.
Though the farms and fields were ‘owned’ by the land owner, yet ultimately
everything belonged to God. How do we live our lives? Have we become affected
by the culture to such a degree that the U.S. constitution takes precedence
over Gods Word? Do you get upset [or enraged!] when some politician questions
your right to own a gun? Jesus said someday the guns will be beaten into
farming tools! I don't want to debate the whole gun thing, I just wanted to
give you a little test to see whose standard you are being effected by, we all
need to re-tool our thinking to a biblical worldview, it is often mistaken with
human world views.
(1134)
Nehemiah 11- After the walls are up, the city now needs
some residents! At one time Jerusalem
was a glorious city, when David captured it, it was considered a tuff city to
take. He built it into a strong capitol city. But after many years of captivity
and difficulty, it lost its luster. Sort of like when Katrina hit Louisiana, at
first there was lots of talk about rebuilding all the devastated areas, but the
‘rich folk’ [politicians and others who stood up for the rebuilding of the
minority areas] underestimated the ‘detachment’ that poor folk have to
temporary things. Many of the evacuees relocated [many to Corpus] and simply
started over. So Jerusalem
needs some volunteers! The bible says the leaders dwelt there [influential
kingdom men] and they cast lots for 1 out of 10 to move back. God also didn’t
want everyone at the home base; this would have limited Israel ’s
influence as a people. Let me be honest, pioneering is difficult; times of
relocating to new places, starting over again. Thru out my life I have gone
thru these various stages and it’s not easy. Abraham’s life and destiny
depended on his willingness to uproot and ‘search for a city that had
foundations’ [a symbol of the church, the ‘city that comes down from God out of
heaven’]. The bible speaks of his willingness to go to a place that he didn’t
even know yet! God would give him the plans as he moved ahead. Let me quote a
few verses off the top of my head ‘get out of the city and dwell in the fields,
even Babylon, and there I will be with you and deliver you from the hand of the
enemy’ ‘remember the word which Moses the servant of the Lord commanded you,
saying your wives and your little ones and your cattle shall remain in the land
the Lord gave you on this side of Jordan, but you shall go before your brethren
armed, all the mighty men of valor, and help them to obtain their inheritance’
[saying this to the two tribes who settled outside of the promised land]. And
the last one ‘David dwelt in the fort and called it the city of David , he built round about from the surrounding cities
and inward, and the Lord was with David and prospered him for the sake of his
people Israel ’.
God wants his people to be willing to dwell in the places that he has ordained,
some made the sacrifice to move back to Jerusalem
and rebuild. Others made the sacrifice to go out and pioneer new cities and
nations. The key is being able and willing to make the steps of faith at the
right time, don’t let anybody kid you, it’s not easy! But it’s always worth it
in the end.
(1135)
Nehemiah 12- Nehemiah restores Davidic worship, he sets
praisers on the city wall. They provide financially for full time worshippers
of God to continually worship the Lord. They give much thanks and praise! When
I just read this chapter a few hours ago, I did my normal prayer/praise time
before writing; I made a conscious effort to thank and praise God. This chapter
also speaks of the key leaders/books that are still to come in the Old
Testament [Ezra, Jeremiah, etc.] Some men are mentioned as ‘chief among the
priests/leaders’. God’s city [the church, the New Jerusalem] has various gifted
ones. Some are leaders of other leaders [Apostles/Pastors type thing] others
are priests [Pastors- note, we are all priests as Christians] Some gifts are
meant to play a foundational role in the community, there are good gifted
teachers that often share good truth, but there are times of upheaval and
reformation/revolution that call for more than simply being faithful to a
ministry. These times require Prophetic voices who often run rough shod over
the routine experience of church and ministry. These men are no better than any
one else, they just play a different role in the city/community of God. We also
see the Fish gate, Sheep gate. We have already discussed the Water gate. These
gates are obviously prophetic with meaning. Jesus said we are ‘fishers of men’
we are also called sheep, this picture of the city of God surrounded by
worshipers on the wall; with gates that let things out and in [Jesus said he
was the door, by him the sheep go out and in- access] these pictures are all
prophetic types of Gods spiritual community, they pre figure us, the people of
God.
(1136)
Nehemiah 13- Nehemiah takes control once again and
settles some scores. First, the main instigator who butted heads with him the
whole time, Tobiah, is exposed. All along he had an ulterior motive; he had a
personal chamber [room] for personal wealth that was part of his connection
with ‘the ministry’ [like Judas]. He had connections to the regional priests
and the money that was supposed to be used for Gods work was being used instead
for personal cash flow! Nehemiah rebukes this strongly and also reinstitutes
the real purpose for the tithes and offerings. Now, to be fair here, he does
rebuke the people for not rightfully distributing the tithes to the Levites;
they were supposed to provide for the leaders who were giving their time and
efforts for the work. A few things; this also included the singers. The money
was to be used as support for God's city/work. I do teach the New Testament
doctrine of ‘the laborer being worthy of the hire’ and I believe it can apply
here. But we also must understand that the personal development of wealth was
just rebuked! And these Levites [leaders] were not allowed to own anything
themselves, the support from the tithe could not be used for their own personal
investments. And last but not least, New Testament elders/pastors are not
Levitical priests! He also rebukes the merchandisers, it reminds you of the
scene where Jesus turned over the money tables in the temple. These business
guys were doing business on the Sabbath, Nehemiah rebuked them and ran them
out, they hung out at the gates for a few days and Nehemiah says ‘if you keep
doing it, I will come and lay hands on you’ he was not talking ordination here!
All in all Nehemiah was a radical reformer, he challenged the leadership and the
people. He gave 12 years of his life free of charge, at his own expense. He
restored the walls and dignity of the people, he often prayed ‘look upon me
God, reward me for my sacrifice’ he really seemed to have a grasp on God being
his audience, that he was not deriving some sort of self respect from the
people. He wasn’t trying to impress the crowd or his peers, he had a job to do
and he did it! When I first started this book a few days ago I had no plans on
doing a study. So this is a ‘short study’ [no in depth chapter by chapter
teaching]. In the future I will try and hit on short and in-depth stuff, let
the Lord lead you guys in what you read from this site. Don’t get me wrong, I
believe it’s all good, but many of you are at different stages of the journey.
Try and be open to the Lords leading as you venture thru this very long blog,
my goal is to deposit ‘meat in due season’ to be open to what the Spirit is
saying and sharing it at the right time. God bless you guys, not sure what will
do next, John.
ISAIAH insights-
(1413) O THOU AFFLICTED AND NOT COMFORTED, I WILL LAY THY
STONES WITH FAIR COLORS, AND THY FOUNDATIONS WITH SAPPHIRES- Isaiah 54. A few weeks ago I read a story in the paper
about the problems Europe is having with their new common currency, called the
Euro. A few years ago Europe had a bunch of countries join together and share a
common money system, the purpose was to give them more influence in the global
market place. But Greece is going thru their own economic catastrophe and it’s
affecting the other countries in the group. So they are debating whether or not
to bail out Greece, their own TARP thing. Some of the countries are mad and are
wanting out of the whole deal; Germany has criticized Greece by saying ‘well if
you guys need cash, why don’t you sell one of your islands’ not a very
brotherly thing to say. Greece responds ‘well if you gave us back the money the
Nazis stole from us during the war, maybe we wouldn’t be in such a bind’. Like
Jesus said ‘nation rising up against nation’ to be honest it’s quite funny.
Okay, let’s talk the concept of reparations. I know some of you are saying
‘that’s it, this guy has just gone too far for me! I’m gonna shut this blog and
go watch Beck’. Just a warning to all my readers; you will read sections on
this site where you will think I’m a stark raving conservative, other posts
might sound like I’m a socialist, just to be clear- I consider myself an
independent and believe that Christians should not be bound to any one party or
group, except the kingdom of God. Now, what does the bible say about
reparations? [The idea that the sins of White America against the Blacks should
be atoned for in a monetary way] Most Americans cringe at the thought, though
the idea itself is not totally foreign to scripture. The bible teaches us that
when people [or people groups] wrong and sin against other groups, that the
groups who committed the sin should try and make things right thru a process
called restitution, which includes paying back what was stolen. Now I am not
saying that the current ideas on reparations fall into this category, but the
concept is there. Some people feel the years of the slave trade that produced a
financial harvest for the nation overall, that the generations of Black kids
that never had the opportunity to have grown up in families with wealth, they missed out on building wealthy dynasties
for their kids, that we as a govt. should try and make up for this sin, not by
punishing whites today for the sins of their forefathers, but by seeing this
reality and making things right generationally- so to speak. I do not fully
hold to the idea myself, but wanted to give you an honest view from scripture.
I believe that we as a people [we being all Americans] should strive for
equality and a color blind society as much as possible, we should advocate for
all our brothers and sisters regardless of race or creed. We should avoid
seeing our positions of influence thru a lens that says ‘I am White, Hispanic,
Black, etc. and my job is to advance my ethnic group at the expense of other
ethnic groups’. This mindset, which I see all the time, is frankly racist at
its core. Now I am not saying that an ethnic person can never try and improve
the plight of his own ethnic group, he just needs to make sure that he is not
doing it at the expense of the other groups he represents. Years ago while
working at the fire dept we had a new group of rookies get hired, one of them
was a Black brother. When a promotional test was coming up I had a Mexican
friend tell me ‘well, why even take the test, so and so will get pushed to the
top no matter what we score’. One day while on shift I went upstairs to the
dorm area and noticed my Black friend mopping the floors, it was ‘floor day’
and it just so happened that he was the only one mopping the floor [often times
the other guys might be on a run, or doing another chore]. Though I was in a
supervisory type job at the time [which means I did not really have to help!] I
immediately grabbed a mop and helped. I am not telling you guys this to make it
sound like I am more noble, I am saying that we all need to be aware of both
the things that look racist, or actually are racist. My Mexican friend was not
a racist, he simply has been brought up with the reality of seeing how
affirmative action [hiring quotas] has caused what he saw as an injustice to
exist. The fine Black friend might have gotten the top score regardless of
affirmative action, and yet he would be seen as getting the promotion because
of an unfair policy. When we as Americans try and do the right thing now, to
make up for the sins of the past, we need to make sure that we don’t create a
new environment that discriminates against other races as well, because in the
end it only makes things worse.
(1326) FOR AS THE NEW HEAVENS AND
EARTH, WHICH I WILL MAKE, SHALL REMAIN,
SO SHALL YOUR SEED AND NAME REMAIN- Isaiah 66:22 Well the senate finally passed health care
reform; they still have some hurdles ahead, but they got the 60 votes needed to
move forward. I do find it utterly corrupt that any single party would actually
pass something that took away benefits from Republican states and not take them
away from Democratic ones. And then have the audacity to make the ‘losing
states’ underwrite the ‘winning states’. I can’t imagine the uproar in the
country if Bush did this. Nebraska [Ben Nelson] cut a deal where they will
never pay for the extended costs of Medicaid, ever. The ‘Federal govt.’ will
forever cover their new costs. They are the only state that gets this deal. The
Federal govt. pays stuff by taxing other states; in essence the rest of the
country will be underwriting Nebraska, simply because they needed the
Democratic vote. Florida, under Bill Nelson, another Democrat, will be the only
state that will not lose Medicare Advance. This is a very popular program with
senior citizens and every other state will lose this program. Why not Florida?
Florida has lots of retired seniors, they need to keep the senate seat
Democratic, so to get the seniors votes they did this deal. These deals are
fundamentally corrupt, we are doing this at a time in the nation where we will
be forcing families to pay a yearly 750 dollar fine if they don’t get insurance
[or a 2% fine of their income, whichever is higher!] and many average income earners
are really going to be in a bind. Much of the money will pay the profits and
salaries of multi millionaires; this is wrong. In the 1960’s Harvey Cox
[professor at Harvard] penned the book ‘the secular city’ it was a play on
words from saint Augustine’s ‘city of God’. Augustine, as a true
Amillennialist, wrote about the influence of the church/kingdom of God on the
nations of the world, and how you could not separate virtue from
public/political life. Cox would challenge this idea and teach that you could
have a separation; you could run a nation apart from the morality of the
church. Harvard would also produce the philosophy of ‘Pragmatism’ you govern by
what is expedient, do what it takes to get the job done- don’t worry about
what’s right or wrong type of a thing. God says his word/standards don’t go
away, the things he states/creates are there for good. The Democratic Party ran
rough shod over some very basic principles of right and wrong, when Harry Reid
was asked about these insider deals, he said that’s the way they do business.
In essence he said if your state didn’t get to do some under the table deal,
then that’s your senator’s fault. The senate leader was being very pragmatic,
doing what he needed to do to get the votes. I think they might have traded for
a few votes today, at the expense of a bunch of them tomorrow.
(1325) BEFORE SHE SUFFERED SHE
GAVE BIRTH, BEFORE HER PAIN SHE GAVE BIRTH. WHO EVER HEARD OF SUCH A THING?
SHALL I BRING YOU TO THE POINT OF BIRTH AND NOT FINISH THE JOB? FOR AS SOON AS
YOU SUFFERED WITH BIRTH PAINS THEN YOU BROUGHT FORTH WHAT I WANTED- Isaiah
66:7-8 [my paraphrase] In Johns gospel Jesus said when a woman is going thru
birth pains it’s difficult because her time has come, the moment of
accomplishing the purpose. Jesus says ‘she has sorrow’ but after she gives
birth she forgets the sorrow because a man is born into the world. Jesus makes
this statement as he himself is entering into his time of sorrow; he prays
‘Father, if it’s possible for me to not have to go thru with this, if there is
any way you think we can do something about this situation, then please lets go
another route’! The agony was very real, he wasn’t afraid of death, but he
dreaded the fact that he would ‘become sin’ for us; he would be separated from
the Father and experience extreme turmoil. He sweat great drops of blood, a
physical act of excruciating anguish that causes this to happen. Jesus told us
that we too had to be willing to carry our cross. I know some feel Jesus was
talking about his cross and death, but in context he was talking about the
difficulties that would come along with following him and denying ourselves.
Peter said that when we go thru fiery trials that we should take comfort in the
fact that other brothers are going thru the same things, even worse things than
us. A few years ago a prominent local figure was arrested and sent to jail for
soliciting a minor over the internet; he worked for the parks/beach dept. and
was active with the Fire Dept. and EMS. Of course the news shocked people; he
seemed to be a good person who gave of himself to help others. A year or so
later I read an article that he had died in prison, though the article did not
go into detail there were enough hints to tell that after he went to prison he
rededicated his life to God and tried to make amends. It also said how his kids
attended his funeral but his ex wife wanted nothing to do with the man. I
thought to myself how hard it would have been for him and his family to have
gone thru this tragic thing. I put his family on my prayer list for a few
years, a time where I pray for fellow believers who have messed up and are in
jail, whenever I read these stories they become part of this prayer time. Or
people who have terminal illnesses, don’t you think it would be hard to pray
and continue to do God’s will knowing that you only have so much time left?
There are times in life when the purpose of God must take precedence over the
things we are going thru. I am not saying these examples are the only types of
‘cross’ experiences people go thru, but they give us some insight into the
difficulties that can happen. In Hebrews the scripture says that Jesus endured
the Cross, despising the shame and has been seated at the right hand of God.
Make no mistake about it, the shame and agony of the Cross were not things that
‘felt good’ to go thru, they were things that were despised, but they were
things that needed to take place in order for a greater purpose to come forth.
I mean whoever heard of a woman giving birth before the pain, and likewise we
believers will go thru some tough things before Gods purpose will be fulfilled.
(1323) WHERE IS THE HOUSE THAT
YOU ARE BUILDING FOR ME? Isaiah 66:1, leaders- think on this for a moment; what
is it exactly that you are building for God? What are the main themes of
scripture that you are communicating? Verse 2 says ‘all these things hath [past
tense] my hand made and all these things HAVE BEEN, says the Lord’. In
Ephesians 2 Paul says that we are ‘his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for
good works that he chose for us before the world began’. We are simply
fulfilling the pre-ordained destiny of God. That is if we are proclaiming and
doing what's right. Yesterday I read a news article on a mega church out of
Ohio, they broadcast a plea that they immediately needed 3 million in donations
or they were in trouble. The plea was looked into and it seems like they
‘fudged’ on the seriousness of the appeal- basically they used ‘disaster’
language for a problem that was not as urgent as you might think; sort of like
what our country did with TARP and what we are doing today [12-19-09] with
saying we urgently need to pass health reform before Christmas, a false
deadline that is being used as a political tool. Why do well meaning ministries/preachers
often focus so much on money? Why is it common for many sermons and messages to
be centered on this? In the first century when the Apostle Paul was circulating
his letters, he would write about 95 % on real theological truth, maybe a few %
of the letters would deal with giving, most of that small percent was in the
context of giving to the poor. Then you had an even smaller % of that deal with
giving to help Paul on his way to the next town, or giving to meet the needs of
laboring leaders in their midst. So if you were a first century church
receiving the letter you would not see Paul’s main message being one of always
appealing for funds. But over the first few centuries of Christianity the
church collected these letters and put them in a book [our New Testament]. This
has enabled people to scour thru the corpus of Paul’s writings and to pick this
small percentage of appeals for funds and to basically present them in a way
that says ‘look how important it is to always speak about money, after all the
bible is full of it!’ Which is really a distortion of the actual themes of the
letters; much of Paul’s writings taken in context actually reprove what the
modern preachers have done with this proof texting tool [read 1st
timothy 6]. So you find many well meaning brothers seeing the need for more and
more money, for a never ending series of good projects, and this causes there
to be a general focusing on a very small percentage of actual New Testament
teaching and presenting it in a way that causes the average believer to think
that this is the main thrust of scripture. So what are you building? Have you
never really seen this before? If not then ask the lord to help you re-focus on
the important stuff. Pastors, leaders- most of you brothers mean well, just
allow the Lord to bring forth out of you the things that he has fore ordained
for you. One of those things might have been stumbling along and reading this
blog.
(1320) Isaiah 65:17-19 ‘I create
a new heavens and new earth…the former has passed away and shall not come into
memory…rejoice in my work, I too joy in it’ [my paraphrase] When God does new
things, he allows the former things to fade and eventually pass. Hebrews says
the old things are fading quickly. Often the transition period from the old to
the new is difficult; we become accustomed to certain patterns of thought and
action and if these old structures are being challenged we have a natural
tendency to resist, often in the face of irrefutable evidence! When Jesus
challenged the religious concepts of his day the leaders made an effort to
refute him. He of course would win all these theological skirmishes, but this
made no difference to those who did not want to accept the truths he was
speaking. As time went on they simply hated him and decided to stop him, it was
no longer a matter of truth- they hated what he stood for and that was that. A
few years ago I bought a book on the case of the military doctor who was
convicted of murdering his family. The book is ‘fatal justice’ the made for TV
movie was called ‘fatal vision’. The movie did portray the doctor as evil and
it was easy to hate the guy. But the book brought out some real questions about
the case and it did put doubts into my mind. Well anyway I was telling this to
a person who has seen the movie many times and has a real hate for the man. I
tried to present both sides of the case and in some way defend the doctor. The
person was mad; they even said that they didn’t care anymore whether he was
guilty or innocent, because he was such an ‘SOB’ that he deserved to rot in
prison anyway. The religious views that the people held were more important
than the actual truth, the enemies of Jesus got to a point where they really
weren’t open to truth anymore, they had their view and they simply wanted to
kill him. We are truly creatures of habit and when ‘new things’ are presented
to us, things that we never really considered before, we have a tendency to
harden in our position and it no longer becomes a sincere search for truth. In
essence we want the guy to rot in prison whether he’s guilty or not!
(1319) Isaiah 65:1-10 Isaiah says
that the Lord was ‘found’ by those who were not looking for him, and that those
who were looking for him [thru religious actions] were not finding him. He
rebukes his people Israel because they developed a religious mentality that
took the true revelation of God and exchanged it ‘for a lie’. But the lord says
he still saw a remnant of value within her; she was like a cluster of grapes
that went bad but had a few ‘good apples’ left. When Jesus appeared to Israel
in the 1st century they were waiting for Gods promise to them to be
fulfilled. They were ‘waiting for the kingdom’. If you were to encapsulate any
singular idea in the preaching of Jesus that was the most prominent, it would
be his declaration of the Kingdom of God being now present as he preached.
Israel saw the kingdom thru natural eyes, they believed that the restored
temple played a major role in Gods coming kingdom. Understand that the
restoring of the temple by Herod [the one before the Herod of Jesus day] was a
spectacular event; the temple was grand and the Jewish people regulated their
life around its rituals. It was only reasonable for Israel to believe that the
next step would be the restoring of her national sovereignty by a coming
Messiah. They had their temple restored first and were waiting for the national
independence to follow- a reverse of what many modern dispensationalists
believe. But instead Jesus tells them in no uncertain terms that their
understanding of the kingdom is wrong, that the kingdom will not come by
observing outward events, but it was already present thru his appearing. In
Jesus parables he speaks of the values of this kingdom, forgiveness, laying
down your rights for others; he is talking about a spiritual kingdom. When the
disciples show him the temple and its grandeur, he states flatly ‘there will
not be left one stone upon another when all is said and done’ huh? So Jesus
without a doubt challenged their understanding of the kingdom and how it would
outwardly manifest in society- it’s not about temples and homelands! He gathers
a ‘few grapes’ from the cluster [The 12 disciples] and uses them as the
foundation stones of a new kingdom and temple. These apostles would launch the
great new movement/kingdom of God thru the proclamation of the gospel. They
would write some harsh things about the temple and old law economy of Israel as
a nation. The disciple John would refer to the synagogue as ‘the synagogues of
satan’ ouch! [Revelation] Paul would say those are not Jews who are Jews
‘outwardly’ [it wasn’t an ethnic thing anymore] but those who had the
‘circumcised heart’ would be counted as the true Israel of God
[Romans/Galatians]. And the overall language of the 12 Jewish apostles was not
one that would fit in with a scenario of a restored Jewish temple with restored
sacrifices and a national homeland. I mean you can’t get much more clearer than
this! And yet in our day you have many well meaning believers looking for all these
outward signs of ‘when the kingdom will come’. We bypass the main writings of
the New Testament [like the things I just quoted] and we go hunting in Daniel,
Ezekiel, Revelation- we find all types of prophetic words that seem to support
our obsession with some outward restoration of these things in order to justify
our system, we basically have fallen into the same error of first century
Israel, we are looking for the kingdom in all the wrong places. I understand
that many believers who hold to these beliefs are sincere and well meaning,
many of them have a genuine love for the Jewish people and this is commendable.
But we need to heed the words of ‘the few good grapes in the cluster’ they did
not exalt Israel’s natural status nor did they see the kingdom of God thru the
lens of restored temples and homelands, they believed that all who would
receive the Messiah were presently being built into a temple made without human
hands, the ‘true Israel of God- the heavenly New Jerusalem that is coming down
from God out of heaven’.
(1317) A DIFFERENT LAKE OF FIRE-
Isaiah says ‘Oh that thou wouldest rend the heavens and come down…like when a
fire makes the water to boil, that you would come down’ [Isaiah 64] the imagery
of fire and water are both used as pictures of the Spirit. On the day of
Pentecost God ‘ripped open the heavens and came down’. Jesus said he came to
set the earth on fire and how he wished it was already burning! Since the day
the Spirit of God has been poured out on ‘all flesh’ these ‘fleshed out ones’
have been stirring the waters and making it boil. Psalms says why do the
heathen rage and the people imagine a vain thing? Why do the kings of the earth
try to rise up and resist Gods anointed ones? In John’s gospel Jesus said the
religious leaders were going around trying to kill him. Why? Because when he
came and did the works that no one else was doing, it took away their cloak of
an excuse. In essence the reason the ‘waters’ [nations/peoples] are boiling
[tribulatin’] is because we as the people of God are a natural thorn in the
side of society who wants us to just go away. I watched a news show this week
interview an ex-gay man who started a ministry and who is now married and lives
a good life. I know for a fact that the women interviewer is a lesbian [she
says so on her on line profile] and of course she was upset that any person
would claim that they were once gay and now have left the life and are happy.
The man’s ministry was not ‘anti gay’ he said his ministry simply works with
those who want to leave the lifestyle, but that still offends the mind of
modern man. The presidents ‘school czar’ [Jennings] is an open advocate for the
gay agenda in the public school system. He has praised men who were affiliated
with ‘NAMBLA’ [the North American man/boy love association] and he does
advocate for the public schools to teach the gay lifestyle as a perfectly
legitimate way of life. Now I’m sure there are many gay/lesbian people who
sincerely have seen and experienced discrimination based on their sexual
orientation. I’m sure many of them feel that teaching this agenda to kids would
be helpful in combating future discrimination against kids. But those who have
this agenda can’t stand any group who simply says ‘being [acting out!]
homosexual is a sin’ this simple reality causes them to be upset and in a way
‘have no cloak for their sin’. If ex-gays have left the life and are now happy,
then their life is a rebuke to homosexual acts. Yes, it’s like starting a fire
that causes the water to boil. We are liquid Napalm for heaven’s sake!
Christians should avoid stereotyping gays/lesbians; there are many sincere
people who struggle with various things. Many people out of a good motive feel
like pushing the gay agenda would be helpful; but at the end of the day
homosexual acts are physically more harmful than heterosexual/monogamous
relationships, even if you put aside the religious convictions of many people,
it is still dangerous to push this agenda in the public school system. Obama
needs to fire his ‘school czar’.
(1316) I LIKE FREE STUFF! ‘FOR
SINCE THE BEGINNING OF TIME MEN HAVE NOT HEARD, NOR PERCIEVED BY THE EAR,
NIETHER HATH THE EYE SEEN, O GOD, BESIDE THEE, WHAT HE HATH PREPARED FOR HIM
THAT WAITETH FOR HIM- Isaiah 64:4 Last
night I caught a story on the news, it showed how terrorists were using an
ingenious way to communicate; instead of sending electronic emails thru the
internet, they would share a common email account and paste their messages to
the saved drafts, then the other guy would simply read the drafts. The FBI/CIA
could not detect the message. Over the years I have heard how people really
don’t value teaching unless they pay for it, and the more they pay the greater
the value. Some Christian motivational speakers have actually charged many
thousands of dollars just to share a word from God. Paul wrote the greatest
letters known to man [the New Testament] and circulated them freely and
encouraged their duplication- we need to reevaluate the standards we live by.
Isaiah said God would reveal things that were secret since the world began. In
the gospels it says that Jesus fulfilled this verse thru his teaching. In
Corinthians Paul said the Spirit is continuing this ‘revealing’ ministry thru
the church. In Revelation chapter 5 you have the vision of John seeing God on
the throne with a scroll; no man is worthy/able to reveal the things in the
scroll. But Jesus, the Lamb who was slain earned the right to walk up to the
throne and take the scroll and open it. Jesus continues to reveal things to the
church based on his righteousness, not ours. He specifically instructed his men
that the things he was freely giving to them [spiritual gifts and insights]
should be shared with others free of charge [thus Paul’s unwillingness to
charge for his very valuable insights]. We need to get back to the basic
reality of scripture; no speaker/teacher was to become rich off of the
revelation of God that was purchased by the Blood of Jesus. These spiritual
gifts were not to be used for one preacher to gain authority over others, that
is the idea that the most gifted one in the group would ‘be over’ the others
was rejected. Jesus explicitly taught this to his men. The false teachers at
Corinth were saying of Paul ‘sure his letters are weighty, but he’s not even on
the scene, wait till he shows up’ in essence they tried to devalue the ministry
of Paul because he was communicating thru letters as opposed to having some
regular office where he was exercising authority over them. The important thing
to remember is Jesus is the one who has earned the right to open the scroll, we
simply freely receive the gift of communicating it as the Spirit wills. We
should value the free things, on the news story about the emails they said how
this tool of the internet and the free access of the emails were accomplishing
more than the older ways that cost thousands of dollars to get the message out.
As the people of God lets value the free stuff, don’t teach people that ‘the
free stuff’ has no value. Don’t tell them that we are charging them for their
good and not ours, these arguments fall on deaf ears as the media exposes the
million dollar mansions and 5 thousand dollar a night hotel fees. Let’s use the
wisdom of the terrorist, communicate the stuff for free, I don’t know how many lives
have been changed over the years thru a free Gideon’s bible placed in the hands
of some soldier or in the drawer of a hotel. These bibles are the free gift of
revelation that Jesus poured out on Paul and the other writers of the New
Testament, thank God that they never copy wrote the thing!
(1314) IN DEFENSE OF THE
HOMELAND- As a young boy growing up in New Jersey I had the privilege of having
many different ethnic friends, but at times I found it difficult to defend the
homeland [Italy]. I mean the Brits could appeal to the heroism of a Churchill,
the Russians could even have their Rommel, but I was caught between a rock and
a hard place. Sure I could resort to ‘what about that El Duce’ but I was
grasping at straws man! This week Italy has been in the headlines, they
convicted an American exchange student [Amanda Knox] on murder and she got 23
years in prison. As I listened to the news media berate the Italian judicial
system I realized that they weren’t upset about the high probability of the girls
guilt, they were upset that the standards of the American system of justice
were not applied. The case involved 4 students who were involved in some type
of sex game and one of the girls did not want to do it. So one of the boys
killed her. After the initial arrest Amanda Knox admitted to being there at the
time, she told the prosecutor and police that she was there. But after a while
she claimed it was a false confession and the Italian courts actually threw out
her first confession on the grounds that she wasn’t properly represented at the
time. The jury convicted her based on the high probability that she was there
and she was seen as an accomplice. The person who murdered the girl confessed
and it seems like a very sad case all around. But the American media portrayed
it as an unjust conviction, even though common sense seemed to be part of the
jury’s verdict. They did not claim she killed the girl, just that she was
present. I remember a case a few years back where a neighbor was being tried
for the kidnapping and murder of a little girl. During the trial at one point
the defendant was in negotiations with the prosecutor about getting a lighter
sentence if he showed them where the girl’s body was. These were private
discussions that the jury was not aware of. Instead the body was found and the
deal was off. The trial proceeded and the defense dragged the history of the
parents into the case, they were swingers and the defense tried to say that one
of the swingers could have done it. The problem with this type of justice is everyone behind the scenes
knew for a fact that the man raped and murdered this little innocent girl, but
according to our rules it would be ‘unjust’ to tell the jury. In Isaiah 63 the
prophet says the Lord looked down and realized that no one was standing up for
justice, so the Lord himself rode thru and set things in order. He used ‘the
right hand of Moses’ and delivered the people. He put on Salvation and took
care of some things. Over the years I have seen how it is so easy for the
people of God to allow for wrong stuff to take place over long periods of time,
things that everyone knows in their heart are wrong. But we become
desensitized, we believe in the fair market and if religious TV networks
continue to pump out blatantly false stuff, so what- it’s a free world. But yet
Gods standards are different than ours, even if society as a whole has accepted
lower standards, it’s still wrong to do/teach false stuff year after year after
year without ever truly dealing with the stuff. The American church has
infected the world with these materialistic teachings to the point where we
have whole nations being sidetracked thru these networks and quite frankly the
network leaders couldn’t ‘give a rip’. God got tired of the inability of his people
to deal with stuff, the mindset that says ‘even though we all know he molested
the girl’ yet our view of justice is it’s all right to legally allow for the
defense to try and convince the jury that the parents friends did it, even
though the judge and prosecutor and defense all know it’s a big game! God
looked down and said ‘enough’ I am going to bring some things into alignment
that have been crooked for too long. God is merciful, but when we refuse to
honestly deal with stuff, he will step in.
(1313) GOD WANTS TO MARRY YOU!
Isaiah 62- This chapter uses a lot of marriage imagery, the bridegroom
rejoicing over his new bride and ‘all your sons being joined to you’. In the
New Testament Jesus himself uses this imagery when speaking about Gods people
and the relationship God had with Israel. Now, it’s important to see that the
New Testament [especially Paul] uses the imagery of the bride and bridegroom
when speaking of the church; Paul will teach that both Jew and Gentile are
making up this bride that the Lord ‘is married to’. Some dispensationalists
[end time beliefs] make a distinction between the language used concerning
Israel [Gods wife] and the language used concerning the church [bride] but if
you see the mystery that Paul is speaking about you see that the fulfillment of
this bride [both Jew and Gentile] being joined unto Jesus includes both people
groups. What I’m saying is the New Testament teaches us that all these Old
Testament promises of God rejoicing over his bride are being fulfilled thru the
‘eternal purpose’ spoken of by Paul in the letter to the Ephesians. God has his
bride! This chapter also speaks of the sons coming to this new land [the
church-people of God] and being joined to her as a bridegroom is joined to his
bride. Recently I have had some good brothers express a desire to ‘join up-team
up-partner with us’ in some way thru the ‘ministry’. These are Pastors from
Pakistan and are doing a great work reaching out to Muslims. They are doing a
very dangerous work, pray for them [they just got out of jail; they were thrown
in jail for preaching the gospel]. Anyway somehow they found this site and
really like it, that’s great. But I gave them the same response that I give to
everybody who contacts us with the well meaning intent to ‘join up’ with us; I
simply told them that there is nothing to join, no money to ‘partner up with
us’ we are simply a voluntary group of Christ followers who are trying to
spread the kingdom by doing what the Lord tells us. In essence if you are
blessed by the teachings, just do your best to follow our example and let the
work grow on its own, no need for me to come and preach, take offerings, or
anything along those lines- just take the word of God and run with it! The
point is sometimes ‘our friends/sons’ [those we are reaching out to] are so
excited about the stuff they are learning that they want to be joined to us.
It’s our job [and yours] to lead them in a way that they are joined to Christ
and find their identity in him. God promised his people that he would ‘marry
them’ Jesus spoke about the great marriage supper of the Lamb. These are
intimate images; Paul said this was a great mystery when speaking of marriage
and how it was a sign of our union with Christ [Ephesians] we need to remind
ourselves that we are joined unto the Lord- not to men and their well meaning
organizations.
(1311) FOR YOUR SHAME YE SHALL
HAVE DOUBLE [PORTION/BLESSING] AND FOR YOUR CONFUSION THEY SHALL REJOICE IN
THEIR PORTION, THEY TOO WILL HAVE A DOUBLE PORTION IN THEIR LAND – Isaiah
61:7 In the book of Acts Peter says God
has highly exalted Jesus and he has received the promise of the father [Spirit]
and because of this he has poured out ‘this which you see and hear’. I like
that, God gave 2 types of testimonies; things you see and things you hear. That
spoke to me because I do both radio [hear] and blog [see]. I was watching a
prophecy brother the other day, he’s a good man, comes from the strong
Dispensational school. As he was reading the declaration of the angel in the book
of Luke- that Jesus will sit on the throne of his father David, the wife said
‘gee, I never saw that before, Jesus has never yet sat on David’s throne’. And
the husband said ‘see, your theological training is kicking in’. If you
actually read all of Peter’s sermons in the book of Acts, you will see that the
apostolic witness sees Jesus as presently ruling on the throne from the exalted
right hand of God. They do not see an idea that the promise from the angel
about Jesus has yet to be fulfilled. I am familiar with the distinctions that
dispensationalist’s make, I just think they go too far in postponing the
‘actual/literal’ rule of Jesus to some future date. The apostle’s language
includes the fulfillment of the Davidic rule with the present ruling position
of Jesus at Gods right hand. I do not totally discount the reality that at the
Second Coming there will be literal future aspects to that rule, but scripture
already ‘sees’ Jesus ruling in Gods kingdom. Well anyway Jesus received this
high position because of the shame and confusion [agony] he went thru. He now
has the right to pour out things both ‘seen and heard’. He poured out the
promise of the Father on his people and they became this great kingdom of
Priests and Kings unto God and his father [Revelation and Isaiah]. In this
present kingdom we overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our
testimony. Jesus is the Lamb as it were slain sitting on the throne- he’s not
waiting for some future date to receive the throne, he’s already there!
(1310) In Isaiah 61 the chapter
starts with the famous scripture speaking about the Spirit being on Jesus to
preach and proclaim to the people. At the end of the chapter Isaiah says ‘as
the earth brings forth the plant/bud, and the garden causes the things that are
planted in it to grow, so the Lord will cause righteousness and praise to
spring up before the nations’. In the earlier verses it also said ‘they will be
trees of righteousness’. Those who were in mourning, those who were oppressed
and suffering, they are the ones who are given beauty for ashes and the spirit
of praise and joy in return for the garment of heaviness. Jesus said ‘blessed
are they that mourn/suffer’ these things are the currency of the Kingdom; you
can trade them in and ‘buy’ the true riches. Notice also how the earth/garden
causes the things that are planted in it to spring forth; as Protestants many
times we emphasis the importance of the ‘preached word’ sort of like the
art/profession of preaching is the vital thing. To be sure it is important
[how can they believe unless one is
sent- Romans, as well as the first verses of this chapter] but the chapter
closes with the ‘ability’ of the garden itself to bud, to cause the things that
were preached/sown to become reality. The field/garden is more important than
we think [that is the people groups are the ones causing the things
taught/preached to be fleshed out, in reality we can’t just ‘preach’ and be
successful anywhere, sort of like the gift/talent itself is the important
thing. In these verses the important thing is the garden/earth]. So for all of
our leaders/pastors, your role is important, but God is the one cultivating and
taking care of the garden [John 15]. You [me!] are expendable, God is the one
who is going to make the praise spring up before all nations- we either partake
of it or not [woe is me if I preach not the gospel- Paul] but the praise is
going to come!
(1309) Got up early today, around
1:30, I usually try and lay down until around 2:30, but this morning I felt
like the Lord was saying ‘no, today you need to start early’. So as I went
outside to pray it was barely drizzling, but it’s really cold. I do pray in the
rain often, but when it’s cold I adjust my prayer schedule. Right when I was
wrapping up the prayer time at around 4 it started raining, I’m glad I started
early. This morning I read ‘your people shall all be made righteous, they shall
inherit the land forever, the branch of my planting the work of my hands’
Isaiah 60:21. I felt like the Lord was saying to leaders/pastors ‘these people
are my work, my planting. When I made Adam I put him in the garden that I
created. He had responsibilities to take care of it and be a faithful steward
over it; but it was my garden, not his’. We often worry about ‘the garden’ [the
work/people that God has called us to] but the lord says they are his people,
his ‘branch’ the work of his hands and he simply allows us to enjoy the
field/garden with him. Paul told the Corinthians that they were God’s field,
that some water and others plant but God alone makes it grow. Jesus said the
kingdom was like a man who planted some seed and when he ‘slept’ God made it
grow. ‘What, you mean I was sleeping when the thing was really productive’?
Yes, humbling isn’t it. Isaiah said ‘I was in difficulty, oppression, going
back and forth and then I said “ who are all these children that I have born,
where did they come from?’” sort of like when you are at a stage in life where
you can’t micro manage the thing, God says ‘there we go, now I can do a thing
thru you that you can’t take credit for’. God said the people would ‘all be
righteous’ that the garden was his responsibility and he simply put ‘you in the
garden’ sometimes your most productive seasons are when you’re sleeping! [when
your hands are off the thing].
(1308) I caught an interview last
night of an Indian author who wrote a book, the title is ‘truth and
transformation’ it deals with how India and much of the Eastern world has a
great degree of economic dishonesty and hiding of money from the govt. and so
forth. But that the Western world has less of this dishonesty going on in a
large scale. It was interesting to hear the point of view that because the west
still had a degree of Christian morality that this had a lasting effect on
society. You rarely hear this view from Easterners. But the brother warned how
we are fast approaching the rest of the world in the area of economic/corporate
corruption. Any way he mentioned how in the book of Revelation the church is
described as ‘a city’- the city that comes down from God out of heaven. I
always liked this imagery, in Isaiah we read how this city of God has it gates
open ‘day and night’ that there is never a moment where life and transactions
are not happening. How can this be? Recently as I have been praying over stuff,
and also have posted various requests on the blog I realized that we have
people praying and reading and ‘partaking’ of the stuff we are doing, this
happens on a 24 hour basis because we have friends from around the world who
are connected to us. So Gods ‘city’ is one that consists of believers the world
over. There are Christians ‘in church’ 24-7, you don’t have to start a 24 hour
prayer service to accomplish this, God has done it by having a worldwide
community of people who he describes as ‘my House of Prayer’. This house/temple
is open all the time, Isaiah also says that the city will have ‘no walls’
because of its great size, the multitude of men and cattle within is so large
that it doesn’t need to wall herself off from society! As a matter of fact a
river flows from this temple to the nations and all the kings of the earth will
bring their glory and riches into her. I like the city imagery a lot,
Revelation says this city has no need for a sun or moon, because the Lamb is
the light of the city. No need for a temple either, we are the temple! [as well
as Jesus, we as his Body join with him in the temple imagery] When reading
scripture it’s important to see things thru a correct lens. I am half way thru
the book by Carl Olson ‘will Catholics be left behind’. Carl is an ex
Fundamentalist who converted to Catholicism and he gives an excellent overview
of the history of Eschatology [end time stuff] much of my teaching agrees with
Carl’s view. But reading thru it reminds me of some of the silly views that
people hold about end time things, how some see the city ‘coming down from God
out of heaven’ as an actual physical city that will be suspended above the
earth during the Millennium and that believers will be living in ‘the sky’
while having access to the planet and interacting with Millennium citizens.
Silly stuff, the city is called ‘the bride, the Lambs wife’ it’s quite obvious
that John is using prophetic imagery to describe the church. But this is a
problem among certain Fundamentalists and this view is quite popular in our
day. When we grasp the ‘better’ view of these things then we can apply them in
practical ways that effect society in a positive way- Gods people/city being
open/available for light and help and mercy to all the ‘kings/nations of the
earth’ Jesus who is our light can also enlighten the nations who are willing to
hear. Stuff like this is helpful, while also recognizing that there are
real/literal things that Revelation deals with, like the 2nd coming
and resurrection and final judgment. Well anyway we are all part of this 24-7
community that has things happening all the time, we belong to a great
worldwide church, the city of God, let’s let our light shine to the nations as
much as possible.
(1306) DARKNESS SHALL COVER THE
EARTH AND GROSS DARKNESS THE PEOPLE… BUT GODS GLORY SHALL BE UPON US AND THE
GENTILES SHALL SEE THIS LIGHT/HOPE AND BE DRAWN TO US- Isaiah 60:1-3 Tonight the president will give a speech at
West Point and tell the nation that we will be sending another 30 thousand
troops to Afghanistan, pretty serious stuff. But the news media has been stuck
on another story, the couple who crashed the White House party the other night.
Oh how they have mused about the fact that even though they passed thru metal
detectors, they still could have hurt the president. Some have espoused that
they could have picked up a fork and gouged his eyes out- others said they
could have spiked his drink with Anthrax; the theory I found the most amusing
was they might have been trained in Martial Arts and could have had the purely
human ability to kill or mame the leader of the free world. Sort of like if the
woman with the red dress was a black belt that somehow this would have enabled
her to decapitate the president with her bare hands! Like what Will Farrell did
in the highly acclaimed movie ‘Glory Blades’ the plot was Farrell was banned
from the Olympics but they found a glitch in the system- he could get in as
this top ice skater if he registered under the couples rule. So he and his
partner [Napoleon Dynamite] get on the team. One problem, the famous move that
they need to perform has been tried in the past by their coach- as they show
the clip of what happened in slow motion, the skater does this move where as he
jumps in the air and flips he accidently decapitates his partner! So you can
see the serious dilemma that the movie engages in. I just thought it too funny
for the media to have spent so much time on this story. Isaiah said ‘gross
darkness’ shall cover the people, they would be consumed with stuff that has
absolutely no value [like watching Glory Blades] but that the people of God
would be this worldwide community of people who had purpose and hope in the
midst of a fallen world. Yes the world system will get worse, but the kingdom
of God and its witness in the nations will grow brighter. As the world obsesses
about whether or not the woman in the red dress might have been some secret
mixed martial arts expert [Royce Gracy in drag?] we have true things of value
to share, hope and light and peace; as the Christmas season is upon us let’s do
our best to share it.
(1305) I’M USING YOU FOR THEIR
SAKE, NOT YOUR’S! Isaiah 59:21 says
‘this is my covenant WITH THEM’. I have been quoting the last part of this
verse for years, I am sure I have said it in prayer at least 10 thousand times
over my life- ‘ the words that I have put in your mouth shall not depart out of
your mouth from this time forth and forevermore’ God says your ‘seed’
[offspring] and your seeds seed will quote and teach them. Good promise for
church planters—but when I recently read it I felt like the lord was saying
‘leader/pastor- listen up- I am going to consistently use you and speak thru
you, not out of some favor to you, but as a promise TO THEM!’ In Isaiah God
says ‘I will give him as a covenant to the people’ [Jesus]. God takes people
and uses them to fulfill his promises to nations/people groups. He has
covenanted with these people groups, made promises to them that he would teach
them and show them things that they never saw before. The Message bible says
when Jesus preached in his hometown, the people said ‘we knew he was a
preacher, but we didn’t know he was this good’! God promised that the people
who sat in darkness would see great light. That kings/leaders would ‘shut their
mouths’ because they were learning things that they never saw before. Jesus
told his men ‘many people wished they were seeing the things that you are
seeing/hearing, yet they never had the chance’ [Message bible again] God used
Jesus to reveal truths that were hidden from the foundation of the world, he
promised this to the people. When God uses leaders/prophetic people to reveal
things that were previously hidden, he is doing this out of faithfulness to the
people. He is keeping his promise to the people, he has made a covenant with
them and God does not break his promise.
(1302) Isaiah 58- This is one of
the chapters that I quote from a lot when praying. God rebukes his people
because they were fasting and practicing religious functions but were
neglecting the ‘weightier matters of the law’. They forgot about the poor,
doing justice and showing mercy, the same themes you hear in Jesus teaching.
But God does say if his people will return to acts of charity, to lifestyles of
humility and not trying to ‘get their voices to be heard’ [seeking fame and
promotion] then he will exalt them, he will allow their ‘light to rise in
obscurity’ [great influence with little personal fanfare and glorying over
men]. We will be like ‘a well watered garden and a spring of water whose waters
fail not’ God will cause us to ‘ride upon the high places of the earth’
[positions of influence]. This chapter is a great chapter, but it comes with
some strong correction- if we heed the warnings the blessings will follow, but
sometimes we keep looking for the blessing and never receive the correction,
this my friends will never work.
(1300) HE KNEW WHAT A
SHAPE-SHIFTER WAS! Isaiah 57- This
chapter contains a strong rebuke against God’s people for their ‘working
knowledge’ of idolatry; the people were well taught in patterns and ways that
were empty. I was watching an episode of Scare Tactics and they did a scenario
where they had some oriental kid in a trailer out in the boonies and they set
up a fake meteor crash. Part of the skit had the pranksters asking the kid ‘do
you know what a shape-shifter is’ and to their surprise the kid answers yes! He
then explains that shape shifters are humans who have the ability to transform
themselves into animals; the kid knew the definition to the fake word! That’s
funny. God rebuked his people for knowing wrong things, in Revelation one of
the churches are commended because they were not familiar with the ways of
satan. Over the years I have found it troubling that many young believers were
taught things that were flat out wrong, it was plain to see that the
interpretation of the scriptures that they were taught were wrong, and yet many
of them clung to an obvious mistake. The problem was the teachers were
continuing to propoagte a wrong view, even though they were told time and time
again that the view was wrong. I am not talking sincere differences of belief,
but blatant false stuff. In some ways we have trained God’s people to know and
understand and believe definitions of stuff that do not exist! They know what
shape shifters are for heavens’ sake! In this chapter God rebukes the people
and also offers mercy. He says he will raise people up who will remove these
stumbling stones, who will clear the way for God’s people and lead them back
into paths of peace. When God’s people return to a trust and dependence on him
once again, they will feel less troubled when the economy tanks. But when the
people of God trust in material riches, they too feel a loss when the things
they trusted in begin to fail. Jesus said ‘you believe in God, believe also in
me- peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you. Not as the world giveth
give I unto you, let not your heart be troubled neither let it be afraid’.
(1298) THEY ARE GREEDY DOGS WHICH
CAN NEVER HAVE ENOUGH AND THEY ARE SHEPHERDS THAT CANNOT UNDERSTAND: THEY ALL
LOOK TO THEIR OWN WAY, EVERY ONE FOR HIS GAIN… THEY SAY TOMORROW SHALL BE MUCH
MORE ABUNDANT- Isaiah 56:11-12 In the mid 18th century we had what
is commonly called ‘the industrial revolution’. In Europe there arose a new
class of people that never existed before, these were the capitalists that were
making lots of wealth and the laborer was drawn from an agrarian type lifestyle
[country/hamlet living] into the strong industrial cities like London. These
poor workers were thrust into a system of profit that consumed their days and
surrounded them with a new atmosphere of industry/factory. The invention of the
steam engine by James Watt was one of the catalysts of this new era. Men like
William Booth [founder of the Salvation Army] would see the hopelessness of
these Londoners and start a ministry to help them. Even in our day the effects
of the industrial revolution still impact us, as a boy growing up I listened to
Black Sabbath, Ozzy came from an area like this. Contrast his songs with Kiss
and you can see the difference! There was an observer of this scene who would
write a document and launch a revolution as a result of what he saw as the
encroachment of capitalism on the common person- His name was Karl Marx, his
document was called ‘the communist manifesto’. Many people resent the western
mindset because of its seeming inability to never be satisfied with finally
having enough, we are a consumerist nation. I caught a quick few minutes of
religious channel surfing the other day and of course I heard the normal
preaching on ‘this year is the year of more abundance than any other year’.
Have we ever asked ourselves when we will have enough? Seriously Isaiah is
pronouncing a judgment on ‘greedy dogs- those who are never satisfied’ one of
the condemnations in Revelation is to believers who say ‘I am rich and
increased with goods’ yet they were spiritually poor. Jesus challenged his
followers on many occasions to forsake all to follow him. Now I am not
advocating irresponsibility, but I am challenging our western mindset and our
inability to say ‘that’s enough’. We preach a message that never seems to leave
this option open; we create an insatiable desire within the church to live each
day with an obsession to gain more. The bible condemns this attitude over and
over again, yet we as westerners never seem to get it, if we ever want to truly
have peaceful relationships with the rest of the world, then we will have to
change our mindset in these areas. Many Muslim countries see our materialist
arrogance and use this as an excuse to reject ‘the Jesus of the west’ [though
he was technically from the east!] We as the people of God need to return to
our own ‘manifesto’ [the gospels] and live them out in reality, if not there
will always be a Marx waiting in the wings with his own.
(1297) LET THE WICKED FORSAKE HIS
WAY AND THE UNRIGHTEOUS MAN HIS THOUGHTS AND LET HIM RETURN UNTO THE LORD-
Isaiah 55. Yesterday I took my daughter to the doctor and they admitted her
into the hospital, she possibly has swine flu and a bladder problem. They won’t
tell us if its swine flu because they say the treatment is the same for swine
or regular, sounds fishy to me. Then the nurse tells me that the whole family
should get checked. This is the second time in the last month that I’ve had to
explain that I personally don’t have a doctor because I don’t have health ins.
They seem surprised that a retired fire fighter does not have insurance, when I
retired I asked the city how much it would cost to cover my family. They told
me a figure that was equal to half of my check; there was no way I could do it.
So sometimes I have to reject ‘my thoughts’ and simply return unto the Lord.
The bible says ‘thou will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on
him’ ‘I hate vain thoughts but thy law do I love’ meditating on God’s word like
this does help, it’s good to read the bible like a book, but there are times
for Christian meditation- focusing on specific scriptures and practicing a form
of contemplative prayer. I hope my daughter gets home today but please keep her
in your prayers. Thanks, John.
(1295) FOR AS THE HEAVENS ARE
HIGHER THAN THE EARTH, SO ARE MY THOUGHTS HIGHER THAN YOUR THOUGHTS; AND MY
WAYS HIGHER THAN YOURS Isaiah 55:9 the other night I caught an interview of
Frances Schaffer on the Rachel Maddow show. Frances is the son of the famous
Frances Schaffer senior, the prolific author/speaker of the 20th
century who dealt with Christian worldviews. He wrote Christian Manifesto and
How shall we then live, among other titles. Frankie and his dad were key
leaders in the rise of the religious right and the moral agenda type groups.
Frankie eventually converted to Eastern Orthodoxy and is now a vehement
opponent of the religious right. First I want to commend him on his conviction
of not being willing to abandon Christianity all together; some children of
famous Christian leaders have taken that route, but Frankie [he calls himself Frances
now, but for this entry I’m using the old title] has chosen a great Christian
tradition to place himself in and for this he should be commended. But he is so
vehement against the religious right that he equates it with the Muslim
extremists. Now I believe that there are dangerous ideas that the religious
right holds to, and that there are extreme elements that shoot abortion doctors
and stuff like that. But to lump all the religious right with the radical
Muslims is going too far in my view. Just like it would be wrong to lump all
Muslims with the few who commit acts of terror. There have been Muslim
Americans who have died on the battlefield defending the American side, we
should not forget this. But Frankie just tore into all the religious right in a
way that does more harm than good in my view. One of the reasons his father was
so popular was because he dealt with Christian worldview issues, he was filling
a void in the Evangelical world. After the Fundamentalist movement of the 20th
century many Protestant believers were lacking a stable diet of ‘higher
learning’ [to be nice about it]. There was this religious angst against many
types of higher learning. The history of Protestantism in America shows a
period where many of the great Protestant theologians [Edwards, etc.] accepted
the idea that the mind and faith went hand in hand, but Protestantism for the
most part would walk away from this heritage and begin seeing higher forms of
learning as bad. The one bright light in the migration from Europe to the
Americas was the teaching of the Dutch Reformed theologian Abraham Kyper; he
wrote extensively on the Christian worldview and gave Protestants a good
foundation to build upon. Well anyway Frances Schaffer also labored in this
field. Isaiah said Gods ways are on a higher plane than ours, we often think
and function for years at a certain level, and then God comes in and causes us
to rethink the whole platform. It’s not so much more information at the current
level, but it’s an overall paradigm shift from a previous way of seeing things
to a whole new view of things. The philosopher William James describes it like
this- He has a study much like my own, with maps and globes and books all over
the place. He says when his dog comes into his study the dog sees everything
that James sees, but the dog has no ability to understand what these things
mean. Even though he ‘sees’ the stuff, he really doesn’t ‘see it’. Sometimes
God opens our eyes to the things we have been staring at for years, when this
happens we then see more fully what it means when Isaiah says ‘Gods
ways/thoughts are higher than hours’ it’s like seeing stuff again for the first
time.
(1294) EVERY ONE WHO IS THIRSTY,
COME TO THE WATER AND BUY WITHOUT MONEY AND WITHOUT PRICE. HE THAT HAS NO MONEY,
LET HIM BUY AND EAT FOR FREE! Isaiah 55:1 my own paraphrase. Last night I
caught Larry King interviewing T.D. Jakes, I always liked brother Jakes. Larry
did ask him about prosperity preachers and Jakes rejected being associated with
the movement. He said his ‘good news’ was that Jesus rose from the dead- bravo
for Jakes. King did say that Jakes was ‘selling God’ and Jakes did a rare mild
rebuke, he flatly said he does not ‘sell God’. Many years ago I was a fan of
the late Keith Green [still am]. I love Keith’s music and read his book and
used to send money to his ministry in Lyndale Tx. Keith was one of the original
Jesus movement brothers, though he was a musician he really saw what he was
doing as ministry and you could tell he meant it. Keith struggled with whether
or not he should sell his music, or just give it away. He read this verse from
Isaiah and began offering his albums for free, something unheard of in the
business. He would eventually settle on a policy of making his music available
to those who couldn’t afford it. One time I went to a ministry site that I
liked, I saw the on line teachings [audio] and thought ‘great, I’ll listen to a
message’ after the first minute of listening, you were cut off and if you
wanted to hear the rest you had to cough up money- what a shame on the gospel.
Though I like brother Jakes, I have come to reject the entire media sensation
type personality that comes with the territory of modern ministry. Many modern
scenarios have huge budgets and often times ‘the ministry’ becomes a clearing
house for the highly charismatic personality; millions are spent on
broadcasting the personas of the talented leaders. The whole scene violates the
New Testament concept of servant leaders and selfless living. If any of the
churches in scripture were becoming platforms for one single personality in the
group, this would be rebuked. Paul actually does rebuke this in Corinthians. So
anyway Isaiah said let those who have no money come and buy and eat, we need to
offer the gospel for free, we need to make Gods truth available for free. I
realize that these concepts are often overlooked in today’s world, and people
like Larry King sincerely view what we do as ‘selling God’ I think too often we
are to blame for this perception. NOTE- If you go to U TUBE you can find a
bunch of Keith Green stuff, if you never heard Keith I suggest you give it a
shot.
(1292) I HAVE CREATED THE SMITH
[blacksmith] THAT BLOWETH THE COALS IN THE FIRE AND BRINGS FORTH AN INSTRUMENT
FOR HIS WORK, AND I HAVE CREATED THE WASTER TO DESTROY- Isaiah 54. God made the
man who figured out if you get the steel hot enough you can shape it into a
tool that will be effective. If God made the man who figured out this ingenious
process, where do you think the man got the idea from? God will turn up the
heat, so to speak, so he can re-shape some stuff in us. This last year I have
tried to read up on some of the trends that go on in the world of Christianity.
Sometimes I wonder if after all the great ideas, new ways of seeing things;
lots of talk about the church needing to get back to social justice issues, all
types of stuff I agree with, but at the end of the day I wonder how many of us
are actually doing the stuff. Have we been duped into a system that enables
articulators to have a forum, that produces a class of professional hearers of
the articulators; but at the end of the day a great majority of us have not
really been moved to act? Sort of like I can tell you how important it is to
reach out to the poor and hurting, you might really belive me when I tell you
this [in all sorts of ways- books, pulpit, etc.] but if all we have
accomplished is to have come up with another subject to talk about, and for
people to listen- then have we really accomplished anything? God wants ‘instruments’
for his work; tools that really function! It’s okay for the church to have
great articulators and for people to have an attentive ear to hear- but it
doesn’t stop there. After so much hearing and so much speaking, we then need
some volunteers to get into the action! And this means more than just finding
some ‘mission to the poor’ ministry that we can write a check to. I fear that
the thing that’s lacking with most of us is the willingness to act, to get
involved, to be the tool that actually works. Over the years I have bought
tools that looked good, but were not well made. They might have been priced
cheap, but they did not function well. Like buying the pens from the dollar
store, what good is it if you got 50 pens for a dollar and none of them work?
So in the kingdom God will often allow the heat to turn up because he wants to
fashion some instruments that work, that do more than just speak or listen, but
instruments that really get the job done. I have learned over the years that
lots of people mean well, but if you want the job to get done you need people
that don’t blame everything on others. People who are not professional victims,
who find their whole identity in faulting others for their lot in life. I hired
a guy to do a small job, to remove some wood from behind a rental house I owned
years ago. It was maybe a 20 minute job, he had a truck. He was one of the guys
I knew from working with addicts and ex-cons. I made the mistake of paying him
the 25 dollars before the job was done. After a few weeks would pass I’d ask
him ‘did you move the wood yet brother’? He would have some excuse why he
didn’t do it. Finally I drove by the alley and saw the wood was gone. Great! I
then found out that the renter got tired of the wood in the alley and hauled it
off himself. We need people in the kingdom that act, that function and do what
God tells them to do. We already have enough able articulators; enough people
willing to buy the books and read about how the church should do more. We
simply need some brothers who will actually move the wood.
(1286) ISAIAH 53- This chapter is
without a doubt the most Messianic chapter in the Old Testament; I find the
character of Jesus described in this chapter to be a challenge to many modern
concepts of ministry and leadership. Jesus is described as a ‘tender plant’ who
grew up out of dry ground [type of virgin birth] we a have tendency to want
well watered ground, we do all we can to create a favorable environment around
us, Jesus thrived in ‘dry ground’. He is described as someone who had no
outward flash that would attract us to him if we saw him; he was not the type
of personality that sucked all the air out of the room when he showed up. I was
listening to a testimony of a minister who attended a ‘preacher’s convention’
he shared how he felt being in an environment where everyone spoke in a
baritone type voice, putting on a preachers garb/persona. How when the
pastor/preacher of a group showed up amongst the regular crowd, that there was
an expectation of the leaders persona to take over and become the central voice
in the group. While there are many well meaning men who fall into this
category, yet Jesus was someone who when you saw him was unpretentious, there
was no ‘beauty- outward persona’ that would attract you to him. Isaiah says he
was acquainted with grief and was not respected, as he bore the problems and
failures of others he remained faithful to intercede for the transgressors. God
would give him a portion with the great men because he was faithful in obscurity;
many judged his difficulties as being a sign that God rejected him. He would
make no effort to hide his trials, contrary to the media image that the modern
church presents. Jesus was truly a Lamb led to the slaughter who would not open
his mouth or defend himself when maligned, his entire style of leadership goes
contrary to what we see in the modern day. You read in the New Testament that
certain authorities were excited when they found out that Jesus would appear
before them, thinking ‘wow, here’s my chance to see him perform’ type of a
thing. Yet they would be let down because Jesus didn’t play that game, he was
not seeking an audience. I like this chapter a lot, it makes us re-think many
of the things we do in our day, things that we associate with ‘successful
ministry’ I think Jesus’ pattern is the way to go.
(1284) FOR A LAW SHALL PROCEED
FROM ME AND I WILL MAKE MY JUDGMENT TO REST FOR A LIGHT OF THE PEOPLE Isaiah
51:5 I found out last week that one of
my friends converted to Islam, he spent some time in New Jersey jails and
rehabs and the Muslim influence is strong in Jersey. He explained to a friend
how ‘God doesn’t share his glory’ and that he was taught that the Christian
view of Jesus violates this truth. First, it would take too much time to
overview the entire history of various beliefs and questions on different
expressions of the Trinity, suffice it to say that there have been Christian
groups from the first century up until today who have had difficulties with the
Orthodox expression of the Trinity. I am Trinitarian, but understand how these
various groups have had difficulty. Just to name a few; the Ethiopian Orthodox
churches reject Trinitarian language. The Oriental Christian churches in
general reject the language. The invading barbarians who attacked the Roman
Empire were eventually converted to a form of Christianity that would reject
Trinitarian language. The great Blasé Pascal thought it to have been a false
teaching. I could go on and on with many groups who believed in God and Jesus
but did not accept strong Trinitarian language. The point being, if someone
thinks that all Christians hold the same views on the language, they are
mistaken. I wrote a letter to my friend who converted to Islam, I simply shared
the main difference between Christianity and Islam [and all religions], that
Christianity teaches forgiveness and acceptance with God as a gift that comes
thru the Atonement of Christ. Jesus died for men’s sins and rose again as a
sacrificial atonement for man, Islam has some well meaning teachings in it but
at the end of the day it is a religion that is legalistic. People attempt to
gain Gods favor thru their own efforts; this is opposed to the Christian view
of grace. I basically think it to be a red herring to use the language of the
Trinity as a reason to reject Christianity and become Muslim, as I already
stated there are many Christian groups who would agree with some of the issues
that Muslims raise; this does not deal with the fact that man cannot atone for
his own sins, man is unable thru any religious works to make himself right with
God. The ‘law that proceeds from God’ to the nations is a law based on grace,
not works. Paul calls it ‘the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus’
[Romans] he contrasts it with the law of works. Now the whole history of
Justification by faith and how different Christian groups see it is another
intramural war that rages within the church, N.T. Wright recently put out a
book on it, John Piper wrote one in defense of the historic Reformation view-
Wright’s view has some excellent points, but would be considered New
Perspective. So there are differences in the way Justification by Faith is
seen, but all groups agree that man is accepted by God based on the free gift
of Grace that comes thru the Cross. Yes, Catholics and Protestants agree with
this language, though there are other differences. The point today is I believe
we as believers need to make clear the differences between law based religions
and Christianity, Jesus offers free forgiveness based on his death burial and
resurrection. Law based religions might seem noble at the start, but at the end
of the day they lead to condemnation and frustration, they are a vain attempt
by man to make himself pleasing to God- an impossible task.
(1281) THE LORD HAS GIVEN ME THE
TONGUE OF THE WISE THAT I WOULD KNOW HOW TO SPEAK A WORD IN SEASON TO HIM THAT
IS WEARY…HE OPENS MY EAR IN THE MORNING- Isaiah 50. I was reading John 17
earlier and Jesus speaks about giving the words that the Father gave him, Jesus
then communicates these words of value to his men. Jesus says ‘these are yours
and yours are mine… you gave me these men out of the world and I have shared
with them your truth’. There is a Divine sense of value on the words that God
speaks. I read an article a while back written by a person who sold
documentaries to TV stations, the person shared how they presented a valuable
series of programs to one of the leading Christian stations. She was surprised
that the station said they were not interested and would never pay a
person/producer for a program. She explained to the station that these shows
were high quality and that she would normally get paid for these shows, but the
network said the only criteria they ever use is simply whether or not the
church/ministry pays the required amount for airtime, the station never decides
what to air based on quality. The person said they finally worked out a deal
where the station accepted the programs but would not pay for them; the
producer ran them for free. When we in the ‘Christian world’ operate along the
lines of simply speaking/teaching words based on whether or not people can pay
for the broadcast, then we are not even living up to the standards that the
secular world uses. The same goes for Christian ‘movies’ many are done on a
scale that’s quite frankly embarrassing. I rented a DVD a few months ago that
was promoted by a Christian network, I got it for the girls and had them watch
it. I asked them how it was, they said ‘it was okay dad, but you can tell it
was cheesy’. Now there are excellently done movies with Christian themes,
movies like ‘the mission’ with Robert
Deniro, or ‘Les Miserable’s’ with Liam Neesan, these are high quality
works of art. But much of what we call Christian broadcasting is simply the
broadcasting of church meetings, very limited stuff. I simply want to encourage
you today; God has given you a ‘set of words’ and a group of people that you
are to communicate these words to over your life. Jesus understood that he was
doing more than just 'giving sermons’ he was getting the specific message
across to the men that the father gave him out of the world, his ear was open
to hear what the father was saying and he spoke those words. Let’s reevaluate
what we as leaders/believers say and do, let’s strive for quality and be
sensitive to what we are communicating, if the level of Christian programming
that we are releasing is either low quality or low value [some high tech shows
still teach silly stuff!] then lets reevaluate the stuff and if necessary pull
some words back. It does no good to the minister/church or to the people when
we speak words that are not coming from the Father.
(1279) THE ROSE OF SHARON- Last
Sunday I tried to catch one of the services on TV that I watch every so often,
but when I checked the channel guide it wasn’t on. So instead of reading I
thought I would see if there was anything else on that would be profitable.
They were showing the classic movie ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ and I always try and
watch it annually. Back in New Jersey we read Steinbeck’s classic in high
school and I have the novel sitting here in my office. I asked the Lord to show
me something that would have some spiritual meaning, I focused on a few things-
Tom Joad [Henry Fonda] says about ‘preacher Casey’ [John Carradine] ‘He was a
lantern/light, he made us see things differently’ and the name of Toms younger
sister is ‘Rose a Sharon’. This term comes from the bible [Song of Solomon
chapter 2] and most preachers use the language to describe Christ and his bride
[the church]. So anyway I like the image of wild flowers and stuff, so it was
good. The last day or so one of the Christian TV stations has been broadcasting
some prophetic type meeting out of Kansas. I have written on these brothers
before and over the years there have been some interesting prophetic type signs
that I received from these guys. As I’m watching the meeting they are recalling
their ‘prophetic history’ and they share how one of the key images that was
given them thru a prophet was the image ‘Rose of Sharon’, I thought that was
cool. In Isaiah God says ‘I have engraven you on the palms of my hands, your
walls are continually before me’ ‘you will spring up like wildflowers/lilies
along the water ways’. God uses lots of ‘flower’ imagery when speaking of his
people. Paul uses the language of us being Gods garden. Jesus said he was the
vine and we are the branches. The verse in Song of Solomon says that the Rose
of Sharon is like the lily of the valley. God’s community of people are a
natural outgrowth of the message and life of the kingdom going forth into all
nations. We do a disservice at times when we [theologians/teachers] emphasize
that the church technically started on the day of Pentecost; I really don’t
disagree with this idea, I understand it was the day the Spirit birthed the
church in a sense, but the problem is we tend to neglect the actual style that
Jesus used when making disciples. That is Jesus is going around preaching the
kingdom, healing people, doing all these great kingdom works and he is
instilling in the disciples this free flowing mindset of simply sowing the seed
and allowing God to ‘make them grow’. Jesus even says in his parables that when
farmers plant seed, they sleep and rise day and night and the seed produces on
its own. The disciples ask him once ‘these other guys are using your name and
we forbid them because they are not part of our group’ and Jesus rebukes them
and tells them to leave them be. He was challenging the ‘ownership mentality’
the idea of ‘local church’ and ministry as being things that we own/oversee as
some sort of business enterprise. You never see Jesus trying to recruit
people’s loyalty in a way that modern church scenarios do in our day. He was
sending his men out to preach the kingdom, those who would believe and become
followers would be part of his kingdom- no need to create all sorts of ways to
tell people ‘if you are committed to this work/this vision- the vision of the
man of God who oversees this house’ all well intended language that is often
used to try and instill loyalty, but this type of mindset is really not seen in
this free flowing ‘wild flower’ ministry of Jesus. He knows his followers will
‘spring up like wild flowers along the waterways’ they will be like ‘lilies in
the valleys’ beautiful things that seem to spring up outside of the
constraining barriers of man. Sure the potted plants at Wal Mart have some
value, but then when you leave the store and see all the natural lilies
springing up along these roads and high ways, you think ‘wow, these things look
great and they need no maintenance and seem to be unstoppable’. The plants in
the garden centers are high maintenance, the ‘Rose’s of Sharon and lilies in
the valleys’ seem to have a life of their own.
(1277) These past few weeks I
have been adding a bunch of new verses to memory from Isaiah. Every so often I
will read chapters 40 thru the end of the book and I always see new stuff. This
morning I was reading the first few verses in chapter 49; the Lord is confirming
the special calling on Israel as well as speaking about the Messiah- ‘It is a
small thing to me to use you to restore the nation of Israel, I will also give
you as a light to the Gentiles’ Paul uses this quote in Acts [I think it’s
Paul]. One of the responses of Israel to seeing the truth of Messiah is ‘I have
labored in vain; all the years of my efforts were worthless’ [these are all my
own paraphrasing]. I find this interesting, Paul says the same thing in the
letter to the Philippians, after his conversion and revelation of the grace of
God he actually viewed all of his previous efforts to advance what he thought
was Gods cause, he now saw his own energies under the law as vain. He called
them ‘dung’ his efforts at trying to produce a self righteousness were working
against the actual grace of God. Often times in ministry we believe that the
key to success is much effort ‘try harder’ ‘if we just had more money Gods work
would get done’. One of the great dichotomies of the kingdom is that our efforts
often work against Gods purpose, this is not to say we shouldn’t work and
function for Gods kingdom, it’s just not a matter of self effort. This passage
in Isaiah also talks about Jesus being despised and hated with a passion, yet
he will touch kings and nations. A previous chapter says ‘men of stature shall
come over to thee- you will influence kings and princes’ God will give us great
influence to touch nations and kings, but we need to also embrace the words of
Jesus in Johns’ gospel ‘how can you please God, you who are trying to please
men- spending energy on the glory that comes from being recognized by man’. Let
all our efforts be based upon the grace of God, this thing is not about us or
are gifts being put under the spotlight, it’s about entering into the true
purposes of God and ceasing from our own labors ‘trust in the Lord with all
your heart and lean not unto thine own understanding’ we often lean too heavily
on our own understanding.
(1274) VISION FOR THE CITY? As
I’m doing the Kings study I have also been reading Isaiah, they kinda fit
because in Isaiah God uses the prophet to rebuke and correct his people; in
Kings we see Gods actual correction. In Isaiah 48 God tells his people ‘I
showed you the future before it happened, I am doing new things with you; these
are things that never existed until right now. I am revealing things to you for
the first time ever; no one has seen these things before’. God really gives
them some great promises, he also tells them ‘don’t you think I foresaw all the
sins and mistakes you were going to make? I knew that you were going to be
stubborn and not listen, I chose you anyway- not as some favor to you, but
because this whole thing was my purpose from the start’ [my paraphrasing]. Over
the years my thinking has changed/grown in certain areas, I remember a time
when it was popular to focus on the ‘destiny of your city’. Many books written
on the subject, studying the history of your city and looking for clues to Gods
purpose. Now I want to be careful here, I do believe in the concept of God
wanting to use his people to have a real impact on society, God does want our
cities and nations to experience him. But now as I look back I feel some of the
over emphasis on our cities was a little off balance. it was common to
read/hear ‘what is happening now in our city [any name can fit] has happened
before in other places on the earth, we are now living in a time of
unbelievable destiny’ and yet as you looked at the actual scene, things pretty
much were chugging along at the same pace as years gone by. In the New
Testament you never see this type of emphasis on your particular city, there is
a transitional mindset that went from ‘natural Jerusalem’ [your actual city
where you live] to the New Jerusalem that comes down from God out of heaven
[the church/people of God]. So instead of Paul writing letters to the churches
and saying ‘you have no idea how great a destiny God has for
Corinth/Ephesus/Philippi’ you read what a great purpose God has for those who
name the name of Christ who live in these areas. So you see some excitement
over what God is doing in these cities, but the actual emphasis is on the
spiritual development of the communities of God dwelling in them. Got it? I say
all this not to ‘pop anyone’s bubble’ so to speak, I just think we need to
rethink some of the excitement that comes along with wanting God to work in our
cities. God told his people he was going to do some awesome things thru them,
he was going to show them things that no one has seen before- he would
establish purposes and ministries that he had planned long before we were ever
born. Just don’t confuse natural Jerusalem with spiritual Jerusalem. Earthly
kingdoms and nations [and yes cities] will all pass away, but we are receiving
a kingdom that cannot be removed, we are being built into a habitation for God,
we look for a city that hath foundations whose builder and maker is God
[Hebrews].
(1272) THE O’RIELLY FACTOR- The
other day as I drove past the auto store O’Reilly’s I had the sense that I
would be going there soon. In the old days I used to do all my own work on the
junker cars I purchased. I remember many days in Kingsville going to every auto
store in town, I used to frequent a little rinky dink place called ‘GAF auto’.
They had a real nice older Mexican brother named Red; he always helped find me
just the right part in their disorganized store. So any way my daughter’s
radiator on the Mustang had a few problems and I managed to take off the
overflow reservoir and patch the leak. But then the electric fan motor [I hate
them!] would not turn on. I actually replaced the fan motor a few years back
and was not sure what the problem was. I told my wife ‘Look, I am not going to
start replacing stuff [like the old days] until I hit the jackpot, this time
you guys need to take it to the shop’. I am trying to get away from doing stuff
like this nowadays. So she looks on line and says ‘it might be the resistor’
[type of fuse]. As I pull out these fuses you really can’t tell if their bad or
not so I think one sounds bad as I shake it. I am also trying to check the
connections themselves to see if I loosened one when fixing the reservoir. So
any way I really can’t tell what’s wrong, I’m running the engine to see if the
fan will turn on and messing with everything. I go into the garage to look if I
have the repair book for this car [1998 mustang]. I have bought books over the
years for the various vehicles we have owned but couldn’t find one for this car
[I have one for my 66 mustang but not for a 98]. As I pull the books off of a
top shelf a resistor falls down. It says ‘ford’ on it and it looks like the
part I’m looking for. As I think back I must have replaced them when I
originally changed the fan motor a few years ago and I guess I kept a good one.
So I stick it in and sure enough it’s fixed. What are the odds that this loose
part just happened to fall down off a shelf? Red would have been proud of me. I
bought these original parts at O’Reilly’s auto a few years ago; I guess the
lord was telling me I would be fixing a car with an O’Reilly part soon. In
Isaiah God says ‘ask me about the future of my sons, concerning the work of my
hands command me’ ‘these people I have formed for myself, they will show forth
my praise’ ‘before stuff happens I show it to you, before it springs forth I
reveal it’. God is telling us ‘look, I am the one who has brought you to the
place where you are at today; I have guided your steps. I have the power to
manipulate the environment to give you a favorable outcome- you have not chosen
me but I have chosen you and ordained you that you should go and bring forth
fruit and that it will last’ God is on our side, even little things like
allowing a part to fall off of a shelf in the nick of time, God does stuff like
this. I want to encourage all of our leaders who read this blog, be sensitive
to the little ‘impressions’ God gives you on the journey, they might not seem
significant at the time, but God does speak to us in simple ways. Look for the
confirmation on stuff, I was really ready to give up on the car but I knew the
lord had impressed ‘auto shop’ on my mind just a few days earlier, I had no
idea how the details would work out but knew that God had spoken in this
seemingly minor way. God is the one who brought us here, he will help with the
little [and big] stuff along the way.
(1265) Almost finished Brian
McLaren’s ‘everything must change’ as is my habit let me close my comments
before I read the last chapter or 2. First, I really agree with Brian’s stance
on challenging western capitalism; he does it in a way that simply holds true
to the biblical ethos of ‘beware of covetousness, for a man’s life does not
consist in the abundance of the things he possesses’ [Jesus]. Yesterday I went
thru around 5 news papers that built up at my doorstep this past week, if I
don’t read them the day they come I try and go thru them on Saturday in one
lump sum. I read some articles on the world’s poor, that every 6 seconds a
child starves to death somewhere in the world; how there are a little over 1
billion people on the planet today who are malnourished. How many of the
countries who can’t feed their people are paying back interest payments to the
rich countries who lent them money. These kids starve because the country must
pay the interest! In Isaiah God tells us often that one of the main functions
of the church is to do justice; to speak out and also act in society as a plumb
line. Too many times the American church has been aligned with a political
ideology and has defended that view at the expense of doing what is just. As I
close my comments on McLaren, I agree 100 % with him on these issues and
appreciate his willingness to be branded as some ‘loony liberal’ for speaking
out. I also would disagree on Brian’s seemingly ‘low church view’ when it comes
to the classic doctrines of Christianity [Atonement, Original sin, etc.] There
is a tendency among believers to either reject everything a person says, or
accept everything he says; In Brian's case I think we should take what is good and
leave the bad alone.
(1261) THE ALABASTER MAN- The
other day my daughter was telling us a funny story, how she was looking for her
pizza pan and asked her fiancé if he knew what happened to it, he admitted that
he used it to cover a hole in the yard to keep the dogs from getting out. She
was recounting the story to my wife and saying ‘just like dad used to do’. Boy
did they get a laugh, I felt like rebuking them for not honoring their elder,
but as I contemplated my best defense I realized that right now there sits one
of my wife’s baking pans on top of the chimney on the roof, tied with bailing
wire to keep the rain out; I figured I would just let it slide. I have been
reading Isaiah along with the Kings study we are doing, Isaiah 40 thru the end
has been one of the most prophetic portions of scripture for me in my own
personal life. ‘I will make you like a new threshing instrument having teeth,
you will thresh [cut apart] the mountains and beat them small; the wind shall
carry them away’ ‘who raised up the righteous man from the east, called him to
his foot and gave the nations before him; he will rule over kings’ ‘the voice
of one crying in the wilderness, make straight in the desert a highway for our
God’ I like all these verses, they have given me direction over the years. Here
at my house I have a few things that I kept from my childhood, one of the
mementos is a 1 inch figurine of an oriental wise man that is made out of
Alabaster, I simply call it ‘the Alabaster man’. My dad bought it for me when I
was around 10 years old; he used to take me over to the city [New York] and
when we went to China Town one year he bought it for me. I have it in the yard
next to a prayer area where I pray. I also have written various verses all over
my yard, on the wooden fence and on my gazebo, it does look a little trashy but
my wife learned to live with it. The verses ‘his fan is in his hand’ ‘before it
happened I showed it to you’ are from Isaiah, one of the verses is right next
to this man, as I was looking at the verse ‘before it happened I showed it to
you’ I realized that this statue of the sage [wise man] has a fan in one hand
and a staff in the other, these images have been significant to me, I have been
praying with a staff in my hand for many years. I just never really noticed the
little fan in the hand; I felt like the Lord was simply confirming these many
various promises, I bought this statue in New York City when I was a boy, the
wise man represents authority and these past few years we have been reaching
into the New York City area in a greater way than ever before. In essence the
Lord gave me a wise man from New York with a staff and fan in his hand, years
before I would ever even contemplate anything along these lines. Isaiah said
‘before it happened I showed it to you, so when it would come to pass you would
know that it was my work, not yours’.
(1258) WHAT LASTS? - These past
few weeks while praying early in the mornings, I have been meditating on verses
like ‘the steps/paths of a good man are ordered by the Lord and he delights in
his way’. David said he desired to always dwell in Gods ‘tabernacle’, while
thinking on these verses I felt like the Lord was speaking to me about the
effects we have, the planting of his word in regions. I even began thinking
about the fact that we will die, and the people we minister to will pass away,
but in some sense the words we taught will remain. In essence the thing that
will last is the gospel and truth that is sown, not the institutions, or even
the people, but the word. Now John says because we have the word in us we will
abide forever, that is the word of God will raise the dead up some day and they
will endure forever; but it’s the word of truth that is lasting. So anyway I
felt like the Lord was directing me to read Isaiah, I read the first 10 verses
of chapter 40 and the theme goes like this ‘all flesh is like grass, it will
pass away; but the word of God endures forever’ basically exactly what God was
speaking to me. This section also speaks of John the Baptist ‘prepare the way
of the Lord, make a straight highway/path for him in the desert’ this was along
the lines of ‘creating a path/ place for God’s word to flow’. Isaiah also has
the famous verse ‘you will be called the restorer of paths to dwell in’. I felt
like God was telling us to lay down some paths, have consistent areas where you
faithfully teach and speak truth and these areas will ‘abide forever’ that is
your impact will affect many generations to come. Right after the 16th
century Reformation you had what is referred to as the Enlightenment, or the
‘age of reason’. Many thinkers began to challenge the institutional church [and
institutions in general] and believed that reason and rationality would lead
the way. In France [1700’s] Paris became a center of thinking for these Deists.
These men were smart enough to realize that the total denial of God was too
ridiculous to accept, they instead embraced Deism. Deism is a type of belief
that said God started the ball rolling, but he left the rest on auto pilot; the
same belief that the Greek philosophers embraced. Now, one of the famous
‘Philosphes’ [sic] was a man by the name of Voltaire, he is well-known as an
infamous atheist today, but he did not totally reject God. These men did have
tremendous influence and they produced the French Encyclopedias which backed up
their cause. Eventually they would overthrow the Catholic Church and kill the
king in their mad rush towards ‘reason’. They were wrong on their basic
understanding of reason and rationality as they applied it to the church. They
believed that rational thought meant
‘naturalistic thought’ that is in order for things to be rational, they
could not be supernatural. They were wrong, in fact those who would later take
the next step into full atheism would deny the laws of reason and logic all
together. I saw Richard Dawkins do an interview the other day, he is one of the
popular atheists of our day. These men who reject God accept a view of creation
that violates the laws of logic; they teach/believe that all things came from
‘no-thing’ a scientific impossibility. This idea violates the law of ‘reason’
known as the law of ‘non contradiction’. This law states that a thing cannot be
and ‘not be’ at the same time and in the same relationship. For all things to
have come from nothing [self creation] would mean that all things created
itself. It would have to 'have been’ before it was. This common system of
belief is absolutely irrational, even though the atheist believes it to be
rational. To believe that God is a self existent being who created all things
does not violate the laws of logic, you might think it does, but it doesn’t.
For someone to have existed forever does not violate the classic laws of logic.
So these thinkers who thought that their rejection of God was ‘rational’ were
in fact wrong. Their ideas led to effects that were horrendous, they in effect
‘planted seed’ [bad doctrines] that would outlast them and their generation,
their bad ideas had bad consequences. But the truth of God and his kingdom have
also been ‘planted’ in the world, these
seeds will last forever. If you want to effect society for good, then plant the
seeds that will have an eternal impact, for ‘he that does the will of God will
abide forever’ [1st John].
(228)In Isaiah 41 it speaks of ‘God
raising up the righteous man from the east and giving nations to him, coming
upon princes like mortar, the coastlands shall wait for his law’ [paraphrasing
from memory]. Then it says ‘the islands feared and every man strengthened
themselves and propped up each others idols’. There have been other significant
seasons in the Body of Christ where the Lord dealt with many of these issues.
The natural response was for the larger national ministries who propagate these
doctrines to ‘prop each other up’. To simply use the tremendous financial store
[which they do have!] to defend each other. This was not only a wrong defense
of people out of ‘self preservation’ but much of the money that was used to
‘push back’ the reproof actually came from Christians who give sacrificially to
these ministries. I couldn’t give in clear conscience to a ministry whose main
leaders are making around $500,000 to a million a year from the offerings of
many low-income people. But the point is there is a natural response to ‘join
hands and strengthen each others idols’ because you know you are all ‘in the
same boat’. This response is unfortunate, but it does happen!
(236)Just reading Isaiah 42, it says
God anointed Jesus [and the Body of Christ] to bring forth judgment. He shall
not cry nor cause his voice to be heard [self promotion]. He shall bring forth
judgment unto truth. He will open blind eyes and show people aspects of truth
that they have never seen before. The ‘coastlands’ shall wait to hear the word the
Lord will speak. They will be ‘fascinated’ by the Spirits ministry. The Lord
will go forth ‘like a mighty man, he will shout like a woman in labor’. For a
long time he held his peace, but finally said ‘it is enough, I cant sit by
silently and let this go on’. Those that trust in graven images [idolatry- the
old testament equal to covetousness] will be greatly ashamed and distressed.
They will see themselves being reproved and corrected like never before. God’s
people are like prey, they were ‘preyed upon’ and used as guinea pigs in the
laboratories of men’s doctrines. None delivered, none said RESTORE! God will
dry up their pools [the polluted sources that were making them sick. The
ministries and avenues of ministry that were hurting them] God does all these
things with the purpose of restoring and bringing us back to the Cross. God
says I will not give my glory to graven images [men’s hearts rejoicing in
materialism] but thru this whole process you will feel disoriented. Many of the
leaders and sources of the past ‘will dry up’. God will begin to feed you again
like the early days. You will hear his voice again, like at the beginning!
NOTE: This chapter also says the Lord will roar like a Lion. I have spoken a
lot on this blog about the imagery of the ‘Lion of Judah’ there are prophecies
I have read this last year that spoke of the Lord roaring thru us,
disintegrating obstacles. I feel the ‘roar of the Lion’ can be the prophetic
‘roar’ coming forth from the prophets at this season in the Church.
(282) Reading
Isaiah 44. The Lord says the people made idols out of that which God provided
for their sustenance, that is Gods resource to them [trees in Isaiah, money and
Gods provision now]. They ‘deck it with
gold’ [in Jeremiah?] they worship that which God gave as provision and made it
their God. They ‘prayed to it’ and saw it as the answer to their dilemma [if we
just had this transference of wealth we could accomplish our mission!] They
became just like that which they worshipped. Their idols were blind and deaf
and dumb. They became blind [unable to perceive] deaf [unable to hear reproof]
and dumb [God took away their voice from society, the church at large]. Because
of their worship of the idols they ‘became foolish in their understanding and
were ashamed’ their foolishness was seen by all [many even from the secular
media have said ‘how can you think Jesus was this money focused mega star, he
was a carpenters son!’ Even Larry king, a Jewish talk show host said this about
the modern money preachers] HE FEEDETH ON ASHES, A DECIEVED HEART HATH TURNED
HIM ASIDE The fact that they ‘fed’ off of their own shallow belief system,
caused them to become shallow in their understanding of scripture, unable to
see the most obvious things! GOD FRUSTRATED THOSE WHO WERE LYING AND TURNED
THESE WISE MEN BACKWARD AND MADE THEIR KNOWLEDGE FOOLISH and at the end God
forgave those who were willing to repent and he restored them. First comes
strong rebuke, but then a true restoration to the original purpose of God.
NOTE: It says they fell down and worshipped THE STOCK OF A TREE paper money is
made from the ‘stock of a tree’ the way you worship something is by seeing that
thing as your goal, confession, desire. Just thinking about it gives you great
satisfaction. You spend a great amount of your thought life strategizing and
dreaming about making more of it. It’s a deadly pursuit. Jesus says you don’t
have time for God and mammon, the worship of mammon consumes too much time!
NOTE It also says that a judgment on those who are held captive by
idolatry/covetousness is they are unable to see the most obvious things in
scripture. One of the strangest things I have seen from the more extreme
prosperity brothers is the inability to read the passages of scripture that
PLAINLY deal with covetousness and to SEE what these passages are saying. I
heard a brother teach on 1st Timothy 6 [both a local brother and 2
national ones] I guess they were getting some heat from guys like me who tell
people that 1st Timothy 6 totally deconstructs the modern prosperity
gospel. When they were done trying to teach the chapter they were making it say
the exact opposite of the plain meaning of Paul’s words. Paul in Timothy warns
Timothy about a ‘coming’ group of preachers who will teach that gain is
godliness. At one point Paul says FLEE THESE THINGS AND INSTEAD LAY HOLD ON
ETERNAL LIFE. The context of this passage was explained by a prosperity guy to
mean Paul was telling Timothy to ‘lay hold of abundant material wealth’ he
exegetes the word ‘eternal life’ and showed that one of the definitions speaks
of ‘wealth in every area’ he then made the conclusion that Paul told Timothy to
‘lay hold of wealth’ This brother didn’t see that when you exegete [study the
meaning] of a word you can find many different definitions that apply at
different times [Jesus says ‘save a sheep’ or a coin in his parables. This is
the same word for ‘save a soul’ in salvation. The text shows you that Jesus
isn’t saying ‘save’ in the same way when he talks about sheep and humans] this
basic mistake caused the prosperity guy to take the actual warnings in
scripture that deal with covetousness and made it teach covetousness. I have
seen this twisted interpretation over and over again from many of these guys.
This is a judgment from God on those who choose to preach a wealthy Jesus. God
says those who distort his Sons image are committing idolatry. One of the
judgments on those who commit idolatry is that there wisdom becomes
foolishness; they are held captive by their own distorted views. I do pray that
these brothers would repent from this stuff. I have personally sent them books
and things over the years. It’s just it got to a point where they refuse
reproof and we are now at a stage where we are trying to keep a whole new
generation of believers from going down this path.
(289)Reading Isaiah again, some stuff
from chapter 45. God says his anointing subdues nations [large regions] looses
Kings [leaders] from captivity [things that they didn’t even know were holding
them back]. God goes before his anointed
and breaks in pieces the gates and bars that people trusted would protect their
borders [territory]. WOE TO THOSE WHO STRIVE WITH THEIR MAKER some will fight
back against what God is doing and it will be harmful to them. Pride will cause
them to see the reproof as ‘Oh, it's those critics again’ not realizing that
this time certain things have come full circle and the Lord will not let
certain things stand anymore. Those whom God anoints will LET GO THE CAPTIVES,
NOT FOR PRICE OR REWARD there only motivation is to free the people and finish
the purpose of God. THEY SHALL GO TO CONFUSION TOGETHER THAT ARE MAKERS OF
IDOLS In the past when they were reproved they were able to ‘whether out the
storm’ but not this time. They go into confusion together this time; the only
hope is to finally truly address these same rebukes they have heard thru out
their lives. I HAVE NOT SPOKEN IN SECRET, OR IN A DARK PLACE God says I have
made these things plain, the only thing preventing many from changing is
spiritual pride. LOOK UNTO ME ALL THE ENDS OF THE EARTH/ EVERY KNEE SHALL BOW
AND EVERY TONGUE CONFESS all people involved will find harmony and peace when
there is mutual submission to the Lord ship of Christ. All will bow! MEN OF
STATURE SHALL COME OVER TO THEE AND THEY SHALL BE THINE Some influential
Kingdom leaders will be persuaded this time around. They themselves have
questioned many of these things but this time they know for sure which path to
take.
(299)Some things from Isaiah 46. THE
IDOLS WERE UPON THE BEASTS, THEY ARE A BURDEN TO THE BEAST Idols wear you down,
they put the responsibility on you to change your world. Sooner or later they
will weigh you down. I HAVE MADE AND I WILL CARRY YOU AND DELIVER YOU True
Christianity puts the ‘burden’ on God to pull us thru. HIS YOKE IS EASY AND
BURDEN LIGHT THEY TAKE GOLD OUT OF THE
BAG, AND WEIGH SILVER IN THE BALANCE. THEY HIRE A GOLDSMITH AND HE MAKES IT
INTO A GOD God will not let this stand CALLING A RAVENOUS BIRD FROM THE EAST,
THE MAN THAT EXECUTETH MY COUNSEL FROM A FAR COUNTRY. I HAVE SPOKEN IT AND I
WILL BRING IT TO PASS. I HAVE PURPOSED IT AND I WILL DO IT HEARKEN UNTO ME YE
STUBBORN OF HEART God says this time around I will perform my purpose to bring
true reform. Many times you have been reproved and shown the error of idolatry,
you have for the most part ignored it and have not allowed for true
reformation. This will not stand any longer. The people are tired of the burden
it brings and they will flee to God so he can ‘carry them’. NOTE: I have
memorized the ‘ravenous bird from the east’ for over 20 yrs. I always took it
personal. Coming from the east and all. ‘Blinded by the light’ song says
‘preacher from the east’. American Pie from Don McLean says ‘the 3 Men I admire
most, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, they took the last train for the coast’
you have the train imagery and the coast. And the image from the gospel of John
on ‘in my fathers house are many mansions’ speaks of people groups. Well
Springstein says ‘ every body’s out on the road tonight in a last chance power
drive, took highway nine to the mansions of glory’ I have driven highway 9, as
you can tell I still like the old songs!
(309)ISAIAH 47 Here this, thou that
are given to pleasures [who see Christianity as a means to self indulgence,
getting more and more] You who say ‘I shall never suffer the loss of children’
[those who have followed our belief system will always remain faithful to us]
Thy wisdom and thy knowledge have perverted thee [the intricate systems of
teaching and the lengths that you have gone to in order to get around plain
scripture] stand now with all the formulas and gimmicks that you have performed
from your early days, see if they will replace true repentance and open turning
back towards the truth. Thus shall be all those who you have merchandised with
from your youth, every one shall wander to his quarter [try to find refuge in
abiding only in those groups who agree with the distorted views that have been
perpetrated on the saints] none shall save thee [you will find that all the assurances
of the past will no longer work. The obvious error that has been passed down
from the leaders who have gone off course will be very plain to the new
generation of believers that God is raising up. Many of the ‘children’ with
love and respect for their ‘fore fathers’ will choose faithfulness to the Lord
over carrying the ‘torch’ for the fathers of their movements. God will save the
day!]
(324)ISAIAH 48 ‘ hear this O house of Jacob [my people
listen] which sware by my name, but not in truth [you say JESUS IS LORD but are
denying my image constantly] I have declared these things before, these things
went forth out of my mouth many times over your life. I knew you were stubborn
and would not listen the first time I warned you. I have now once again showed you
‘hidden things’. I knew you would deal deceitfully, and were called a
transgressor from the start. For my sake I will hold back my anger and give you
another chance to make it right. I have chosen to correct you in the furnace of
affliction. I know it’s hard, but how can I continue to let my name be
polluted. [You use my name and say ‘Jesus is Lord’ and I have no idea who this
image belongs to that you confess!] I have raised up the ‘spirit of prophecy’
[thru many, not just one voice!] I will make HIS WAY PROSPEROUS. I am the Lord
thy God which TEACHETH THEE TO PROFIT [godliness with contentment is very
profitable, but they that seek wealth come to confusion] O that thou hast
listened to me before, your peace would have been like a river. There is no peace
saith God to the wicked [wicked is a word that denotes a ‘twisting’ {wicker}
when you twist scripture and the truth of Jesus Christ there is no peace. God
knew from the beginning that many would take this path. He chooses to call them
to repentance so they will now have peace like a river. True peace in
God.] NOTE: I remember when I used to
regularly watch the brother from the Forth
Worth area. He did a whole week or so on finances, and he would end the prayer
by praying to ‘our great Lord and financier’ I thought of the verses where the
brothers are fighting over their inheritance and they ask Jesus to settle their
financial dispute. Jesus says ‘who made me a judge over you in these matters’.
Jesus was saying ‘who taught you to come to me in this way and view me as your
financier; I am not here to settle your financial disputes. I am hear to
fulfill the purpose of my Father’. No mountain will stand in the way this time,
even one who calls himself ‘eagle mountain’. THOU HAST HEARD, SEE ALL THIS. AND
WILL NOT YE DECLARE IT. I HAVE CALLED YOU, I HAVE SPOKEN THRU YOU AND I SHALL
MAKE YOUR WAY PROSPEROUS.
(367)Isaiah 49- ‘The Lord called me from birth, he made
mention of my name from my mothers womb. He hath made my mouth like a sharp
sword, in the shadow of his hand hath he hid me’ God combines ‘hiding’ with
authority. Elijah not only had a strong prophetic ministry, he also had the
ability to go in hiding for 3.5 years. ‘Then said I, I have labored in vain’ in
context this is speaking of Israel ’s
national re birth at the 2nd coming. She says ‘I labored in vain’ in
the context of ‘laboring under law’. At the appearing of Christ she will
realize she spent thousands of years trying to legalistically gain Gods
approval when all the ‘work/labor’ had already been done. ‘Your warfare is
accomplished and sin forgiven’ [we will read this later on in Isaiah]. ‘Thus
saith the Lord to him whom men despise, nations hate and a servant to rulers.
Kings [leaders] shall see new things and rise. Princes also shall worship’ I
see this as a type of God giving authority to those who have felt rejection. If
you want authority to influence ‘kings’ then you will experience rejection on a
large scale. ‘I will contend with him who contends with thee and save your
children’ the fact that you are being ‘contended with’ is a sure sign that you
are ‘birthing children’ winning people to the true cause of Christ.
(385)A few things from Isaiah ‘I have
seen your ways and will heal you, I will restore comforts unto you and to your
mourners’ I spoke on the Cross a few entries back. One of the hard things was
Jesus would say to the disciples ‘you must also take up the cross and follow
me’. A central area of identifying with Christ was going thru the Cross. This
is a difficult thing. There are times in life where all seems to be going well.
You have your life organized and happy. The ‘dose’ of Christianity that you
have embraced is just strong enough to insure that all your needs will be met.
You have the verses down and all. Then there comes some ‘strange’ preacher you
never heard of before. He seems to be a little different. He is speaking the
same language and all, it’s just different ‘Jesus spoke with authority, not
like the scribes’. The average people could really identify with him. He rubbed
the ‘elite’ class the wrong way. One of the main parts of his teaching was
those who were ‘well off’ now, would pay later. Yet the ‘poor’ would inherit
the earth. This didn’t sit well with the ‘well to do’. The religious leaders
were getting tired of him. Every time he opened his mouth it seemed like he was
teaching stuff that was right on, and it often reproved the systems of belief
that the average preacher was ‘hawking’ at the time. Then the day comes where
his zealous followers are going to prove to everybody that Jesus is the
Messiah, they have been waiting for a few years to be vindicated. Peter was
this ‘zealot’ type reformer who was tired of the oppression of Rome . Being treated as
some type of ‘illegal alien’. ‘You wait and see Rome , our Messiah has finally arrived. It was
even prophesied that he would deliver the Jews from Rome ’s oppression. Our day is here’. Then a
funny thing happened. The road to Jerusalem
is nearing, our vindication day. All the prophets spoke of the triumphal entry
of the Jewish King to take David’s throne. This obviously will be fulfilled in Jerusalem , the city of the
great King [David]. Well as the day approached, Jesus started talking about
death and leaving us. We couldn’t grasp what he was saying. We gave everything
to him; we looked like fools following him against the opinions of the
preachers of our day. Jesus doesn’t seem to understand we can’t have him dieing
now. It will ruin our ‘day of getting even’ with all those who spoke against
us. If he dies now we will feel like we have allowed the enemies to win. We
want to win! Then they remember the teachings of Jesus. He told them the Cross
was not just something he would experience. He told them a day was coming where
they too would identify with him in this process. A day of humiliation and
defeat. Those who would experience it would be different on the other side.
Peter swallows hard and readies himself. “Though all the others forsake you, I
wont’’ He even cuts off the ear of one of the company who come to take Jesus. A
very brave thing to do, knowing your out numbered and all. I guess he really
wanted to show that he was willing to die this day. But this wasn’t his day to
die. Then the hour comes. Jesus begged the Father if there was another way
please help me find it. He determines to allow the Cross to take full course.
He sees Peter cursing and denying him. Peter tastes it too. They drive the
nails thru his hands and prop him up over this hillside. It looks like
something out of Hollywood
‘the place of the skull’. Something strange happens. The sky turns dark. It’s
eerie, the people were just making fun of him and now they are terrified. One
of the others being crucified that day decides to ask Jesus if he could be with
him in Paradise . Jesus has so much on his
plate right now. The ‘weight of the world’ and yet has time to pray for him.
‘Today you will be with me in Paradise ’ still
putting others first. As the sky darkens the earth shakes. Later we find out
that the tombs of believers broke open from this event and after the resurrection
many saints rose from the dead and were seen witnessing in the area! A Roman
guard is seeing all this, he sees this strange religious leader cry out to his
God ‘O my God why did it come to this. You have forsaken me. Into your hands I
commit my spirit’ the soldier simply says ‘truly this man was the Son of God’.
He is taken down and put in a tomb. Others will come who will teach that Jesus
was part of the ‘aristocracy’ that he was from the ‘rich class’. They put him
in a ‘rich mans tomb’ but it had to be donated! His followers are distraught.
Especially Peter. Peter was thinking ‘what have I done, I cant believe the
weakness of my flesh. All that I worked for in this revolution is now lost. I
will be remembered as the one who failed. My image is forever stained’. Jesus
appears to the women who were his followers after the resurrection. A strange
thing for sure. If someone were writing this story and it was all made up, you
wouldn’t have Jesus going first to the women. It would take away from the
‘believability’ of the story. 1st century Rome
was a bit ‘patriarchal’ you know. The women are amazed. Jesus did it. ‘Go tell
the disciples I am alive. Especially Peter. I know he gave it all he could to
not deny me. But it had to happen. It was part of his Cross’. They go and tell
the others. The disciples will go on and found the greatest religious movement
known to man. Peter will gain his boldness back. History even tells us that
when they crucified him he asked to be killed upside down, because he wasn’t
worthy to die like his King. They finished well. God restored comforts unto
Jesus and to his mourners. But first the Cross. NOTE: The martyrdom of Peter.
Jesus tells Peter one time ‘where I am going [the Cross] you cannot follow me
at this time. Later you will follow me, but your time has not come yet’. Jesus
knew it was necessary for Peter’s denial to still take place. Peter had an
‘appointment’ with failure. Peters desire was to be a martyr for the cause. He
was a ‘zealot’ a political activist of his day who would have been willing to
die for freedom. He tried to show this at the point when they came to take
Jesus. The act of cutting off the ear of a Roman soldier is something that you
get executed for. The 1st century means of execution was the Cross.
Peter actually took a step towards martyrdom with this act. Jesus interrupted
the process by miraculously putting the guys ear back on! Its like Peter wanted
death, but Jesus already told him it wasn’t yet time. You find Peter after
Pentecost preaching to the Jews in such a way that it seemed like he was back
to the ‘martyrdom complex’. He says things that could very well get him killed.
It’s like he can’t wait to pass thru the ‘tunnel’. When the day finally comes
he does get crucified upside down. He never really overcame the guilt of his
initial denial. He still felt unworthy over what he did. The early church had a
‘movement’ where Christians were wanting to get martyred. They read verses like
the one in Hebrews 11 that says ‘those who are martyred receive a better
resurrection’ so this group of ‘Christian zealots’ were actually doing things
to get executed for the faith. The early church fathers/Bishops had to put a
stop to it. These guys were like Peter after the resurrection! There was a real
sense of ‘I want to get killed for the faith’ that some of these brothers had.
What a contrast to today’s gospel. We appeal to people by telling them your
gonna get rich if you follow Christ. Things will be great. We seem to appeal to
the flesh of people. The early followers knew if they embraced the faith that
there was a chance that you might get killed.
(391)‘As many as were astonished at
you, so shall you sprinkle many nations. Kings shall shut their mouths at you.
They will see things they have never seen before. They will consider things
that they never considered before’ rough quote from Isaiah. Chapter 50
something? I felt like God was saying he is going to produce things from the
shattering of our lives. The ‘broken pot’ imagery. He will bring forth things
from the act of ‘crucifixion’ that could not be produced in a thousand years of
our own intellectual capacity. Our gifts and talents don’t produce. The ‘grain’
of wheat must fall into the ground and die. They said of Jesus once ‘this is a
hard saying, who can receive it’ I guess those for whom it is meant.
(396)Some things from Isaiah 53. ‘He
is despised and rejected of men, we hid our faces from him’. Funny thing, never
did or said a single wrong thing. Theologically correct 100 % of the time. How
did we view him? We HID from him when we saw him coming. The gossip was so bad
about him we couldn’t even face him. ‘We esteemed him not’. We said ‘I don’t
care who he thinks he is, do you know what I heard’? ‘He was wounded for us,
bruised for us. The price to obtain the things that would bring us peace was on
him’ all the things that caused us to look down upon him were actually part of
the price he had to pay for our benefit! ‘He was oppressed and afflicted, yet
he opened not his mouth, he was like a silent lamb being killed’ I don’t have
what it takes to be silent when I am being talked about. There was a sort of
oppression that kept coming against Jesus. It was like men will keep doing
whatever it takes to ‘get to him’. Pilate says ‘don’t you know I might actually
have you put to death’ they kept pushing all the buttons. What was it again
that they found wrong with him? O yes, he said ‘I am the Son of God’ in so many
words. That’s right, now I remember. The great crime that led us to this point
of killing him was HE TOLD US THE TRUTH! ‘He did no violence, nor was there
ever any deceit in his mouth’ I cant say the same about me. ‘Yet it pleased the
Father to bruise him, HE HATH DONE THIS TO HIM’ it’s so hard to comprehend
this. You are not only allowing these things, but actually doing them by your
great purpose! I thought any thing like this was the work of the devil. I
thought I was suffering because of something I did wrong. I have been trying to
get out of this difficulty. Everyone today preaches ‘if he were from God surely
this wouldn’t be happening’. ‘He will see of the pain in my soul, by his
knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many’ the things I will bring
forth from your pain will ‘justify’ [bring into alignment] many. The pain
first! ‘I will divide him a portion with the great [he will share the fruits
with many well known people, those who thrive on fame]. He will divide the
goods with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death. He bare the sin
of many and made intercession for the transgressors’ in the midst of this
personal turmoil he was faithful to continue interceding for others. He did
like Job who ‘prayed for his friends’ and then the Lord turned his captivity
around. He learned to be faithful in intercession even when his life was being
poured out. Who can live up to this? Jesus is the perfect man. NOTE this
chapter starts with ‘who hath believed our report’ I was just ‘worrying’ about
how many people are ‘accepting/believing’ the things on this blog. A feeling of
like ‘am I crazy, is nobody getting reached in a lasting way?’ Then I read the
part of ‘our report’. I felt like the Lord was saying don’t worry about whether
or not you are accepted. If you speak the things I am saying, then it’s ‘our’
report. Sort of like when scripture says to the prophets ‘they have not
rejected you, they have rejected me’. I don’t want to come off as everything I
say is right. I just felt like the Lord was saying when you speak in his will,
it’s up to him to deal with the problem of whether or not the ‘report’ is being
believed. Sometimes it’s in his purpose for reports to ‘not be believed’ so he
can get to the next step.
(405)Isaiah 54 ‘sing O barren, thou
that didst not bear, break forth into singing. For more are the children of the
desolate than of the married wife’ God says those who are empty and feeling
‘numb’ are reproducing spiritual children in abundance. We recently read how
God ‘saw’ the pain in Jesus soul and was satisfied. How those in bondage and
captivity brought forth children and said ‘where did these come from, I was in
pain and affliction’. God seems to bring forth fruit from our lives during
seasons of weakness and failure. Paul saw this and learned to ‘glory in his
weakness’ because when he was humanly weak and incapable of the task, God would
then step in and do for him what he was not able to perform. ‘Enlarge the place
of thy tent and let them stretch forth the curtains of thy habitations. Spare
not, lengthen thy cords and strengthen thy stakes’ the ‘them’ are the promised
offspring that are coming. God says ‘make preparations’ you will have many
spiritual kids. The Lord also says ‘lengthen your cords’ and then ‘strengthen
the tent posts’ we usually want to strengthen first, sort of have everything
pre prepared before we ‘expand’. The order here is different. God says ‘go for
the growth first, and then I will strengthen what needs to be stronger’. I am
not saying don’t make preparations, but sometimes we spend our whole lives
‘preparing’ and we never grow! ‘For thou shalt break forth on the right hand and
on the left and your seed shall inherit the gentiles’ ‘for a small moment have
you felt forsaken, but with great mercies will I gather you. In a little wrath
I hid my face from you for a moment, but with never ending kindness will I have
mercy on you’ The ‘down’ times in your life seem forever, but compared to the
fruit and grace that are coming, they will seem like small moments of history
in my overall plan. ‘For this is like the waters of Noah to me, just like I
swore that I would never flood the earth again, so I promise I will never be
angry with you again’ the Cross removes any future wrath and anger from God,
all future dealings will be as a father who disciplines a son. Can you imagine
an earthly father truly hating or refusing to stop spanking his son? [I know
some who have been abused can imagine this, but God is different!] How much
more is God willing to correct you and let you move ahead? Quit beating
yourself over the head because of your failures, God is not holding this stuff
against you anymore! ‘The mountains shall depart and the hills be removed. But
my kindness shall remain’ God is going to change your ‘scenery’ the things you
have been ‘seeing’ and the obstacles obstructing your view are coming down. The
mountains and hills in your way are being ‘threshed’ and God is going to
restore to you ‘fore sight’ an ability to see down the road. Without vision
[prophetic insight] people perish [have no controlling destiny, have no reason
to be restrained and disciplined]. God is removing the things that were
blurring your vision and you will see clearly again! ‘Thou shall be far from
oppression, for you will not have fear, and from terror, it shall not come near
you’ ‘whoever comes against you will fall for your sake’ In another place it
says ‘I will give men for thee’ God favors you to the point of ‘manipulating’
the environment to be favorable towards you. You don’t deserve this to be sure!
But he is doing it for his own glory, you already bear his name! NOTE: The
verse ‘more are the children of the desolate’ Paul uses this in Galatians to
show Gods promised children are the ‘spiritual Jerusalem ’ all those [both Jew and gentile]
that would receive the promised Spirit by faith. He basically says ‘the mother’
[heavenly Jerusalem -the church] that has no ‘physical
children’ [desolate] will have more offspring/seed [all the spiritual children]
than the nation/mother [natural Jerusalem ]
who has many offspring! NOTE: For those of you who have made it this far on
this blog, if you keep reading into the later 400’s you will find that I have
become very sick. I won’t go thru it all here. But I want you to see something
prophetic. This chapter [Isaiah 54] has been one of the key chapters for me for
over 20 years. As a matter of fact from Isaiah 42 thru the end of Isaiah have
been the most prophetic words the Lord has given me about our ministry. Part of
the sickness I am going thru is numbness to my right leg and extreme
dizziness/vertigo. The only time I don’t feel dizzy is when I am looking far
away. Like my habit of praying outside and looking to the stars, or even during
the day looking at a distance feels fine. Being in the house and other confined
spaces feels very disorienting. In this chapter, which I wrote about a month or
two before getting sick, it says ‘blessed are those who are numb’ [right
leg]. That God is going to ‘change our
scenery’ [that which we see]. That God is going to remove things that are
blurring your vision [vertigo/dizziness]. I even said ‘God is going to restore
to you fore sight, an ability to see down the road [seeing ‘down the road’ long
distances, is the only ‘seeing’ that doesn’t get me dizzy!] I find the
prophetic word interesting, especially when you prophesy about yourself and
don’t even know it!
(421) Isaiah
55 ‘I have given him [you] for a witness to the people, a leader and a
commander to the people. You will call a nation that you do not know. And
nations that do not know you will come to you. This will happen because of my
choice, I have exalted you’ God chose you to have great influence in the
Kingdom. There will be large people groups [nations] that you will influence
and you won’t even know of the impact you are making until the coming of the
Lord. For the most part you will remain ‘faceless’ [you will not know them and
they will not know you] but the gift I have put in you will have great
influence. NOTE: these verses are primarily speaking of Jesus calling gentile
nations, and gentile nations coming to him. We are called the ‘body of Christ’
so allow these verses to speak to you as an extension of Jesus Body in the
earth today. ‘For as the rain and snow come down [remember the vision I had
about ‘bolts of snow coming down’? It is on this site] and water the earth and
cause it to bud’. So shall it be with my words, the things I am specifically
communicating to you at this season of your life. These words shall accomplish
my purpose in you. I have sent these words out to you, they will prosper in the
areas that I desire. ‘This shall be for a sign that shall not be cut off’ I have
given you signs this past year. You have seen me work before, but many times
you later forgot what I said. Sort of like the signs and things were real but
you couldn’t ‘retain’ the awesome things I was showing you. Not this time. This
year I have given you signs that will last for the rest of the journey, just
like at the start.
(424) I WILL MAKE THY WINDOWS OF AGATES, THY GATES OF CARBUNKLES, AND
ALL THY BORDERS OF PRECIOUS STONES [Isaiah] Windows speak of ‘portals of
sending’ [like this blog! Or radio and stuff like this]. I felt like the Lord
was saying he is going to bless your ‘portals’ of sending. ‘Cast your seed upon
the water, for in many days it will come back to you’ [message in a bottle- the
Police]. God is going to increase you. He will expand your borders. He will not
only ‘bless your gates/borders’ but he will ‘bless your windows’. Windows let
light out of a house. They allow the ‘brightness’ to go out into the dark. They
also allow light to come in and lighten up a room in a way that no ‘man made’
light could do. God is going to bless ‘your windows’. You will see things that
you have never seen before, and you will reach places that are far away with
the light that is ‘in your house’. ‘I have given you an open window that no man
can shut’ God to John in the book of Revelation.
(431) Isaiah 56 ‘Keep
judgment and do justice, for my salvation is near and my righteousness is ready
to be revealed’ God says he is about to do some major things. He wants you to
‘judge right’ actually stand strong in discernment with mercy. It’s easy to
give up on the things God has shown you and to fall into the status quo. God
says stay true to what I showed you because it’s for a purpose. ‘Blessed is the
man that doesn’t pollute my Sabbath and keeps his hand from evil’. Remember
what we recently said about the Sabbath? God says ‘blessed are those who remain
in my rest. Those who abide in me and allow me to bring forth the fruit’ this
is the only way we can keep our selves from ‘doing evil’. In Gods grace! ‘These
are the ones I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in MY HOUSE
OF PRAYER’ we also just discussed Gods house of prayer. God will gather all
those who are in grace and make them ‘joyful’ as they join in intercession for
the nations. You are a ‘house of Prayer’ you will only be fulfilled when you
are doing what you were created to do! Remember, we are corporately his
facility, our ‘use’ is to be a habitation thru whom God intercedes. ‘His
watchman are blind, they cant see. They are greedy, they can never have enough
wealth. They are all out for personal gain, they look for it to come to their
areas. They say ‘tomorrow will be much more abundant’. Here God rebukes the
leadership for always wanting more finances. They live day by day with the goal
of ‘great material abundance’. They have usurped Gods purpose for his ‘house’
and made it into a den of thieves! [These are the leaders who teach it
obsessively, they have made the goal ‘material wealth’ not so much the Pastors
who are raising money for unselfish things! Also see the specific rebuke to
those who say ‘tomorrow we will have more wealth’ the actual confession and
excitement of seeing more wealth as the goal is being rebuked here!]
(459) ‘ISAIAH 57’ ‘the
righteous perisheth and no man takes it to heart, none considers that he is
taken away from the evil to come’ God has/is removing some of you from familiar
territory. This ‘land’ has been a source of provision in the past, he is now
moving you away from it. You seem confused as to why others can receive
income/resource from this land, but you cannot. God is saying ‘I am removing
you from these sources because they will not be their for ever, they will dry
up. Others put their trust in them, they will fear when the source dries up’.
‘He that putteth his trust in me shall posses the land and shall inherit my
holy mountain, and shall say cast up, cast up, prepare the way, take up the
stumbling block out of the way of my people’ those who trust in the Lord as
opposed to their own wisdom will be used to remove the things that have been
causing Gods people to stumble. Don’t rejoice in the fact that you see it when
others don’t. You only see these stumbling blocks because of Gods grace, a man
can receive no ministry unless it was given to him as a free gift from God. ‘I
dwell with him that is humble and contrite, I will revive them’ ‘I will not
contend forever, nor always be wroth’ God says there are things he wants to
remove and change in us. The things he has shown us should produce humility and
a contrite spirit. Don’t ‘kick against the pricks’ don’t rebel against the
things God has shown you to change. Don’t blame the prophets, they are just
seeing/saying the words of God. ‘For the iniquity of his covetousness was I
wroth and smote him. I hid [stopped correcting him for a season] and he went on
forwardly in the way of his heart [this part of the Body excelled and went
forward in the ways that they chose, even though the Lord had previously said
no more] I have seen his ways and will heal him and restore comforts unto him
and to his mourners’ Many who have become renown in the area of ‘covetousness’
will be healed. They will see how off track they have been and God will forgive
and restore and continue to use them [Jim Bakker] but first there will be a humbling.
NOTE: All true ministry is really not about us ‘fulfilling our dreams’ or
‘achieving our goals’ it’s about being faithful to God. Saying and doing the
things he wants. You will be fulfilled by doing this, but this is a result, not
the goal.
(468) ISAIAH 58 ‘Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a
trumpet, and show my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their
sins’ When prophets go thru difficulty, the first thing they question is ‘have
I been too hard on your people?’ God is going to deal with this in this
chapter. He starts by first of all telling Isaiah ‘I have called you to reveal
to my people their sins, it is my calling for you to show them the areas they
don’t fully see yet. Their ‘sins’ of ignorance. They often ask for me. I am
going to show them things about church and the way they worship me that are
limited. Showing them ‘their sins’ is not a function of judgment, it is a
necessary ‘uprooting’ that they need in order for their prayers to be
answered.’ God is basically telling Isaiah ‘when things are hard and difficult,
don’t question my basic revelatory ministry thru you. You don’t have the right
to stop speaking what I am saying!’ ‘Yet they seek me daily, and delight to
know my ways, they ask of me the ordinances of justice and take delight in
approaching me’ we as believers take the act of seeking and asking and
learning, and we turn it into ‘doing what God wants’. In essence we have
developed a mindset that says ‘I go to church, I learn all the bible tricks on
how to have a happy and prosperous life. If I am ever confronted with teaching
that doesn’t appeal to me, or requires sacrifice, I have already learned to
ignore it, you cant fly with eagles if you think like a turkey’ we basically
have bypassed the instructions on self sacrifice and giving our lives away for
the Kingdom. We simply think the ‘acts’ of going and learning from bible
truths, even if it is all based on self, that this in itself is pleasing to
God. God says why do my people by pass all my instructions and then delight
that they are going to approach me? It’s because our ‘approaching God’ in the
present mindset of the western church is simply for self-fulfillment. We
approach him like a cosmic Santa Clause and this delights us. God says I want
to show you things that I require from you and I want you to do them. Don’t
simply think that you are pleasing me by ‘approaching me’ I want the
action/obedience to be the fruit of your ‘approaching/church going’. [NOTE: It
is not totally wrong to seek God for self help/improvement. It’s just many of
us in today’s church have made this the priority. When people watch the ‘get
rich and famous’ infomercials on the weekends, there is a feeling of ‘hope and
self fulfillment’ that simply comes from surrounding yourself in an environment
of ‘maybe that can be me someday’. Its OK to hope, but scripture does teach us
[1st Timothy 6] to ‘not desire to become rich’ as well as Jesus many other
warnings in the gospels. So I just want to warn you to not fall into the trap
of making ‘church/approaching God’ a format for self help. It might ‘feel good’
to see Christianity thru this materialistic lens, but in the end it can be
dangerous] ‘Is not this the fast that I have chosen? To loose the bands of
wickedness, to undo heavy burdens and to let the oppressed go free, that you
break every yoke. Is it not to feed your food to the hungry, that you bring the
poor to YOUR house. You should clothe the naked, and help your own natural
family. If you do these things you will get healed, your goodness will shine
like the morning sun. You will call to me and I will hear. Take away from you
the bondages, the blaming of others and speaking vanity. Draw out your soul to
the hungry, feed them and satisfy them [even with your ministry/teaching] and
your light shall rise in obscurity and your darkness will be like day’ you find
all the elements of Jesus earthly ministry contained here. The Pharisees lived
for religious ritual. They fasted and afflicted themselves [and others] Jesus
reached out in love and poured his soul out for the needy, Isaiah is
prophesying the heart of Jesus here. God accepts a lifestyle of giving your
life away for others. Jesus would teach that this type of love is the greatest
commandment. Here we see the heart of ministry. I want to challenge everyone
[especially leaders] to re examine your ‘ministry’ does it contain these most
fundamental elements? Do we carry out ministry in a way that simply tells the
world ‘hey, look at us, we are a highly motivated business and we can compete
with any other organization in our area’. Do we view ministry this way? Jesus
values the souls of those who lay their lives down for others, don’t fall into
the trap of establishing religious functions for the purpose of impressing men.
This is what 1st century religion digressed to, even though one of
their own prophets [Isaiah] warned against it centuries before! ‘thou shalt be
like a spring of water who’s waters fail not. They that shall be of thee shall
build the old waste places and make the desolate cities to be inhabited [I
added this last part from another place, I am so used to saying it like this]
Thou shalt be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of paths to dwell
in’ God is saying when you give yourself away for others, when you obey him.
When you show compassion. When you do not view ‘ministry’ as trying to attain
some degree of respect in the ‘corporate world’ when you approach it like
Jesus, then the Lord will allow your influence to go far. The people you impact
will be used to spread the Kingdom to various cities. The people will be
‘faithful to the things you spoke’ because they are enjoined to you like a
‘band of brothers’. There memories of you will truly be that of a friend who
gave himself away for them. These also will ‘repair breaches, restore paths’
there are so many true Christian values and principles that Jesus taught were
the foundations of his Kingdom, things like self sacrifice and laying down your
life for others. God will use your ‘seed/offspring’ to restore these ‘lost’
teachings back into the Church. We are so consumed with ‘self help’ that we
have lost the foundational principles of the Cross. ‘ If you turn away your
foot from the Sabbath, from doing what you want on my holy day’. In context God
is saying ‘if you rest in me, and stop doing your own works in my day of grace,
then I will move mightily on your behalf’. If you remember I already showed you
on this blog how the Sabbath is a type of entering into the covenant of Grace.
When you cease from your own legalistic attempts to do Gods work, then God will
come in and do them thru you! ‘not doing thine own ways, nor speaking thine on
words’ much of modern ministry [especially Pastoral] is under the burden to
‘come up with something to speak on for an hour on Sunday’ many of these
brothers are well meaning, but because we have structured the church in today’s
world around the ‘Sunday meeting’ it has put a burden on Pastors to come up
with something to say every Sunday at a certain time. The New Testament churches
didn’t function like this. Therefore we have a lot of ‘speaking our own words’
we don’t realize that we are doing this, but in essence we are. I would simply
encourage all Christian teachers/speakers to speak only what you hear God
saying. If God has a certain vision or direction that he has planted in your
heart, then build that into the people. Don’t go thru 20 verses all over the
bible and then try to make them fit some theme. The bible has plenty of
‘themes’ already. Focus on whole portions of scripture and teach them as God
directs. A lot of the unbalanced teaching in the church today is a result of
teachers jumping all over the bible in a 30 minute time span and then making
the bible say something that it never meant! ‘If you do all this, then I will cause
you to ride upon the high places of the earth’ lets conclude this chapter with
an overview. If you do all the things in this chapter: give yourself away for
people. Have true religion as described in the book of James. Don’t point the
finger in accusation at people, when reproving, which is a function of the
prophetic, do it in love. When you speak and do what God is saying, instead of
coming up with your own ‘peculiar brand’ of seeing everything, then God will
exalt you to a high place. In essence this is the ministry of Jesus, who
lowered himself more than any man, who did all the things you read about in
this chapter and then God gave him a name that is above all others. Do the will
of God my friends and he will exalt you in due season.
(503) Isaiah 59- ‘Gods
hand is not shortened that it cannot save, nor his ear dull that it cannot
hear. But our sins have separated us from God acting on our behalf’ one of the
themes we will see in this chapter is God wanting us to speak truth and to
stand for justice. He will reprove the times we lie and don’t really speak and
walk in truth. There are so many issues with the American church at this
season. I saw Benny Hinn speaking to a meeting of Pastors. I have sent Benny my
books and stuff. I was encouraged to hear him reprove those who teach that Job
[in the bible] was making a bad confession and God recorded his words, but
didn’t justify Jobs confession. Those of you in the ‘know’ remember how it was
[and still is!] taught that Job went thru trials because of a bad confession,
and in essence God doesn’t want us reading Job and believing Jobs confession.
You just read Job to see what not to do! I have dealt with this error before.
But I was glad to see Benny hit on it in such a public way. This is an example of
God telling us ‘Church, I love you guys. I have given you time to overcome
this. You can’t keep speaking ‘lies’ and think I am going to move in your
country [The U.S.]’ So God is dealing with us in mercy, but he is telling all
of us ‘I really want to move on your behalf, you must humble yourselves and
repent. I want justice, I want truth. You need mercy and love, but they cannot
trump my desire for truth and righteous justice’. ‘None calleth for justice,
none speak truth. They trust in vanity and speak lies’ There has been a
stubbornness on certain parts of the American church that have consistently
‘trusted fake things, and continue to speak fake things’ we are all guilty of
this, Gods agenda is for us to seek him and return to a pure biblical gospel. I
am so excited about this younger generation. I have been watching the ‘call’ or
the ‘cause’. Basically a group of young people on fire for Jesus. The I.H.O.P.
meetings with Mike Bickle. The ‘merchant band’ all of these radical kids
seeking the face of God. They put me to shame. And in the midst of this there
exists an older generation who insist on ‘speaking lies, trusting in vanity’
the older generation needs to listen to these ‘babes’, out of their mouths God
is speaking. They sing things like ‘don’t sell out for the stuff of this
world’. ‘They hatch eggs, whoever eats their eggs dies. They will not continue
to cover themselves with their teachings’ when we steer off course of Christ’s
main message, the things we produce [books, blogs, tapes, etc.] only hurt
others. We can’t keep ‘feeding rotten eggs’ to Gods kids. These movements who
have veered away from the gospel will not continue to ‘cover themselves’ [hide
within their groups] because God is calling for repentance and justice. ‘They
have made crooked paths, those who go in them will not have peace’ when
teachers establish wrong doctrines and teachings in the church, they become
‘crooked paths’ paths that many will go down. It is very hard to undo this.
Jesus actually said ‘let them go down these paths. They will all fall into a
ditch’ sometimes God allows the wrong paths to exist until both the leaders and
followers see the error of their way. I remember reading how Jim Bakker saw how
wrong he was. He started reading the gospels while in prison and couldn’t
believe that he was a money preacher who taught that Jesus was rich. After
reading the gospels he saw how wrong he was. God is going to take those who
have made ‘crooked paths’ and he will use them to go straight again.
NOTE: Let me interject a reminder here. All Christians, especially
those who feel the Lord has called them to the prophetic ministry, are required
to confront [in love] obvious abuses and error in the church. One of the most
difficult things about this calling is the majority of people you are called to
speak into will reject you at the start. The gift brings with it an ‘inner
mechanism’ that causes the messenger to be rejected initially. Why? Be cause to
confront and undo mindsets that have existed in certain areas of the people of
God is ‘tumultuous’. You go thru a season where you ‘pluck up, root out, tear
down’ and then you get to the place where you ‘build and strengthen’ again. I
look at these contractors who buy nice homes on prime lots of real estate. They
go in and begin to dismantle the house! Even though it is an ‘OK’ structure, it
has provided shelter for many years. Lots of kids grew up in that house. Man,
what are you doing coming against all my memories! Well the contractor realizes
that it served a purpose, but the time has come to realize that the structure
is insufficient for the next level of community growth. So I see the temptation
for those whom the Lord has called to prophetic things, to go thru this type of
rejection. And when these people go thru difficulty it is only natural to say
‘Physician, heal thyself’ those whom the message is directed will have a
tendency to say ‘see, that Isaiah fellow, he thought he was such a voice for
God, look at him now’ [or Jeremiah or any of the other prophets]. So as we
continue thru Isaiah we will eventually get to the ‘building up process’ but
first God has to make sure all the debris is truly removed before the next
structure can go up. Remember what I said about the prophecy given to the
Virgin Mary ‘a sword shall pierce thru your own heart also, that the thoughts
of many hearts will be revealed’ God allows prophetic people to be ‘pierced’ so
he can see the response of those around them. Note; I have found myself at
times thinking ‘If I could just overcome this obstacle, if I didn’t have to
deal with these difficulties at this time, I would be so much more effective’ I
have to remind myself that ‘when I am weak, then God can be glorified thru me’
natural thinking says ‘why the Cross?’ then you learn to say ‘nevertheless not
my will, but yours be done’ amen!
‘Therefore we behold obscurity’ I
have found one of the worst judgments in my own life is when I ‘behold
obscurity’. When I am in sin in some area of my life, Gods mercy is always
there, but there is a real sense of the absence of Gods presence. Jesus said
‘the pure in heart see God’ when our hearts are not pure, we ‘see obscurity’.
‘We roar like bears, and mourn like doves’ Have you ever experienced extreme
highs and lows. Days where you were ‘roaring like a bear’ and the next day ‘crying
like a dove’. When our hearts are not right, these ups and downs are
inevitable. Sometimes we even experience this when our hearts are right, but in
this context sin is the main reason for it. ‘our transgressions are with us and
our iniquities, we know them’ transgressions are the actual breaking of Gods
law, the ‘act of sin’ if you will. The ‘iniquity’ is that tendency in us to
gravitate towards certain sins. That ‘bent’ that keeps turning us in the wrong
direction. You say ‘why brother, I have no idea what you are talking about’.
You’re lying! Here God says ‘we know them’. ‘Truth faileth and he that departs
from error makes himself a target’ I find it interesting, when people repent
from ‘wrong paths’ they then become the target of those who are still on the
path! Why? Because if you can do it, make the change, go to the next level.
Then there is no more excuse for those who are not changing. This is at the
heart of murder and hatred. The bible says ‘for this reason Cain slew Able,
because his own works were wicked and his brothers righteous’ Envy and pride
are horrible things. They cause us to want the failure of others who are
succeeding. We really don’t want ‘that other church to succeed’ in our hearts.
If they get 6 thousand people to attend, then all my excuses of why I only have
so many attend my church are no longer valid. Those who start going on the
better paths than we have been on become a target! ‘And the Redeemer shall come
to Zion , those
that turn away from transgression in Jacob’ God will come to those who ‘turn
away from sin in Jacob’ like Paul says in the New Testament, it is not natural
birth that counts. To simply be ‘Jacob’ [Israel ] doesn’t cut it. You need to
have ‘turned away from sin’ and accepted Gods sacrifice, Jesus! To those [Jew
or Gentile] that ‘turn away from transgression’ [this means the actual act of
disobedience!] God will reveal himself. ‘This is my promise to you, the word
that I have put in your mouth shall not depart out of your mouth, nor out of
the mouth of your seed, nor out of the mouth of your seeds seed, from this time
forth and forever more’ Yesterday we had a good home meeting in Kingsville. One
of the ‘sons’ of the fathers I used to preach to years ago in jail. The son is
the ‘seed’ [offspring] of the original person from this family that I preached
to. His son [the grandson] lives in Corpus and also is a part of what the Lord
is doing. God promises that if you speak his words, they will remain in the
mouths of ‘the children’s children’ God is always thinking generationaly
/dynastically. Man thinks short term.
(525) Isaiah 60 ‘Arise, shine; for thy light has come,
and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. Darkness shall cover thee earth
and gross darkness the people, but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his
glory shall be seen upon thee’ Like we said when we spoke on the kingdom of God , though the world is getting darker,
the church gets brighter! We are ‘the light of the world’ the world needs us!
They don’t want to admit it, but at the end of all atheism, humanism and every
other ‘ism’ there is a void. They will be drawn to the light! ‘Gentiles SHALL
come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising’ ‘thy sons shall
come from far, and thy daughters shall be nursed at thy side’ though these verses
are Messianic in nature [they speak prophetically of Christ] yet they are also
fulfilled thru us, because we are ‘extensions of Christ’ in the earth. We ARE
his Body! ‘Then thou shalt see, and FLOW TOGETHER, and thy heart shall fear and
be enlarged’ When the Lord is magnified, when his will and purpose take
precedence, we FEAR him and are enlarged. We also flow together as Gods people.
There is a real sense of your success being found in your brothers and sister’s
success. We flow together. ‘In my wrath I smote thee, but in my favor I have
had mercy on thee. Therefore thy gates shall be open continually’ in the ‘New
Jerusalem’ [the Church] our gates are ‘open always’ people find access to come
in and rest in God. But open gates also allow for there to be exit. Not
‘damnation’ here, but a going into all the world to preach the gospel. The
people of God are made to find rest in him and be by still waters. Then there
comes this churning, this ‘inner pull’ to go out ‘is it from God’ yes! God
allows you to have seasons of rest and refuge, and then he calls you to the
example of Christ. He compels you to look at the harvest and say ‘here am I,
send me’. ‘The glory of Lebanon shall come to thee, the Fir tree, the Pine tree
and the Box tree together, to beautify the place of my sanctuary, AND I WILL
MAKE THE PLACE OF MY FEET GLORIOUS’ God will bring great diversity [Pine, Box,
Fir tree’s] into one corporate function and purpose. We will no more say ‘I am
Charismatic’ I am Baptist, I am Catholic, I am this or that. We will truly
bring our diversity together and lay them at Christ’s feet. He makes the place
of his feet glorious. Jesus washed the disciple’s feet; he was showing that
this place of humility and service will be honored in Gods economy. It is the
place of value and exaltation. He offers it to all, there doesn’t seem to be a
lot of takers. ‘Whereas thou hast been afflicted and hated, I will make thee an
eternal excellency; a joy of many generations’ God allows affliction and hatred
for a season. Both natural Israel
and her Messiah went thru this. We all will partake of it at one time or
another; REJOICE when it happens, because God is preparing you for eternal
excellency! ‘For brass I will bring gold, for iron silver, for wood brass and
for stones iron, I will make thy officers peace’ we often preach and teach ‘for
stones you will get gold’ we ‘skip’ the steps! God’s prosperity comes to those
who patiently and consistently give and love and work and invest and do many
things in stages. These people are not trying to turn stones into gold. They
realize you go from stones to iron to silver and to gold. They have realistic
expectations on living a consistent life. God will make our ‘officials’ peace.
The verse that says let all your requests be known to God and Gods peace will
keep your hearts and minds, this speaks of Gods peace being the ‘officiator’
Christians make good decisions when they cast all their care over to God. Gods
peace comes in to officiate for us, we don’t have to worry about the next step,
we simply need to rest and walk in it as it is revealed. ‘Violence shall be no
more in the land, nor destruction in our borders, your walls shall be Salvation
and your gates Praise’ this is speaking of a spiritual/heavenly city. God is
already showing that his future place of rest, the ‘eternal city’ that needs no
light, because the Lamb is the light, God is showing that it is a place where
walls and gates are praise and salvation. Not brick and mortar! He will make
this place glorious. ‘The Lord shall be the everlasting light, the days of
mourning shall be ended Thy people shall all be righteous, they shall inherit
the land for ever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I may
be glorified. A little one shall become a thousand, a small one a strong
nation: I the Lord will do it in my time’ God will extend you and cause all the
people you work with to be right. A day is coming where the smallest one [least
significant] shall have great influence. He will ‘grow you and your people like
a branch thru the earth’ thru the people you bring into the Kingdom, God will
allow great influence to go forth. God told Abraham ‘thru your seed shall all
nations be blessed’ you are simply the ‘instigator/initiator’ of the thing, it
will get carried out thru your spiritual children!
(528) Isaiah 61 ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me
BECAUSE the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings to the meek, he hath
sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and
the opening of the prison to them that are bound’ Jesus read this verse in the
gospel and said it was being fulfilled thru him. God anoints Jesus and us for
set purposes. I find it interesting how this coincides with chapter 58 and
deals with the hand of God to free people. To actually minister to real needs.
In chapter 58 God rebukes Israel
for thinking the anointing [Spirit] is for ritualistic religion, he tells them
to do justice and reach out to the hurting. Jesus exemplifies this. He
‘proclaims’ liberty to captives. It’s like if someone were in a jail cell and
the governor sent a message that said ‘you are already pardoned’. The message
of the gospel is ‘you are free, God is not holding your sins against you. Only
believe!’ We often preach ‘you must do so and so to get free’ Jesus said ‘you
already are’. ‘To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, the day of
vengeance of our God’ we must make it clear that a day of judgment is coming.
The reality is God does forgive you, but you must come thru the Cross. It must
be plain that all who reject Christ face a sure and certain judgment. A few
years ago a very famous Charismatic preacher became a ‘universalist’ [someone
who believes that everyone goes to heaven, or in this case that hell and
judgment do not exist] He shared how when he stopped preaching ‘hell’ that it
just made everyone feel better. It might make you feel better, but that doesn’t
mean it’s not real! God wants us to tell people about this ‘acceptable time of
the Lord’ but also warn them that if they refuse Gods grace, judgment is coming
down the road. ‘To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion , to give unto them beauty for ashes, the
oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness’ Now
we are going to see a theme thru out the rest of the chapter. God wants to
bring you out of mourning and into full restoration. I said in the previous
chapters that rebuke and correction lead up to restoration. It is vital that we
enter into joy! God wants us to come out of places of ‘heaviness’ [depression]
and bring us to places of joy and peace ‘that we might be called trees of
righteousness, the planting of the Lord, and they shall build up the waste
places, repair waste cities’ Who will do these things ? Those who have truly
entered into praise! This is why it’s vital to make the transition into joy. It
is the restoration process that enables us to move on to the next level. God
says ‘you will have a scar, but no open wound’ There will be reminders of the
desert you were in, that’s good. God says I want you to remember how awful it
really was, never forget the ‘pit that I took you out of’ now that you are out,
go and do my works! I have claimed these verses for over 20 years concerning
building up waste cities and God doing it thru your seed. Yesterday we had a good
outreach day in Kingsville .
We got with some brothers and met at a park. I have a friend who is a musician,
but he only knows the old classics ‘amazing grace’ and stuff. Fine with me, we
sang and praised in that park. I felt the Lord said that he was going to
restore joy to ‘our mourners’ and it will be thru this restored joy that he
will ‘build the old waste places’. ‘You shall be named the Priests of the Lord,
the ministers of our God’ this is all of us! No special class here, no
‘clergy’. This is you and me. ‘For your shame ye shall have double, and for
confusion they shall rejoice in their portion, they shall posses double,
everlasting joy shall be with them’ In Hebrews it says of Jesus ‘he despised
the shame, looking ahead to the reward’. Here it says God will reward you by
giving you many converts and blessing these converts exponentially based on the
shame and confusion you experience. Don’t try to get out of the
shame/difficulty/persecution, but see it as part of the cost. Know that as you
suffer, God is promising to reward you thru your seed. ‘I the Lord love
judgment, I HATE ROBBERY FOR BURNT OFFERINGS’ now I want you to pay attention
here. In the New Testament Jesus teaches the way people ‘rob God’ is by not
meeting the needs of people. He rebuked the Pharisees for tithing to the temple
and using this as an excuse to not meet the needs of their parents. Jesus said
when you didn’t meet the needs of the destitute that you were NOT MEETING HIS
NEEDS, Jesus is God! John says ‘how can you say you love God who you don’t see,
when you don’t meet the needs [love demonstrated] of the brother that you do
see’. It is common today to use Malachi and teach ‘robbing God’ in the context
of ‘not tithing’. Because the New Testament temple are made up of people, the
New Testament teaches ‘robbing God’ is done by not ‘giving’ to this temple,
which are people! I have taught all this before, but I want to change your
thinking in this area. You must see the people as the temple in order to not
ROB GOD. ‘I WILL GREATLY REJOICE IN THE LORD, MY SOUL SHALL BE JOYFUL IN MY
GOD’ I want to end on this high note, even though the last verse of this
chapter is also good [go read it!] I personally believe this to be a key
ingredient at this time for us. The joy of the Lord is our strength. ‘But
brother, you ‘rebuke’ so much in your writings, you teach correction a lot. How
can you have joy when there is so much difficulty and trials and stuff?’ Our
joy is not dependant on our situation, it is fixed in God. Read the Psalms,
David understood this principle. Paul said his contentment was not based on
outward circumstances. Let’s grasp hold of the great reality of what God has
done for us; we are going to live forever! Don’t lose sight of the great things
God has done. Be joyful in God at all times. I know he is going to do great
things for all of us, let’s rejoice in the Lord, and again I say REJOICE! NOTE;
‘for confusion and shame your children shall posses a double portion in the
land’ [my paraphrase] this past year my 2 oldest daughters [19-21] both
purchased their own homes. They ‘possessed’ double of what I own. I see God
doing things in the natural first, then the spiritual. A couple of our friends
from the early years have just begun doing home groups in their cities, they
have been serving the Lord, but it’s been a while since we really established
anything consistent with these guys. I felt like the Lord was saying ‘our seed
[yours too!] will begin possessing the Land this year’.
(532) Isaiah 62 ‘For Zion’s sake I
will not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until her
righteousness goes forth as brightness, and salvation like a lamp that burns’
This is intercession based on natural Israel’s spiritual conversion. He is
praying ‘open up Israel ’s
eyes to true salvation and righteousness’. ‘And gentiles shall see thy
righteousness [Christ] and all kings thy glory, and thou shall be called by a
new name [the Body of Christ! Spiritual Israel , a ‘new name’ that no one
knows but he who gave it] which the mouth of the Lord shall name’. ‘Thou shall
no longer be called forsaken or desolate, thy land shall be married’ The great
‘marriage supper of the Lamb’ a day when Israel will no longer be
‘separated/divorced’ from God, but will be part of the ‘bride of Christ’ and thru
this holy union be ‘married’ back to God! ‘As the bridegroom rejoiceth over the
bride [this is actually an intimate term ‘rejoiceth over’ God will actually be
intimate with us and we with him!] so shall God rejoice over thee’. ‘I have set
watchman on thy walls oh Jerusalem , they shall
never be quiet day or night, give him no rest till he make Jerusalem
a praise in the earth’ Pray over Israel/Jerusalem until he makes Jerusalem a praise in the
earth, this will be at the appearing of her Messiah. NOTE; some theologians
today are called ‘New Perspective’ they are giving a new perspective on Paul’s
theology. There are some good points they bring out. One area is they are
showing how the New Testament offer of ‘faith’ to the gentiles was ‘come and
believe and you too will be part of the commonwealth
of Israel ’ they emphasize that faith
allowed gentiles to partake of the community that God already had with Israel .
There is some truth to this. The extreme says ‘Israel really is in line with God
now, gentiles just need to get in on what she has’ this view doesn’t see that
in Christ the TWO are made INTO ONE NEW MAN. God is actually creating one new
man [not asking gentiles to come into an old man] and this happens thru Christ!
‘The Lord hath sworn by his right hand, surely I will no longer give thy corn
to be food for thy enemies, and the son of the stranger shall not drink thy
wine for which you have worked, but they that have earned it shall eat it and
praise the Lord’ One of the curses for being disobedient is the wages and
things you earn count for nothing. There are different types of judgment on
sin, one is you have no power to posses wealth. The other is you have no power
to keep it! Here God is saying when people are in judgment they lose the stuff
they earned. One of the greatest financial wreckers in society today is
divorce. Some high wage people have lived in difficulty because of this. They
might earn 10 thousand a month and still be broke! This is common. God is
telling his people if we get right with him, not only will he give us great
opportunities to earn wealth, but we also get to keep it! [That is use it for
right things, not horde it!] ‘go thru, go thru the gates, prepare ye the way of
the people; cast up, cast up the highway, gather out the stones, lift up a
standard for the people’ A few years ago [2004] I felt the Lord tell me to
start driving to work in Kingsville thru a longer route that would take me thru
regional cities. During this time they also built all these new overpasses that
allowed you to ‘drive on the walls of the cities’ and pray over them from a
‘high place’. This was for 3 years until I would retire [which I am in the
process of doing]. I felt the lord gave me 3 intense years of prayer and
intercession over a region that we have long prayed for. When I read these
verses ‘go thru the gates/highway and take out the stones and prepare a way for
the people’ as well as God saying ‘I will cause you to ride upon the high
places of the land’ I felt things like this were signifying how God wants us to
lay the groundwork thru prayer first. As I drove thru the land and ‘prophesied’
and prayed, God was ‘breaking up the fallow ground’. God has ‘land’ for you,
you will begin possessing it as you are faithful to ‘go thru the land’ but also
‘gather out the stones’ this speaks of a willingness to both reprove [in love]
and remove the ‘stones’ that are hindering the highway. When a road is filled
with obstacles, you can still drive it, but very slow. I felt like the Lord was
speaking of ‘acceleration’ a ‘suddenly’ when he acts quickly on our behalf. If
we want to ‘advance rapidly thru out the land’ then we must get the stones out
of the road! NOTE; I have told you guys in the past that sometimes my ‘spell
check’ is prophetic. When I wrote ‘reprove’ it spelt ‘repave’.
(535) Isaiah 63 The first part of the chapter speaks of
Gods righteous judgment ‘the day of vengeance’ and then mixes in mercy! ‘In all
their affliction, he was afflicted’ this is interesting, God says ‘when you
were afflicted, I too experienced it’. Wow, how could our afflictions be
experienced by God? In Corinthians you have the doctrine of the ‘sin unto
death’. There are various interpretations on this. You see certain believers
who are in open sin. God allows judgment on them, even to the point of death,
because they are ‘part of his body’. Sort of like God is saying ‘you guys are
intricately attached to me, when you, as my Body, sin, then you are dragging me
into the situation’. It seems as if God was saying his judgment is a result of
them being the church, and at the same time ‘drinking the cup of devils’. You
can’t have both! So in this case judgment was pronounced because they were
‘making the Spirit of God partake of evil things’ so to speak. Understand when
we go thru things, especially open rebellion, God will eventually judge. It’s
not out of meanness, but mercy. You read in Corinthians that when God judges us
it is so we will not be condemned with the world. His judgment proves we are
his kids and therefore it is really an act of divine mercy! ‘But they rebelled
and VEXED his Holy Spirit’ it was ‘vexing’ to the Spirit because they were the
temple of the Spirit. ‘O Lord, why hast THOU made us to err from thy ways’
Interesting! One of the prophets said ‘you deceived me, and I was deceived’. A
lot of modern translations try to change this. They try to say God wouldn’t be
an active partaker in ‘deceiving you’. I see it along these lines, God knows us
intimately, he even knows there are fears and shortcomings that prevent us from
truly entering into our destiny. He will actively allow us to ‘be deceived’ or
cause us to ‘err from his ways’ because he wants us to get to the point of
doing his will, he knows it’s best for us. If we don’t do his will voluntarily,
he allows us to stray so ‘in the desert’ we will turn back to him. ‘Return for
thy servants sake’ after the desert we then are willing! In the day of thy
wrath you made us willing!
(536) Isaiah 64 ‘Oh that thou wouldest rend the heavens,
that thou would come down, that the mountains might flow at thy presence’ There
are pivotal times in our lives where we have done all the planning we could
imagine. We have prayed, read the Word and done all the things that we thought
were necessary to see God move. It is often at the end of all of our efforts
that we get to a place where we see the futility of it all, apart from God! In
the end, like Paul said, some water, some plant, but only God can cause it to
grow! Have you seen the need for God to come down and move on your behalf?
You’ve done everything else, might as well call on God and believe that he
alone can do it. ‘As when the melting fire burneth, the fire causes the waters
to boil’ WOW! Jesus said ‘I am come to set fire to the earth, how I wish it
were already burning’ [my translation]. We will read in this chapter ‘God is a
consuming fire’. Jesus understood the role he was to play. He knew it would end
in violence and resurrection. He knew it would be revolutionary in nature. How
can you expect to come to a group of people who truly believe in God, and then
show them that they have fallen away from the true intent of God and then say
‘God sent me to tell you this’. The role of a Prophet is revolutionary by its
very nature. It will ‘burn’ things, things that need to be burnt. Jesus knew the
course he was on, he knew he was going to start a fire that would consume
everything in its path, he said he wished it were already burning. ‘For since
the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear,
neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, what you have prepared for those
who wait for you’ Paul quotes this to the Corinthians. This is not really
talking about the great ministries and things that we think, it can include
that. But this is speaking of the unbelievable mystery of redemption thru
Christ. The things that Angels desire to look into. The story of mans
redemption and how God preplanned it before the world began is a tremendous
mystery that no man can see unless God reveals it to him. Paul says ‘no man can
say Jesus is Lord but by Gods Spirit’ Paul was not saying no one could ‘mouth’
it, he was saying no human understanding can grasp it apart from the revelation
of God. ‘Thou meetest him that rejoiceth and worketh righteousness, those that
remember thee in thy ways’ God instituted things so his people would ‘remember
him’. The Passover, the Lords Supper. Often time’s people remember him in these
rituals, but forget him in ‘their ways’. This is the main rebuke Isaiah gives
to Israel
in this book. When religion digresses to a point of ritual, apart from
righteous action [justice] then we are not remembering God in his ways. Because
his ways are justice and mercy and caring for the downtrodden and oppressed. It
is too easy today to associate Christianity with ‘conservatism’. I am neither
liberal or conservative, but you will find I hold to beliefs in both of these
camps. The danger of aligning Christiantiy with a political cause is then you
begin to think the ‘cause’ is Christian. You can fight against the illegal
alien, or be against ‘welfare’ and the people on it, and if taken to the
extreme you begin to see Christianity thru a lens that says ‘we are moral
preachers to a fallen society’ to a point where we no longer practice charity
or justice for the oppressed. God says he wants us to remember him in ‘ritual’
as long as we also remember him in deed. ‘But we are all as an unclean thing,
and all our good deeds are as filthy rags’ This verse has been a key verse in
many of the revivalist movements of the 19th and 20th centuries. They focused on mans inability to
please God and be good. Later on the ‘Word of Faith/Prosperity movement’
brought out good points when they emphasized that we are now made the
righteousness of God in Christ. The balance here is apart from God, we are
absolutely unrighteous and unable to please God. In Christ we are ‘acceptable
to God’. God sees us as totally righteous. The caveat is Paul will still refer
to himself at times as ‘the worst of sinners’ even after his conversion. I see
the balance like this; In God we are accepted and God sees his Sons
righteousness as being imputed to us by faith. During our journey we are
progressively being made actually righteous. We are being sanctified. There are
obvious times in this walk where we totally fail God. We then confess and
repent and continue the journey. The closer we get to God, the further we see
how far we really are. So Paul [and us] can at times see how ‘we are the worst
of sinners’ and at the same time thank God that he doesn’t view us that way! ‘Our
iniquities like the wind have taken us away’ Jesus says in John 3 ‘those that
are born of the Spirit are like the wind’ Paul also teaches that as we once
were controlled by sin, now we are to be controlled by righteousness. The
‘wind’ can describe how either we are led by sin or by God. It is an unseen
force that cause’s things to turn in a certain direction. You can look at the
wind blowing a tree and say ‘wow, that tree is being bent severely’ and yet you
know it is a result of the wind. Often times I have seen [and experienced!] the
lifestyle of going down paths that you seem to have no control over, friends
who are at the stage of being in the street, robbing everything they can get
their hands on for the next fix, and then going off to prison. At these stages
they are allowing sin to bend them like the wind. I have also seen these same
guys later be controlled by the Spirit and serving God. Paul said the way to
‘not walk in the flesh’ is to ‘walk in the Spirit’. Religion tells people
‘don’t do this or that’ while Gods recovery program is ‘do what the Spirit is
saying’. The secret to deliverance is for a person to actively give them selves
over to God and to do his works. If you ‘walk in the Spirit, then you will not
do the works of the flesh’. ‘Commit thy works unto the Lord and thy thoughts
will be established’ we need a breakthrough in obedience, in getting out and
fulfilling Gods will. Most Christians who are running around from deliverance
conference to deliverance conference are not yet ‘delivered’ because they
haven’t yet fully given themselves into the active service of the Lord! ‘There
is none that calls upon thy name, that stirs himself up to take hold of thee’
Why? Because our sins have separated us from God! In Hebrews it says ‘let us
come boldly before the throne with a clear conscience’ it says this in context
of the work of Christ in redemption. Because legally God refuses to hold our
sins against us, therefore we have confidence. One of the most devastating
things about sin is it separates us from God. It keeps us from coming to him.
We feel guilty and unworthy and we can’t seem to get thru in prayer. God says
‘come’ and he will heal and forgive and restore. ‘But you are our father, we
are the clay, you are the potter, we are the work of your hand. Don’t be really
mad, don’t remember our sins, we are your people’ Isaiah uses the same
‘strategy’ as Moses ‘we are yours, we bare your name. For this reason please
come and help us. It won’t look good on your record if your people don’t make
it!’ We are asking God to help us because all we are is from him. He chose us
and fashioned us with a specific destiny in mind. Tell God ‘you made me to do
your will, move on my behalf Father, help me at this time. I have come to do
thy will O God’ he often will ‘take away the first that he might establish the
second’ [Hebrews]. Look for God to allow the first works of ministry to
‘dissolve’ as he transitions you into new things. Sometimes we hold onto our
Ishmael’s because we truly have an affinity for them, yet God says ‘let go of
Ishmael, I will still bless him, but the promise will be fulfilled in Isaac’.
‘Our holy and our beautiful house is burned up with fire’ interesting, we just
read how ‘God is a consuming fire’ and how Jesus said ‘I have come to start a
fire’. In the New Testament God transitioned his ‘holy place’ from the natural
temple to the spiritual temple [the church/Body of Christ]. Thru out Israel ’s
history the destruction of the temple always represented Gods judgment. That
was the significance of Jesus saying ‘destroy this temple and in 3 days I will
raise it up’ this was offensive to the Jewish mind. It was like desecrating the
flag [even though Jesus was speaking of his body, the Jews were offended
because they took it to mean their temple]. The fact that Israel , as a nation, would not make
the full transition into the New Covenant left them with their temple and
sacrifices that God already said were an abomination to him [Hebrews].
Ultimately this would lead to the temples final destruction in A.D. 70 under
Titus. The destruction of the temple again was Gods way of saying ‘I no longer
dwell in temples made with hands, I no longer will accept animal sacrifices. I
will dwell in those who accept the sacrifice of my son, and I will receive
their sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving, this is the temple I will build,
the temple of the Body of Christ’.
(537) Isaiah65 ‘I am sought of them that asked not for
me, I am found of them that sought me not’ Paul uses these verses in Romans to
show how Gods justification went to the Gentiles and not to Israel . The nation that prided
herself in ‘seeking God’ were not accepted because of pride and her refusal to
acknowledge the Messiah, the Gentiles were not even thinking there could be a
chance of acceptance, and Jesus says ‘to all of you who weren’t even looking,
you didn’t even bother to seek me, I am now opening my arms to you’ Wow! ‘I
have stretched out my hands ALL DAY LONG unto a rebellious people, which walk
after their own thoughts, they continually provoke me to anger, they sacrifice
in gardens and burn incense on altars of brick’ God prescribed the way to
sacrifice, Israel went another way. In Israel ’s history you find times
where she introduced a priesthood and system of sacrifice that ‘veered away’ from
the ‘orthodox order’. During these times the people still had sacrifice, which
they figured was good enough, but God detested sacrifices that were not in his
prescribed order. Now all this points to the Cross. In Hebrews God says ‘I will
not accept any more animal sacrifices, the prescribed order is now one
sacrifice made on the altar of the Cross’. God is showing us here that even
though many good people continue to ‘serve God in their own way’ this doesn’t
cut it! You must come Gods way, his sacrifice and altar are the only way. It
might seem ‘culturally incorrect’ to look at all religion outside of the Cross
and deem it useless, but this is what God is saying! Don’t come to me with your
own ideas of acceptable sacrifice [Cain/Able] but come to me thru the one
sacrifice that I deem worthy. ‘As the new wine is found in the cluster and one
saith, destroy it not for a blessing is in it: so will I do for my servant’s
sake, that I may not destroy them all. I will bring forth a seed out of Jacob
and out of Judah an
inheritor of my mountains’ God said if he found 10 righteous people in Sodom he would have spared
the whole city for the remnants sake. This is a theme in scripture. God says he
spares nations and people groups for the sake of the few who still have
potential in them. God does this with individuals also. He sees remnants of
good still left in you. You might have failed miserably, done terrible things.
Why in the world does God still stick with you? He sees potential in you still,
and knows it’s worth the wait! ‘The former troubles are forgotten, they are hid
from mine eyes, for I create new heavens and a new earth, the former shall not
be remembered or come into mind’ Now, I don’t want to whitewash what comes
before this. God does rebuke and punish the people for walking in their own
ways, after their own thoughts. God brings very severe judgment on the people
for their sin! But after they turn back to God he says ‘I choose to forget the
past, don’t keep going back to your ‘old world’ I am creating a new atmosphere
for you to operate in’ I don’t want to over spiritualize this. God will make a
real new heaven and earth someday. This is true. But he also wants to make a
‘new heaven and earth’ for you right now. He wants you to come out of your own
small world of problems. Don’t spend your whole life surrounded by little
insignificant problems. I don’t want to demean you; I want to show you that we
have a tendency to see everything thru a myopic view. In the microscope
everything looks huge, until you pull your head back and look at everything
else around you. Sometimes the solution to our problem is to simply pull back
and see the new heaven and earth that God has waiting for you; don’t spend so
much time looking thru the microscope! ‘For as the days of a tree are the days
of my people, and they shall long enjoy the work of their hands’ I have often
used the analogy of a tree to describe Gods people, scripture does the same.
Jesus is the vine, ‘the man whose name is the branch, he will branch out from
his place and build the temple of the Lord’. God wants to branch out thru you,
he wants you to grow and extend thru the disciples that you bring to Christ. ‘I
am the vine; ye are the branches’ you ‘branch out’ thru the people you bring to
the Lord. Are you branching out yet? ‘They shall not labor in vain, nor bring
forth for trouble, they are the seed of the blessed of the Lord, and their
offspring with them’ these last few passages I have committed to memory. These
verses are about as good as any to memorize and pray and claim. I like them
better than the prayer of Jabez! ‘It shall come to pass before they call I will
answer, and while they are yet speaking I will hear’ A few years ago I was in a
Church service and the Pastor asked the whole congregation to pray that the
Lord would pay the salary of another staff worker for a campus church in
Kingsville [Bay Area Fellowship]. As the Pastor and the congregation prayed
this prayer, a few minutes later another staff person came to the front and
announced that earlier in the morning, before we prayed, someone already
volunteered to pay the salary of the person for one year. Before we asked, God
answered!
(539) Isaiah 66 ‘Thus saith the lord, the heaven is my
throne and the earth my footstool: where is the house that ye build unto me?
And where is the place of my rest’ Here we begin to see the transition that
will take place in 1st century Rome .
These descriptions from Isaiah are prophetic of Gods offer to Israel . Isaiah is saying ‘where is
the temple that you can build for me to dwell in’? I do not want a man made
temple any more. I am done with all animal sacrifices [we read that next!] God
will end the prophetic message of Isaiah with his intent to transfer from an
earthly natural temple, to a heavenly spiritual one, the Body of Christ! God
will show his displeasure with all animal sacrifices, not just certain ones.
For Isaiah to claim to be speaking for God, and to say these things seems
blasphemous to Israel
at this time. You must see that Isaiah is coming against all the ceremony and
system that God instituted. To say these things was to put himself in the same
category of Paul who the Jews will accuse of trying to destroy the law and Temple worship. But Paul
was saying this post Christ, Isaiah was saying it before the Cross. How could
Isaiah get away with this while the law was still in effect? The Spirit of
prophecy sees and functions in future realities. When God opens up the future
to a prophet, he simply speaks what he is seeing. It is Gods prerogative to proclaim
his disapproval of the old system in anticipation of the new one that was to
come. ‘For all those things hath mine hand made, but to this man will I look,
to him that is of a poor and contrite spirit’ God says ‘I will not dwell in the
temples of men, but in those who are humble and contrite’. Jesus said unless we
humble ourselves and become as little children, we will not enter Gods kingdom.
Here we see the ‘stones’ that the new temple will be made of, humble contrite
people. ‘He that killeth an ox is like he slew a man, he that sacraficeth a
lamb, as if he cut off a dogs neck, he that offers an oblation, as if he
offered swine’s blood [and you guys think I am harsh!] and he that burneth
incense as if he blessed an idol’ In essence Isaiah is saying the same as the
book of Hebrews. You must see that in the mind of God, all animal sacrifice,
after the Cross[which Isaiah is seeing thru prophecy, he is speaking ‘post
Cross prophetically’] is an insult and an abomination. I am going to start a
commentary on Hebrews as soon as I finish Isaiah, I want to put the book in
proper perspective. When the writer of Hebrews says ‘those who continue to sin
after they were enlightened, that God will not allow them to renew their
repentance’ it is not speaking of believers, as commonly taught. But it is
telling Israel
‘if you reject Messiah, and think you can keep bringing me all these sacrifices
of repentance, I won’t accept them anymore. You cant be ‘renewed again unto
repentance, you have done despite to the Spirit of Grace and have trampled
under foot the sacrifice of God’ The reason the language is so strong here, is
because God is saying when you continue to sacrifice animals after the once and
for all sacrifice of my Son, then you are doing disgrace to Grace. For Isaiah
to being saying this, pre Cross, is amazing! ‘Your brethren that hated you,
that cast you out FOR MY NAMES SAKE said, let the Lord be glorified, but he
shall appear to your joy, and they shall be ashamed’ the brethren of Jesus cast
him out for what they thought was Gods will. The rejection of Messiah was seen
to be an act of Israel ’s
orthodox belief. They truly thought they were doing the will of God. Jesus even
said a time was coming when people would kill believers thinking they were
doing Gods service. But in the end God appeared to Jesus joy and they were
ashamed. ‘A voice of noise from the city, a voice from the temple’ Gods ‘city’
and ‘temple’ are the people of God. God has a voice that comes forth out of the
temple. Rivers flow from this temple. Jesus said he who believes, out of his
belly shall flow rivers of living water. God speaks thru his church. Some have
attempted to ‘de gender’ God. They will say that God is both male and female.
This is not so. God is definitively male. Then where is the feminine voice? It
comes from what the Spirit is saying thru the bride, the Lambs wife. God has
purposed to speak this way. So you have both the male and female sides seen.
Paul said that the Jerusalem
which is above is the mother of us all. The ‘Jerusalem
from above’ is the church, the city of God .
Scripture says listen to the voice of your mother and your father. We are to
hear what God says [Father] and our mother, the corporate voice of the Spirit
that has spoken thru the church, the mother of us all. ‘Before she travailed
she brought forth, before her pain came she was delivered of a man child, who
hath heard such a thing? For as soon as Zion
travailed she brought forth her children. Shall I bring to the birth and not
cause to bring forth?’ God is saying there is a process to the things he wants
to birth from you. Part of the process is travailing, it is the severe pain
experienced at the end of pregnancy. We often equate that pain the wrong way.
We think ‘well, things are so hard here at the end, I want to quit and go home’
God is saying don’t quit, you are about to give birth. Don’t misread the labor
pains; it is a culmination of the long months of waiting. I determined to bring
you to this point of extreme pain, it is my process. Don’t abort! ‘Rejoice ye
with Jerusalem ,
be glad all ye that love her’ It is vital for us to enter into joy. Jesus said
after the woman gives birth, she forgets all the pain she went thru, because of
the joy of bringing forth the child. Begin rejoicing in God, he will do great
things. Scripture says ‘when the Lord turned the captivity of Zion , it was like a dream’ God is going to so
move on your behalf that you will think it is too good to be true! ‘I will
extend peace to her like a river, and the glory of the gentiles like a flowing
stream’ Jesus said ‘Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you, not as
the world giveth give I unto you, let not your heart be troubled neither let it
be afraid’ You have the inner ability to ‘not let your heart be troubled’ the
world runs to doctors and drugs, we run to God. ‘As one whom his mother
comforteth, so will I comfort you, and you shall be comforted in Jerusalem ’ God comforts us ‘in Jerusalem ’. In the book of Galatians the Body
of Christ is called ‘the New Jerusalem, the Church, the mother of us all’ in
the book of Revelation John says ‘the city that comes down from God out of
heaven, the New Jerusalem, is the bride, the Lambs wife’ God says we are
comforted in community. John also says [in 1st John] ‘when WE walk
in the light, WE have fellowship one with another and the blood of Jesus Christ
his Son cleanses US from all sin’ God works in community, as well as with
individuals. Some times we as believers go to one extreme or another. Soren
Kierkegaard, the great 19th century Philosopher/Theologian wrote as
a Prophet against what he saw as the abuses of the institutional church. The
Danish state church had a lot of formality and ‘spectator’ Christianity.
Kierkegaard emphasized Gods desire to reveal himself to people individually,
outside of ‘the church’. He would say things like ‘the congregations are
totally useless, there is nothing good to be found there’ and then he would say
you can only truly serve God outside of ‘the church’. Well God does see all of
us ‘as the church’ and he works thru individuals as well as ‘groups of people’.
God wants to ‘attach’ you to people for his purpose and destiny. You need to
‘walk in the light’ with other believers, so God can ‘comfort you in Jerusalem ’ the corporate city of God . ‘For I will set a sign among them, and I
will send those that escape of them unto the nations… to the Isles afar off,
that have not heard my fame, neither seen my glory, and they shall declare my
name among the gentiles’ sound familiar? This sounds just like the day of
Pentecost, in Acts. God gathered all types of people groups to Jerusalem for the
outpouring of the Spirit, and these nations/people groups went back to their
own areas and spread the gospel. God sends those ‘who escape’, out to be
evangelists. Many times you will ‘go thru hell’ and barley escape with your
life, but the reason God let you escape was for the purpose of sending you out
to other places and people. Don’t make bargains with God and not keep them! How
many times have people said ‘God, if you get me out of this one I sware to do
this or that’ are you out? Then do what you said! [note: in the New testament
Jesus and James taught to not even make
these types of vows, so I am not advocating doing this, but the point is many
of us have, so if you did do it, now fulfill what you promised God you would
do!] ‘For as the new heavens and the new earth shall remain before me, so shall
your seed and name remain… and all flesh shall come to worship me.. and they
shall go forth and look upon the bodies of those who transgressed against me,
for their worm dieth not, neither shall the fire be quenched, and they shall be
an abhorring unto all flesh’ I want to end our study of these last 15 or so
chapters of Isaiah with a brief overview. God tells us ‘I am going to make all
things new’ God has a real future eternal hope for all those who are in Christ.
We need to reaffirm the truth that heaven is real! As well as a ‘new earth’
that he will make new some day. God also affirms thru the Prophet that hell is
real! Theologians, even good ones, have differing views on hell. I like R.C.
Sproul, he is one of my favorite theologians, he believes the references to
‘hell fire’ are symbolic, but he states ‘the real punishment will be worse than
real fire’ the reason I wanted to add the above verses on ‘the worm dieth not,
and the fire is not quenched’ is because Jesus himself uses this terminology
when describing eternal punishment, the ‘worm dieth not’ indicates that there
will be a real physical judgment that lasts forever! God doesn’t want ANYBODY
to go there. How many will go? I don’t know, but this I do know, we as
believers have the only hope in the world to keep people from going there, his
name is Jesus Christ. I exhort all of you to begin doing all you can to reap in
a huge harvest of souls for God, we can’t bring our cars and houses and money
and stocks and all these other things with us, but we can bring people! Gather
up as many of them as you can, so you will have some friends and family when
you get to the other side.
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