2004-04-23
Good Morning Dear Ones,
In a number of messages in this series on True Faith, I have been dealing with the question: Can we live the Sermon on the Mount lifestyle now? And, I have said that I believe we are meant to do this. We are now ready to see how this is possible. It is because of the Covenant of Grace that faith in Christ is available to us. With our repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, God has supernaturally transformed our hearts. Not having faith and repentance prevents God from doing this. Long ago before the Covenant of Grace was instituted by Christ shedding His blood on the cross, God promised that such righteousness would be possible for a believer in EZK 36: 26-27. “I will give you a new heart and a new mind. I will take away your stubborn heart of stone and give you an obedient heart. I will put My Spirit in you and will see to it that you follow My laws and keep all the commands I have given you.” Imagine! God was pronouncing this blessing on Israel during the time that it was in captivity in Babylonia [586-444 BC]! Only God has the power and compassion to carry out this transformation and join His Spirit with the spirit of a person. This is done despite the fact that we were still His enemies when He chose to call us to faith.
Let’s look at some key verses from Romans that give us insight into this supernatural process. RO 8: 9, 11, 14-18, “But you do not live as your human nature tells you to; instead, you live as the Spirit tells you to-if, in fact, God’s Spirit lives in you. Whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him…If the Spirit of God, Who raised Jesus from death, lives in you, then He who raised Christ from death will also give life to your mortal bodies by the presence of His Spirit in you…Those who are led by God’s Spirit are God’s sons. For the Spirit that God has given you does not make you slaves and cause you to be afraid; instead, the Spirit makes you God’s children, and by the Spirit’s power we cry out to God, ‘Abba, my Abba!’ God’s Spirit joins Himself to our spirits to declare that we are God’s children. Since we are His children, we will possess the blessings He keeps for His people, and we will also possess with Christ what God has kept for Him; for if we share Christ’s suffering, we will also share His glory. I consider that what we suffer at this present time cannot be compared at all with the glory that is going to be revealed to us.” Dear Ones, this is powerful! Of course RO 12: 2, which I cite so often, makes God’s will for us very clear. “Do not conform yourselves to the standards of this world, but let God transform you inwardly by a complete change of your mind. Then you will be able to know the will of God-what is good and is pleasing to Him and is perfect.”
It is clear that this supernatural transformation of one’s heart through the joining of the Holy Spirit with one’s own spirit must take place for righteousness to be the dominating force in a person’s life. In other words, this must happen for a believer to live the lifestyle outlined in the Sermon on the Mount. God must be present in the soul of a person for Christ’s teaching to really work in his life. Our loving Abba knows this, which is why He chooses to give people who believe in the Son the gift of the Holy Spirit. It is through the Holy Spirit that we have the power to overcome temptation. I believe it is the Holy Spirit which helped Peter and I know what to do when tempted to say nothing about a part which broke down on the car we are trying to sell. We found out how much it will cost to replace and decided to lower our asking price by that amount. It was the only right thing to do. Without our faith in Christ, His ultimate justice, and the presence in our lives of the Holy Spirit, I’m not sure we would have made that choice. It’s because a human being on his own without the kind of faith God gives him really can’t make righteous choices and overcome temptation.
Faith in Christ, the salvation by His sacrifice on the cross, being washed in His blood, and the presence of the Holy Spirit have made it possible for people to live a way of life that pleases God. That is the way of life outlined in the Sermon on the Mount. Frankly, there is nothing more important that any of us can do but to live to please God. It is what we were created by Him to do. EPH 1: 4-8, “Even before the world was made, God had already chosen us to be His through our union with Christ, so that we would be holy and without fault before Him. Because of His love God had already decided that through Jesus Christ He would make us His sons-this was His pleasure and purpose. Let us praise God for His glorious grace, for the free gift He gave us in His dear Son! For by the death of Christ we are set free, that is, our sins are forgiven. How great is the grace of God, which He gave to us in such large measure.” This week, let me challenge you to join me in considering what changes we need to make in our lives to cause them to more accurately conform to God’s will.
PRAYER: O Lord, Your power and majesty is unmatched anywhere in the universe. The same can be said for your compassion and patience for Your creation. You are to be praised and revered. These words of the Psalmist in PS 104: 1-2 come to mind. “O Lord my God, Thou art very great; Thou art clothed with honor and majesty. Who coverest Thyself with light as with a garment: Who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain.” You sent Your Son to the cross, so that we could be bought out of the marketplace of slavery to sin. You sent us faith in Him, and You freely gave us the gift of Your Spirit to join with our own. Through Him, You gave us a hunger for Your word, the desire to live lives that conform to the Sermon on the Mount teaching, and You opened communication with us through prayer. EPH 2: 8-10 reveals Your will for us. “For it is by God’s grace that you have been saved through faith. It is not the result of your own efforts, but God’s gift, so that no one can boast about it. God has made us what we are, and in our union with Christ Jesus He has created us for a life of good deeds, which He has already prepared for us to do.” We are sinners who do not deserve this merit which is Your grace. And yet, You love us enough to have made the ultimate sacrifice of Your Son on the cross for us. We stand at Your altar today to confess our sins and to dedicate ourselves to living the lifestyle of the Sermon on the Mount today and in the future. We submit to Your will and Your commands, knowing right well that they are always righteous and in our best long-term spiritual interests. We thank You for giving us the same power that You used to raise Christ from death to life to fend off the fiery arrows that the evil one sends our way [EPH 1: 18-20]. We offer You thanks for allowing us a way to stretch toward Your perspective on the pain, suffering, loss, and disappointments of our lives. You do this by first transforming our minds and hearts and then by supplying us with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit enables us to believe in and understand Your word. It is He Who rebukes us when we are wrong, encourages us when we are downtrodden, and comforts us when we are afraid. You are a God without equal, and we love You for being present in our lives. In Christ’s holy name, we pray. Amen.
Man’s heart has been deceitful since the time of the original sin in the Garden of Eden. God has had a Herculean task of civilizing mankind over their history. Only our God, our loving Abba, has the power and the will to do this. Next week, we will look at some events in mankind’s history from the Bible that will reveal how God has had to work to transform the hearts of believers and make His Kingdom alive now in them. We will see how the limitations of the law don’t render it evil. In the meanwhile, we each need to spend some time examining the state of both our faith in Christ and our willingness to obey God’s teaching through Him. All the while that we are doing this, we also need to be reminded of how much our Abba loves us. IS 54: 10, “’For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but My steadfast love shall not depart from you, and My covenant of peace shall not be removed,’ says the Lord, Who has compassion for you.” IS 49: 14-16, “But the people of Jerusalem said, ‘The Lord has abandoned us! He has forgotten us.’ So the Lord answers, ‘Can a woman forget her own baby and not love the child she bore? Even if a mother should forget her child, I will never forget you. Jerusalem, I can never forget you! I have written your name on the palms of my hands.’” Since Gentiles have been engrafted to the cultured olive tree [believing Jews], this promise applies to all believers, Jews and Gentiles alike [RO 2: 14-16 & RO 11: 17]. Our loving Abba deserves the very best from us, doesn’t He?
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn