2002-01-01
Good Morning Faithful Readers,
The prophet, Zechariah, spoke of the future deliverance of Jerusalem, something that is yet to be fulfilled, in ZECH 12. As you know I have written extensively about the many prophecies and occurrences of Christ (although never mentioned by that name) in the OT. ZECH 12: 10 is a most revealing prophecy of an awakening that will happen amongst the Jewish remnant in our future. “I will fill the descendants of David and other people of Jerusalem with the spirit of mercy and the spirit of prayer. They will look at the One Whom they stabbed to death and they will mourn for Him like those who mourn for an only child. They will mourn bitterly, like those who have lost their first-born son.” This certainly fits in with the prophecies in ZECH 13: 9 about the one-third remnant of Jews alive during the Tribulation who will come through the refiner’s fire successfully and come to faith, and with RO 11: 25, which promises that the stubbornness of the Jews [regarding rejecting Christ as the Messiah] isn’t permanent. From all of these citations we can see that there was nothing accidental or unplanned about the timing or the onset of the Covenant of Grace. Yesterday we looked at coming to fullness of faith in Christ from skepticism. Today, we will look at citations that show the oneness we have with the Trinity in the relationship that is brought about by the new covenant or Covenant of Grace.
Jesus Christ prayed for His disciples, a prayer which I believe applies to us just as it did to the original disciples. It was the intercessory prayer of our High Priest Whose love for us words cannot adequately describe. JN 17: 20-23, “I pray not only for them, but also for those who believe in Me, because of their message. I pray that they may all be one. Father! May they be in us, just as You are in Me and I am in You. May they be one, so that the world will believe that You sent Me. I gave them the same glory You gave Me, so they may be one, just as You and I are one: I in them and You in Me, so that they may be completely one, in order that the world may know that You sent me and that You love them as You love Me.” What a great privilege it is when God grants this prayer for us! Talk about bliss; now, that’s bliss! COL 1: 27 illuminates this teaching. “God’s plan is to make known His secret to His people, this rich and glorious secret which He has for all peoples. And the secret is that Christ is in you, which means that you will share in the glory of God.” How many of us stop to think that we carry with us when we live “in Christ” the makings of our own bliss? We too often get caught up in the mundane problems of our daily lives to stop and think that we have been equipped to make a huge difference in our own lives and those with whom we come in contact. We spend too much time looking to others or our government or any other source other than the Lord for solutions to our problems.
The Lord has led me to write about the meaning of the sacrament in recent messages, so I won’t repeat all of that here. However, it’s important to think about why we have been commanded to take the bread and wine regularly by Christ Himself [MT 26: 26-28 & 1 COR 11: 23-26]. I feel that it’s important for us to look at the taking of the sacraments as it relates to the oneness in the covenant. This is revealed in JN 6: 53-58. “Jesus said to them, ‘I am telling you the truth; if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you will not have life in yourselves. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him to life on the last Day. For My flesh is the real food; my blood is the real drink. Whoever lives in Me, and I live in him. The living Father sent Me, and because of Him I live also. In the same way whoever eats Me will live because of Me. This, then, is the bread that came down from heaven; it is not like the bread that your ancestors ate, but then later died. The one who eats this bread will live forever.’” The point made here in comparing the bread that we take as a part of the sacrament today to the manna [EX 16: 31] God supplied the Jews wandering in the desert with should not be lost on us. That bread was sufficient, if collected as God directed, to sustain physical life only. It did not guarantee salvation. The sacramental bread that we take is a reminder to us that our faith in Christ, His sacrifice for us, and our willingness to repent of sins are indeed, taking us to salvation and eternal life with God. That is the great blessing of the new covenant made possible by Christ’s Atonement.
I have a little slip of paper taped to my computer monitor which reads, “Stop searching; happiness is inside of you.” There is more truth in that than the average believer understands. The happiness inside of You comes from the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, one of the Trinity working all the time to give us peace and understanding through our assimilation spiritually of the Scriptures and what we learn from God in prayer. It is not we who are generating this happiness. Instead, it is God Who is giving us the privilege of oneness in the covenant relationship. This is expressed another way in RO 6: 3-4, “For surely you know that when we were baptized into union with Christ Jesus, we were baptized into union with His death. By our baptism then, we were buried with Him and shared His death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from death by the glorious power of the Father, so also we might live a new life.” Meditate today on how our individual oneness with the Trinity impacts our own lives.
PRAYER: O Lord, You plan for us is so marvelous and compassionate. Because of the limitations of our perception compared to Yours, we either take for granted or miss altogether the way You have equipped us for lives of peaceful bliss due to our oneness with You in our covenant relationship. You have given us the weapons to fight spiritual warfare successfully, and You have given us the ability to love one another as You love us. Too often, we are caught up in our own pain or problems to see this bigger picture. That is why You have called us to the communion table in addition to giving us a chance to confess sin of which the Holy Spirit convicts us. We became one with You when we came to faith and related to Your death, burial, and resurrection. Our baptism didn’t bring us salvation, but is an outward sign of the inward transformation You have brought about of our minds beforehand. With diligent faith, obedience, and trust in You, we are prepared to move forward in the sanctification process on our way to eternal life with You. That, Dearest Father, is the greatest bliss we can have, either on earth or in heaven. For that and so much more, we humbly approach You today with our worship, adoration, loyalty, diligence, trust, obedience, glory, honor, praise, and thanks. In Christ’s holy name, we pray. Amen.
Tomorrow, we will look at some of the lives of people who lived in the oneness of covenant with God in the Scriptures. I don’t doubt that some remarkable insight into our own lives might be obtained from this pursuit. God has so much to teach us. It is out of His love for us that He is willing to take the time and have the patience to do this. Peter and I send you our love too.
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn