2002-01-01
Good Morning Dear Ones,
I admit openly that there have been times in this covenant series when I have been led to repeat certain principles for the sake of emphasis. To some extent I will be doing that in this morning’s message. However, there is more than just emphasis involved. We all know that the Lord has taken us back to certain Scriptures repeatedly, because each time we return to them, He teaches us something more than we understood previously with the help of the Holy Spirit. In this section of messages called “Walking Between The Pieces,” we will examine the connection between OT customs and NT truths regarding the making and keeping of covenants. Hopefully, this will allow us to come to value even more than before the importance of having a thoroughly committed relationship with God.
It is clear to me that any time a person makes a serious commitment, he gives up some of self. Upon first inspection, particularly for a young person, this is pretty scary. Remember that a covenant is a two-way agreement. The Covenant of Grace is a two-way agreement between a person and God. We might ask: Does God give up some of self? The answer, surprisingly, is yes. For God to know the content of our hearts, He had to give up some of His control to us to allow us to have free agency. If He hadn’t done this, we would have been puppets on a string. But, we are not, and He did do this for us. This yielding of a certain amount of His power has not been without its challenges for Him. Whenever mankind decides to disobey His commands and/or disrespect Him, God is presented with problems to solve and often with disappointment. If He didn’t love us so much, He wouldn’t be vulnerable to this; but, He does. Please believe that I am not painting a picture of God as a weak Deity, only One with an enormous heart. Surely Christ never deserved to go through the misery He experienced on the cross either. But, He became incarnate, suffered pain and temptation, and then was brutally crucified, so that we could have a way to eternal life.
Let’s look now at Christ’s teaching on the yielding up of self in MK 8: 34-35. “Then Jesus called the crowd and his disciples to Him. ‘If anyone wants to come with Me,’ He told them, ‘he must forget himself, carry his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his own life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for Me and for the Gospel will save it.’” The full implications of this citation are not easy to understand on first inspection. There are both intellectual and emotional reasons for this. Remember that when Paul was teaching about the mechanism of faith in RO 12: 2, he wrote about the “inward transformation by the renewal of one’s mind.” For a person to yield self, that transformation must take place. He comes to look at his own life differently, stretching toward God’s perspective and away from the worldly, flesh-driven one. This can be hard work, because it means a major change in determining priorities. This point is really revealed in LK 9: 57-62, “As they went on their way, a man said to Jesus, ‘I will follow you wherever you go.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Foxes have holes, and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lie down and rest.’ He said to another man, ‘Follow Me.’ but that man said, ‘Sir, first let me go back and bury my father.’ Jesus answered, ‘Let the dead bury their own dead. You go, and proclaim the Kingdom of God.’ Another man said, ‘I will follow You, Sir; but first let me go and say good-bye to my family.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Anyone who starts to plow and then keeps looking back is of no use for the Kingdom of God.’”
Initially, Christ’s words here may seem harsh, but they are very necessary. I think I know now better than ever before why Abraham was justified the way he was in GN 15: 6. It was because he was willing to deny self to the extent that he picked up at God’s invitation, left Ur of the Chaldes where he had been born and raised in idolatry, and was willing to follow God’s commands. He did this even when he didn’t fully understand them or even know where he was going [HE 11: 8-9]. If one has allowed God to “inwardly transform him by the renewal of his mind,” then he will obey God’s commands without looking back and make God’s agenda his first priority in life. The men in LK 9: 57-62 were not willing to do that, which is why Christ deemed them “of no use for the Kingdom.” That brings us to a different understanding of how we personally should approach our own keeping of the Covenant of Grace, doesn’t it? I believe that the Lord is commanding us to review our priorities in our own lives and to see where He fits into them. Truthfully, because of my profound belief that we are soon coming to the end times, I feel a real urgency to do this that I hope I can convey to all of us. I know that if we need help in this task, we can turn to our Abba, and through the Holy Spirit, he will gladly and with much relief give it.
PRAYER: O Lord, You command us to deny self and to take up our crosses and follow Christ. That is often hard for us to do, because we are so used to thinking of our selves and our own agendas first. Yet, as in all other cases, when we obey Your commands, You bless us abundantly. That You called us to faith, inviting us to join You in Your work while we were still enemies is nothing short of amazing. When we refuse to accept Your outstretched hand, we foolishly throw away the opportunity for an eternal life of joy and fellowship with You, just as the adversary did. Once we accept Your invitation, the hard work we must do begins. We must look at the nature of our lives through the lens of Your righteousness and can see areas that we must change to conform to Your will. Some of us must leave our homes and old comfortable habits to do this. Others must face painful truths about themselves and their former lifestyles, then leave these behind. Some will go into difficult and unfriendly places to do Your work. Others will leave temporal careers behind to spread Your word and/or become prayer warriors interceding for others. Many of us are on the front lines of spiritual warfare, but we must never forget that You have equipped us for victory when we trust and obey You. We humbly approach You to acknowledge Your superior wisdom and Your profound love for us. Today and always, we offer You our adoration, worship, loyalty, trust, obedience, diligence, glory, honor, praise, and thanks. In Christ’s name, amen.
Tomorrow, we will take another look at some of the OT covenant practices with an eye to how they relate to our modern day participation in keeping our Covenant of Grace agreements. Spiritually, we will see what walking between the pieces really means. No matter what challenges we face today, we can rest assured that when we trust and obey our Abba, we will become stronger for having dealt with them and that we can enjoy His protection, provision, and blessing. He is there to guide us through our challenges and to insure that we will overcome them with our obedience to Him. All of this is borne out of His love for each of us, a love which cannot be measured. Peter and I send you our love too.
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn