Paul writes in Philippians 1:25: “And having this confidence, I know that I shall abide and continue with you all for your furtherance and joy of faith.”
This is the companion verse to II Cor. 1:24 where Paul says, “Not for that we have dominion over your faith, but are helpers of your joy: for by faith ye stand.”
Jordan says, “Many years ago those two verses completely transformed my ministry when I realized my ministry wasn’t what brother Johnny was talking about earlier—‘Beat ’em up, kick ’em around, make ’em do, put the standards in and if they don’t live up to it, smack ’em,’ and don’t have much else without that. That’s called legalism. That’s called performance-based acceptance. It’s performance rather than who we are in Christ and the joy of what God’s made us in Christ.
“It’s in that mindset that Paul comes to Philippians 1:27: ‘Only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ: that whether I come and see you, or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs, that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel.’
“In that word ‘conversation’ you see the word ‘converse’ and ‘concourse’ in the middle of it. That doesn’t just have to do with speaking. When you’re conversant with something, you’re intimate in the way it works, and you know how it happens and how it’s accomplished, and you can become conversant with a book, or a subject, or with a computer, or whatever it is you want to be conversant with and you have a thorough knowledge of it that you’re able to live it and handle it and deal with it.
“The word ‘conversation’ is more than just being able to talk about it. It’s that you get right into it and into its life and let what’s at the basis of who you are, and the way you live, be as becometh the gospel of Christ. Let your manner of life, your lifestyle, who you are be becoming, adorned, make look good…
“Let who you are down inside adorn the doctrine. It’s Titus 2 terminology. That, here’s the reason, ‘Whether I come and see you, or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs . . .’
“Can I tell you that I want to hear about you what Paul hears about these people? When you go away from here and I hear about your ministry and your life and your testimony, Paul said, ‘Whether I’m there with you or not, I want to hear about you. I want to hear about your affairs,’ and that’s not Bill Clinton doctrine. It’s ‘Whatcha doin' in life?’ I want to hear whether you’ve got your manure spreader out or not. You still shoveling dung or washed some of that stuff out? That’s Philippians 3:
[8] Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ,
[9] And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith:
[10] That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death;
“Just three simple things that he said he wanted to hear about them and you know, Paul said, ‘The things which thou has heard of me, commit . . . ’
*****
“There’s a very interesting event that takes place in the ministry of Apostle Paul. There’s a sense in which this passage is very encouraging and enlightening. Acts 15:36. These two guys, Barnabas and Paul, have been ministering together since Acts 13, actually since Acts 11 when Barnabas went up to Antioch and got Paul and added him to the ministry and Paul, in essence, became the teacher and the pastor there and they were consistently working together up to this point.
“John Mark went out with them on the first apostolic journey in Acts 13. He went a ways and then he turned back from the work and went home. He quit and Paul obviously didn’t think it was a good idea to take a quitter with him. But Barnabas was determined to take him.
“You notice in verse 37 it says Barnabas determined to take him. Verse 38. What you have here is a clash of wills. One man’s will wants to do something that the other man’s will says, ‘I’m not going to do it; we’re going to do something else.’ This is not a doctrinal clash; this is a clash of opinion and will and personality.
“This passage is comforting in a sense because what you see here is the humanity of Paul and Barnabas. You remember back in chapter 14:15 when Paul was talking to these people at Lystra, he says to them, ‘Sirs, why do you do these things, we also are men of like passions with you’?
“Sometime you get the idea that Paul and Barnabas, and Paul especially, never would have made a mistake! They would never have got mad or cross with anybody or angry or anything of that nature and it’s pretty obvious they were men of like passions like you and I!
“They’re humanity was just as real as yours and mine is. They disagreed; they lost their temper. They had strong words between them and they departed. They separated. They got mad enough and determined enough, and dug their heels in enough, that they separated. One went one way and one went the other.
“But there’s a lesson here. The disagreement they had was an illustration about how to disagree agreeably and that’s almost a contradiction in terms. I’m not talking about doctrine; this is a personality clash. They disagreed in grace and then they pressed on. This was not a sectarian kind of thing; it was a very practical application of grace.
“You see that in verse 40. When it says about being ‘recommended by the brethren under the grace of God,’ that’s not talking about the brethren taking Paul’s side over Barnabas’ side. In fact, it’s almost the opposite of that.
“Because when Barnabas and Paul left, both of them are recommended. It’s not that the brethren are commending them; what they’re saying is, ‘Look, guys, don’t spend the rest of your life taking pot shots at each other. Paul, don’t try to justify what you did and condemn Barnabas and Barnabas, don’t take shots and lob scud missiles over there at Paul. Just get on with it! Get over what’s happened and press on with the word of the ministry!’
*****
“Titus 1:4 says, ‘To Titus, mine own son after the common faith: Grace, mercy, and peace, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour.’
“I heard a sermon years ago about that verse and the guy called it, ‘It’s too early to quit!’ and I’ve always thought about that when I read that passage. Paul writes to Titus and says, ‘Titus, don’t quit yet! Keep going! This is why I left you there in Crete! I left you there to do a job so get on with the job! Don’t lay down and quit!’
“It’s always too soon to quit. You quit when the Lord takes you home and until then it’s too early to quit. And the thing that he left Titus there to do is in verse 5: ‘For this cause left I thee in Crete, that thou shouldest set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain elders in every city, as I had appointed thee.’
“There were some things in the ministry on Crete that Paul expected to be accomplished by the local churches that they hadn’t done. There’s some things that are wanting. It had to do with getting the local church structured in a way that it would do the things that God wanted it to do.”
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Honeymoon do list
At last month’s Ladies Luncheon at Shorewood, I was seated next to a friend of the same age who will be married next month for the first time. When the subject of honeymoons came up I told the ladies around my table that my mom had a doozy of a wedding night herself.
My dad had decided they would honeymoon in Manhattan since he wanted to go to this dentist of the stars on Central Park South to be fitted with a new pair of dentures. My dad, who had grown up very impoverished, had all his teeth pulled by the dental school at the University of Michigan, where he studied pre-med on a full academic scholarship. As it turned out, Bette Davis entered the dentist’s waiting room with her two little dogs at the same time my dad was visiting.
For their 1960 wedding in Akron, Ohio, my dad, a very popular private physician in the Firestone Park neighborhood who met my mom when she responded to a newspaper ad he placed for a receptionist, had been dieting to look good for the ceremony and accompanying photos, etc.
After the reception and hour-and-a-half flight to LaGuardia,they had barely checked into their midtown hotel room when my dad suddenly announced he was going out for a minute and would be back.
My dad, a first-generation Norwegian-American who grew up on Lake Superior at the Minnesota-Wisconsin border, was extremely fond of Jewish deli items that reminded him of the foods he grew up on—Gefilte fish, smoked herring in cream sauce, salami on rye bread, knish, etc.
Unbeknownst to my mom, he had been jonesing for this type of New York deli big-time and escaped from the hotel straight over to one of those 24-hour automats that catered to all his favorite cravings.
Returning to his wife an hour later with a belly overloaded on such “delicacies,” he soon became ill and was unable to even consummate their marriage that evening!!
Thus began a 34-year marriage that was to be filled to the gills with the kooky, nutty, selfish, unpredictable, irresponsible, immature antics of an absolute eccentric of a husband, father and doctor. Only the good Lord knows how much my poor mom was made to endure!
My dad had decided they would honeymoon in Manhattan since he wanted to go to this dentist of the stars on Central Park South to be fitted with a new pair of dentures. My dad, who had grown up very impoverished, had all his teeth pulled by the dental school at the University of Michigan, where he studied pre-med on a full academic scholarship. As it turned out, Bette Davis entered the dentist’s waiting room with her two little dogs at the same time my dad was visiting.
For their 1960 wedding in Akron, Ohio, my dad, a very popular private physician in the Firestone Park neighborhood who met my mom when she responded to a newspaper ad he placed for a receptionist, had been dieting to look good for the ceremony and accompanying photos, etc.
After the reception and hour-and-a-half flight to LaGuardia,they had barely checked into their midtown hotel room when my dad suddenly announced he was going out for a minute and would be back.
My dad, a first-generation Norwegian-American who grew up on Lake Superior at the Minnesota-Wisconsin border, was extremely fond of Jewish deli items that reminded him of the foods he grew up on—Gefilte fish, smoked herring in cream sauce, salami on rye bread, knish, etc.
Unbeknownst to my mom, he had been jonesing for this type of New York deli big-time and escaped from the hotel straight over to one of those 24-hour automats that catered to all his favorite cravings.
Returning to his wife an hour later with a belly overloaded on such “delicacies,” he soon became ill and was unable to even consummate their marriage that evening!!
Thus began a 34-year marriage that was to be filled to the gills with the kooky, nutty, selfish, unpredictable, irresponsible, immature antics of an absolute eccentric of a husband, father and doctor. Only the good Lord knows how much my poor mom was made to endure!
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Orders from home
Today is the wedding anniversary of a dear married couple, Eddie Mae and Eugene, who I’ve come to love since I helped them relocate here to the elderly house two years ago from a very bad living situation (where they were on the brink of homelessness).
The two met in their mid-30s in Texas, Eugene’s native state. Eddie Mae is from Montgomery, Ala. They both are lifelong Baptists and study their King James Bible every single day. The fact they’ve lived a biblically-prescribed marriage is readily apparent whenever you see them together. Like my boss once observed, “If they could breathe for each other they would.”
In honor of their day, here’s an old study passage from Jordan on the love between a man and a woman as God would have it:
“For a man to really understand a woman is pretty near an impossibility. The reason for that is God took Eve out of Adam, so there’s something missing in us and there’s a part of us that isn’t there anymore. And you just don’t understand something that isn’t a part of you.
“For you ladies, that’s not a bad thing; it’s a good thing because the man is always looking, always pursuing. You’re the one creature in the whole earth he never really fully figures out. And that’s good for you because he’s naturally going to be interested in you if he’s normal.
“That term ‘to know’ first occurs in Genesis 4. ‘And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived and bare Cain. . . ’ That’s a term talking about having sexual relationships in marriage. It’s interesting that God gave to Adam this fantastic way to say to Eve he loved her. And the word He uses is ‘knew.’
“To love somebody, in other words, is to ‘know’ them and part of what you’re doing in marriage, when you communicate to your spouse that you know them and you develop in your understanding a knowledge of them, you’re building up in them a tremendous deposit of love and you’re balance goes way up like that.
“A love map is that part of your thinking, your mind, where you store all of the relevant information about your partner’s life. The reason I call it a map is it’s a detailed description you’ve plotted out—you know some things about your spouse. Again, our mind, our will, our emotions.
“If I’m knowing some things about my partner, then my mind is programmed with that, and my will is going to make some decisions based on that and my emotions are going to support that and reflect that.
“I hear people refer to being ‘emotionally intelligent’ and I think, what does that mean? If your emotions don’t have independent intelligence, for you to be emotionally intelligent would mean for you to have some intelligence in your mind that your emotions then look to and draw upon. Emotionally intelligent couples are going to be familiar with one another. They’ll know each other’s joys, likes, dislikes, fears, stresses, goals, hopes, longings, beliefs . . .”
******
An old Oprah interview had a very moving interview with a woman who was held hostage in Columbia for six-plus years. She said one of the biggest lessons learned from the ordeal was, ‘Whoever the person you ultimately want to be, that one you always dream about one day becoming, just be that person right now. You don’t have to wait.”
Here’s a great passage from Jordan: “What I represent, what I do, all of it is to come from orders from home. And I’m just a little colony of home down here. Can you imagine that? Look around you this morning; we’re an outpost of heaven.
“You send dudes up into space and put them in the spaceship up there, whatever you see in the movies. Well, we’re just that from heaven. God reached out in the world and took a bunch of old dirt bags like us, made of dust, put a little spit in it, molded a man and then He put His life in you and made you part of heaven. That’s who we really are.
“Our conversation . . . our sense of our identity is in heaven. It’s that nobler affinity, that grander purpose, that protection and security that comes from really knowing who you are.
“You know why I can press toward the mark for the prize? It’s because I really know what’s going on. I really know what I’m a part of. He didn’t just save me to keep me out of hell. He saved me to make me a citizen and a part of the commonwealth of His kingdom. And He didn’t just give me a citizen card to put my little nametag on that says, ‘Oh, I’m in!’ He said, ‘You know, I want to associate you with a lifestyle that I’ve established. And I want to demonstrate that in your life.’
“It isn’t just that we’re representing heaven but I’m also looking for this thing to get completed. Aren’t you glad of that? ‘From whence also we look for the Savior.’ When He says we’re looking for Christ the Savior we’re looking for Him. I’m not looking for the undertaker, I’m not looking to get rich, I’m not looking for an overthrow of the government, I’m not looking for the cure of AIDS, I’m looking for Christ. He’s the hope.
“When Paul says, ‘We look,’ we have that earnest expectation; that eager anticipation for Him to appear. Now that’s a dispensational issue as well as a practical issue.
“One of the hard things to do when you teach people is to help folks move out of the sentimental-based thinking into good hard doctrinal reality that gives substance to their hope. Their hope will then give the sentimental attachment.
“People say, ‘Why don’t I just start with the sentimental attachment and forget how I got there?’ Because as soon as the wind blows you get off that sentimental attachment. If it’s all based in your sentiment, when the wind blows the other way your sentiment turns around and you’re mad sentimentally in your emotions. You know that.
“You’ve talked to somebody and one moment you’ve loved them and the next minute you’ve hated them. You went out and bought that new car and you couldn’t do without that thing; you had to have it! That shiny, little red job with all the gadgets. You couldn’t stand to be deprived of having that thing.
The two met in their mid-30s in Texas, Eugene’s native state. Eddie Mae is from Montgomery, Ala. They both are lifelong Baptists and study their King James Bible every single day. The fact they’ve lived a biblically-prescribed marriage is readily apparent whenever you see them together. Like my boss once observed, “If they could breathe for each other they would.”
In honor of their day, here’s an old study passage from Jordan on the love between a man and a woman as God would have it:
“For a man to really understand a woman is pretty near an impossibility. The reason for that is God took Eve out of Adam, so there’s something missing in us and there’s a part of us that isn’t there anymore. And you just don’t understand something that isn’t a part of you.
“For you ladies, that’s not a bad thing; it’s a good thing because the man is always looking, always pursuing. You’re the one creature in the whole earth he never really fully figures out. And that’s good for you because he’s naturally going to be interested in you if he’s normal.
“That term ‘to know’ first occurs in Genesis 4. ‘And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived and bare Cain. . . ’ That’s a term talking about having sexual relationships in marriage. It’s interesting that God gave to Adam this fantastic way to say to Eve he loved her. And the word He uses is ‘knew.’
“To love somebody, in other words, is to ‘know’ them and part of what you’re doing in marriage, when you communicate to your spouse that you know them and you develop in your understanding a knowledge of them, you’re building up in them a tremendous deposit of love and you’re balance goes way up like that.
“A love map is that part of your thinking, your mind, where you store all of the relevant information about your partner’s life. The reason I call it a map is it’s a detailed description you’ve plotted out—you know some things about your spouse. Again, our mind, our will, our emotions.
“If I’m knowing some things about my partner, then my mind is programmed with that, and my will is going to make some decisions based on that and my emotions are going to support that and reflect that.
“I hear people refer to being ‘emotionally intelligent’ and I think, what does that mean? If your emotions don’t have independent intelligence, for you to be emotionally intelligent would mean for you to have some intelligence in your mind that your emotions then look to and draw upon. Emotionally intelligent couples are going to be familiar with one another. They’ll know each other’s joys, likes, dislikes, fears, stresses, goals, hopes, longings, beliefs . . .”
******
An old Oprah interview had a very moving interview with a woman who was held hostage in Columbia for six-plus years. She said one of the biggest lessons learned from the ordeal was, ‘Whoever the person you ultimately want to be, that one you always dream about one day becoming, just be that person right now. You don’t have to wait.”
Here’s a great passage from Jordan: “What I represent, what I do, all of it is to come from orders from home. And I’m just a little colony of home down here. Can you imagine that? Look around you this morning; we’re an outpost of heaven.
“You send dudes up into space and put them in the spaceship up there, whatever you see in the movies. Well, we’re just that from heaven. God reached out in the world and took a bunch of old dirt bags like us, made of dust, put a little spit in it, molded a man and then He put His life in you and made you part of heaven. That’s who we really are.
“Our conversation . . . our sense of our identity is in heaven. It’s that nobler affinity, that grander purpose, that protection and security that comes from really knowing who you are.
“You know why I can press toward the mark for the prize? It’s because I really know what’s going on. I really know what I’m a part of. He didn’t just save me to keep me out of hell. He saved me to make me a citizen and a part of the commonwealth of His kingdom. And He didn’t just give me a citizen card to put my little nametag on that says, ‘Oh, I’m in!’ He said, ‘You know, I want to associate you with a lifestyle that I’ve established. And I want to demonstrate that in your life.’
“It isn’t just that we’re representing heaven but I’m also looking for this thing to get completed. Aren’t you glad of that? ‘From whence also we look for the Savior.’ When He says we’re looking for Christ the Savior we’re looking for Him. I’m not looking for the undertaker, I’m not looking to get rich, I’m not looking for an overthrow of the government, I’m not looking for the cure of AIDS, I’m looking for Christ. He’s the hope.
“When Paul says, ‘We look,’ we have that earnest expectation; that eager anticipation for Him to appear. Now that’s a dispensational issue as well as a practical issue.
“One of the hard things to do when you teach people is to help folks move out of the sentimental-based thinking into good hard doctrinal reality that gives substance to their hope. Their hope will then give the sentimental attachment.
“People say, ‘Why don’t I just start with the sentimental attachment and forget how I got there?’ Because as soon as the wind blows you get off that sentimental attachment. If it’s all based in your sentiment, when the wind blows the other way your sentiment turns around and you’re mad sentimentally in your emotions. You know that.
“You’ve talked to somebody and one moment you’ve loved them and the next minute you’ve hated them. You went out and bought that new car and you couldn’t do without that thing; you had to have it! That shiny, little red job with all the gadgets. You couldn’t stand to be deprived of having that thing.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Seeing into the heart
To be filled with the Spirit is to be filled with the Word and have your thinking and actions controlled by the Word of God. Jordan says I Thess. 2:13 is one of his favorite verses: “There’s a lot of things to get from that verse. It’s the Word of God that effectually works in people that believe. When you by faith take the Word of God and step out upon what God says, God the Holy Spirit takes His Word . . .
“God the Holy Spirit today works indirectly in your life through the instrumentality of the Word of God as you by faith rest upon it. I don’t know how to say that any clearer than that. If I did, I’d say it another way. The way God’s going to work in your life, it isn’t you sitting down and saying, ‘Lord, I want you to take away this problem out of my life,’ and God’s just going to zap you and it’s going to be gone. That isn’t how that happens.
“As you objectively take your thinking processes, your actions and your attitude and bring them under the control and authority of the Word of God . . . As you begin to think in your own heart and mind the way God says He thinks in His Word, that is God the Holy Spirit working in you both to will and to do His good pleasure.
“So rather than looking out there, we look in here. Rather than asking God to move and do out there, it’s His Word that WORKS and He’s in us, living His life out through our mortal bodies as we walk by faith in what He says in His Word.
“If something is effectual that means it WORKS. It’s effective; it gets the job done. It’s not a misfire. It works effectually IN you. That’s where God’s working starts. It’s in you that believe! That’s the catalyst of it.
“Col. 1:9. There’s that word again! Let the Word of Christ DWELL in you! Let it come and fill up your life and be at home in you and live there! I pray that you might be filled with the knowledge of His will.
“What should be the result of you having a daily and a weekly intake of sound doctrine into your life? That you might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing.
“The first thing God is interested in you understanding about Jesus Christ is not His earthly life and ministry. That’s what religion wants you to know about.
“When you look back to Calvary and watch all the things that happen there, then the Lord speaks seven times. Now, you can only see into the heart of a person when the words come out of their mouth. You can’t watch the actions of a person and tell exactly what’s inside of them. They can be fooling you.
“But you listen to the words that come out a person’s mouth and the Lord says that’s where the Spirit’s revealed. That’s where your inner man comes out.”
“God the Holy Spirit today works indirectly in your life through the instrumentality of the Word of God as you by faith rest upon it. I don’t know how to say that any clearer than that. If I did, I’d say it another way. The way God’s going to work in your life, it isn’t you sitting down and saying, ‘Lord, I want you to take away this problem out of my life,’ and God’s just going to zap you and it’s going to be gone. That isn’t how that happens.
“As you objectively take your thinking processes, your actions and your attitude and bring them under the control and authority of the Word of God . . . As you begin to think in your own heart and mind the way God says He thinks in His Word, that is God the Holy Spirit working in you both to will and to do His good pleasure.
“So rather than looking out there, we look in here. Rather than asking God to move and do out there, it’s His Word that WORKS and He’s in us, living His life out through our mortal bodies as we walk by faith in what He says in His Word.
“If something is effectual that means it WORKS. It’s effective; it gets the job done. It’s not a misfire. It works effectually IN you. That’s where God’s working starts. It’s in you that believe! That’s the catalyst of it.
“Col. 1:9. There’s that word again! Let the Word of Christ DWELL in you! Let it come and fill up your life and be at home in you and live there! I pray that you might be filled with the knowledge of His will.
“What should be the result of you having a daily and a weekly intake of sound doctrine into your life? That you might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing.
“The first thing God is interested in you understanding about Jesus Christ is not His earthly life and ministry. That’s what religion wants you to know about.
“When you look back to Calvary and watch all the things that happen there, then the Lord speaks seven times. Now, you can only see into the heart of a person when the words come out of their mouth. You can’t watch the actions of a person and tell exactly what’s inside of them. They can be fooling you.
“But you listen to the words that come out a person’s mouth and the Lord says that’s where the Spirit’s revealed. That’s where your inner man comes out.”
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Objectively speaking
Paul is not talking about getting MORE of the Spirit of God when he advises to “be filled with the Spirit.” It’s to be filled by His instrumentality.
Jordan explains, “God the Holy Spirit is going to be used by the Father to put some things into you that ought to be there. It isn’t about putting more of the Spirit of God in you; it’s rather by the instrumentality of the Spirit of God--by the working of Holy Spirit --that some things are going to begin to be produced in your life.
“What it is is to have God’s Word—the Spirit of God never works apart from His Word. It’s to have God’s Spirit; take His Word and fill your heart, your understanding, and renew your mind with an understanding of what it is God’s doing. It’s an objective, measurable operation of the Holy Spirit. It’s something that can be measured by words on a page in the Bible and be identified in your life in specific ways.
“To be filled with anything is to be saturated by that thing to the point that it completely dominates and controls your life. For example, Luke 5:25. That’s saying these people were so astonished and afraid that fear just took control of them and the emotion of fear just completely consumed them to the place they were incapable of doing anything because it controlled them.
“Luke 6:10. They were just completely controlled by their rage at the wonderful thing Christ had done and it gripped them and carried them along and they couldn’t get shed of it.
“John 16:6. The emotion just came in and grabbed them and wrenched them to the place that they couldn’t get out from under the control of it.
“We could go on and on with passages like that. To ‘be filled with the Spirit’ simply means to be under the complete, total dominion and domination of the Holy Spirit. It has to do with surrender. Boy, we don’t like that word. It’s the total surrender of your life and your thinking to the control of the Holy Spirit so that He carries you along through life.
“Being filled with the Holy Spirit is you lost, you can’t, you give up and He does. Paul said ‘I’m crucified.’ If your Christian life is going to be what God produces, it won’t be you. It requires the DEATH of selfishness and the DEATH of self-will in your life. It isn’t my thinking, my way. It’s His way. We got this whole thing, ‘My way or the highway.’ It isn’t that.
“I was in the bookstore specifically looking for books telling you how to be filled with the Holy Spirit and didn’t find one that had less than 6 steps to get there and the first two had to do with confessing your sins and all that kind of bunk.
“How do you get there? To be filled with the Spirit is easy to understand; it means ‘I surrender to His control. He controls me moment by moment, day by day.’ My life is to be lived in an attitude of complete, total surrender to the spirit of Almighty God. How in the world do I do that?
“It’s always fascinated me why there’s so much confusion about what it is that produces; what the means of producing this filling of the Spirit is.
“Like I said, it’s not simply a subjective feeling you get inside, that your emotions point you to. It’s an objective work of God the Holy Spirit in a non-experiential realm in your life, and you can measure it and identify it objectively.
“The Book of Ephesians and the Book of Colossians are companion epistles; often called sister epistles, which means they’re related.
“Ephesians is a book of doctrine. Colossians is the book of correction about mistakes being made regarding the doctrine in Ephesians. Ephesians focuses on the Body of Christ over which Christ is the head. In Colossians the focus is on Christ who is the head of the Body.
“I was 18 years old when I went out one day onto a hayfield and laid a palette down and spent all day reading the Book of Ephesians. I read it 20 some times that day, and all of a sudden the book just transformed itself right in front of my mind. You get it in your mind like that.
“I made a list of over 30 things Paul will say in Ephesians that he repeats in Colossians. Look at Colossians 3:18. Watch the same instructions in Ephesians 5:22.
“If you let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly, you’re going to get the exactly the same results in the wives, the husbands, the children, the fathers, the servants and the masters. If you get the same results from being filled with the Spirit that you get from being filled with the Word of God, what does that tell you?!
“Listen, if you get exactly the same results, doesn’t that tell you that being filled with the Spirit is equal to being filled with the Word of God? Sure it does.
“You know what it is? Being filled with the Spirit of God is equivalent to saying, ‘Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.’ It’s the Holy Spirit working through the Word of God to fill your life with the qualities of spiritual maturity. It’s taking the Word of Christ and letting it infuse every part of our being.
“Eph. 5:13. Now that’s an objective standard. You can measure yourself. If you are unskillful in the word of righteousness than you’re a baby spiritually. I didn’t say that; God said that! Measure your own status on that!”
Jordan explains, “God the Holy Spirit is going to be used by the Father to put some things into you that ought to be there. It isn’t about putting more of the Spirit of God in you; it’s rather by the instrumentality of the Spirit of God--by the working of Holy Spirit --that some things are going to begin to be produced in your life.
“What it is is to have God’s Word—the Spirit of God never works apart from His Word. It’s to have God’s Spirit; take His Word and fill your heart, your understanding, and renew your mind with an understanding of what it is God’s doing. It’s an objective, measurable operation of the Holy Spirit. It’s something that can be measured by words on a page in the Bible and be identified in your life in specific ways.
“To be filled with anything is to be saturated by that thing to the point that it completely dominates and controls your life. For example, Luke 5:25. That’s saying these people were so astonished and afraid that fear just took control of them and the emotion of fear just completely consumed them to the place they were incapable of doing anything because it controlled them.
“Luke 6:10. They were just completely controlled by their rage at the wonderful thing Christ had done and it gripped them and carried them along and they couldn’t get shed of it.
“John 16:6. The emotion just came in and grabbed them and wrenched them to the place that they couldn’t get out from under the control of it.
“We could go on and on with passages like that. To ‘be filled with the Spirit’ simply means to be under the complete, total dominion and domination of the Holy Spirit. It has to do with surrender. Boy, we don’t like that word. It’s the total surrender of your life and your thinking to the control of the Holy Spirit so that He carries you along through life.
“Being filled with the Holy Spirit is you lost, you can’t, you give up and He does. Paul said ‘I’m crucified.’ If your Christian life is going to be what God produces, it won’t be you. It requires the DEATH of selfishness and the DEATH of self-will in your life. It isn’t my thinking, my way. It’s His way. We got this whole thing, ‘My way or the highway.’ It isn’t that.
“I was in the bookstore specifically looking for books telling you how to be filled with the Holy Spirit and didn’t find one that had less than 6 steps to get there and the first two had to do with confessing your sins and all that kind of bunk.
“How do you get there? To be filled with the Spirit is easy to understand; it means ‘I surrender to His control. He controls me moment by moment, day by day.’ My life is to be lived in an attitude of complete, total surrender to the spirit of Almighty God. How in the world do I do that?
“It’s always fascinated me why there’s so much confusion about what it is that produces; what the means of producing this filling of the Spirit is.
“Like I said, it’s not simply a subjective feeling you get inside, that your emotions point you to. It’s an objective work of God the Holy Spirit in a non-experiential realm in your life, and you can measure it and identify it objectively.
“The Book of Ephesians and the Book of Colossians are companion epistles; often called sister epistles, which means they’re related.
“Ephesians is a book of doctrine. Colossians is the book of correction about mistakes being made regarding the doctrine in Ephesians. Ephesians focuses on the Body of Christ over which Christ is the head. In Colossians the focus is on Christ who is the head of the Body.
“I was 18 years old when I went out one day onto a hayfield and laid a palette down and spent all day reading the Book of Ephesians. I read it 20 some times that day, and all of a sudden the book just transformed itself right in front of my mind. You get it in your mind like that.
“I made a list of over 30 things Paul will say in Ephesians that he repeats in Colossians. Look at Colossians 3:18. Watch the same instructions in Ephesians 5:22.
“If you let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly, you’re going to get the exactly the same results in the wives, the husbands, the children, the fathers, the servants and the masters. If you get the same results from being filled with the Spirit that you get from being filled with the Word of God, what does that tell you?!
“Listen, if you get exactly the same results, doesn’t that tell you that being filled with the Spirit is equal to being filled with the Word of God? Sure it does.
“You know what it is? Being filled with the Spirit of God is equivalent to saying, ‘Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.’ It’s the Holy Spirit working through the Word of God to fill your life with the qualities of spiritual maturity. It’s taking the Word of Christ and letting it infuse every part of our being.
“Eph. 5:13. Now that’s an objective standard. You can measure yourself. If you are unskillful in the word of righteousness than you’re a baby spiritually. I didn’t say that; God said that! Measure your own status on that!”
Friday, May 18, 2012
Inner man fruits
Not only should we Believers have that melody in our heart, we should always have a thankful heart toward God. As Ephesians 5:20-21 says, “Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.”
Jordan says about this particular passage, “These are the fruits of what verse 18 is talking about. Verse 18 is a very interesting passage: ‘And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit.’
“That is equivalent to verse 17’s ‘Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.’ It is unwise to be drunk with wine wherein there’s excess. Now you know that! I don’t have to tell you that being filled with wine is stupid and foolish.
“Come with me to the Book of Proverbs. There’s some things that you learn just by growing up in life. I never saw a drunk ‘til I was about 17 years old at the Mobile Rescue Mission. The first drunk I ever saw staggered up the alley alongside between Bolt Body Shop and the rescue mission. I didn’t have any idea what was the matter with him, but I helped him up off the ground and said, ‘That poor guy’s sick. He can’t stand up.’ And I thought, ‘He needs a bath; he smells terrible!’ Found out later he was just drunk.
“Be not drunk with wine. It’s not wise to do those kinds of things. Proverbs 20:1 says, ‘Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.’ Wine is a mocker. Strong drink is raging.
“Somebody says, ‘Well, I can handle it, preacher.’ Yeah, that verse just told me about you, didn’t it? You trust yourself too much. I just don’t trust myself quite that much.
“Proverbs 23 says, ‘ Hear thou, my son, and be wise, and guide thine heart in the way.
[20] Be not among winebibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh:
[21] For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty: and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags.’
“That’s a pretty fair statement on the situation. Verse 29-32 says, ‘Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes?
[30] They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine.
[31] Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright.
[32] At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.’
“Question. I used to love that ad slogan talking about ‘the finest product of the brewer’s ark.’ Some beer company. I used wonder why somebody didn’t talk about the FINISHED product! I wondered that at 18 years old down at the rescue mission where you SAW the finished product!
“At the last, look at what it does. ‘It biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder.’ I mean, they’re just hooked. They got to have it, got to have it. Though it’s stupid and foolish they’re hung up by it. If you haven’t got sense enough to get beyond that in your life, well, you’re going to find out that what God says about it’s true, okay?
“I say all that to say to you that is not exactly what Paul’s talking about in Eph. 5:18. I’m going to disappoint you. Eph. 5:18 is not a verse where Paul is teaching abstinence. It’s a verse talking about drinking wine in a little different context.
“Come with me to Isaiah 28. When Paul’s talking about the ‘be not drunk with wine’ over there, he’s got something more in mind than just social drinking and social issues. He has some religious issues in mind. Isaiah 28:7 says, ‘But they also have erred through wine, and through strong drink are out of the way; the priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink, they are swallowed up of wine, they are out of the way through strong drink; they err in vision, they stumble in judgment.’
“I mean, you went down there to church in Jerusalem and the priests were up there drinking and carrying on and they just were vomiting and puking. You ever been on a dance hall on a Sunday morning after a Saturday night spree?
“I remember years ago down in Mobile when I was working at the rescue mission there was a little church that started in a dance hall. It was called a Junior Achievement building. On Saturdays they would rent it out to this dance band and they had dances in there and then on Sunday morning this church would use it.
“And I used to go down and preach for them every now and then and you’d go in there sometime and there’d be people just get sick and you know, if you’re drunk and you’re sick, you’re going to get up and be careful you go to the restroom and take care of it, right? Yeah, sure you are! I mean, you just find an empty pocket and puke, is what you do. I don’t mean to be uncouth but that’s what you do. Might as well call it what it is. Listen, they’re not called ‘upholstered sewers’ for nothing.
“Only in this verse they’re not down at the Club 500 and they’re not down at the discotheque; they’re at church! They’re in the temple. And what they’re doing is they’re worshipping idols and the idolatry.
“The idolatry in Israel is associated with the drunkenness because the heathen contacted their gods through getting these out-of-body experiences. Isaiah 5. You see the first drug addicts were not in the 20th century in America. The drug culture and all that business, like in Revelation 9, all that stuff comes through the occult and the idolatrous systems of the heathen out there.
“Hosea has said, ‘Ephraim has joined idols; let him alone.’ The mark of it and the outward manifestation of it was this drunken debauchery up there in the temple. These are the woes upon the nation Israel for which God destroyed them.
“Isaiah 5:11-12 says, ‘Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink; that continue until night, till wine inflame them!
[12] And the harp, and the viol, the tabret, and pipe, and wine, are in their feasts: but they regard not the work of the LORD, neither consider the operation of his hands.’
“Listen, he’s not talking about somebody having a fling on Saturday night. He’s not talking about somebody sitting with a six-pack in front of the TV eating pretzels and watching football on Sunday afternoon. He’s talking about the religious system out there and this is part of the worship of the heathen.
“It’s part of the idolatrous system out of which the Ephesians were saved. They had that great goddess Diana at Ephesus. These people were saved out of a life and a religious life that consumed them in these ways.
“I Cor. 10:20. If you go back to Deut. 32 where that passage is a quote from, and study down through that thing, you’ll see that cup he’s talking about is filled with wine! And a religious ceremony where they’re taking wine and they transform it into blood! The pure blood of the grape! The only people who take wine and transform it into blood in order to drink it is religion. Paganism.
“When you come to Ephesians in that light, and he says ‘be not drunk with wine where is excess,’ what he’s saying to them is, ‘Don’t try to worship God and serve God like you used to in the heathen church. Lay all the traditions of the former life, all the religion that you used to have, all of you viewpoint about how God can be happy with you, lay aside all of that. We’re not going to worship God today like we used to!’
“Now, maybe you came out of a religion like that. I don’t k now. Maybe you didn’t. I didn’t. I never came out of a religion that did any of those kind of things. They did worse kinds of things in other areas. See?
“Hey people, I’ve seen people so drunk on pride, if they had gotten that drunk on whisky they’d be dead! Let’s be honest about the thing!
“So we’re going to get rid of one sin for another sin. You didn’t improve yourself; you deceived yourself. But when Paul says, ‘Be not drunk,’ he’s saying the Christian life isn’t going to work the way . . . we’re not going to worship the way we used to.
“We’re not going to worship with the wine. Experience-based religion is to satisfy the flesh. That’s the way they used to worship! It was a religion based on their experiences: ‘I feel it, I see it, I touch it, I experience it, my senses are involved in it and it satisfies the lusts of my flesh.’ The desires of my flesh.
“What religion is designed to do is to make you feel good about doing good: ‘Give me something to do and make me feel good about doing that.’ Feelings. Your experience. Listen, folks, when the basic content of your religion is what you experience, and what you can feel . . . I mean the beautiful building and the wonderful music, and the wonderful message, and the warm cordial feeling. Feeling good in the place and that kind of stuff.
“As soon as your religion is based in that you’re going to be outdone a hundred to one by the Adversary because that’s his realm. His wisdom is first, sensual. James 3:15 says, ‘This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish.’
“God works on our inner man by His Word resident inside in our spirit and that works out of us. The other is just the religious external form. Experience-based religion. Paul says that won’t get it.
“There has to be a reality in your life that goes far deeper than the external activities you’re involved in. In fact, it has to be exactly the other way.
“I had a woman come to me the other week who was raised in a church just like ours and believes what we believe; more or less, she acknowledges the doctrines that we preach. She sat there and said, ‘Brother Rick, I’m just dead on the inside and I’m tired of carrying all the baggage on the outside.’
“You see, that’s the opposite of the way it ought to be! And yet that’s how we get sometimes.
“Now there’s one of two answers to that. No. 1., you didn’t have any life on the inside to start with. Or No. 2, you put so much baggage on the outside that the life’s gone to sleep. In her case, it was the latter. The answer to it is verse 18: ‘Don’t do it that way but be filled with the spirit.’
“Eph. 3:16-20 says, 16] That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man;
[17] That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love,
[18] May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height;
[19] And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.
[20] Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, inner man.’"
Jordan says about this particular passage, “These are the fruits of what verse 18 is talking about. Verse 18 is a very interesting passage: ‘And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit.’
“That is equivalent to verse 17’s ‘Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.’ It is unwise to be drunk with wine wherein there’s excess. Now you know that! I don’t have to tell you that being filled with wine is stupid and foolish.
“Come with me to the Book of Proverbs. There’s some things that you learn just by growing up in life. I never saw a drunk ‘til I was about 17 years old at the Mobile Rescue Mission. The first drunk I ever saw staggered up the alley alongside between Bolt Body Shop and the rescue mission. I didn’t have any idea what was the matter with him, but I helped him up off the ground and said, ‘That poor guy’s sick. He can’t stand up.’ And I thought, ‘He needs a bath; he smells terrible!’ Found out later he was just drunk.
“Be not drunk with wine. It’s not wise to do those kinds of things. Proverbs 20:1 says, ‘Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.’ Wine is a mocker. Strong drink is raging.
“Somebody says, ‘Well, I can handle it, preacher.’ Yeah, that verse just told me about you, didn’t it? You trust yourself too much. I just don’t trust myself quite that much.
“Proverbs 23 says, ‘ Hear thou, my son, and be wise, and guide thine heart in the way.
[20] Be not among winebibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh:
[21] For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty: and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags.’
“That’s a pretty fair statement on the situation. Verse 29-32 says, ‘Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes?
[30] They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine.
[31] Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright.
[32] At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.’
“Question. I used to love that ad slogan talking about ‘the finest product of the brewer’s ark.’ Some beer company. I used wonder why somebody didn’t talk about the FINISHED product! I wondered that at 18 years old down at the rescue mission where you SAW the finished product!
“At the last, look at what it does. ‘It biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder.’ I mean, they’re just hooked. They got to have it, got to have it. Though it’s stupid and foolish they’re hung up by it. If you haven’t got sense enough to get beyond that in your life, well, you’re going to find out that what God says about it’s true, okay?
“I say all that to say to you that is not exactly what Paul’s talking about in Eph. 5:18. I’m going to disappoint you. Eph. 5:18 is not a verse where Paul is teaching abstinence. It’s a verse talking about drinking wine in a little different context.
“Come with me to Isaiah 28. When Paul’s talking about the ‘be not drunk with wine’ over there, he’s got something more in mind than just social drinking and social issues. He has some religious issues in mind. Isaiah 28:7 says, ‘But they also have erred through wine, and through strong drink are out of the way; the priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink, they are swallowed up of wine, they are out of the way through strong drink; they err in vision, they stumble in judgment.’
“I mean, you went down there to church in Jerusalem and the priests were up there drinking and carrying on and they just were vomiting and puking. You ever been on a dance hall on a Sunday morning after a Saturday night spree?
“I remember years ago down in Mobile when I was working at the rescue mission there was a little church that started in a dance hall. It was called a Junior Achievement building. On Saturdays they would rent it out to this dance band and they had dances in there and then on Sunday morning this church would use it.
“And I used to go down and preach for them every now and then and you’d go in there sometime and there’d be people just get sick and you know, if you’re drunk and you’re sick, you’re going to get up and be careful you go to the restroom and take care of it, right? Yeah, sure you are! I mean, you just find an empty pocket and puke, is what you do. I don’t mean to be uncouth but that’s what you do. Might as well call it what it is. Listen, they’re not called ‘upholstered sewers’ for nothing.
“Only in this verse they’re not down at the Club 500 and they’re not down at the discotheque; they’re at church! They’re in the temple. And what they’re doing is they’re worshipping idols and the idolatry.
“The idolatry in Israel is associated with the drunkenness because the heathen contacted their gods through getting these out-of-body experiences. Isaiah 5. You see the first drug addicts were not in the 20th century in America. The drug culture and all that business, like in Revelation 9, all that stuff comes through the occult and the idolatrous systems of the heathen out there.
“Hosea has said, ‘Ephraim has joined idols; let him alone.’ The mark of it and the outward manifestation of it was this drunken debauchery up there in the temple. These are the woes upon the nation Israel for which God destroyed them.
“Isaiah 5:11-12 says, ‘Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink; that continue until night, till wine inflame them!
[12] And the harp, and the viol, the tabret, and pipe, and wine, are in their feasts: but they regard not the work of the LORD, neither consider the operation of his hands.’
“Listen, he’s not talking about somebody having a fling on Saturday night. He’s not talking about somebody sitting with a six-pack in front of the TV eating pretzels and watching football on Sunday afternoon. He’s talking about the religious system out there and this is part of the worship of the heathen.
“It’s part of the idolatrous system out of which the Ephesians were saved. They had that great goddess Diana at Ephesus. These people were saved out of a life and a religious life that consumed them in these ways.
“I Cor. 10:20. If you go back to Deut. 32 where that passage is a quote from, and study down through that thing, you’ll see that cup he’s talking about is filled with wine! And a religious ceremony where they’re taking wine and they transform it into blood! The pure blood of the grape! The only people who take wine and transform it into blood in order to drink it is religion. Paganism.
“When you come to Ephesians in that light, and he says ‘be not drunk with wine where is excess,’ what he’s saying to them is, ‘Don’t try to worship God and serve God like you used to in the heathen church. Lay all the traditions of the former life, all the religion that you used to have, all of you viewpoint about how God can be happy with you, lay aside all of that. We’re not going to worship God today like we used to!’
“Now, maybe you came out of a religion like that. I don’t k now. Maybe you didn’t. I didn’t. I never came out of a religion that did any of those kind of things. They did worse kinds of things in other areas. See?
“Hey people, I’ve seen people so drunk on pride, if they had gotten that drunk on whisky they’d be dead! Let’s be honest about the thing!
“So we’re going to get rid of one sin for another sin. You didn’t improve yourself; you deceived yourself. But when Paul says, ‘Be not drunk,’ he’s saying the Christian life isn’t going to work the way . . . we’re not going to worship the way we used to.
“We’re not going to worship with the wine. Experience-based religion is to satisfy the flesh. That’s the way they used to worship! It was a religion based on their experiences: ‘I feel it, I see it, I touch it, I experience it, my senses are involved in it and it satisfies the lusts of my flesh.’ The desires of my flesh.
“What religion is designed to do is to make you feel good about doing good: ‘Give me something to do and make me feel good about doing that.’ Feelings. Your experience. Listen, folks, when the basic content of your religion is what you experience, and what you can feel . . . I mean the beautiful building and the wonderful music, and the wonderful message, and the warm cordial feeling. Feeling good in the place and that kind of stuff.
“As soon as your religion is based in that you’re going to be outdone a hundred to one by the Adversary because that’s his realm. His wisdom is first, sensual. James 3:15 says, ‘This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish.’
“God works on our inner man by His Word resident inside in our spirit and that works out of us. The other is just the religious external form. Experience-based religion. Paul says that won’t get it.
“There has to be a reality in your life that goes far deeper than the external activities you’re involved in. In fact, it has to be exactly the other way.
“I had a woman come to me the other week who was raised in a church just like ours and believes what we believe; more or less, she acknowledges the doctrines that we preach. She sat there and said, ‘Brother Rick, I’m just dead on the inside and I’m tired of carrying all the baggage on the outside.’
“You see, that’s the opposite of the way it ought to be! And yet that’s how we get sometimes.
“Now there’s one of two answers to that. No. 1., you didn’t have any life on the inside to start with. Or No. 2, you put so much baggage on the outside that the life’s gone to sleep. In her case, it was the latter. The answer to it is verse 18: ‘Don’t do it that way but be filled with the spirit.’
“Eph. 3:16-20 says, 16] That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man;
[17] That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love,
[18] May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height;
[19] And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.
[20] Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, inner man.’"
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Growth movement
Watching an introduction session to Grace School of the Bible, Jordan said, “The issue in the ministry is to present every person you minister to as perfect. It’s to bring them to the place of being thoroughly and completely equipped to function as a member of the Body of Christ.
“The Bible’s got a lot to say about growing and becoming established in the faith. Eph. 4:11 says, ‘And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers.’
“How else is the Body of Christ going to be built up and edified? It’s through the work of the ministry. How’s it going to be carried on? By perfected saints. It’s the only way.
“The Word saturates you. It produces growth. Ministry comes as the result of spiritual growth. You know what happens when you grow? You begin to move.
“I remember down in Alabama we’d sit out on a hot August evening on an 80-acre field, out front of the farm house we lived in, and my wife and I would just relax out there. It’d be hot and we’d be fanning and trying to get cool in the evening.
“About every third year, Mr. Adams on that farm, he planted corn and I always hated it when he did. You ever heard corn grow? You’d sit out there in the August night heat and hear it pop. It sounded like popcorn going off. It was those stalks expanding. You were literally hearing it grow as it stretched.
“When you grow there’s movement. As you grow spiritually, momentum and movement follows and it increases. The way to get people to go do the work of the ministry is to get them to grow up because that movement and activity and work will be a natural byproduct.
“Romans 15: 14 is my heart’s desire, to be able to say this about myself and about those people to whom and with whom I minister, and if I had a verse I wanted to say about you coming out of the School it would be Romans 15:14.
“We’ve made a commitment to follow Paul. If I want the work of the ministry to be done, I’ve got to produce some perfected saints who the doctrine then goes and motivates to do the work of the ministry.
*****
“Back in the early ’70s I sat down in a little farmhouse out in the Autauga County, Ala. (it wasn’t even a city) out in the middle of nowhere, 17 miles from the nearest town. I’d been through high school and college and been through Bible school, and then I went up in those woods in that territory and started a church and got involved with a local ministry.
“I lived in a house trailer on the farm with my wife. All three of my kids were born there. We had enough money to go to town three times a week. Two of them were on Sunday. One of them was on Monday to buy $10 worth of groceries for the week and any of the rest of the time I wanted to go in I had to hitchhike. I went back and forth many times just that way.
“But I had a lot of time to study. And after about six months of that out there in those woods I realized I didn’t know what in the world I was doing! I said, ‘Lord, I’ve been to school, I’ve learned everything they taught me in school. I read all the time. I’m just taking stuff in and I don’t have any idea what I’m doing! I can tell you what every theologian said that’s been published, and I know what all the Neo-orthodox’s say and Neo-evangelicals; I know what they all say, but I don’t know what to do!’
“And I said, ‘Paul said perfected saints do the work of the ministry. I desperately want to know how to be a perfected saint.’
“That’s when I began to find the design in Paul’s epistles for it. I spent seven years of my life working this stuff through.”
“The Bible’s got a lot to say about growing and becoming established in the faith. Eph. 4:11 says, ‘And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers.’
“How else is the Body of Christ going to be built up and edified? It’s through the work of the ministry. How’s it going to be carried on? By perfected saints. It’s the only way.
“The Word saturates you. It produces growth. Ministry comes as the result of spiritual growth. You know what happens when you grow? You begin to move.
“I remember down in Alabama we’d sit out on a hot August evening on an 80-acre field, out front of the farm house we lived in, and my wife and I would just relax out there. It’d be hot and we’d be fanning and trying to get cool in the evening.
“About every third year, Mr. Adams on that farm, he planted corn and I always hated it when he did. You ever heard corn grow? You’d sit out there in the August night heat and hear it pop. It sounded like popcorn going off. It was those stalks expanding. You were literally hearing it grow as it stretched.
“When you grow there’s movement. As you grow spiritually, momentum and movement follows and it increases. The way to get people to go do the work of the ministry is to get them to grow up because that movement and activity and work will be a natural byproduct.
“Romans 15: 14 is my heart’s desire, to be able to say this about myself and about those people to whom and with whom I minister, and if I had a verse I wanted to say about you coming out of the School it would be Romans 15:14.
“We’ve made a commitment to follow Paul. If I want the work of the ministry to be done, I’ve got to produce some perfected saints who the doctrine then goes and motivates to do the work of the ministry.
*****
“Back in the early ’70s I sat down in a little farmhouse out in the Autauga County, Ala. (it wasn’t even a city) out in the middle of nowhere, 17 miles from the nearest town. I’d been through high school and college and been through Bible school, and then I went up in those woods in that territory and started a church and got involved with a local ministry.
“I lived in a house trailer on the farm with my wife. All three of my kids were born there. We had enough money to go to town three times a week. Two of them were on Sunday. One of them was on Monday to buy $10 worth of groceries for the week and any of the rest of the time I wanted to go in I had to hitchhike. I went back and forth many times just that way.
“But I had a lot of time to study. And after about six months of that out there in those woods I realized I didn’t know what in the world I was doing! I said, ‘Lord, I’ve been to school, I’ve learned everything they taught me in school. I read all the time. I’m just taking stuff in and I don’t have any idea what I’m doing! I can tell you what every theologian said that’s been published, and I know what all the Neo-orthodox’s say and Neo-evangelicals; I know what they all say, but I don’t know what to do!’
“And I said, ‘Paul said perfected saints do the work of the ministry. I desperately want to know how to be a perfected saint.’
“That’s when I began to find the design in Paul’s epistles for it. I spent seven years of my life working this stuff through.”
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Cycling through
The island of Crete is the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean. Three hundred years before the time of Christ, Homer wrote about Crete’s hundreds of villages. It was a heavily populated island at that time, which means at the time of Paul’s visit there were that many more inhabitants.
In Acts 14 is an account by Luke of how extensively the Apostle Paul was getting around:
[19] And there came thither certain Jews from Antioch and Iconium, who persuaded the people, and, having stoned Paul, drew him out of the city, supposing he had been dead.
[20] Howbeit, as the disciples stood round about him, he rose up, and came into the city: and the next day he departed with Barnabas to Derbe.
[21] And when they had preached the gospel to that city, and had taught many, they returned again to Lystra, and to Iconium, and Antioch,
[22] Confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.
[23] And when they had ordained them elders in every church, and had prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord, on whom they believed.
[24] And after they had passed throughout Pisidia, they came to Pamphylia.
[25] And when they had preached the word in Perga, they went down into Attalia:
[26] And thence sailed to Antioch, from whence they had been recommended to the grace of God for the work which they fulfilled.
*****
An old VCR tape I picked up from a bargain table at last month’s Soldier’s Conference has Jordan, in 1994, talking about his trip to Bulgaria with Oscar Woodall and Nick Tercziski.
He started out by reading this same passage from Acts, commenting, “It’s real clear what Paul does. He goes into a town and preaches the gospel, people get saved and then they gather together and are taught. When he leaves the territory, he establishes the Believers together—he’s identified some elders and then leaves them in charge of the ministry.
“In Acts 17, Paul goes to Thessalonica and spends two weeks in the Jewish synagogue and the result was a local church was established. If you go to Philippians 4, you’ll notice he stayed in Thessalonica more than two weeks.
“Philippians 4:15: ‘Now ye Philippians know also, that in the beginning of the gospel, when I departed from Macedonia, no church communicated with me as concerning giving and receiving, but ye only.’
“Philippi was a major metropolis of the area at the time of Paul’s travels. When it says it was a ‘colony,’ the Romans had a way of establishing a city. You know the term ‘city-state.’ You actually had to have citizenship in the city.
“The commentaries say this city was built by Alexander the Great in honor of his dad Philip (the ruler of Greece prior to Alexander). If that’s true, that city is not located down on the coast by Thessalonica; it’s rather in what is modern-day Bulgaria, which at that time was called Macedonia.
“At one time the city was called Philipopolis. Plavdiv is the city now and it is a considerable distance north of when Thessalonica is. If it weren’t for verse 12, you would assume it would be the Philippi down at the coast.
“If it’s the city down on the coast, you could compress the time some. If it’s Plavdiv, which is way up north in the Baltic mountains, you’re going to expand the time. Paul is at Thessalonica and twice the Philippians send offerings to him. What that means is somebody had to go from Philippi to Thessalonica and then go back to Philippi and then go back to Thessalonica and then go back to Philippi. Two round trips.
“In Paul’s day, you’re talking about a five-mile-an-hour clip on an animal to travel somewhere and it’s better than 120 miles to Plavdiv down to Thessalonica, so you’re looking at him taking a little bit of time.
“My point is Paul was there maybe, tops, 3 months. I Thessalonians 1. Here’s a bunch of people where Paul goes in, evangelizes them, then teaches them, and in a period of only a few months, leaves them. He goes on down to Berea, then Athens, then goes to Corinth. While he’s in Athens and Berea, he sends Timothy back to Thessalonica to get a report. Timothy meets him in Corinth and Paul writes I Thessalonians in Acts 18.
“Notice what he says in verse 3: ‘Remembering without ceasing your work of faith, and labour of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the sight of God and our Father;
[4] Knowing, brethren beloved, your election of God.’
“These folks had gotten busy in a hurry! There’s only just a few months from their conversion, and the establishment of the church in Thessalonica, that Paul writes this back about them.
“Notice verse 4. You know how many people still fight about election?! These people know all about it; he doesn’t even explain . . . he says, ‘You know these things.’ And you go through I Thessalonians and it’s amazing the doctrines that he refers to that they know about.
“I’ve always wondered about how in the world is something like that possible because I’m used to dealing with people like you—wonderful, sweet, kind people but just a little thick-headed. People who like to argue a little bit; got your own ideas.
“Well, we went up into the area where Nick is from, into the country there, went into some homes, shared the gospel, people got saved. You began to sit around and instruct them.
“More than once people would get saved, you’d talk to them about the clarity of the gospel, being complete in Christ, living under grace, right division, the difference between Peter and Paul, Israel and the Body of Christ, the one Baptism and the Bible version issue, all in a two-hour period of time after they got saved! And they would understand and grasp.
“There were several times I just wanted to stop and say, ‘Wouldn’t somebody like to argue?’ But people were just receiving it, coming out of tradition, coming out of religion and superstition, and standing in grace.
“You see, what was happening is more or less what Paul was experiencing there. He took the pattern of soul-winning and then teaching the converts, establishing leaders among them, and then having the leaders go back and repeat the process. That pattern is what the work of the ministry is all about. It’s not building buildings, and dogma developments, and tradition and institutions.
“We’re talking about the life of the Body of Christ functioning through the doctrines of grace and that’s where they work.
“Consistently down through church history, based on that pattern, the one thing that you can take to the bank and cash and never run out of is that as soon as a movement, or a group, lets down the issue of soul-winning (nowadays people call it evangelism) . . . when that element is missing from a group, or a local assembly or movement, the road to apostasy has been joined.
“Now maybe they won’t get there right away, but the people that they hand the ball to will get there. I’m talking about the cycle of life of that Body working and the way you see that cycle of life is in that reproductive process of the giving of life.”
In Acts 14 is an account by Luke of how extensively the Apostle Paul was getting around:
[19] And there came thither certain Jews from Antioch and Iconium, who persuaded the people, and, having stoned Paul, drew him out of the city, supposing he had been dead.
[20] Howbeit, as the disciples stood round about him, he rose up, and came into the city: and the next day he departed with Barnabas to Derbe.
[21] And when they had preached the gospel to that city, and had taught many, they returned again to Lystra, and to Iconium, and Antioch,
[22] Confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.
[23] And when they had ordained them elders in every church, and had prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord, on whom they believed.
[24] And after they had passed throughout Pisidia, they came to Pamphylia.
[25] And when they had preached the word in Perga, they went down into Attalia:
[26] And thence sailed to Antioch, from whence they had been recommended to the grace of God for the work which they fulfilled.
*****
An old VCR tape I picked up from a bargain table at last month’s Soldier’s Conference has Jordan, in 1994, talking about his trip to Bulgaria with Oscar Woodall and Nick Tercziski.
He started out by reading this same passage from Acts, commenting, “It’s real clear what Paul does. He goes into a town and preaches the gospel, people get saved and then they gather together and are taught. When he leaves the territory, he establishes the Believers together—he’s identified some elders and then leaves them in charge of the ministry.
“In Acts 17, Paul goes to Thessalonica and spends two weeks in the Jewish synagogue and the result was a local church was established. If you go to Philippians 4, you’ll notice he stayed in Thessalonica more than two weeks.
“Philippians 4:15: ‘Now ye Philippians know also, that in the beginning of the gospel, when I departed from Macedonia, no church communicated with me as concerning giving and receiving, but ye only.’
“Philippi was a major metropolis of the area at the time of Paul’s travels. When it says it was a ‘colony,’ the Romans had a way of establishing a city. You know the term ‘city-state.’ You actually had to have citizenship in the city.
“The commentaries say this city was built by Alexander the Great in honor of his dad Philip (the ruler of Greece prior to Alexander). If that’s true, that city is not located down on the coast by Thessalonica; it’s rather in what is modern-day Bulgaria, which at that time was called Macedonia.
“At one time the city was called Philipopolis. Plavdiv is the city now and it is a considerable distance north of when Thessalonica is. If it weren’t for verse 12, you would assume it would be the Philippi down at the coast.
“If it’s the city down on the coast, you could compress the time some. If it’s Plavdiv, which is way up north in the Baltic mountains, you’re going to expand the time. Paul is at Thessalonica and twice the Philippians send offerings to him. What that means is somebody had to go from Philippi to Thessalonica and then go back to Philippi and then go back to Thessalonica and then go back to Philippi. Two round trips.
“In Paul’s day, you’re talking about a five-mile-an-hour clip on an animal to travel somewhere and it’s better than 120 miles to Plavdiv down to Thessalonica, so you’re looking at him taking a little bit of time.
“My point is Paul was there maybe, tops, 3 months. I Thessalonians 1. Here’s a bunch of people where Paul goes in, evangelizes them, then teaches them, and in a period of only a few months, leaves them. He goes on down to Berea, then Athens, then goes to Corinth. While he’s in Athens and Berea, he sends Timothy back to Thessalonica to get a report. Timothy meets him in Corinth and Paul writes I Thessalonians in Acts 18.
“Notice what he says in verse 3: ‘Remembering without ceasing your work of faith, and labour of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the sight of God and our Father;
[4] Knowing, brethren beloved, your election of God.’
“These folks had gotten busy in a hurry! There’s only just a few months from their conversion, and the establishment of the church in Thessalonica, that Paul writes this back about them.
“Notice verse 4. You know how many people still fight about election?! These people know all about it; he doesn’t even explain . . . he says, ‘You know these things.’ And you go through I Thessalonians and it’s amazing the doctrines that he refers to that they know about.
“I’ve always wondered about how in the world is something like that possible because I’m used to dealing with people like you—wonderful, sweet, kind people but just a little thick-headed. People who like to argue a little bit; got your own ideas.
“Well, we went up into the area where Nick is from, into the country there, went into some homes, shared the gospel, people got saved. You began to sit around and instruct them.
“More than once people would get saved, you’d talk to them about the clarity of the gospel, being complete in Christ, living under grace, right division, the difference between Peter and Paul, Israel and the Body of Christ, the one Baptism and the Bible version issue, all in a two-hour period of time after they got saved! And they would understand and grasp.
“There were several times I just wanted to stop and say, ‘Wouldn’t somebody like to argue?’ But people were just receiving it, coming out of tradition, coming out of religion and superstition, and standing in grace.
“You see, what was happening is more or less what Paul was experiencing there. He took the pattern of soul-winning and then teaching the converts, establishing leaders among them, and then having the leaders go back and repeat the process. That pattern is what the work of the ministry is all about. It’s not building buildings, and dogma developments, and tradition and institutions.
“We’re talking about the life of the Body of Christ functioning through the doctrines of grace and that’s where they work.
“Consistently down through church history, based on that pattern, the one thing that you can take to the bank and cash and never run out of is that as soon as a movement, or a group, lets down the issue of soul-winning (nowadays people call it evangelism) . . . when that element is missing from a group, or a local assembly or movement, the road to apostasy has been joined.
“Now maybe they won’t get there right away, but the people that they hand the ball to will get there. I’m talking about the cycle of life of that Body working and the way you see that cycle of life is in that reproductive process of the giving of life.”
Monday, May 7, 2012
Wisdom notes
If you type into Google “Famous quotes on wisdom,” here’s a sampling of what first comes up:
I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.
-- Abraham Lincoln
If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. You may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.
-- Abraham Lincoln
Know thyself.
-- Linnaeus
Every man gets a narrower and narrower field of knowledge in which he must be an expert in order to compete with other people. The specialist knows more and more about less and less and finally knows everything about nothing.
-- Konrad Lorenz
A love affair with knowledge will never end in heartbreak.
-- Michael Garrett Marino
If written directions alone would suffice, libraries wouldn't need to have the rest of the universities attached.
-- Judith Martin, "Miss Manners" columnist and author
We are drowning in information, but starved for knowledge.
-- John Naisbilt
I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
-- Isaac Newton, Brewster's Memoirs of Newton. Vol. ii. Chap. xxvii
*****
Romans 15 is a great epilogue on the way of wisdom found in Romans 14. The issue is taking the wisdom God’s given us by His grace in His Word and living on a daily basis, dealing with one another, on that basis.
As Jordan explains, “Romans 14 literally lays the groundwork for practical living in the details of life. Practically letting the gospel and the life of Christ that lives in us live out through us in our relationships one with another and that’s a critically important issue because it’s only as we live and walk on a daily basis based on an understanding of who we are in Christ, and in what God’s doing in us and through us for Himself, that we’re able to use the details of our lives for God’s glory.
“Unfortunately Romans 15 is mostly overlooked. You read commentaries on Romans, or hear preaching on it, by the time they get down to Romans 15, the instructions here kind of get a short shrift. I guess time’s running out and people are trying to get through, or space is running out in the book, and they think of other chapters as being more important, so these passages are often passed over.
“The two great principles of the way of wisdom that Romans 14 sets forth. First, there’s the issue of living purposefully, living our lives with the proper focus, on what God has saved us for. No thoughtless, casual living. You should live with passion, but you should live with purpose. Purposeless passion is dangerous and passionless purpose is useless.
“The second great principle is to concentrate on Christ. He’s our model and our motivation. We’re not living to please ourselves; Christ didn’t and neither should we. Christ understood that source of the energy and power for His life was that which God was doing and the working of the Word.
“The application of sound doctrine to the details of our lives; that’s what wisdom is all about.”
I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.
-- Abraham Lincoln
If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. You may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.
-- Abraham Lincoln
Know thyself.
-- Linnaeus
Every man gets a narrower and narrower field of knowledge in which he must be an expert in order to compete with other people. The specialist knows more and more about less and less and finally knows everything about nothing.
-- Konrad Lorenz
A love affair with knowledge will never end in heartbreak.
-- Michael Garrett Marino
If written directions alone would suffice, libraries wouldn't need to have the rest of the universities attached.
-- Judith Martin, "Miss Manners" columnist and author
We are drowning in information, but starved for knowledge.
-- John Naisbilt
I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
-- Isaac Newton, Brewster's Memoirs of Newton. Vol. ii. Chap. xxvii
*****
Romans 15 is a great epilogue on the way of wisdom found in Romans 14. The issue is taking the wisdom God’s given us by His grace in His Word and living on a daily basis, dealing with one another, on that basis.
As Jordan explains, “Romans 14 literally lays the groundwork for practical living in the details of life. Practically letting the gospel and the life of Christ that lives in us live out through us in our relationships one with another and that’s a critically important issue because it’s only as we live and walk on a daily basis based on an understanding of who we are in Christ, and in what God’s doing in us and through us for Himself, that we’re able to use the details of our lives for God’s glory.
“Unfortunately Romans 15 is mostly overlooked. You read commentaries on Romans, or hear preaching on it, by the time they get down to Romans 15, the instructions here kind of get a short shrift. I guess time’s running out and people are trying to get through, or space is running out in the book, and they think of other chapters as being more important, so these passages are often passed over.
“The two great principles of the way of wisdom that Romans 14 sets forth. First, there’s the issue of living purposefully, living our lives with the proper focus, on what God has saved us for. No thoughtless, casual living. You should live with passion, but you should live with purpose. Purposeless passion is dangerous and passionless purpose is useless.
“The second great principle is to concentrate on Christ. He’s our model and our motivation. We’re not living to please ourselves; Christ didn’t and neither should we. Christ understood that source of the energy and power for His life was that which God was doing and the working of the Word.
“The application of sound doctrine to the details of our lives; that’s what wisdom is all about.”
Saturday, May 5, 2012
Prepositioned and ready
Martin Luther got a phrase for his hymn, “A Mighty Fortress is Our God,” from Job 41:33 (“Upon earth there is not his like, who is made without fear”) but the verse is not talking about God; it’s talking about Satan and Luther understood the power of the Adversary.
In Job 40 and 41, God describes the two great adversaries of the last days—the behemoth and Leviathan.
Jordan says, “By the way, if you’ve got a new bible, or you’ve got commentary notes in them, for some reason they have absolute no idea who these dudes are. They call the behemoth the elephant, as some think. Scofield has that in his margin notes. A hippopotamus is another one. They try and put dragons and stuff back here and all this stuff. I don’t know what would make a hippo or elephant that scary. The things involved in here don’t fit that.
“Isaiah 27:1 says, ‘In that day the LORD with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.’
“Who do you know who’s a dragon, a serpent and Satan (Rev. 12). Rev. 19 is the sword that comes out of his mouth. But look at the last verse in Isaiah 26: ‘For, behold, the LORD cometh out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity: the earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain.’ We’re talking about the Second Coming here and Christ’s destruction of Satan when He comes.
“The leviathan character in Job 41 is Satan himself. Read through that chapter and you’ll see Satan and descriptions and things about him.
“The word behemoth is really not a translation; it’s more of a transliteration. It’s really something close to the Hebrew word put out in English. The Hebrew word is the word for ‘beast’ in the plural and so it’s the plural form of ‘beast.’ One of the things people miss about this guy is he’s really the 13th animal mentioned in this passage.
“If you’re Mr. 13, does that kind of ring a bell about somebody? Job 38. What he’s literally telling Job is, ‘Look, think about what you know about how creation is laid out? I have it structured in such a way that I have prepositioned munitions and armament.’
“I remember in Desert Storm General Schwarzkopf talking about his tanks outrunning their fueling trucks. You can’t have a tank battle if you can’t get gasoline so you have to have stuff prepositioned.
“I knew some people in Desert Storm who were in the transportation division of the Army who would go ahead of the battle, which was kind of a spooky thing, and go around with big tankers and refuel the tanks. You think, ‘Wow, buddy, the logistics of all that!’ and God literally is saying, ‘Job, I got my artillery and everything out there ready. I did it in Genesis thinking about the last day.’
“The behemoth here in Job 40, when he’s a beast in the plural, is the source of the real rebellion. Go to Revelation 13 and notice how this beast is described: ‘And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. [2] And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.
[3] And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast.
[4] And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?’
“So this beast, the Antichrist, is a leopard, bear and lion combined together. He’s a composite creature. Well, that’s exactly what a behemoth is. This is not isolated imagery here. Hosea 13:7. That’s describing what God’s going to send upon Israel in the tribulation as the Antichrist, in his policies and plans, destroys the nation Israel. So this combining of this beast together is a picture back here in Job—it’s a really a reference to the Antichrist himself.
“Job 40:15 says, ‘Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox.’ The ox turns out to be the face of a cherub. Because in one passage, it’s the ox and the face of the man, the lion and the eagle.
"When it says he’s going to be ‘cursed above the cattle of the field,’ that’s because in his nature of who he is he’s a cherub, and that cherub and that ox, when you compare that thing in Ezekiel 1 and Ezekiel 10 and Revelation 4, you see they’re used interchangeably and this guy is connected with that program and so he eats grass as an ox. He’s totally and completely in line with the one that gives him his power.
“Verse 16 says, ‘Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly.’ That’s why God said, ‘You’re going to go on your belly. His strength and his force is in the desire-oriented . . . Remember the verse in Romans, ‘Their god is their belly’? You’re driven by your own appetites.
“The psalms describe it as being like a brute beast. Job 40:18 says, ‘His bones are as strong pieces of brass; his bones are like bars of iron.’ You go back in Daniel and so forth and see how that’s connected: ‘He is the chief of the ways of God.’ This guy’s going to be controlling. He’s that wicked prince. He’s going to control the rulers of the earth.
“Verse 19 says, ‘He is the chief of the ways of God: he that made him can make his sword to approach unto him.’ Now that’s the little ray of sunlight in the passage. Nobody can deal with this guy except God and His Word. The one that can deal with him is going to be the one who’s his maker.
“So this character Paul’s describing is described multitudes of times in Scripture and he’s not a superman, and he’s not a supernatural creature, but he’s empowered and vested by Satan---his coming is after the working of Satan and he’s Satan’s man. And that’s why he’s called ‘the man of sin’ and then he transitions into ‘the son of perdition.’ And leviathan is the one who gives him his power.
“There are 18 major types (individuals) of the Antichrist in the Bible and there’s a lot of situations that prefigure him leviathan and the behemoth.
“The first type is Cain. He’s the original type of the seed of the serpent. I John 3:12. Notice he’s ‘of that wicked one.’ When Eve was pregnant and had that little boy, she said, ‘We’ve gotten a man from the Lord.’ She thought he was going to be the Redeemer. She thought, ’Here’s the seed of the woman that’s going to take us back into the Garden!’ Abel was just a red-headed stepchild, so to speak. They had put all their hope in Cain.
“The rest are Nimrod, Pharaoh (called a dragon in Ezekiel 29, as Satan is in Revelation 12). In Numbers 22 is a dude named Balak. There’s the unholy trio. Balak (the false king), Balaam (the false prophet) and Baal (the false god).
“Ahab is that wicked prince in Israel, like Ezekiel 28 calls the Antichrist. He was opposed by Elijah, just like the Antichrist will be.
“Next is King Saul, then Goliath. In I Samuel 17:4-7, there’s the helmet, the coat, the greaves, the target, the staff and the shield. There are six pieces of armament. His height is six cubits and then there’s the six hundred in verse 7. So when you just take the numbers in the passage you have 666. And this guy’s killed by David, who is the king, the type of Christ.
“Next is Absalom, Jeroboam and Solomon (II Chronicles 9:13). Solomon has a complete turnaround, just as ‘the man of sin’ becomes ‘the son of perdition.’ All of a sudden Solomon moves from the king in Israel, the peaceful man, to a picture of the apostate. If you go down through his entourage there, you’ll see 666 in verses 15-18.
“The rest are Haman, Sennacherib, Nebby, Abimelech, Nabal, Judas . . . last there’s King Herod in Acts 12. This is a real strange one. Herod is persecuting the remnant of Israel. He takes James, the brother of John. James and John and Peter, those three, were the only three apostles that Christ surnamed.
“Christ said, ‘Thou art Peter upon this rock I will build my church.’ He surnamed James and John, ‘The Sons of Boanerges’; ‘The sons of thunder.’ Thunder in the scripture is a description of God speaking. They were going to be God’s spokesmen. In fact, John is the one who goes on later to write the book of the revelation.
“Herod literally seeks to silence the voice of God’s man, but look down if you will to what happens to him. Verse 20. He usurps God’s voice, refuses to give God the glory, and then God kills him. He’s again, a picture of the man of sin, the son of perdition.”
In Job 40 and 41, God describes the two great adversaries of the last days—the behemoth and Leviathan.
Jordan says, “By the way, if you’ve got a new bible, or you’ve got commentary notes in them, for some reason they have absolute no idea who these dudes are. They call the behemoth the elephant, as some think. Scofield has that in his margin notes. A hippopotamus is another one. They try and put dragons and stuff back here and all this stuff. I don’t know what would make a hippo or elephant that scary. The things involved in here don’t fit that.
“Isaiah 27:1 says, ‘In that day the LORD with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.’
“Who do you know who’s a dragon, a serpent and Satan (Rev. 12). Rev. 19 is the sword that comes out of his mouth. But look at the last verse in Isaiah 26: ‘For, behold, the LORD cometh out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity: the earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain.’ We’re talking about the Second Coming here and Christ’s destruction of Satan when He comes.
“The leviathan character in Job 41 is Satan himself. Read through that chapter and you’ll see Satan and descriptions and things about him.
“The word behemoth is really not a translation; it’s more of a transliteration. It’s really something close to the Hebrew word put out in English. The Hebrew word is the word for ‘beast’ in the plural and so it’s the plural form of ‘beast.’ One of the things people miss about this guy is he’s really the 13th animal mentioned in this passage.
“If you’re Mr. 13, does that kind of ring a bell about somebody? Job 38. What he’s literally telling Job is, ‘Look, think about what you know about how creation is laid out? I have it structured in such a way that I have prepositioned munitions and armament.’
“I remember in Desert Storm General Schwarzkopf talking about his tanks outrunning their fueling trucks. You can’t have a tank battle if you can’t get gasoline so you have to have stuff prepositioned.
“I knew some people in Desert Storm who were in the transportation division of the Army who would go ahead of the battle, which was kind of a spooky thing, and go around with big tankers and refuel the tanks. You think, ‘Wow, buddy, the logistics of all that!’ and God literally is saying, ‘Job, I got my artillery and everything out there ready. I did it in Genesis thinking about the last day.’
“The behemoth here in Job 40, when he’s a beast in the plural, is the source of the real rebellion. Go to Revelation 13 and notice how this beast is described: ‘And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. [2] And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.
[3] And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast.
[4] And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?’
“So this beast, the Antichrist, is a leopard, bear and lion combined together. He’s a composite creature. Well, that’s exactly what a behemoth is. This is not isolated imagery here. Hosea 13:7. That’s describing what God’s going to send upon Israel in the tribulation as the Antichrist, in his policies and plans, destroys the nation Israel. So this combining of this beast together is a picture back here in Job—it’s a really a reference to the Antichrist himself.
“Job 40:15 says, ‘Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox.’ The ox turns out to be the face of a cherub. Because in one passage, it’s the ox and the face of the man, the lion and the eagle.
"When it says he’s going to be ‘cursed above the cattle of the field,’ that’s because in his nature of who he is he’s a cherub, and that cherub and that ox, when you compare that thing in Ezekiel 1 and Ezekiel 10 and Revelation 4, you see they’re used interchangeably and this guy is connected with that program and so he eats grass as an ox. He’s totally and completely in line with the one that gives him his power.
“Verse 16 says, ‘Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly.’ That’s why God said, ‘You’re going to go on your belly. His strength and his force is in the desire-oriented . . . Remember the verse in Romans, ‘Their god is their belly’? You’re driven by your own appetites.
“The psalms describe it as being like a brute beast. Job 40:18 says, ‘His bones are as strong pieces of brass; his bones are like bars of iron.’ You go back in Daniel and so forth and see how that’s connected: ‘He is the chief of the ways of God.’ This guy’s going to be controlling. He’s that wicked prince. He’s going to control the rulers of the earth.
“Verse 19 says, ‘He is the chief of the ways of God: he that made him can make his sword to approach unto him.’ Now that’s the little ray of sunlight in the passage. Nobody can deal with this guy except God and His Word. The one that can deal with him is going to be the one who’s his maker.
“So this character Paul’s describing is described multitudes of times in Scripture and he’s not a superman, and he’s not a supernatural creature, but he’s empowered and vested by Satan---his coming is after the working of Satan and he’s Satan’s man. And that’s why he’s called ‘the man of sin’ and then he transitions into ‘the son of perdition.’ And leviathan is the one who gives him his power.
“There are 18 major types (individuals) of the Antichrist in the Bible and there’s a lot of situations that prefigure him leviathan and the behemoth.
“The first type is Cain. He’s the original type of the seed of the serpent. I John 3:12. Notice he’s ‘of that wicked one.’ When Eve was pregnant and had that little boy, she said, ‘We’ve gotten a man from the Lord.’ She thought he was going to be the Redeemer. She thought, ’Here’s the seed of the woman that’s going to take us back into the Garden!’ Abel was just a red-headed stepchild, so to speak. They had put all their hope in Cain.
“The rest are Nimrod, Pharaoh (called a dragon in Ezekiel 29, as Satan is in Revelation 12). In Numbers 22 is a dude named Balak. There’s the unholy trio. Balak (the false king), Balaam (the false prophet) and Baal (the false god).
“Ahab is that wicked prince in Israel, like Ezekiel 28 calls the Antichrist. He was opposed by Elijah, just like the Antichrist will be.
“Next is King Saul, then Goliath. In I Samuel 17:4-7, there’s the helmet, the coat, the greaves, the target, the staff and the shield. There are six pieces of armament. His height is six cubits and then there’s the six hundred in verse 7. So when you just take the numbers in the passage you have 666. And this guy’s killed by David, who is the king, the type of Christ.
“Next is Absalom, Jeroboam and Solomon (II Chronicles 9:13). Solomon has a complete turnaround, just as ‘the man of sin’ becomes ‘the son of perdition.’ All of a sudden Solomon moves from the king in Israel, the peaceful man, to a picture of the apostate. If you go down through his entourage there, you’ll see 666 in verses 15-18.
“The rest are Haman, Sennacherib, Nebby, Abimelech, Nabal, Judas . . . last there’s King Herod in Acts 12. This is a real strange one. Herod is persecuting the remnant of Israel. He takes James, the brother of John. James and John and Peter, those three, were the only three apostles that Christ surnamed.
“Christ said, ‘Thou art Peter upon this rock I will build my church.’ He surnamed James and John, ‘The Sons of Boanerges’; ‘The sons of thunder.’ Thunder in the scripture is a description of God speaking. They were going to be God’s spokesmen. In fact, John is the one who goes on later to write the book of the revelation.
“Herod literally seeks to silence the voice of God’s man, but look down if you will to what happens to him. Verse 20. He usurps God’s voice, refuses to give God the glory, and then God kills him. He’s again, a picture of the man of sin, the son of perdition.”
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Boaz did!
J. Vernon McGee wrote the book, “The Romance of Redemption,” which was his commentary on the Book of Ruth, a book that’s really about Jesus Christ as the Kinsman Redeemer.
While people often used to sing at weddings, “Wither thou goest I will go, where thou lodgest I will lodge. Thy people shall be my people,” not many realized it was really a song about Ruth’s mother-in-law talking to he daughter-in-law about life after her husband’s passing.
Ruth’s problem was she was a Moabitess. Deuteronomy 23:3 says, An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to their tenth generation shall they not enter into the congregation of the LORD for ever.”
As Jordan explains, “Although Ruth believed in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and though she desired to cleave unto Naomi and make Israel her people and become a part of the nation Israel, the law God gave Israel said, ‘You can’t come in. You have to be separated.’ The law condemned Ruth.
“Now Ruth isn’t like Tamar; she isn’t a wicked person bound by the sins of the flesh. She’s not like Rahab the harlot, the Gentile woman living in Jericho. Ruth is a Gentile woman who has cleaved herself (literally the man or woman shall leave their father and mother and cleave unto themselves) and literally married herself to the nation Israel and yet the law says, ‘You’re condemned.’
“There’s an old saying that says, ‘The law of God condemns the best of us. The grace of God saves the worst of us. And in Ruth, there’s the law condemning her. Well, if the law condemns Ruth, the Moabitess, how come she fits into the genealogy of Matthew 1? She gets in there because of a man by the name of Boaz, who became her husband.
“Boaz is Ruth and Naomi’s near kinsman, so Naomi says, ‘You need to go and tell him who you are and present yourself to him and lay claim on him as one in need, knowing he can be your redeemer.’
“So in chapter 3, Naomi says, ‘My daughter, shall I not seek rest for thee, that it may be well with thee?
[2] And now is not Boaz of our kindred, with whose maidens thou wast? Behold, he winnoweth barley to night in the threshingfloor.
[3] Wash thyself therefore, and anoint thee, and put thy raiment upon thee, and get thee down to the floor: but make not thyself known unto the man, until he shall have done eating and drinking.
[4] And it shall be, when he lieth down, that thou shalt mark the place where he shall lie, and thou shalt go in, and uncover his feet, and lay thee down; and he will tell thee what thou shalt do.’
“The typology in Ruth begins to point to the Second Coming of Christ. There’s Boaz winnowing barley. Matthew 3 talks about Lord Jesus Christ whose fan is in His hand and He will thoroughly purge His floor. And He’ll take the wheat and gather it into the garner; take the Believers and the chafe he’s going to burn up with unquenchable fire. You have a picture of that scene in Ruth 3.
"Verse 8 says, ‘And it came to pass at midnight, that the man was afraid, and turned himself: and, behold, a woman lay at his feet.’ Midnight represents the tribulation as the dark hour of Jacob’s trouble. With the feet there’s Israel in Revelation 12 identified as the woman that’s fled out into the wilderness, needing the Redeemer.
“And he said, ‘Who art thou?’ Notice she doesn’t try to cover up who she is: ‘I am Ruth thy handmaid. I’m Ruth the Moabitess She acknowledges just who she is but adds, ‘I’m also your kin. I also desire to be a part of your family. And you can make it happen!’ And she lays claim on him as her kinsman redeemer and he responds.
“Verse 11 is a wonderful statement. He says, ' I'll do everything you need done.’ And in essence what he tells Ruth to do is ‘you just sit down. Trust me and I’ll go do everything that needs to be done to provide your redemption and rest.
Now there’s a problem. Verse 12. There was somebody closer kin to Ruth than Boaz so he says the law of the kinsman redeemer is one you have to be the nearest kinsman and two, you have to be able to redeem the person and three, you have to be willing.
“Verse 13 says, ‘And now, my daughter, fear not; I will do to thee all that thou requires: for all the city of my people doth know that thou art a virtuous woman.’ That’s wonderful you know. Naomi says to Ruth, ‘You just sit still and let him do the work because he won’t rest until he’s got the job done.’
“You remember the Lord Jesus Christ hanging on the Cross of Calvary and He says, ‘It’s finished.’ All you and I need to do is rest in what he’s done. That’s what Ruth has to do. There’s no help for what Ruth is going to do.
“In Chapter 4 the picture’s wonderful. Boaz goes and gets 10 men to judge the situation—a picture of the law. How many commandments did God give Israel? 613, I know, but how many are in the 10 Commandments? The law tells the man, ‘Can you redeem it?’ The law says no man can redeem his brother because you can’t even redeem yourself.
“And so Boaz answers, ‘But I can and I will,’ and he becomes her kinsman redeemer. He pays the price. He redeemed her and verse 13 says, ‘So Boaz took Ruth, and she was his wife: and when he went in unto her, the LORD gave her conception, and she bare a son.’
“Verse 21-22. You’ll see that Boaz begat Obed and Obed begat Jesse and Jesse begat David. You know how Ruth got in the genealogy of Christ? Because of Boaz. Had it not been that she found a kinsman redeemer who was able, not just to be kin, but able to redeem her, and able to do it all himself . . . the other kinsman couldn’t do it! He was kin but he didn’t have the ability to go and redeem her. Boaz did!”
“Hebrews 2 says that the Lord Jesus Christ took upon Himself not the nature of angels but the seed of Abraham. Paul said there’s ‘one mediator between God and men’ and that’s the MAN Christ Jesus. I John 14 says, ‘And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.’
“He became one of us; became our near kinsman. And while others may be kin to you, they literally may be closer kin to you in that they’re just humans, but because of their fallen humanity they couldn’t redeem you. You can’t redeem yourself and no one can redeem you because they can’t—somebody that can’t redeem themselves can’t help you. That’s why religion won’t work. That’s why the prayers of the dead saints don’t do. That’s why you have to have a kinsman redeemer like Boaz and that’s who the Lord Jesus Christ is.
“As the man Christ Jesus He’s our near kinsman. And yet He’s God, thus able. Paul says that God made Him to be sin who knew no sin. He was made in the likeness of sinful flesh but He wasn’t sinful flesh He had, it was just flesh.
“In Luke 1, when Gabriel talks to Mary, he says that ‘the power of the highest shall overshadow thee and that holy thing which will be created in you will be called the son of the highest.’ That holy thing, sometime people complain about a King James Bible, ‘Well, He’s not a ‘thing,’ He’s a person!’ Well, I know that! They knew that! It says ‘holy thing’ because it’s emphasizing not the person but the nature—the nature of who He is.
“And the contrast is in Isaiah 64:6 when it says, ‘But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.’
“In our nature, we’re unclean. In His nature, He’s sinless, harmless, separate from sinners, pure without sin, able to be your Redeemer.”
While people often used to sing at weddings, “Wither thou goest I will go, where thou lodgest I will lodge. Thy people shall be my people,” not many realized it was really a song about Ruth’s mother-in-law talking to he daughter-in-law about life after her husband’s passing.
Ruth’s problem was she was a Moabitess. Deuteronomy 23:3 says, An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to their tenth generation shall they not enter into the congregation of the LORD for ever.”
As Jordan explains, “Although Ruth believed in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and though she desired to cleave unto Naomi and make Israel her people and become a part of the nation Israel, the law God gave Israel said, ‘You can’t come in. You have to be separated.’ The law condemned Ruth.
“Now Ruth isn’t like Tamar; she isn’t a wicked person bound by the sins of the flesh. She’s not like Rahab the harlot, the Gentile woman living in Jericho. Ruth is a Gentile woman who has cleaved herself (literally the man or woman shall leave their father and mother and cleave unto themselves) and literally married herself to the nation Israel and yet the law says, ‘You’re condemned.’
“There’s an old saying that says, ‘The law of God condemns the best of us. The grace of God saves the worst of us. And in Ruth, there’s the law condemning her. Well, if the law condemns Ruth, the Moabitess, how come she fits into the genealogy of Matthew 1? She gets in there because of a man by the name of Boaz, who became her husband.
“Boaz is Ruth and Naomi’s near kinsman, so Naomi says, ‘You need to go and tell him who you are and present yourself to him and lay claim on him as one in need, knowing he can be your redeemer.’
“So in chapter 3, Naomi says, ‘My daughter, shall I not seek rest for thee, that it may be well with thee?
[2] And now is not Boaz of our kindred, with whose maidens thou wast? Behold, he winnoweth barley to night in the threshingfloor.
[3] Wash thyself therefore, and anoint thee, and put thy raiment upon thee, and get thee down to the floor: but make not thyself known unto the man, until he shall have done eating and drinking.
[4] And it shall be, when he lieth down, that thou shalt mark the place where he shall lie, and thou shalt go in, and uncover his feet, and lay thee down; and he will tell thee what thou shalt do.’
“The typology in Ruth begins to point to the Second Coming of Christ. There’s Boaz winnowing barley. Matthew 3 talks about Lord Jesus Christ whose fan is in His hand and He will thoroughly purge His floor. And He’ll take the wheat and gather it into the garner; take the Believers and the chafe he’s going to burn up with unquenchable fire. You have a picture of that scene in Ruth 3.
"Verse 8 says, ‘And it came to pass at midnight, that the man was afraid, and turned himself: and, behold, a woman lay at his feet.’ Midnight represents the tribulation as the dark hour of Jacob’s trouble. With the feet there’s Israel in Revelation 12 identified as the woman that’s fled out into the wilderness, needing the Redeemer.
“And he said, ‘Who art thou?’ Notice she doesn’t try to cover up who she is: ‘I am Ruth thy handmaid. I’m Ruth the Moabitess She acknowledges just who she is but adds, ‘I’m also your kin. I also desire to be a part of your family. And you can make it happen!’ And she lays claim on him as her kinsman redeemer and he responds.
“Verse 11 is a wonderful statement. He says, ' I'll do everything you need done.’ And in essence what he tells Ruth to do is ‘you just sit down. Trust me and I’ll go do everything that needs to be done to provide your redemption and rest.
Now there’s a problem. Verse 12. There was somebody closer kin to Ruth than Boaz so he says the law of the kinsman redeemer is one you have to be the nearest kinsman and two, you have to be able to redeem the person and three, you have to be willing.
“Verse 13 says, ‘And now, my daughter, fear not; I will do to thee all that thou requires: for all the city of my people doth know that thou art a virtuous woman.’ That’s wonderful you know. Naomi says to Ruth, ‘You just sit still and let him do the work because he won’t rest until he’s got the job done.’
“You remember the Lord Jesus Christ hanging on the Cross of Calvary and He says, ‘It’s finished.’ All you and I need to do is rest in what he’s done. That’s what Ruth has to do. There’s no help for what Ruth is going to do.
“In Chapter 4 the picture’s wonderful. Boaz goes and gets 10 men to judge the situation—a picture of the law. How many commandments did God give Israel? 613, I know, but how many are in the 10 Commandments? The law tells the man, ‘Can you redeem it?’ The law says no man can redeem his brother because you can’t even redeem yourself.
“And so Boaz answers, ‘But I can and I will,’ and he becomes her kinsman redeemer. He pays the price. He redeemed her and verse 13 says, ‘So Boaz took Ruth, and she was his wife: and when he went in unto her, the LORD gave her conception, and she bare a son.’
“Verse 21-22. You’ll see that Boaz begat Obed and Obed begat Jesse and Jesse begat David. You know how Ruth got in the genealogy of Christ? Because of Boaz. Had it not been that she found a kinsman redeemer who was able, not just to be kin, but able to redeem her, and able to do it all himself . . . the other kinsman couldn’t do it! He was kin but he didn’t have the ability to go and redeem her. Boaz did!”
“Hebrews 2 says that the Lord Jesus Christ took upon Himself not the nature of angels but the seed of Abraham. Paul said there’s ‘one mediator between God and men’ and that’s the MAN Christ Jesus. I John 14 says, ‘And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.’
“He became one of us; became our near kinsman. And while others may be kin to you, they literally may be closer kin to you in that they’re just humans, but because of their fallen humanity they couldn’t redeem you. You can’t redeem yourself and no one can redeem you because they can’t—somebody that can’t redeem themselves can’t help you. That’s why religion won’t work. That’s why the prayers of the dead saints don’t do. That’s why you have to have a kinsman redeemer like Boaz and that’s who the Lord Jesus Christ is.
“As the man Christ Jesus He’s our near kinsman. And yet He’s God, thus able. Paul says that God made Him to be sin who knew no sin. He was made in the likeness of sinful flesh but He wasn’t sinful flesh He had, it was just flesh.
“In Luke 1, when Gabriel talks to Mary, he says that ‘the power of the highest shall overshadow thee and that holy thing which will be created in you will be called the son of the highest.’ That holy thing, sometime people complain about a King James Bible, ‘Well, He’s not a ‘thing,’ He’s a person!’ Well, I know that! They knew that! It says ‘holy thing’ because it’s emphasizing not the person but the nature—the nature of who He is.
“And the contrast is in Isaiah 64:6 when it says, ‘But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.’
“In our nature, we’re unclean. In His nature, He’s sinless, harmless, separate from sinners, pure without sin, able to be your Redeemer.”
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