Gardenkeeping

Jordan recalls as a teenager have a one-time opportunity to hear Otis Wasson preach. He taught on I Corinthians 12:1 (“Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant”).

Jordan says, “Wasson made the statement, ‘You know that expression Paul says, I would not have you to be ignorant, is found six times in his epistles?! Each time it focuses on something you better know about!’

“I wrote that in the back of my mind and said, ‘I wonder where those six times are and what those things are about?’ and I went home, as a teenager, and wrote them down and studied them out.

“None of them talk about the fundamentals of the faith. These people are already saved and he says, ‘As Believers, you ought to know and be careful not to miss because these things focus on the functioning of your life in time for God’s glory and your ministry.’

“Every one of these statements focuses on something that the Adversary, in his policy of attack and evil against the Body of Christ, is focused on; special areas where the Adversary knows it’s to his advantage to attack in order to neutralize you.

“Romans 11:25 says, ‘For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in.’

“This second great ignorant statement focuses on Israel and the mystery of Christ. William R. Newell said the test of a man’s theology is the answer to the question, ‘Is he Pauline?’

“My pastor, Brother Roy Lange, used to say, ‘Right division is clearing away.’ When you go out to plant a garden the first thing you do is get rid of all the stuff you don’t want; the weeds and all that. But then you never get tomatoes to grow if you just do that. You got to go plant them. And if you don’t keep pulling the weeds away they choke them out.

“A lot of folks think, ‘Well, we understand about Paul, his apostleship and so forth,’ and they think that makes them Grace Believers. No, that made them good Mid-Acts Dispensationalists. But there’s a whole lot of Mid-Acts Dispensationalists who are just as legalistic as the guy who doesn’t know anything about dispensationalism at all!

“That distinction between Israel and the body of Christ is missing in theology today. There’s one thing missing in every systematic theology book I’ve ever seen. They talk about theology (study of God), anthropology (study of man), angelology (study of angels and the spirit world), soteriology (the study of salvation), ecclesiology (the study of church), and eschatology (the study of last times) but there’s one thing that’s never there—it’s Israelology.

“I never figured out why somewhere somebody didn’t say, ‘You know, you can’t understand the Bible if you don’t understand the nation Israel so why don’t we add into our theology some Israelology?’

“You can come with me to my study; I’ve got a dozen different authors, different schools of theology, other systematic theology books. Look through all of them from Louis Sperry Chafer (who is the most voluminous dispensational theologian) to Charles Baker, who would be in our camp, all the way the over to Birkhoff and Dabney and Strongs or to the modern guys and they won’t have anything, or very little, about Israel and nothing in a real study of . . . Paul says, ‘I don’t want you to be ignorant about Israel and the mystery.’

“Satan’s found that it’s to his advantage to confuse the two. You’re trying to be somebody you’re not and Paul says ‘Boy, you better not do that and early on in your Christian life you better get ready for it.’

“I’ve learned that when you come to the place where you don’t have any wisdom of your own and you’re willing to be weak enough not to know anything and you’re willing to let God know it and tell you about it through His Word, you can come to some real understanding about some things.

“Jesus said, ‘If a man will to know the doctrine he’ll know it.’ It’s a matter of your will. It’s not you choosing to not know it yourself, or let it be what your church says.

“In Romans 9, Paul begins to deal with the issue, ‘Well, what about Israel? Their program was running just fine. What happened?’ Pastor J. C. O’Hair once wrote a book, ‘You can’t understand the Bible unless you understand Israel.’ ”

Traveling LIGHT

If you read through the Book of Acts and look at Paul and his travels, you’ll notice he very seldom was ever by himself.

“Paul had big entourages going with him,” says Jordan. “Why would he take a guy from Berea, and a guy from Thessalonica and a guy from over there? Why was he taking these guys around with him all the time? He just wanted somebody to carry his briefcase? No, these are guys in training, because the best way to learn something is to go do it with somebody who knows how they’re doing it and for them to let you do it and watch you do it and then help you. It’s a growing process.”

*****

The Plymouth Brethren Movement (named after the English seaside town of Plymouth) started in the mid-1800s. Within a 25-year period the group had taken the gospel all around the world.

“Michigan preacher Tom Brusha met some people in a Holland fishing village on the coast who understood right division and they had never heard of anybody in America,” says Jordan. “They weren’t interested in meeting anybody from America. They didn’t need us.

“Because they’re fishermen, they went down the coast in Europe, around Africa, up into India, and they had fishing ports where they could stop and stay and meet brethren from their fellowship. There are people all down the European coast and all down through Africa and all up over India who understood some of this stuff in the 1800s!  A man from New Zealand once gave me a book about right division written in the 1800s.

*****

“What the Industrialization era did to Christendom is it took everything out of the local church and out of the hands of the local ministries and put it into the hands of institutions and the cookie-cutter kind of assembly-line process and the seminary and education system you see today.

