AUSTRALIAN BIBLE CHURCH July 8,15, 23, 29, August 5, 12  2007

A CONTINUATION OF THE THRUST AND BASE OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
OF AUSTRALIA ON BIBLICAL LINES …

The WAY of LIFE 13 Testimonies

of Entry, Growth, Aspiration and Eternity  

Sermon Notes covering a series of texts on three related topics, 
which in practical terms have occupied many weeks!

 

Like Peaks in a Mountain Range, there are many marvels of spiritual insight and promise in the Bible. Today we consider thirteen in three categories.

I

 

ENTRY  REQUIREMENTS ... PRIMARY

1. Matthew 9:13 - Not without being straight about being a sinner.

"Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance."

If a person is not a sinner, then of all on earth, for that one Christ did not come. On the other hand, Except you eat My flesh ... you have no life. Hence this is about being a hypocrite, blind and deaf, dumb and dead spiritually, and not realising your place in the morgue of life. Free among the dead, you stay there, and inherit the destiny suitable.  

2. Luke 13:2-5 - Not without repentance.

"Do you suppose that these Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans, because they suffered such things? I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse sinners than all other men who dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish."

Life is not a highway, as a glance should suffice to show. Its internal brilliance in creation is a pathway, but the ways of the will of mankind are NOT, or rather are they a shute. Hence disaster is a mere option for those who are not in Christ, and separation from God is separation from truth, and being an enemy of it, so that life is being squandered, as one who walks through traffic with the eyes closed, or sails without weather information, or a vessel capable of withstanding what comes.

3. John 3:5-8 - Not without regeneration.

"Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit."

Flesh, genes and molecules, this is a wonderful thing, a stupendous basis for action by the spirit which God equally gave to man (Genesis 3).  The spirit of man however is the criterion, for it is not the car but the driver, not the thought out equipment, but the thinker, man himself, whose ways are assessed (John 3:19).

If your body is given, your thoughts are assessed. If your way is appointed, your will is a worker, and can work evil most readily (Matthew 23:37). It is only, therefore, when that will and spirit of man, back of his thoughts, is divinely appointed so that its keenly felt fall is no longer a twisted steering column, and only when man is as at the first in harmonious fellowship with God, placed by a power as miraculous as that which saw his arrival on earth, this time not in the test as such, but in the triumph of grace by which he is now redeemed when he believes: it is only then that his personal being is spiritual, adopted, a friend of God.

Without this, what you work is never satisfactory (Romans 10:1-4), for the life is not in the heart, the very life of God for which man is appointed (I John 1:1-4).

4. Romans 5:17, 10:3 - Not without the gift of righteousness, duly and freely received.

"For if by the one man’s offense death reigned through the one,
much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ."

 "For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish
their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God."

Receipt of your righteousness as a GIFT means there is no shift or shiftlessness about your honour, merit, goodness or grace. You being bankrupt are bankrolled. Like it ? Take it. It is there freely (Romans 3:23ff., Isaiah 55:1-3).Dislike it ? Then live on your own righteousness, as one "seeking to establish" it, in hope or deed, and do not submit. This qualifies you as rebel.

5. John 6:53-54,61-63 - Not without eating and drinking what
Christ provides by His death. Like all the rest, it is received by faith.

"Then Jesus said to them, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.’ The ‘eating’ is by faith as of the sacrifice in the Passover, but word is spirit and life (John 6), and Communion reminds and revivifies.

"Does this offend you? What then if you should see
the Son of Man ascend where He was before?
It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing.
The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.
 

"But there are some of you who do not believe" (John 6:62 - bold added).

Notice that in John 6:51, Christ uses another image of His self-giving to man. This time, instead of using the figure found in the former sacrificial slaughter of animals, where the flesh of the lamb as at the Passover so famously, would next be eaten, showing both the sin-cancelling power of the death as a portrayal of that of Christ to come (cf. John 1:29) and the life sustaining power of the Lord of life in those who know Him, He used that of bread. It was based on that other historical fact, the Exodus, when in the desert the equally famous manna sustained their physical beings.

In this reference to 'eating' the 'bread', receiving the spiritual manna, that other form of referring to His own self as sacrifice and resurrected Lamb, the ONLY one of its kind! Christ uses what grammatically is called the aorist subjunctive. It is not present tense. It signifies that ONCE you eat of this bread, you will live for ever.

Precisely the same message is to be found in John 4:14, where ONCE you drink of this water (instead of laboriously coming day by day to draw), there will be this amazingly delightful, and most restful phenomenon, that this water will THEN be IN YOU.

Not only so, it will have an intrinsic power, and will SPRING UP UNTO ETERNAL LIFE. That in turn is precisely as John 5:24 indicates, that of the one who believes in Him who sent Christ and in His own words 1) has eternal life 2) does not come into judgment and 3) has passed (Greek perfect tense here) from  a state of death to a state of life. The single reception of this risen Saviour suffices for the eternal redemption of the soul (Hebrews 9:12, 6:19, 10:10,14, Ephesians 1:11, I John 5:11-13). Let us look at this point further.

Thirdly, like a three-rail track, this is in perfect parallel to I John 5:11-13 where John is at such pains, as inspired by God, to make it clear that believers who in fact are in Christ, not attached to some fag end of philosophy which seeks to reconstruct Him, but the eternal Son of God become  flesh who died to take the penalty of sin and give life to those who know Him, NOW HAVE eternal life. He who has the Son has life, and he who does not have the Son, does not have life, declares John 5:12.

To return to John 6, this eternal life is one such that Christ will raise up the recipient on the last day (John 6:54), and that one will live "for ever".

To think that once you receive this free gift (Romans 5:12-17) of Christ and His righteousness,

v        the whole calamity of man, severance from the God of his Creation,
the eternal and almighty, is remedied, and
 

v        the sequences of sequestration are annulled, so that
 

v        not oddities but sovereign steps are in view,
 

v        not events as indifferent (Psalm 1), like winds blowing chaff,
but events as under the knowing watchfulness of the Shepherd, these occur, so that
 

v        eternity comes in its meaning and depth,

its vitality and delicious drama, and not as a dream when it departs:

this is delight. Then Christ actually lives in you (Colossians 1:27) by His Spirit (Romans 8:5-11). While, as Psalm 1 declares, the way of the wicked is like the chaff which the wind blows away (unbased, without saving grace, subject to circumstances not specifically directed to the good of what is determined on the path which has no Rock), the Lord, it proceeds, KNOWS the way of the righteous. He knows those who have received HIS own righteousness as a gift (Romans 5:17, 6:23), and have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb (Revelation 7:14).

This is as in Colossians 1:21-22:

·        "And you, who once were alienated
and enemies in your mind by wicked works,
yet now He has reconciled in the body of His flesh through death,
to present you holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight..."

There are no ruses, negotiations: instead, there is realisation, repentance and reception of Him who saves. There are no substitutes, creative thinking programs from man or casuistries for his spirit. You simply receive Christ crucified, finished in His work of eternal redemption (Hebrews 9:12, Romans 3:23ff.), taking Him by FAITH, just as they earlier took the Lamb in the Passover, for Christ IS our Passover (I Corinthians 5:7), and since HE is in heaven and WE are on earth, receive this substitutionary sacrifice from His heart by the faith which takes, appropriates and rests on His WORK.

	Being identified by faith in His finished act, in which He bore the sin of all who would ever come to Him, foreknown and predestined in love, by Him who seeking all, finds His people;
	and being crucified with Christ in that one act, once in the history of man (Hebrews 9 repeats this), by which He has wrought all:
	leave on that Cross, now vacated by death, the offal of sin and the sinfulness of your life. This is by faith and thus once and for all comes eternal salvation (John 5:24,  6:51, 4:14, I John 5:11-13, Ephesians 1:11, Romans 6:23).

When it comes to Communion, the Lord's Supper, do it in REMEMBRANCE of Him who having finished all has ascended and will return to claim His own on that day which is appointed. See then that you do not waver (Matthew 24:45ff., II Peter 2:1ff.) or be deceived (Matthew  24:4). If you want Him,  receive Him, and if you love Him, follow and obey Him.

Take it or leave it, God your own Saviour, Christ the Redeemer - or flee. Indeed, flee to or from Him , the former as in Hebrews 6:18, the latter as in Hosea 7:16 -

·        "they are like a deceitful bow, they return, but not to the Most High."

Yet even standing still is just to remain as one who has already fled, and is dead to God.

On the other hand, being deceitful and trying to make what Christ called a memorial, into an actual eating of flesh that is not there, as if Christ had committed suicide at the Last Supper when the bread became His body - and He has as man had but one (Hebrews 2): this is a rueful degradation of His words, of which at this point, He declared, "It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you, they are spirit and they are life" - John 6:63. Christ gave a setting for this: "What then if you should see the Son of Man  ascend to where He was before!"

There would be no 'lamb' to consume physically then! It is a SPIRITUAL thing, and efforts by Romanism to make it physical, not only deny the reality of the Last Supper by making a suicide affair out of it, were this so, by implication, but ignore the frank denunciation of any such concept by Christ, and even this, in company with His declaration that they must consider what He says in the light of His RETURN to heaven. You do not have a sacrificial eat-feast on earth with a victim already a suicide case, when the latter is in heaven and you are on earth! (cf. Acts 3:19ff.).

In fact, it is not only idolatry to worship this very 'flesh' as Rome does emphatically to the point of slaughtering some in times past for not accepting such a ritual, but direct disregard of Christ's words

	a) that it is a memorial feast
	b) that His going to heaven is NOT in alliance with the concept of flesh in this matter and
	c) that His words are thus SPIRIT and LIFE, for it is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh profiting nothing. That is the position with regard to that issue!

Calvary, not the Upper Room, is the profitable sacrifice, for this only is one at all, when ONCE, not twice or three thousand times,  in the end of the Age, Christ put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself (Hebrews 9:26)! As Galatians 6:14 makes so clear, it is the cross of Christ, and this is not the memorial earlier instituted, but the action itself with all its preparations and implications: it is this in which one should glory. One does not glory in the trophy or the memorial, but in the event, in the thing memorialised; and indeed, the reason for its memorial is this, that it is past.

When therefore the current Pope, as has happened this week (mid-July, 2007), comes out with the rank surrealism of Primacy in the affair of declaring his religious corporation the ONLY true Church, as he likes to esteem this idolatrous body, the reply is that it is not a church at all (I Corinthians 6:9, Romans 16:17). Like other sects, Rome is highly denunciatory, but before this, derogatory of specific scriptural declarations. What has this to do with Christ or Peaks ? It is an abyss, a veritable degradation to what profits nothing at all!

The bread of the memorial as Christ-defined, this may be eaten, and as a token takes you in spirit to Calvary, where the actualities here memorialised, occurred, and in the light of this, you partake of the communion of the body of Christ, as Paul puts it, receiving in SPIRIT and in LIFE what He has declared: His perpetual pardon to His flock, His perpetual food to their lives and His assurance of being raised up at the last day, in His redemptive presence (John 6:53-54). Let us however search further in the word of God concerning these things, since they have been misused by many, to the destruction of more.

Indeed, Christ who died and whose body rose again from the dead on the third day (I Corinthians 15:1-4, Luke 24), is received into heaven UNTIL the regeneration of all things, and heaven, we read in Acts 3:21, MUST receive Him until this regeneration. It is necessary, says the Greek, and it is necessary UNTIL this restitution of all things. That is both what it says and what will happen.

In the interim, in which we all wait for that second coming, all who are His (Hebrews 9:28), there are seasons of refreshing (Acts 3:19) for those who having followed the direction given by Peter as in Acts 3, REPENT of their sins and BELIEVE in the Lord Jesus Christ, the One of history, not "another Jesus" with "another Gospel" and "another Spirit." As to that error, it is a horror against which Paul declaims in II Corinthians 11, noting that some 'false apostles' from the devil's realm, can look like angels of light, while they deceive.

These seasons of refreshings however occur in a very different realm to one of regeneration of all things. Currently, it grows, the state of this world, as foretold, increasingly near to the a vast degeneration (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5). It is this which is upon us as in Matthew 24, Revelation 6-8, Isaiah 24. Moves to invent a new Christ somewhere else than in the prescribed, and necessary place are proscribed by the Bible, quite incisively and decisively. To seek to place Him in this time of despoliation of the nations, it is not merely disobedient, but in ludicrous contrast to the time specified by the OPPOSITE case, the regeneration of all things.

This too, however, it also is no less foretold - with many false prophets and christs to come as the pressure mounts towards calamities and degradations all but unthinkable, trubulations unique since creation (Matthew 24:24,22, Mark 13:19, Revelation 6ff.). The Roman Catholic Mass is a simple ONE of these varied fulfilments of that prophecy about false christs made by Christ in Matthew 24:24-28.

What warning do you get from the lips of the actual Master, Lord, Teacher, the only One whose word directs (cf. I John 2:27, Matthew 23:8-10) infallibly, faithfully and finally (cf. Massifs ... Ch. 11, SMR Appendix D)? Watch for it, He shows you. See the case. He then outlines it.

"Here!" they say, "here is the very Christ, the veritable Christ, in this room," space or place, lifted up or otherwise. That is the kind of thing against which Jesus Christ in so many words, has warned you. And what is this 'christ', this false christ, this untimely christ, this shunted back to earth christ before His stated time ? What is it ! "He" - actually a piece of bread given for what is idolatrous worship. Here He is, they say He  is HERE! (cf. SMR pp. 1088B ff.)

Come worship! they say.

Don't do it! says Christ, don't believe them! (Matthew 24:26), in warning against such false christs as a category sure to come after He left this world, pending His return at the time of the regeneration of all things, the restitution of all.

WAIT!

Wait FOR HIM! not for some prime moving prelate, born as all men other than Christ since Adam, in sin, contesting against Christ's decree that one call NO MAN Master or Teacher or Father but CHRIST Jesus Himself! This - is it some slight confusion of God and man, the infinite with the finite, the redeemer with the sinner! Is there anything more appalling! Whose word, then, that of God incarnate, Jesus Christ, the eternal Word and sinless Saviour, the "I am" (John 8:58) who is the truth (John 14:6), or that of a soaring sinner who spiritually here does an Icarus act, the pope!

But what of this request to worship the 'host' in the Mass ?

Now notice that it is CHRIST that they ask you to worship, as if THERE, though what they offer for this act is - a piece of bread. Those of ancient Israel did much the same in the famous case of the bronze serpent which was used as a focus and emblem of the saving power of God when Israel was being spoiled by poisonous serpents (Numbers 21). They had to look to this piece of bronze, see the point, and believing in the power of God, receive healing by faith. However, as the flesh moves from the spiritual and the apt to the carnal and the inept, so they began to worship the thing, the emblem. What a prodigious calamity to worship the symbol in place of the Saviour!

Therefore the reforming King Hezekiah DESTROYED that once useful EMBLEM, that wrongly prized bronze serpent, because of this idolatrous misuse of its whole point and purpose (II Kings 18:4). It is in this setting the same of the memorial, the Lord's Supper. In this, "the flesh profits nothing" as Christ declared specifically. The words, said He, that I speak, are spirit and life, and those words in that place referred to eating His flesh, as the new Lamb and drinking His blood (John 6:48-63).

No, do not believe (Matthew 24:26), He warned, when they say Christ is HERE or THERE! to be found in some room or place. When He Himself actually comes to be seen, He proceeded, it will be "as the lightning comes from east and flashes to the west." That is the extent of the contrast to all these misconceived ideas with false Christs to be seen here or there in the interim! Lightning from east to west is not a piece of bread being held up! The affairs are infinitely different. Lightning flashing, that is the nature of the case when at last, after one has waited "UNTIL" the time for the restitution of all things, He actually DOES COME. There is no room for any doubt or confusion. This, it is so. It is the word of the Lord. Be warned therefore.

The word "for" in Matthew 24:27 shows that this FACT of His vast and brilliant coming, in specified contrast to any dealings in rooms or assigned sites, shows that this is the reason why you should not believe claims of creating or revealing Him, Himself, in some private place - such as a chapel indeed. Try lightning moreover, in a cathedral. The contrast is specific, specified and inalienable.

The Mass of Romanism therefore not only is idolatrous, but in the wrong place at the wrong time, and counters the explicit command of Christ, replacing it with one made by the command of a man, a sinner like all on this earth and all men other than Christ Himself, a man neither eternal nor the Saviour, who never died in the cross, never rose again, a pope called Father, though that very name in spiritual terms is expressly and explicitly forbidden, this also by Christ (Matthew 23:8-10). It is made, this counter-claim and counter-command alike, by one who dares to be designated "God Almighty on earth" as in the New York catechism, so giving idolatry a duplex of duplicity added to the tedium of untruth.

Enter who dares! Enter such a place where a false christ at at spurious time is idolatrously presented to be worshipped! There is the opposition to Christ: DO NOT enter says He. DO ENTER, says the papacy.

Small wonder the Bible says, "Come out of her My people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues" - Revelation 18:4 (cf. SMR pp. 946ff.).

The word of prophecy in Matthew 24, here from the very lips of Christ, the actual one, is indeed "a light that shines in a dark place" (II Peter 1:19), a needed illumination,  as Peter (the actual one) rightly foretells in general, adding in particular his warning about false teaching making merchandise out of you, arising from your OWN MIDST as the Age progresses towards its terminus (II Peter 2:1ff.). So here, as in all things that it specifies,  biblical prophecy brings light, is truth and is to be heeded (II Timothy 3:16). It is such a light "until the day dawns" (II Peter 1:19 cf. Ch. 11 infra), says Peter. 

WAIT for it, therefore, and meanwhile drink abundantly of the spiritual waters that the Lord Jesus Christ Himself gives (John 4:14, 7:37-38) by His Spirit (cf. John 15:26) and wash freely in the blood of the Lamb by that faith through which, if a Christian,  you received, in Christ's name, the salvation of your soul (Acts 2:27-28, Zechariah 13:1, Revelation 7:14).

Do NOT idolatrise as those of old, an emblem, or a memorial, lest it and you be alike degraded to mere judgment, for the faith through which is free salvation (Romans 3:23ff., 6:23, 5:15, Titus 3:5ff.), it brings salvation free of works, but living faith DOES work;  and one of its workings is this, to ADORE the LORD and to OBEY His word. This result of faith appropriating the salvation of Christ, it is not HOW a sinner is saved, but it is what is its mainstream of life, WHEN the sinner is saved (John 5::24, I John 3:9).

WHY, asked Christ pertinently indeed, to you call Me Lord, Lord and NOT do the things that I say! (Luke 6:46). This then is the way of those saved. Far from perfect (I John 1:7-2:2), they are yet perfectly clear that the LORD alone is to be obeyed, above all men, and His word is truth! (Matthew 23:8-10, I John 2:27, John 14:21-23).

How dazzlingly clear Christ has made it all, from the outset. The things that I say, Christ declaimed, specific here to our point of application, they are spirit and they are life (John 6, in the chapter concerning these eatings and drinkings) - what if I go up to where I was before! He asked pointedly. Flesh ? try eating at a distance. Flesh ? try eating the One who having finished (John 19:30), has been welcomed into heaven until a time now so shaded from view, that it contrasts with a violence that its peace disdains.

Do not then be deceived by this prodigy of fanfare of a religious body. The body that matters is that of Christ, resurrected, glorified in heaven, and staying there until His time of return comes, with the restoration, not the degradation, of all things.

What then do we find ? This, His return to reception in heaven, this He did (Acts 1, Acts 3:19ff., Hebrews 4:14), UNTIL, as the Bible declares, as the actual Peter announced, that glorious time, long awaited, and TO BE WAITED FOR with PATIENCE (II Peter 3:9), that epochal and transformational time, ending the processive, and indeed progressive pangs of the Age. Lightning and not lordly private places of ostensible christs made illegally from bread, and no more Christ than the sky or the Lord, than was the bronze serpent: this signified the time to receive Him in His coming. That is the witness and the warning of Jesus Christ. It is He to whom we look, since He knows. It is to the Deity who by humbling Himself became a brother to believers, not to the man who by exalting himself becomes an enemy to the faith (Matthew 16::24-27).

