An Abundance of Grace

Just like the serpent did in the garden of Eden, Satan always wants to pollute your perception of Who God is and His promises. He wants you to focus on your sin rather than repent and TRUST for the instant you do you realize that God never left, that you never ‘surprise’ Him, that His love and grace are infinitely more powerful than your failures, that Christ’s blood is and always will be the final Word.

So, what we are meant to understand is that the God-Son, as the Almighty’s Expression, His Agent, didn’t simply create life but rather He is life. Thus, the entire cosmos was vested in the outcome of His sacrifice.

This is why the trifecta is so important. God could have done anything to rectify what was being spoiled. He could have created literally anything, and yet He chose to create a beautiful world with a magnificent garden and a situation that would teach all His creation the one fundamental truth.

Do you want to live as Jesus, like His disciples (post Calvary)? Meet each moment, good or bad, with trust in Father God. And don’t worry about it, don’t try to make yourself trust. Just choose it and rest in Him.

In our day, you might say ‘he just couldn’t catch a break’. He started off as kind of a ‘grumbler’, not at all happy about what God had told him to do. Ironically, he came from a small town just a few miles from modern day Nazareth which of course was where Jesus grew up.

Why is the human heart and mind ‘coping’ with Jesus by trying to define Him in these myriad ways? Simply put, to define Him is to put Him in a ‘box’, to ‘contain’ Him. When something we perceive about Him or those we associate with Him bums us out, we can simply adjust our definition and thus His ‘container’. That’s how we remain ‘superior’.

I must have read this scripture a thousand times, literally, and then a couple of days ago, wham. It struck me as shocking that the risen Lord, the Lord of Lords and King of Kings, Lord of all, having conquered death and hell and condemned the devil to destruction, having completed His divine mission – He calls the very ones who deserted Him in the garden, He calls them “My brothers”.

Comparatively, it’s easy to recognize Satan’s work outwardly but not so obvious when his work is inward and most of the time it is. His thought-arrows are deception, hatred, pride and lust, etc. As he influences you with his ‘propaganda’, you become his tool.

And this is where the “fullness” comes in, literally. When He comes in, He brings His “fullness” – infinite love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and so forth. His presence is His fullness. Filled with His fullness means filled with God’s presence and thus all that He is. It’s a spiritual union:For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones."For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh."

For we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.(Eph 2:10)

This glorious gift of grace means that with His Spirit in you, you are no longer “of the earth” like the first Adam. Rather, you are from that point forward “of heaven” like the “last Adam”. In fact, you are then a member of the family of God – your name is written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.

He’s Lord of the Sabbath because back in Genesis He created the the seventh day of rest, the Sabbath, (See Gen 2:2,3) and more than that, He is the Sabbath. More accurately, He is our Sabbath. You see, sabbath is all about rest and peace. Because of this, it is also about trust for you cannot truly have rest or peace unless you have trust, trust in the Almighty. Jesus embodies this rest, peace and trust.

These people who could not believe despite the obvious, empowered by the presence of God’s Spirit in them were transformed inwardly. They then had the power to embrace ‘the basics’ and the power to trust the next lesson – perfection.

When all others forsake and or forget you, God never will. His love for you is perfect and eternal. And you may think, ‘God doesn’t understand my hurt’, but actually He does. You see the pain of forgottenness is synonymous with the pain of forsakenness. And on the cross, God the Son cried out to God the Father:And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Mat 27:46)

Jesus spoke of “great faith” and “little faith” and a couple times of “no faith”. But in Luke chapter seventeen, after exhorting His disciples about forgiveness:“Take heed to yourselves. If your brother sins against you, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times in a day returns to you, saying, ‘I repent,’ you shall forgive him.” (Luke 17:3,4)They knew they needed help. They may have thought forgiving this much could be challenging; thus, His exhortation seems to have prompted them to ask for Him to “increase” their faith. In response to their request, He answered:“If you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.” (Luke 17:6)

Did you notice? It looks like all these six incidents involved one or more of the three ‘inner circle’ disciples who witnessed Christ’s transfiguration. What amazing patience from Jesus as He faced the coming sacrifice!

Like John the Baptist, we all tend to look for the wrong things from God. When God doesn’t do what we expect or how we expect or when we expect, we can be ‘scandalized’ or ‘tripped up’ or doubtful. We set our eyes upon men, even ‘spiritual’ men, even men in ministry and when they fail our expectation (and they always will), we can be like John.

Actually, you could say disobedience on Adam’s part led to sin and sin led to fear. And ever since, it has been hard-wired into the human race. Now, the Bible clearly instructs us to fear the Lord (more than 30 times) but let me clarify something. When the scriptures talk about the fear of the Lord, they are referring to reverence – to revere Him. You see, in both Hebrew and Greek, the languages of the Old and New Testaments, the word for fear and reverence is the same.

You see, Jacob had always been all about escaping trouble, escaping fear and you can bet that as a last resort, that plan was always on his mind. But with a broken hip? That won’t happen.

Now, “wedding” is a New Testament word and “marriage” is only used twice in the Old Testament which I find interesting. Of course, weddings and the concept of marriage are as old as the story of mankind. And notably, weddings are the joyous celebration of marriage and thus it’s natural that Christ’s first miracle as recorded in John chapter two was in support of that joy.

But in chapter twenty, as Abraham was looking off in that direction, the whole valley became a billowing furnace, like a nuclear bomb had dropped. It’s likely that Abraham’s heart just sank. You see, they had no cell-phones then. Abraham saw this inferno in the valley and surely thought his beloved Lot was toast, literally. He had no way to know that God had saved him by taking him out of there.

Now that was a sight to behold! The scriptures tell that no man has seen God at any time but here the LORD (Yahweh) caused all His goodness to pass before Moses.

The first teaching regards doing righteousness which includes kind deeds, giving, and service or any personal sacrifice. Religion emphasizes doing these things publicly and many systems are in place to acknowledge the ‘righteous doers’ and to glorify them.

This parable from Jesus speaks to the character of the Almighty and, importantly, about our perception of His character. Unfortunately, many preachers and commentators ignore that and zero-in on the issue of their productivity or lack thereof.

When you look into a mirror, you’re looking at yourself – the implication is that with Christ in you as a believer, you are also seeing Jesus but dimly because of the flesh. Therefore you ‘know’ or recognize Him in part. But the time is coming when you will perfectly know Him just as He knows you. You’ll know Him this way because you were made to be this way – in His image.

And as His children, we abide in Him and He in us. That’s how we see/know light – we live in His light and thus separated from the darkness, we comprehend the light:For with You is the fountain of life;In Your light we see light. (Psa 36:9)

As the soldiers sent by the Chief Priest along with Judas Iscariot approached Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, He asked them a most poignant question reaching far beyond that pivotal night. It transcends time. Thus, He asks us the same question today.

When you want to learn more about grace and forgiveness one of the characters in the Bible you can reference is David the king of Israel. For all his courage in battle and sincerity in worship, his life was filled with messes, and he often was their maker. Can you relate to that? I sure can.

But Jesus overthrew their tables on this by asserting that they were like ‘deer in His headlight’ so to speak. Exposed as fakers with God. What He was saying is what He always said – “You must be born again.” You must be completely, changed inwardly to be clean (i.e. acceptable) before God. You simply cannot get away with the outward show.

You see, the context of the lesson was/is our duty to forgive but the lesson goes beyond that and puts a spotlight on the condition of the heart of the forgiver or servant of the Lord.

This is why most all of us need to persist in prayer because we need a holy heart attitude, uncluttered by the world and our own ‘flesh’. It’s in that time ‘on the mountain’ like Christ (see Mat 14:23 and Luke 6:12) or in your own Gethsemane, whether fellowshipping and/or agonizing with the Almighty, that you arrive at the ‘one-two’.

And how about those who are “oppressed”? Well, the translators perhaps should have used the literal meaning of “crushed”, or “broken in pieces” or “shattered”. You may have read the novel, “The Count of Monte Cristo” wherein, the protagonist, a young French sailor, Edmund Dantes was falsely imprisoned in the horrible Chateau D’if. Each year, the ‘warden’ chained Edmund up and beat him nearly to death. Finally, when he is able to escape this monstrous hell, he takes with him immense wealth from a pirate treasure but sadly, he is still bound up in his heart in Chateau D’if. He is never truly free of the grip of his loss and torture.This pictures everyone of humanity spiritually. Jesus came to truly set us all free of this oppression, this shattering of the soul.

But not everyone who encounters Christ does so with sincerity. Some see themselves are morally superior to everyone else. The power of God’s Son does not impress them because they actually are not just bound by sin by devoted to evil:

Early in His ministry, Jesus roamed the shore of the Sea of Galilee and encountered two fishermen, Peter and his brother Andrew. He simply said, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.” The result was:They immediately left their nets and followed Him. (Matt 4:19,20)Nearby, He also found two more brothers, James and John, fishermen as well:He called them, and immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed Him. (Matt 4:21,22)

The Gospel Jesus taught is based upon faith and trust in an Almighty God Who offers eternal life freely. Contrary to this, the Law never saved anyone. That’s because mankind has always been powerless to keep it – only the Son of God Himself could do that and the Life of faith and trust He brought is empowered by the indwelling of His Holy Spirit.

Jesus, the Living Word, gave us many pictures, many examples to learn from. Taking on the menial task of washing the disciples’ feet, including Judas’, was one such picture.

God will speak if we will listen. 138 times, the Bible records that the Lord spoke to someone. 136 of those times are in the Old Testament while only two are in the New Testament. Why do you suppose that is? Probably because the Word was made flesh in Jesus Christ and He said everything God wanted to say.

Being alone, or feeling that way, can be terrifying to some. To others, it seems normal. But being truly alone because of being forsaken or abandoned, ‘ghosted’ as they say, is progressively disheartening. It is part of the pain of hell.But there is good news for those who have been born anew in Christ – forever and ever, you will never be alone again, never utterly forsaken or abandoned because God’s Holy Spirit is IN you and won’t leave:

Jesus said to him, “If I will that he (John) remains till I come, what is that to you? You follow Me.” (John 21:22)That is, conform your ways to mine. You see, you don’t ‘follow Jesus’ by walking after Him but by Him living IN YOU (by faith) and you fully submitting to Him/His Spirit. So, again by definition, where He goes, you go. Do you follow?

Jesus’ peace, the peace He freely shares with us, is not some state of ‘higher consciousness’ but a direct connection and intimate relationship with the Source. The Abba Father, the One and only Creator. This peace is IN Him and THROUGH Him. And joyously, it’s PERMANENT.

For You meet him with the blessings of goodness; You set a crown of pure gold upon his head.He asked life from You, and You gave it to him--Length of days forever and ever.

These people, sadly including John the B, were focused on the miracles – the visible works. But they were missing the real work of God, the eternal work.

You see, God does not lack, He does not need, but He does love. We are the ones who rebelled against Him and separated ourselves from Him. His love compelled Him to send His Son to seek and save us.

The Bible calls this idol “mammon” which simply means wealth. Security, pleasure, temporary happiness, and other things come with mammon but there are also plenty of traps such as pride, obsession, fear, distrust and more which capture and torture and ultimately strangle the human soul/heart.

If you are truly born again, your inner being deeply desires to revel in the unity of the new creature with your Maker.

Alas Nicodemas, the confusion was driving him nuts. His whole life had been spent pursuing the wisdom of the elders and the knowledge of the scriptures. He knew the traditions better than most Pharisees. In fact, he was known as the teacher of Israel. And for most of his life, he’d been quite confident about his knowledge.But then came this itinerant rabbi doing these truly amazing signs. He gave sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, new limbs to the lame. Demons even fled at his word. Yet it was his word that troubled Nicodemus. His teachings confused him for though the signs were undoubtedly from God, his words didn’t seem to jive with the traditions of the elders.

And when I think of patient endurance for a lifetime, I think of the wilderness and 40 years of wandering in it. Moses and the Jewish nation endured this – why? Well, we know that at first, they failed to obey God and take the new land. They chickened out. But the wandering wasn’t punishment, it was purposeful:“And you shall remember that the LORD your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not.”“who fed you in the wilderness with manna, which your fathers did not know, that He might humble you and that He might test you, to do you good in the end—” (Deut 8:2,16)

I suspect that’s because after 2000 years or so it is much easier to preach on loving, much more reasonable to believe and obey the ‘love command’. After all, watching implies an expectation and requires trust that the expectation will be fulfilled.

There is no ‘getting better’ from SIN; there’s no amount of discipline or ‘growth’ that can drive it from you.The ONLY way to be rid of its stench and blackness is to surrender all of it to Christ and absolutely trust Him. You see, He took the penalty for ALL of it that we surrender by faith on the cross of Calvary. He literally took all of it on Himself:who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness—by whose stripes you were healed. (1Pet 2:24)

Simply put, hope is the expectation of coming good. It’s eternal because He’s eternal and it’s wonderful because He’s wonderful.