“Seminaries and bible colleges are built on a similar model that came out of the Industrial Revolution where you send people off somewhere and you have a cookie-cutter thing that makes them and then you send them out through the process, and what that does is it builds the alma-mater mentality. It builds loyalty to the institution.

“Brother Marvin Taylor, who comes out an Independent Baptist background, says when you’re in Independent Baptist circles, people talk about being independent but all you have to do is ask the guy where he went to school to know what he’s into.

“That’s backwards of the way it ought to be. The local church is the institution God established for the work of the ministry. He never established anything beyond that, and so what our philosophy has been is to try and help ministries that way.”

“The church isn’t the building; it’s just a tool. Just like the songbook is just a tool. You can’t remember all the words so you put them in a book as a memory aid. Pianos and organs are just tools to try to keep us on tune.

“The local church is the Believers gathering together. It’s not a glorified Bible class. It’s a group of saints gathering together around the truth for the purpose of the work of the ministry--evangelism and edification.

“When you look at Paul’s ministry model, what he does is he goes into a town, finds a strategic location, goes in, preaches the gospel, gets some people saved, gets them established in the doctrines of grace and understanding of who they are, and then entrusts that work of ministry to those local people.

“Paul would leave them and go to the next place and leave a ministry there. Now, that whole scenario of the way Paul does the work of the ministry is the way God designed it to be, so if you’re going to train people that would be the logical place.”

Be still, my soul

Matt. 3:17 says, “And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

Jordan says, “Get a hold of that will you, because Paul, when he says ‘you’re accepted in the beloved,’ takes us back to this special moment of the Father’s public pronouncement of His Son being the one in whom He is well pleased.

“The Lord Jesus Christ did not preach one sermon, He did not work one miracle, He began His public ministry with the approval of the Father. He had that up front before He did anything. And He lived out of a consciousness of the fact of who He is and who He was. He lived out of the identity He had as the Christ, the Son of the living God.

“Matthew 12:18. Quoting Isaiah 42, He says ‘Behold my servant, whom I have chosen; my beloved, in whom my soul is well pleased: I will put my spirit upon him, and he shall shew judgment to the Gentiles.’

“In chapter 17, when they go up on the Mount of Transfiguration, Jesus ‘was transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light.
[3] And, behold, there appeared unto them Moses and Elias talking with him.
[4] Then answered Peter, and said unto Jesus, Lord, it is good for us to be here: if thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias.
[5] While he yet spake, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them: and behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him.
[6] And when the disciples heard it, they fell on their face, and were sore afraid.
[7] And Jesus came and touched them, and said, Arise, and be not afraid.’

“When Paul says ‘we are accepted in the beloved,’ that’s just simply saying that the Father, when He looks at us, sees us in Christ but He sees us in the beloved one in whom He’s well-pleased.

“Do you understand today you’re accepted by God? You are acceptable TO God.

“You know, feelings of rejection, alienation, are some of the most painful and damaging emotions. They lead to distorted images of your own value and the unfruitful coping patterns people develop. They become deeply embedded in our personalities. We look at ourselves and we see the tempers, the peevish minds, the rebellious thinking, the coldness, the barrenness--even in the business of life.

“We sense what the song writer said, ‘Prone to wander, Lord I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love.’ We see that in ourselves and we begin to think that God looks at us that way too. It’s because you’ve spent all that time thinking that way and you slide back into that.

“When you’re out trying to seek the approval of men, you know what that is? That’s really idolatry. You’re giving men, people, whether it’s you or someone else, the position that only God ought to have in your life. The antidote is this complete forgiveness and acceptance in Christ and you just simply resting in that perfect identity that God gives you in the beloved and the love of God to you in Christ Jesus.

“Romans 8:35 is a passage if you’ve never memorized, you ought to be getting this passage into your frame of reference. This passage can absolutely transform your life this week!

“What does tribulation do if you’re walking in the wisdom of God’s Word, living in God’s grace? It works patience! If you’re thinking about yourself the way God thinks about it, instead of saying, ‘Here’s trouble coming into my life—God’s after me, God’s trying to get me, God’s going to nail me!’ You think, ‘Wait a minute, I’m accepted in the beloved, God has equipped me, whether it’s personal problems, economic problems, or peril, or sword, or nakedness, all the things that we fear.

“ ‘I can stay with the word, stay with who I am and that will work some experience.’  You’re just listening to a bunch of yoyos on the news media who are trying to get you to tune in so they can go to the bank, cash in on the commercials they’re selling you. That’s all that is. You can get caught up in the dust and the fluff out there and act like God’s forsaken you. You act like if you don’t get your way in it, God’s forsaken you. You let all that stuff crowd in your mind and you forget who you really are. You’re out there getting slaughtered and yet you’re more than conquerors through Him that loved us!

*****

“Exodus 28:36. What’s the first thing you notice when you notice people? You’re supposed to say their eyes. So he’s going to take this plate, this little crown or nameplate, and put it right across this high priest’s forehead and it’s going to say, ‘Holiness to the Lord.’

“Have you ever noticed you got this blank space (your forehead) that would be a good place to write things? So God writes across Aaron. Every time they looked at Aaron, he’s going to go into the holy of holies, into the presence of God and represent Israel and across that he’s got ‘Holiness to the Lord.’ That’s why it’s called the holy crown.

“When he goes in, it’s in him who is God’s righteousness, that they had acceptance. Just as Aaron would go in and it’d be the holy crown upon his head, the first thing they would see (even with all the beautiful garment he had on), the thing that stood above all the rest was his forehead. When you and I stand before God we have on our forehead, ‘Accepted in the Beloved.’

*****

“One of the greatest illustrations of this in Scripture is a young boy by the name of Mephibosheth. A couple of years ago at a conference they sang a song about Lo-debar and I became conscious that a lot of folks didn’t know what Lo-debar was.

M was one of the sons of Saul. When news came to the palace that Saul had been killed and his son Jonathan died in battle, people in the palace panicked. They were afraid David was going to come to seize the throne and would kill all the sons and grandsons of Saul and wipe them all out.

“So a nurse took Mephibosheth (he was 5 years old and was the son of Jonathan, the one who David loved as his own soul—they were soul mates) and ran and when she did, fleeing with the 5-year-old, the boy fell and he became lame in both his feet.

“The little boy was crippled and they ran to a place called Lo-debar and hid there. The name Lo-debar means ‘place no pasture.’ You remember ‘my lord is my shepherd I shall not want, he leadeth me beside the still waters’? Well this was the place of none of that. No provision from God.

“They’re down there in exile. David is king now and he said, ‘Kindness for Jonathan’s sake.’ You see, that little boy became lame because of some bad news based on a lie. They thought, ‘David will come and kill him!’ But David had made a covenant with Jonathan to do good. He would have come and blessed Israel and taken care of them.

Mephibosheth said, ‘You’re doing all this for a dead dog like me?!’ and David said, ‘No son, you’re not a dead dog. You’re going to be one of my boys. I’m going to sit you at my table and you’re going to be just like one of my sons.’

“What did we read in Ephesians 1 about adoption? You take somebody who’s not your natural child and put them at the table and treat them like they are—give them the same status. David adopted Mephibosheth.

“In the story, Saul is like Adam. He was king and lost his kingdom out of unbelief and rebellion. Jonathan is like the Lord Jesus Christ. He was the opposite. He was the perfect one.

“David is a picture of God the Father and Mephibosheth is a picture of the sinner. Crippled, lame in both feet, can’t walk and got that way because he got a bad message based on a lie. He thought God was out to get him; God was out to destroy him.

“It turned out David had just the exact opposite in mind. He said, ‘I’m not after your life. I’m looking for you to show you kindness, to take care of you, to restore you to all the things that your granddad lost.’ ”

Hillbillies and O'Hair

It was J.C. O’Hair’s commitment to the local church, more than anything else, that made his ministry a national success. His Chicago church impacted the whole country in the ‘40s and ‘50s.

At one point, North Shore Church (at the corner of Wilson and Sheridan) organized a men’s grace fellowship that was attended by up to 400 men each month.

“Three or four times a year they would buy a full-page in the Chicago Tribune for $28,000—a lot of money back then—and O’Hair would write a gospel message,” says Jordan.

“In the late ’60s, all that kind of went away and I used to ask questions about why and guys would lament how it just fell apart. You know what happened to the Grace Movement? It fell out of the hands of the leaders of local churches and into the hands of para-church institutions, and when it came time for them to do some of the things the passage in I Corinthians 16 says to do, they didn’t have the context of the local church to do it out of.”

*****

A very fascinating cover story, entitled “Hillbilly Heaven,” appeared last month in the Chicago newsweekly “New City.” It was about how Uptown, on the same streets surrounding North Shore Church, was inundated with Southerners starting in the ‘late ‘40s.

The article read, “ ‘The ‘hillbilly’ presence overlapped Uptown, probably ranging from Sheridan on the east and Ashland on the west and Addison to the south and Foster to the north,’ says Patrick Butler, who covered the area for the Lerner Newspapers during the sixties, seventies and eighties. ‘They also had concentrations in Lincoln Park, Lakeview and the Bowmanville neighborhoods.’

“In fact, records show that while the forties, fifties and sixties saw as many as 400,000 African-Americans migrate to Chicago from Deep South states like Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, an estimated 70,000 whites also settled in Chicago after the Korean War. These migrants came from the Mid-South, the mountainous regions of states like North Carolina, Kentucky, Eastern Tennessee and West Virginia.”

Writer David Witter informed, “Like most new immigrant or migrant groups, they were immediately vilified. Yet perhaps because they were largely of the same race and spoke the same language, their own habits and customs were even more vehemently derived in the press. Albert N. Votaw, executive director of the Uptown Chicago Commission wrote an article titled ‘The Hillbillies Invade Chicago,’ for the February, 1958 edition of Harper’s magazine stating:

“ ‘These southerners bring with them suspicion of landlords, bosses, police, principals, and most church people, settling in deteriorating neighborhoods where they can stick with their own kind, living much as they did back home, often removing window screens, they sit half-dressed where it is cooler and dispose of their garbage in the quickest way.’

“A series of Chicago Tribune articles, penned in 1957 by reporter Norma Lee Browning and reposted on a Chicago magazine web page, painted an even worse picture.

“ ‘Skid row dives, opium parlors, and assorted other dens of inequity collectively are as safe as a Sunday school picnic compared with the joints taken over by the clan’s fightin’, feudin’ southern hillbillies and their shootin’ cousins, who today constitute one of the most dangerous and lawless elements of Chicago’s fastest growing migrant

population . . . Authorities are reluctant to point a finger at any one segment of the population or nationality group, but they agree that the southern hillbilly migrants, who have descended on Chicago like a plague of locusts in the last few years, have the lowest standard of living and moral code [if any] of all, the biggest capacity for liquor, and the most savage and vicious tactics when drunk, which is most of the time.’

“Articles from this era can easily be described as insensitive and sensationalistic journalism that would not appear in a major newspaper or magazine today. Yet as somebody who grew up in Lincoln Park in the 1970s with the last remnants of the ‘hillbillies’I can testify that some of the stereotypes depicted in these articles are not entirely without precedent. The neighborhood even had its own version of ‘The Hatfields and McCoys’—The Corns and The Tates. I remember my friend Norman got into a fight with Dell Tate at Alcott School. As soon as school ended, about ten Tate males holding sticks, thick Coke bottles and garbage-can lids were standing in back of his house near Clark and Drummond, the eldest one shouting,‘You mess with one of the Tate’s, you mess with the whole family!’ ”

 

Three's the charm

Wow, what a way to get clear ONCE again about what my priorities in life are to be. A very favorite resident, 97-year-old Rosalie (who was just looking so sprite and classy in our network TV spot last week on ABC's "Secret Millionaire") fell down and split her head open on her bedroom dresser. I saw her in the ER right after it happened and she said, "I want to die but not this way."

Now she is in a hospice and really appearing close to death. She couldn't even lift her head to show me her new haircut (after they shaved her for the stitches) and was having trouble keeping one eye open.

She is Jewish and I talked to her, as I have done in the past, about her need to trust in God's provision of His Son for her sins in order to gain eternal life in heaven. She nodded that she understood and I plan to visit her again tomorrow to get a stronger confirmation, if possible.

Rosalie is already a believer in the God of the Bible and was raised in Hebrew school. She reads from her Old Testament and has bookmarks all through it.

She told me yesterday that she felt a special connection to me from the first day we met and I said I did too. We told each other again that we loved each other. She told me once again how pretty I am and that I am a beautiful person inside as well as outside. She made me cry.

As I left, I assured her repeatedly that she would be much happier once she's in heaven and that I wanted her to be in heaven with me. I must have said three different times in three different ways.

******

There are three times in connection with the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ that the expression “fear not” occurs. The first one is said to Joseph by an angel, who comforts him in a dream with, “Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.”

Under Israel’s Old Testament economy, an “espousal” was more than being engaged; it was equal to being married. Mary was Joseph’s intended wife, it’s just that their commitment hadn’t been consummated yet, and the fact she was “found with child” was a crime punishable by stoning death by Israeli law.

“Now, you got to think about Joseph’s perspective in all of this,” says Jordan. “He’s usually rather ignored (in the nativity story), but he was quite somebody. Joseph’s got this young girl, he’s looking forward to marrying her, they’ve fallen in love; she’s won his heart and he’s won her hand. Everybody knows they’ve already gone through the formalities (the announcements and the invitations are out) but she comes up pregnant.

“Joseph’s in the dark about why. He doesn’t have ANY idea what’s happened. He doesn’t know HOW she got pregnant! I guess maybe he has an idea about how she can get pregnant, but he’s completely in the dark. He doesn’t know this is something God is going to do to fulfill Isaiah 14. He just gets the news she’s pregnant.

*****

Matthew 1:19 says, “Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a publick example, was minded to put her away privily.”

Jordan explains, “That verse is fascinating about Joseph. He’s in a tough situation. He wants to do what’s right. He’s not going to sweep this under the rug and act like it didn’t happen. He’s a just man.

“He wants to deal with it properly, but in Israel’s economy, if she’s found with a child, legally in the law they could stone her; give her the death penalty. At the very least it would be publicly shameful!

“It says Joseph wasn’t willing to make her a public example. The guy’s got a kind spirit; he’s got a loving heart and so it says ‘he was mindful to put her away privily.’ That word ‘minded’ there it’s not just ‘the thought occurred to him.’ It’s the idea that he sat down and gave some serious thought to what was going on and he thought it through and came to a selfless decision to just handle this quietly between her and him.

“I don’t know about you, but my mind kind of imagines things like that. I sit around sometimes thinking about these verses. You can just see Joseph wondering, ‘Why did something like this happen?!’

“He’s having to deal with the hurt of the betrayal and the disillusionment that would come from this kind of thing. You can just see him sitting there trying to figure out exactly how to get out of the mess that Mary’s gotten him into. You can see his heart all filled with turmoil. ‘How am I gonna fix this mess?! How are we ever going to get beyond this?!’

“There’s Joseph in this impossible situation. The things he’s thinking about are testing his mettle; his goodness. And in the midst of all that, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in his sleep.

“Suddenly God broke into Joseph’s predicament and the explanation He gave him was a doozie! If you think it’s unbelievable that an angel would show up, that kind of message from an angel even sounds stranger! Here’s something that’s never happened before!

“He’s told, “And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.’ It even gets stranger but then the angel gives Joseph something he can hang onto: ‘Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.’ (Matt. 1:23)

“You see what that angel really did for Joseph was he said, ‘Here’s a verse of Scripture that’s God’s fulfilling in YOUR life right now! You don’t need to be afraid! I know it’s outrageous! Here’s what God’s Word says, though.’

“The message was ‘fear not for God said.’ The message is you can hang your life on God’s Word and you’re never going to get rid of fear in your life except that way.”

*****

The other two times the angel-sent encouragement of “fear not” shows up in relationship to the birth of Christ is in Luke 1:13 (‘But the angel said unto him, Fear not, Zacharias: for thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John) and in Luke 1:30 (‘And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God.’)

Jordan says, “Now, if you think Joseph was little upset, can you imagine how shocked Mary must have been when the angel Gabriel started talking to her!

“Luke 1:26 tells us, ‘And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth.’ That’s six months after John the Baptist had been conceived. In the 6^th month in the pregnancy of Elisabeth, John the Baptist’s mother, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to the city of Galilee named Nazareth.

“By the way, Luke was a medical doctor, so the specificity of terminology here is not being used casually. It’s being used very specific with precise meanings. Luke starts out his book saying, ‘I’m a good historian.’

“In the first four verses, the little preface to his book, if you wanted to capsulate in one sentence, Luke was saying, ‘I was a good first-hand researcher and historian; I went and talked to the eyewitnesses; the people who were there.’

“There’s this little thing he writes in Chapter 2 that I’ve always been touched by. Luke says, ‘But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.’

“I think, here’s a little mother that when Luke met her, recounts the nativity and the birth of the child, and there’s certain things that she never told anybody else. She just kept them hid and thought about them and pondered them in her heart.

“I don’t know about you but I think, ‘How’d Luke get her to tell him that! He must have had a wonderful bedside manner.’ Because when you read his book, you can tell he’s talked to these people and he’s picked up all these little details.

“In fact, you ever heard anybody say you can’t know the date of the birth of Christ? If you just read Luke 1, you can literally figure out within a three to five-day time period the date of the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ! It’s not December, by the way, but there is something that took place in late December in this chapter.

“The real miracle of Christmas was not the nativity; it was the conception. By the way, if you look at the first verse in Chapter 2, it says, ‘And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.’

“Those kinds of references are often located in the Book of Luke. They are historically verifiable data that you can go into secular history and find.

“Sometimes people give you the idea that the Bible is just a willy-nilly book concocted by a bunch of guys who along the way somewhere just wrote books and made all this stuff up.

“Well, you certainly can’t believe that when you read the Book of Luke! You see this is put together by men who thought carefully who researched thoroughly and who documented what they were saying in such a way that you could go behind them and check the footnotes.

“Luke 1:27-30 is a great illustration of Luke’s penetrating thinking and looking. Can I recommend to you, when you read the book, read it slowly and let those kinds of things into your mind.

“Here’s something Mary shared with Luke about what was going on in her mind. I have a hard time putting myself in her situation. The questions that must have been in this little girl’s mind at the time!

“She’s told, ‘Hey Mary, you’re going to be the mother of the Messiah!’ Whoa! I mean, what a privilege, but what a shock! Mary asked the logical question: ‘How shall this be, seeing as how I know not a man?’

“In the presence of something that’s obviously going to be supernatural that can’t be understood in human terms, you can just imagine . . .  but verse 37 is the answer: ‘For with God nothing shall be impossible.’

“Mary’s fear turned to faith in what God’s Word said. So Mary, like Joseph, trusted God’s Word. When it says she found ‘favor with God,’ that’s undeserved favor. That’s a definition of grace: ‘Mary you’ve got nothing to be afraid of; you are perfectly loved.’

“Come down to Luke 2 and you’ll see this time he says it to the shepherds. It’s one of those fascinating chapters in scripture. The first seven verses explain how God was going to fill Micah 5:2.

“Seven hundred years before the birth of Jesus Christ, God through a little prophet . . . Micah and Isaiah were contemporaries. Isaiah wrote 66 chapters; he’s a big dude. Micah got to write seven and significant portions of the Book of Micah are repeats or echoes of the Book of Isaiah.

“Somebody reads Micah and says, ‘He hardly had an original thought. He’s just working with Isaiah.’ But God takes that ‘little insignificant prophet,’ as it were, and reached into his ‘little book,’ and in Micah 5:2 writes down 700 years before the event the town in which the Messiah is going to be born in: Bethlehem Ephratah.

“There were two Bethlehems in Israel at that time. One was in the tribe of Zebulun. One’s down in the tribe of Judah. So Bethlehem Ephratah, that’s Bethlehem in Judah. That’s the one were talking about.

“That little town in Judah is so insignificant that if you go back to the Book of Joshua, when they polled the tribes of Israel to get soldiers to man the armies of Israel, Bethlehem and Zebulun are mentioned and the one in Judah isn’t.

“But God says that’s where my Messiah is gonna be born! Where did you read back in Luke 1:26 that Mary lived? She didn’t live in Bethlehem. She lived in Nazareth up in Galilee over a 100 miles north.

“The week before Jesus was born, you know where Mary was? She was at home in Nazareth. Now, you people that have had babies, you can understand in that verse when it says she was ‘great with child.’ That last week before the baby’s born, it’s just get around the best you can.

“Her husband, he don’t even know it yet, but he’s got to get her from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Can you imagine she says, ‘How we gonna get there?! Donkey Express?!’

“You think about it, if you’re down to the last week of your pregnancy and your husband is putting you on a donkey and walking you a hundred miles . . .

“What God does is He uses a pagan emperor who had no thought of what was going on . . .  if Caesar Augustus had known what was going to happen as a result of what he did, he’d have never done it! The last thing he would have wanted is to work out the birth of Israel’s Messiah! But it turns out to be Caesar Augustus’ fault that they have to move from Nazareth down to Bethlehem!

“The message is the God of history works through history. You see, God can take care of His Word; you don’t have to worry about it. The God of history isn’t just going to come to reside in humanity; He works out the circumstances so, at exactly the right moment, that young couple is moved from Nazareth to Bethlehem where He had said 700 years before He was going to be born.”     

The summum bonus!

When Christ says ‘my kingdom is not of this world,’ He’s talking about how the authority and origin of His kingdom is not from the human, earthly system that’s here right now. That belongs to the Adversary.

Luke reports in Chapter 19 of his book, “And as they heard these things, he added and spake a parable, because he was nigh to Jerusalem, and because they thought that the kingdom of God should immediately appear.
[12] He said therefore, A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return.
[13] And he called his ten servants, and delivered them ten pounds, and said unto them, Occupy till I come.
[14] But his citizens hated him, and sent a message after him, saying, We will not have this man to reign over us. They thought the kingdom was going to be set up immediately so he’s going to give them a parable.”

Jordan explains, “When Jesus began to speak in parables (starting in Matthew 13) all of the parables He tells them have to with the delay in the establishment of his kingdom. He came to the point in Matthew 12 where it was clear Israel, on the record, would not accept Him as the Messiah.

“In fact, if you go back and read old-time authors 100-150 years ago, oftentimes they would put the fall of Israel in Matthew 11 and 12 because there was a crisis that came in the earthly ministry of Christ and, at that point, it’s in Matthew 12, for the first time, that He tells some of His disciples, ‘Don’t go tell anybody who I am.’ Up until then He’s been out proclaiming who He is.

“In Matt. 17 they come off the Mount of Transfiguration and He says, ‘Don’t go telling anybody what you saw up there.’ You say, ‘Well, that would kick a soul-winning program in the ditch!’

“Everybody today talks about, ‘We go by the great commandment and the Great Commission,’ and boy, did you ever notice in Matthew 12, 16 and 17 that Jesus tells this very little flock, His apostles, ‘Don’t go tell people who I am.’ You say, ‘Why would He do that?!’ Because He recognizes they’re not going to receive Him and He begins to tell them about going to the Cross, and involved in doing that, He gives them a bunch of parables which are always speaking to the issue that there’s going to be a delay in that establishment of His kingdom.

“In Luke 19 He’s going to give them sort of a timeline for it. Verse 12. The nobleman is going to go away into a far country, Christ is going to ascend into heaven, and He’s going to go there to receive for Himself a kingdom and to return. So He says, ‘I’m going to go away and then I’m going to come again.’

“When He goes away, He’s going to take His possessions, put them into the hands of His servants and say, ‘Occupy ‘til I come. Go take care of my message, my truth, my stuff, until I come back.’ Verse 13. But His citizens hated Him.

“Historically that turns out to be Stephen in Acts 7.

“Notice where does He receive the kingdom from? He went into the far country and got it there and then brings it back down when He comes. ‘It isn’t the authority of this world that’s going to set me up; it’s going to be the authority of heaven.’

“Watch it happen in prophecy. Daniel 7:9. That’s talking about the Antichrist. So where you are here is you’re prophetically looking into the future into the 70th week of Daniel, the time of the Antichrist.

“Notice where the Son of Man gets His kingdom. He gets it from the ancient of days. If you go to Rev. 4-5 you see that scene enacted out there where He comes before the Father. Who’s worthy to open the book, take the title deed to the universe, open it up, break the seals, and claim possession? It turns out to be none other than the Lamb that was slain.

“What John is telling Pilate is, ‘I’m not worried about your political power because my kingdom, if it was focused on political power, then all my disciples would take up arms and clean your plough.’

“In John 18:36 you see one word that the new bibles tend to leave out but it’s the key. When he says ‘but NOW,’ He’s saying, ‘Right now, my kingdom isn’t the issue because if it was, we’d fight!’

“Rev. 11:15. Now what kind of kingdoms are on this earth? Literal, physical ones that one day Jesus Christ will reign from. He’s not saying, ‘The nature of my kingdom is to just rule in the hearts of men.’ He’s talking about how, ‘Right now the physical stuff isn’t the issue.’

“To me one of those more helpful verses in all of that is Matthew 6:33. Jesus on the Sermon on the Mount.

“God makes all of these provisions for his creation, then he says, ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these physical things will be added to you.’

“You see God’s promise to Israel of physical blessing, material prosperity, headship over the nations and all of that stuff rested, not on Israel being such a wonderful, lovely people, but it rested on the righteousness of God equipping them for Him being about to use them in His plan.

“What they needed to understand is He came to save Israel from their sins and it had to start with the circumcision of the heart that Deuteronomy 30 told them they had to had in order to receive the blessings in the land. That verse Matthew 6:33; that’s what Israel was missing. They were seeking all the physical things and Jesus said that’s not the issue. The issue is ‘seek ye first the kingdom of God. You get that and this other stuff will follow,’ because that was the program.

“John 18:37. Pilate didn’t ask Christ, he just said, ‘What is truth?’ He’s not saying that as this is a profound philosophical discussion we should have about discovering truth. Aristotle, Plato, Socrates; those great Greek philosophers were focused on that question: ‘What is the supreme good? The summum bonum?’

“They developed the Greek philosophy about that. That’s why you had Zeno and Epicures with the different ideas and so forth. The Epicureans and the Stoics Paul talks to in Acts 17. It all focused around ‘what is truth?’ and the pursuit of that issue.

“Pilate is not doing that here. Pilate is not asking the question; He said in other words, ‘What’s truth got to do with anything?! Who cares about truth, man, you’re on trial for your life?!!!’

“Have you ever noticed that if you get caught up in the judicial system, truth really isn’t the issue? You get lawyers on one side and the other. Both take the same laws and twist them in 180-degree pretzels different from one another.

“The closest the thing you can get in the judicial system to truth is when you can get in front of a jury who kind of understands how to follow rules of evidence but even then, somebody’s going to determine what you can tell the jury and what you can’t tell them.

“Pilate’s making an accurate statement. He’s saying, ‘I’m in charge of the government here. Truth isn’t the issue here. It’s, ‘What can we get done?’ Pilate is a consummate compromiser.

“What kind of unscrupulous coward could Pilate possibly be? He knows the truth. ‘I find no fault in him.’ That’s the truth. John 19:4. But what did he do in the interval? He beat him up; scourged him.

“Pilate knows truth isn’t the issue here. Trying to keep the lid on a volatile situation, finding a compromise that will work just to keep the peace, that’s all it is. Luke 23:20. He wasn’t just willing to release Him; he’s trying to figure out a way to release Him.

“John 19:11. Notice the people demanding for Jesus to be crucified have a greater sin than Pilate. What does that tell you about Pilate? He had sin that was great—his cowardice, his compromising, his willingness to allow an innocent man to be murdered and lynched.

“But the sin of the people who demanded it was greater and when they cried, ‘We’ve been putting up with this enough! Let’s get this over with! Don’t give us this guy, give us Barabbas!’

“They were bloodthirsty and really they were bloodthirsty robbers and that’s why it says there Barabbas was a robber. Luke 23:18. Notice that Barabbas is guilty of sedition. He’s a usurper. He’s a robber and murderer. That’s exactly who the leaders of Israel were. They were usurping the kingdom from his rightful king, robbing God of His honor and bloodthirsty for the death of His Son.

“Jesus talked about Him in just those terms. Matt 11:12. From the time of the John the Baptist, as that message of the gospel of the kingdom was being preached by him, as that message was preached, what kind of a response did it get from the leaders? It got a violent response! ‘We don’t want to lose our power so we got to go kill him.”

“In the parable in Matthew 21, when Jesus told them about the vineyard He uses the same type imagery. 21:33. Now, if you’re an Israeli you’d understand those things. The Lord is a strong and mighty tower. He’s talking about how He planted His truth in it. So you’ve got a nation with God’s religion in it that’s the vineyard with the fig tree and He lets it out. He puts it in the hands of some leaders to take care of it. And He goes into a far country, and when the time of the fruit drew near, He sent His servants for the husbandman that they might receive the fruits of it.

“It’s, ‘Give us this guy who’s a usurping, robbing murderer!’ That’s exactly who they are. Barabbas (bar = son and abbas = abba father). The name Barabbas means ‘son of the father’. But the son of which father? Turns out to be the son of his father the devil.

“There’s some real good preaching in this text. In an old famous sermon about Barabbas the preacher waxed quite eloquent, describing Barabbas having been caught for his murderous sedition and robbery and Luke says he was a notable prisoner, an infamous guy, an enemy No. 1.

“He’s captured, put into prison, he’s ready to be executed and the morning of his execution he hears the soldiers coming down the hall of the dungeon and they come and open his cell and unshackle him from the wall and get him up and carry him out, one on each side of him (big Roman soldiers), dragging him to his execution.

“They get him up to the end of the hall to the door of the prison and they say, ‘Now you’re free,’ and he says, ‘What?! How can I be free?!’ and they said, ‘Another’s going to die in your place.’ They said, ‘Give us Jesus, not Barabbas.’

“That was a good day for Barabbas because a Savior took his place. He didn’t deserve it—a murderous, thieving, usurper deserved nothing but a just execution. But one unbeknownst to him . . . ‘While we were yet without strength in due time Christ died for the ungodly.’

“So there’s some good preaching in that. But you can’t do that preaching until you come over to Romans because that message isn’t there until then. And there’s some mythology that goes along with Barabbas-- one died in his place and later he hears the gospel and gets saved.

“You can imagine how Barabbas felt on that day because you know what it’s like to be guilty like he was and yet have one die in your place.”

Only the beginning (again)

Luke begins to talk about Zechariah and Elisabeth, the momma and daddy of John the Baptist. Jordan explains, “And he said, ‘The story I’m gonna tell you about John the Baptist’s birth, and his mom and dad, I’m telling you because I’ve been a historian. I’ve actually talked to the eyewitness accounts of these things who’ve had, from the beginning of those events, personal knowledge.’

“That’s one of those verses where you say, ‘Well, I thought he wrote by inspiration?’ Well, he did but he also wrote by historical inquiry. He wrote by inspiration, but when God wrote it down by inspiration He demonstrates the historical validity.

“What Luke is doing there is saying, ‘I was a good historian. You can go behind me and check the historical record and it’s exactly what I’m saying because what God is writing down here for you is what the evidence in the historical record sets forth.’ The Bible’s a very historic book.

“You go back in the Old Testament in Chronicles, or Kings and Samuel, for examples, you’ll find a list of about 15 different public chronicle records, or historical books that are not Bible and they’re not in the Bible; they’re in Jewish history at the time that you can check. The writer would refer to them.

“That’s a demonstration of the historical accuracy of the writer because if you challenge somebody to go and check the record, well you better be sure the record is there, No. 1, and then that it’s right and compatible with what you’re saying.

“So here’s a beginning that isn’t the beginning of eternity, it’s not the beginning of creation, it’s just the beginning of the earthly ministry of Christ. But if you really want to get it going look at Acts 11. Peter’s been over to Cornelius’ house and he comes back, gets called on the carpet, and he answers the people in Jerusalem in Acts 11:3: ‘Saying, Thou wentest in to men uncircumcised, and didst eat with them.
[4] But Peter rehearsed the matter from the beginning, and expounded it by order unto them, saying,
[5] I was in the city of Joppa praying: and in a trance I saw a vision, A certain vessel descend, as it had been a great sheet, let down from heaven by four corners; and it came even to me:
[6] Upon the which when I had fastened mine eyes, I considered, and saw fourfooted beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air.’

“When it says he rehearsed the matter from the beginning, what beginning is that? That’s not Gen. 1:1. That’s not Luke 1 either. He says, ‘Let me go back and tell you what happened,’ and it starts with the vision about Cornelius and he goes back and from the beginning of that incident, that historical event in his life, and he recounts things from the beginning of that. You understand that.

“Verse 15 is where it gets interesting: ‘And as I began to speak, the Holy Ghost fell on them, as on us at the beginning.’ What beginning is that? When did the Holy Spirit fall on Peter and the Jerusalem church? Acts 2. That’s Pentecost.

“So now here in the passage he says, ‘Let me tell you what happened from the beginning,’ and then he talks about the things and he says, ‘What happened over here is what happened to us back over there at the beginning.’ Which beginning? Pentecost. My point is you can use the term ‘beginning’ for a lot of different things. It isn’t just automatically the beginning from eternity past.”