Alas for the papacy has fallen into that very pit from which Christ rescued on one occasion His arguing disciples (Matthew 20:20-28). There is 20/20 vision, when Christ is so much the first, that service and not authoritative power, lording it over faith, is the criterion (cf. Paul in II Corinthians 1:24). What does the apostle declare of such primacy:

"Not that we have dominion over your faith, but are fellow workers for your joy;
for by faith you stand" (cf. I John 2:27).

It is the word of God that stands for ever, directive from the Lord and final (Revelation 22:18ff., Galatians, I Peter 1:24ff., 2:1, Proverbs 8:8), composed and intolerant of additive antics, now as ever: in Gospel and in its conclusion, concerning ALL THINGS, complete. We await HIM, and not another! (cf. John 14:30).

What have we found then on all sides ? It is this. Do not be at all concerned about new christs or new directors of faith or new lords with dominion over your faith, or new pieces of bread, not memorial but to be worshipped, or new commands to find Christ here or there; but wait with patience, as well as with eager expectation (Hebrews 9:28).Avoid short-circits and WAIT for Him who comes in His own highly specific, specialised and specified manner!

THAT, like sky scouring lightning, that is the manner in which the Lord of creation ACTUALLY becomes available, when the time has come. WAIT FOR IT (Hebrews 9:28). Do not be precipitate, disobedient, luxuriating in fraud and falsity, impetuous, impenitent, turning to idolatry as did Israel so often.

Be clear, be careful, ponder the position and your own! This blazing phenomenon for which Christ bade His people to wait, this is as far from a room or place of reverence, an enclosed place as you could possibly be, and moreover, Christ specifically WARNS against such places for such purposes. I AM NOT THERE, He declares, so "DO NOT BELIEVE IT!"

Not to hear this is to be inhabited by a peculiar form of deafness, and this also, Christ covered for the people of His own day, at least in vast masses of them, as seen in Matthew 13:14ff.; and that, it was cited from Isaiah. It is an affliction, this sort of substitution of the idolatrous for the spiritual and the actual, of the humanly invented for that divinely given.

Meanwhile, still following the inspired word of Peter as in Acts 3:19ff., be regaled with "seasons of refreshing," if you know the Lord (as in John 17:1-3), and have eternal life, for these seasons also foretold; and make bold in spirit to come to the throne of grace to seek help in time of need, as in Hebrews 4:16; for as it says, "we have a great High Priest who is passed through to the heavens" (Hebrews 4:14).

His return - it is as specified: remember the light, power and horizon-scattering power of the lightning when He comes! Wait for it with eager expectation (as in Hebrews 9:28), undiverted because truly converted; for it then that He will appear "A SECOND TIME". It had not happened then. It has not happened yet. The SECOND TIME is arithmetically ONE MORE... not many. The second for that second is not yet, though it grows near, praise the Lord. Millions of masses are not a second time. Wait, again let us rehearse it, wait until He comes, and be not deceived by devious dealings from false teachers with false christs; for those who follow this in defiance and defilement of His word, stumble as has been appointed (II Peter 2:9,19, I Peter 1:8).

Alas for the fall is great (Revelation 17-19) which is to come, before the return like lightning there is to be another fire, but it is not a constructive one! Look to that Massif beyond all, the Christ Himself to which so many words point in such grandeur and magnificence, come to Him and wait on Him, following the word to the Faithful Witness Himself (Revelation 1:5): abide in His words and let His words abide in  you.

 

6. Matthew 18:3-  Not without being converted and becoming as little children.

"Assuredly, I tell you, unless you are converted and become as little children,
you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven."

Notice the dramatic, emphatic exclusion "assuredly not enter".  God's promises are both positive and negative, like those read out from Mount Ebal and Mount Gerazim as shown in Deut.  27,28, the blessings and the cursings. While salvation is by grace through faith, and not of works, yet damnation is by the disgrace of rejection of redemption. Both are sure - John 8:24, John 3:16, 5:24.

Little children are taken as those whom He could take in His arms, unresisting, trusting, looking, learning, ready for instruction (I Peter 2:2), willing to receive joy from the Saviour's might, accepting His words as "new-born babes", learning from His lips the wisdom which understands (Matthew 13:11,16-17). Consider the opposite to what is apposite in 13:14-15:

·        “Hearing you will hear and shall not understand,
And seeing you will see and not perceive;
For the hearts of this people have grown dull.
Their ears are hard of hearing,
And their eyes they have closed,
Lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears,
Lest they should understand with their hearts and turn,
            So that I should heal them."

The entire wonder of the kingdom of heaven is there for exploration, in this guidance, for in it Christ gives strength, by Him is inspiration, as for one living in the Alpine marvels of massifs of splendour.  

 

II

 

GROWTH  RESULTS ... SECONDARY

7.   James 2:26  - You are born into a faith that is not a piece of furniture, but functional -      “For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also."

Faith is not an arm on which you rest, or an inspiration by which you breathe. It is trust in the living God which like a tube, brings from Him, and to the one trusting in His mercy,  what is required for spiritual life. You could no more squash its power or betray its reality than make yourself invisible, or squeeze out the visible world so that you need not see it. It is there and it operates: it is so with faith WHEN it is placed in the saving power of God, and is in Him. He uses it not as an arm, but a channel for operations. Even a student with alienated mind is all but impossible to teach, but the wise draw wisdom from the teacher,  and the people of God have promises of power (Ephesians 1:19).

8. Galatians 5:22 -25 - Fruit is not a hope but a happening.

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,
longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.
And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit."

What law is needed against the very righteous works of the Holy Spirit which anoints the eyes, subdues the hearts, enlivens the thought and makes keen the spirit in man! As Paul declares in I Timothy 1, the law is for law-breakers.

" ...the law is not made for a righteous person,
but for the lawless and insubordinate,
for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy and profane,
for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers,
for fornicators, for sodomites, for kidnappers,
for liars, for perjurers,
and if there is any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine,
according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God which was committed to my trust."

Notice that the law is for murderers of mothers, and in the same category, with others, for sodomites and the like. Thus the 'churches' which would allow as godly what is consigned to law to condemnation (as expressly in I Corinthians 6:9) and would even take as pastors those who, as the apostle states, cannot enter the kingdom of heaven, are no churches but those who wage war on the word of God, and seek to subvert the law which nothing can subvert, and hence mislead many.

Why, says Christ, do you call  Me, Lord, Lord and not do the things that I say! (Luke 6:46). A short reference to Matthew 7:21-23, completes the picture. 

Weakness and correction, that is one phase; but rebellion, this is as woeful as witchcraft, says the Lord (I Samuel 15:23).  That is the way amiss.  What however of the highway of holiness, where though sinners still, one recognises the rules of the road, and seeks to follow them as part of the heritage of regeneration (I John 3:9) ?

To translate once more to farming, what then is the result ? Then, on the contrary, what is the wonder of the fruit! When the red  and black spot, the fungus in the roots of the tree are all removed, fruit can flourish. Indeed,  the tree being planted by God, will not be uprooted (Matthew 15:13).  

9. Ephesians 6:10-18 - Armour is not a lounge suit, or suite. It is both granted and needed!

"Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.
Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities,
against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age,
against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.

"Therefore take up the whole armor of God,
that you may be able to withstand in the evil day,
and having done all, to stand.

“Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth,
having put on the breastplate of righteousness,
and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace;
above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench
all the fiery darts of the wicked one.

“And take the helmet of salvation,
and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God;
praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit ..." 

 

10. Philippians 2:14-16 - Light that shines from God is not ashamed, but valiant in vigour.

"Do all things without complaining and disputing, that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life, so that I may rejoice in the day of Christ that I have not run in vain or labored in vain." 

The  tendency to complain is inherent in the flesh (I Corinthians 10, Galatians 5), but men ought not to faint but to pray (Luke 18:1), and as to complaints, Exodus and Numbers show a moiety of them. To be harmless is at odds with the fierce struggle to the death of survivalists, who like rats have no thought greater than the desirability of continuing, quality apart, meaning apart, destiny apart, as long as possible, as if the calibre of the gun and the nature of the bullet were all, and the point of having one were nothing.

Such blindness is to be regarded like lice in the hair, and if in Paul's day it meant being contrary to a "perverse" generation, how much more now, one perverse in spirit, so that mental and bodily oddities alike, are mere 'fruits'.

 

III

 

ASPIRATION AND CULMINATION DESIRE AND DESTINY, TERTIARY

11.  Philippians 3:8a - There are loss leaders.

"Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish …”

A store may advertise things that are sold at a loss, to attract custom; but a child of God, a saved sinner now named saint in Paul's letters, this one COUNTS on loss, not to secure custom, but as a customer of Christ, to remove dead weight and be free for function, not friction, to soar, not slave for this world, its wits or its ways, to be groomed, not doomed.  

 

12. Philippians 3:8b-9  - There are heart ravishers (I Peter 1:5ff.).

"...that I may gain Christ
and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law,
but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith ..."

There are things most ravishing in righteousness, just in praise, and there is their epicentre, like an earthquake in reverse, which brings not destruction but creation of joy in truth, spreading outward through the entire life. This is Christ, God's declaration of Himself (Hebrews 1:1-9).

Such is NOT to be found in self-love, self-will, whether individual or corporate, but in Jesus the Christ, that personal exhibition of the glory of God in definitive fashion, that incarnation of the eternal word of God, that One who so humbled Himself that He became man, not bread, not a door, not wine. He did not creak, nor turn, nor grow mouldy with age. It was Himself, not symbol,  far less idolatrous symbol who was to be credited. No more for that matter did He become a geological exhibit because He is, as God, the ONLY ROCK that God tolerates for man (Psalm 62:1-2, II Samuel 22:32-33), the only LORD, the only AUTHORITY and the only STAY and ENVIRONMENT of mercy.

Those who defy His word defile themselves, for it remains pure. AS a rock, a door, wine, bread, a shepherd, Christ indeed acts, but not as part of a building to be planed down to shape, or part of the mountains, to be sat on. Is mind to return to the dust that lust be indulged to uttermost while man makes another Christ, "God Almighty on earth" as the New York Catechism of Romanism has made the pope! What a travesty of truth and peril to the flock to have such false teachers, when ONLY Christ is your teacher and ONLY God Almighty is your Father (Matthew 23:8-10).

Our topic is Christ and His name which is above every name that can be named in earth or heaven, as equal with God (Philippians 2: 1-12), and our warning concerning Rome's old ways, is to avoid them.

Thus when we read in The Advertiser, July 26, 2007, that there is a return to that old 'Mass' in which Latin was the often uncomprehended language of its narration, it is in one sense only fitting. And why is that ? It is because in this, there is an additional lack of comprehension which mirrors and rebukes the other! It is rather like the uncontrolled laughter seen in many Pentecostal circles, amid the sort of effusions and profusions of disorder which came in unscriptural irreverences (Psalm 89:7) or spiritual 'slayings'. As to these, they were an anomaly founded on the fact that when God is to come to render vengeance to evil on this earth (as He did once before in the flood), that many will be ‘slain’, but this is misused. Isaiah 66:14ff. in particular has nothing to provide for such actions, but is wholly contrary, concerned with fiery vengeance to unrepentant rebellion, not gracious pity in spiritual mercy! The contrast is complete.

It is felt by some that words such as these of Isaiah, in some intoxicated seeming sense, relate to the clean beauty of repentance and faith, that may be evinced inside a church building! Vengeance and devastation in fury is to be conceived as contrition and pardon in mercy! Is plus minus ? Is zero infinity ? Is mercy judgment ? When will the will cease to wander into idle avenues and gaunt distortions!

Such 'spiritual' types of 'slaying'  are not mandated by such words, as Isaiah 66:16, with parallels in Habakkuk 3 and Joel 3 make most clear. Nothing is found in the word of God either to exhibit, authorise or demonstrate such a thing. It starts in imagination and ends in disorder, and should be avoided at all costs. Being ‘crucified with Christ’ (Gal. 2:20), however, this is the biblical, normal and perpetually appropriate condition as Paul here asserts.  Romans 8:1-17, Gal. 5:24 (cf. Tender Times for Timely Truth Ch. 3) have a similar message, in line with Christ’s commission (Luke 14:27ff.).

In this Pentecostal fashion, however, folly reveals itself, and error shows its heart by its dealings, extravanganzas and impracticalities as well as from the word of God direct. Errors of adding to the word of God (Proverbs 30:6) and distorting it abound; but let us return to the Roman case.

What then did Romanism desire ? The new pope has authorised wider use of the Old Latin Mass, as in former times, prior to Vatican II,  and now we find that there are those of such zeal concerning it that a volume of 850 pages has been produced to show the details of the idolatry, one not acknowledged to be such, though bread is worshipped! As to that, had it in fact been Christ's intention to vacate the human body in favour of edibles, He would in this second incarnation, have committed suicide in being broken into pieces at the Supper! The words that I speak to you are SPIRIT and they are LIFE! He cried. The flesh profits nothing (John 6)! Yet they ignore this as we saw in point 6 above.

We are to be shown, we read in the newspaper report, or rather the priests, the exact order in which to don the several layers of vestments, while the precise placement of priests' hands is given, in centimetres, for the ceremony. It does not cease till hundreds of pages of unscriptural verbiage fashion the shape of this idolatry. The report indicates that many of the young are feeling the reality of the supernatural and seek something sacred to express this. How just the feeling and how loathsome the exhibition of it! How sad and hideous a thing that as in Israel of old, the desire for God should be diverted to an idol, a thing not God and prohibited by God for worship!

Alas, this search for the supernatural within the realms of idolatry, of the power and authority of man expressly replacing the counter-claims of Jesus Christ, who REFUSES to ANY man the power and place of teacher or father, because HE ONLY has the former, and the Father Almighty only, the latter (Matthew 23:8-10, cf. I John 2:19): this is precisely the mode to come for this generation.

By no means is Romanism the final crux or criterion of such a motion (SMR pp. 727ff., 732Bff., 743), though it has had a central place in such ways; To be sure, statistically over time, it has been a major party to it, and the destruction of Rome, especially its basic religious sector, is biblically declared. Rome’s burning,  statedly for religious reasons, fits with the very concrete participation in the past of that body (as affirmed in Vatican II), and no less with what is foretold in Revelation 17-18 (cf. Deserts ... Ch. 8, SMR pp. 946ff.). Yet that is not the end of the Age, which comes in Revelation 19, when these things past, the ultimate aspirations of the devil, not through a single medium but with numbers more directly deployed, appear and then, suddenly disappear in a devastation not merely due, but a deliverance for many (II Thessalonians 1).

To that hour the world moves, seeking the supernatural in the midst of its secular muddle, torturous mud and calamitous thud of assassin, national and international, racial and religious, as the blood toll mounts and even efforts to deliver, being ungodly in conception, become increasingly godless in execution. Despising the truth, distorting and torturing it, just as Christ, its crux and criterion was tortured, it moves to the kill; but the people of the Lord will be delivered (Matthew 24, Luke 21), before the flame of reality consumes the tirades and task forces of the cruel crusaders of force. But as to force, that is not the way and its leading proponents, including the false prophet and deceiving spirits emitted from his mouth, corrosive and corruptive, polluted and impure, perish in their infamy (Rev. 16:13-14, 19:20). If the ship, misused, sinks, then the salvation is in the life boat, the Christ of desire!

Therefore let those who KNOW the Lord, experience for themselves in their own hearts and in their own worship with the people of the Lord, the power and the presence, the peace and the pardon, the joy and the goodness, the elevation of His name, the Saviour, above every name, and the love of Him who is measured not in centimetres in ceremonies in order to be moved about, but in hallowed glory; for He has been received up into heaven until He returns like lightning (Matthew 24, Acts 3) as we have seen. Now is He, who is invisible, who became man, and who has to come ONCE more (Hebrews 9), to be worshipped in spirit and in truth, for such worshippers the Father desires (John 4).

 

So Paul writes in Ephesians 3:

17. " ...that He {Christ} may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love,

18. may be able to comprehend with all the saints
what is the width and length and depth and height—

19. to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge;
that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

20. "Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly
above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us,

21. to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations,
forever and ever. Amen."

Here lies the practical and direct communion, comfort, strengthening and comradeship with Christ. First HE dwells in your heart BY FAITH (3:17). This is not hope, but that trust in His mercy, in His covenant, in His word, in His truth and in HIMSELF, which taking His salvation like a cup, and draining it to the full, receiving His pardon in peace, and believing in His power to save, works like a key in a lock. This is how it OPERATES in the Christian who finds the extreme dimensions of the love of God (3:18), soaring and grounding itself, spreading and then, when one begins to see its vastness, becoming expansive past all knowledge, its quality assured, its spread that of the Infinite God. In this way, you become “filled with all the fullness of God,” (3:19).

Notice (3:20) that what God is able to do is first of all above what we ask or think. His is the imagination, ours the hope. Secondly, it is abundantly beyond, as in a good father, but the more so, for this One is God Almighty. Again, it is not merely abundantly beyond, but exceedingly abundantly beyond. It is the work of the Lover of all time and beyond time, the Lord God whose ways do not bend, so that His enemies curse His name or call Him cruel or the like. Yet heaven with sin means no heaven for any, and life without God means a car on an expressway without steering. What can you expect! He keeps it pure! By HIM only do people come to that domain, the hearts freely worshipping, their lives fondly His.

 More, it is conspicuous in this scripture, that what God has and is able to do is exceedingly abundantly beyond not only what we ask or think, but above ALL we ask or think (3:21). It is as with the good father, above us entirely, and though He be aware of our littlenesses and needs, as a kind pater is, yet His dealings transcend our thoughts, without failing to inspire them as He acts, and as we ponder both the wisdom of His abilities and desires, and the intensity of His pure love. When GOD is one's father, how blessed each day! How to serve Him becomes the becoming desire...

Then as we turn to a parallel passage but one later in presenting the coming power of Christ, in  we find that our citizenship is in heaven (3:20) NOW, and that the resurrection is ....

 

The Coming Appointment with Christ
 

Philippians 3:20-21 adds the decisive word.

 “For our citizenship is in heaven,
from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,

who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body,
according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself.” 

Already our righteousness is there, held in heaven, with Christ,
who however also by His Spirit has
encompassed us with it already on the earth
(cf. Isaiah 61:10, Romans 3:22, 5:1,9,18,  Titus 3:5-7).
But how is it in heaven ? It is so

¨   since Christ is our righteousness
(I Corinthians 1:30, II Corinthians 5:21, Romans 3:21-22, 5:17)

and He is in heaven (Acts 3:19-21),

¨   the anchor in the Holy of Holies,

¨   who keeps our souls (Hebrews 6:19, 9:12, 10:10,14, I Peter 1:3-8, Ephesians 1:11),
     for ever.

It is from this same heaven that “we eagerly wait” for the Saviour (Phil. 3:20), not as some kind of religious extremists, but as those who knowing the heartland of godliness, in Christ, and the current place of Christ and of this world, seek for His return as one might await holidays in Summer, health from an illness or strength from running, a bride or bridegroom after long absence, or a reply from a loved one, from a letter long sent. But Paul goes further in Philippians 3:21.

Resurrection of the body becomes the culmination of the blessing of Jesus Christ, who works through it on the way. When that day comes, faith becomes sight. The resurrection of the body in His presence becomes the culmination of the blessing of Jesus Christ, who works through and in us with this sight before us.

When that day comes, when the trumpet sounds and the dead in Christ will be raised incorruptible, then hope become fact as well as faith sight. It is already a means of spiritual sight for the Christian (I Peter 1:5ff.), all throughout the night (cf. Hebrews 11:27, I Corinthians 15:42-58, Romans 10:9). It is indeed THIS Jesus and not some other one (II Corinthians 11) who comes, and He, He without the aid of any sinner, HE who is Lord of all! (Revelation 19). To Him then let us look, putting aside the burdens of the flesh, the lusts of spirit, whether in would-be churches or in wanton desire of mind, spirit or body. Reside in Him, hidden like Moses in the cleft of the Rock, in Him who is not symbol, but man, and at that, God as man.

Then with all saints, let us rejoice and await His ultimate blessings as we travail for His service while day is still called day. When the night comes, no man can work (John 9:4-5)!