How is the knowledge of the Lord impacting your relationships? How is your understanding of Him coming down in human form while still retaining the full rights of deity impacting your own life? Our relationships are the best test of our walk with Messiah. At the risk of sounding redundant I will say this. Most often as believers we try to reach up towards the Lord rather than realizing that He has already reached down to us in His personhood and death; identifying with us not us with Him in that understanding. In another sense its not truly our fault, but our cultural upbringing that most often defines our faith even after we have come to faith, and are actually in Him. It matters not whether you think culturalization does or does not affect us, because it does. In fact culturalization affects your faith more than you may realize.
Our culture tells our young men and women to attend school then specialize, then refocus after they have found out what they do in an attempt to have a “career”. This of course is part of the problem that we have. We already have as believers an eternal career in carrying the living lamp of the Word of the Lord to the nations of the world. Many might think that the Bible is dead in today’s society. To this argument, I want to suggest something: If the Bible is dead, then we don’t need hermeneutics which is the science of Scripture, which helps Pastors and lay people alike to understand how to properly intrept the Scriptures. Oh yes, another thing we won’t need homiletics the study of preaching, because everyone would know how to preach perfectly to get the desired results that the preacher or teacher so choose, but another hand we wouldn’t need archeology either because we would have already discovered and uncovered all the mysteries of the world’s gone by. You see the problem with such a problem philosophically? Do you see the problem with it theologically? Perhaps you even see it biblically as well, but even if you don’t today your going to get some fresh insight into why the Lord comes down and how we can meet Him as He meets with us.
God came down to meet us and dine with us. The story is a simple one yet it is profound all at the same time. Perhaps rather than explaining a doctrine we would rather to see it from the Scriptures which are living and breathing able to penetrate the fabric of our very being.
Phillippians 2: Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, 6who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, 7but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. 8And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. 9Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, 10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, 11and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
How is knowledge affecting your relationships? Here what we find is that God took the knowledge of who we are, because He has known the mind of man since the dawn of time, and yet He the Lord our God humbled, Himself in becoming a man, a servant of men. In Galatians 6:2-5 it reads, “2Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. 3For if anyone thinks himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. 4But let each one examine his own work, and then he will have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another. 5For each one shall bear his own load.” Matthew 22: (A) 34But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, 36"Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?" 37Jesus said to him, ""You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’[a] 38This is the first and great commandment. 39And the second is like it: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’[b]”
Luke 10: 25And behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tested Him, saying, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" 26He said to him, "What is written in the law? What is your reading of it?" 27So he answered and said, ""You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind,’[a] and "your neighbor as yourself."’[b] 28And He said to him, "You have answered rightly; do this and you will live."
Mark 12:28-34, “28Then one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, perceiving[a] that He had answered them well, asked Him, "Which is the first commandment of all?" 29Jesus answered him, "The first of all the commandments is: "Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one. 30And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’[b] This is the first commandment.[c] 31And the second, like it, is this: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’[d] There is no other commandment greater than these." 32So the scribe said to Him, "Well said, Teacher. You have spoken the truth, for there is one God, and there is no other but He. 33And to love Him with all the heart, with all the understanding, with all the soul,[e] and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is more than all the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices." 34Now when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, He said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." But after that no one dared question Him.“
Here we get some examples of relationships with others. In Galatians 6:2-5 we see that working together in community; bearing each others burdens by loving one another enough to carry one another when we are weak. We need people who will stand behind us in praying and laboring alongside of us with the love of the Lord Messiah. In Matthew 22:34-39, we see that loving the Lord isn’t the way we have been taught, for loving Him comes from our hearts the house of our spiritual life, then into our soul and then into our mind. Knowledge must touch our hearts if it is to be housed in the heart. Yet what we see that if we actually do this; loving the Lord in fact loving the Lord so that we can in fact love ourselves we will live. Do this and live is the promise of the law, yet since no sinner can obey perfectly, the impossible demands of the law are meant to drive us to seek divine mercy (Galatians 3:10-13, 22-25). This man should have responded not with an answer to the question, but rather with a confession of his own guilty, rather than trying to self justified himself before Messiah.
In Mark 12:28-34 we see the scribe testing Yeshua’s understanding of the Torah as it pertains in relevance to our examination of knowledge and the impact that it has on our relationships. We see the Lord’s understanding of the Shema the Lord our God is One; the understanding that every Jew throughout the centuries has had. This understanding is intertwined within the very fabric of Torah which Yeshua proclaimed. This came from Deut 6:4-5 Yeshua confirmed the practice of every pious Jew who recited the entire Shema (Num 15:37-41; Deut 6:4-9; 11:13-21) every morning and evening. Yeshua stating to love the Lord was taking from Deut 10:12; 30:6; by Him using that He answered from the Torah to answer the question, indicating the orthodox nature of His theology.
While still on the subject at hand the Lord then took it to the next level by affirming the Great Commandment by identifying the second greatest commandment because it was critical to an understanding of the complete duty of love. This commandment, also from the book of Moses (Lev 19:18) is of the same nature and character as the first. Genuine love for God is followed in importance by a genuine love for people, and our neighbors (Matthew 22:39; Luke 10:29)
Some of us need our understanding of the Lord God challenged which here in Mark 12:34, the Lord challenges a scribe who is a well learned man of the Torah, Prophets and writings by telling him, “ 34Now when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, He said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God.” By the use of the compliment some may take it that the Lord is not playing fair, but that couldn’t be further from the Truth. You see here we have the perfect case of the Lord walking alongside of a very intellectual man who studied the Scriptures; yet met him on his level and challenged him to go further.
God may be trying to meet with you today even if you’re not intellectual or sit on the pew. How is the Lord and the knowledge you have of His Word impacting your heart? Faith without works is dead which means are your relationships alive and well? Even more importantly are your relationships reflecting the light of the Gospel? The Lord said that we are too reflect Him in Matthew 5: 14"You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. 15Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. 16Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.” Are your relationships reflecting that Light?
The Lord compliments and challenged the scribe in Mark 12:34 by acknowledge the scribe’s insight regarding the importance of love. By stating that the scribe was not far from the kingdom He emphasized that he was not in the kingdom. He understood the requirements of love and he needed only to love and obey the One who alone could grant him entrance to the Kingdom. The question that the Lord gave exposed his greatest understanding of Torah and showed it was it was. Perhaps today you are thinking that you are very knowledgeable about the Scriptures, and that’s a good thing. We need people who are strong in the Word and walk in the power of the Spirit. Yet would you be able to stand before the Lord of Hosts and hold your own? Here in Mark and throughout the Gospels what we are forced to realize is that God will always come to meet with us even when we don’t want Him too, because it is their that we need Him most.
The modern mentality of Christianity or religion in general is to lift your hands up to the god or goddesses and therefore worship them. Yet in worship in our congregations this is exactly what we do in terms of lifting our hands up before the Lord to worship Him. Nothing is wrong with lifting your hands at all as long as you are worshipping Him in Spirit and in Truth as He prescribed in John 4: 24God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."
Our congregations more than ever we need too worship the Lord in Spirit and in truth. How would we go about that? By loving the Lord God Almighty first with all of our hearts, souls and mind we can then express the faith that we have inwardly to proclaim it outwardly in word and deed. This is why faith without works is dead because we cannot ever express our faith without the inward understanding of the workings of having a relationship with/of God within us by His Spirit through His Son’s sacrificial death. It is here that we begin to understand that God came to meet us in His death. God always at all times wants to meet with His people, because that is the primary function of the Holy Spirit’s work to operate at all times in a sovereign affair to lead people into the Truth of Himself for His glory. The Holy Spirit’s primary mission is to get people to worship the Lamb that was slain in Spirit and in Truth, so that they will be living lives awaiting the coming of Messiah Yeshua!
How is the knowledge that you have reflecting the truth of what is being said? How are your relationships today? How is your understanding of Him coming down in human form while still retaining the full rights of deity impacting your own life?
God came down in human form while retaining His full rights to deity is an awesome and daunting reality for a believer to full grasp. Yet its truth ought to pierce us right to the very core of our being; even at its most basic introduction to us today. God coming to meet us is a truth that affects every aspect of our lives; as believers from how we worship, too how we interact with others our world yet also in interacting with others in their own worlds. In a sense how we understand the Lord coming down to meet us impacts every relationship that we will ever have, and also how we will live for Him in this present time, and in the future as well. The knowledge and understanding we have received into us affects how we in turn understand the Lord not to mention His working, which impact how we will in fact live for Him.
Paul stated it the best when he said in Phil 2: : Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, 6who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, 7but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. 8And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. 9Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, 10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, 11and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
The wonderful truth is that the Lord wants to impact you today with the message of His living Word. He wants to come and meet with you where you are and take you to greater heights for His glory today, not some other day. Oftentimes we think the Lord doesn’t really want all of us but we can’t really think that after today. The Lord wants to come into every facet of your live to change you and make you into who He is. He will break you, to restore you, make you so that He can send you with the message of His Word and way to the world. Part of the problem that we have is that many leaders do not teach the Truth because they don’t really know what true brokenness is. I’ve experienced people’s broken lives on multiple continents in multiple ministries in serving the Lord throughout the world. The Truth is people need the Truth to impact their relationships now more than ever!
Our relationships with others are the best test of our relationship with the Lord. God comes and meets with us remember? How are your relationships? Are you struggling to be relational? Are you struggling to communicate with your brother or sister? Communicate talk it out with whoever you have a problem with; then confess your sins one to another, pray for each other and it will be done and over. Forgive each other as the Lord has forgiven you and move forward. Don’t let the past rule you, let the past be put in the past, and march forward in victory in Him. He has called us to victory through His blood, resurrection, and Ascension to be Overcomers for His glory so that we can represent His glory in all we do as shining lights; as beacons of hope to a lost and dying world.
Focus on your own relationships and understand that the knowledge you may have needs to first reach your heart. When the knowledge reaches your heart you will gain true understanding of the Scriptures and they will become alive. The Word of God is not dead it is alive and well. Earlier I used the analogy of the academics in relation too homiletics, hermeneutics and archeology. I used this analogy to get you to understand that these are all biblical fields as well as secular fields that are uncovering evidence for the living reality of the Word of God. God is still working powerfully today even two thousand years after Pentecost. He is blowing His Spirit upon people today; just as He was two thousand years ago granting people fresh revelations and understandings of His character by helping them to understand the revealed Word of the Lord through the guidance of His Spirit.
The Lord is doing a deeply moving work in the house of God in these days. He is changing hearts and minds by drawing people back to the Scriptures, but most importantly back to the basic understanding that He wants to meet with them. What happened when the Lord God met with Jacob? Was not the name Israel given to Jacob? When the Lord met with Saul; he was changed from a persecutor and rejecter of the Gospel to its greatest supporter, and went forward in the Lord and in the power of His Spirit after the Lord met with Him by changing his name to Paul? Perhaps some of you today need to meet with the Lord but you have to understand that God wants to meet with you and all you just have to do is come and understand that He is already right beside you to meet with Him.
This is why we as believers are to pray. Prayer is the backbone of our faith. Our faith is driven by prayer, for what drives faith is praying not only for ourselves by talking with the Lord, but also interceding for others so that they can grow in faith; get saved or ask the Lord to move in accordance with His revealed Word. God will always honor His Word, because He lives to move and operate under its government in His timing. God will always honor His Word because He is faithful and true.
The Lord Yeshua stated in Matthew 6: 10Your kingdom come.
Your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven”
Do you see the power of such words? These are not words to some stranger these are words to His friends to pray in accordance with His plan and way. Paul prayed that we would understand the depths of His love in relationship with the Lord, in Ephesians 3:16-19, ‘16that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, 17that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height-- 19to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
God wanting to meet with us is at the very front and center of the Scriptures. You cannot love something unless you know it is an irrefutable fact of the universe. God has known you even when you didn’t know Him. He seeks after you today with a holy love that transcends all of our finite understandings of what love is. He wants to have a relationship with you so that you can pray to Him and with Him in the Spirit. He is calling today for you to meet with the living God whose words are still reverberating through the walls of the greatest schools on this planet and in the minds of the greatest scholars of our age. You have been called out to love the Lord God, because He created you to be in relationship with Himself for Himself, but not only that for His glory so that you could praise His holy name.
Are your relationships reflecting the fact that God wants to come and meet with you in all facets of your life? Is the knowledge you have of the Scriptures impacting your understanding of your world? Is your understanding of the workings of God being developed by the understanding of His Spirit so that you can walk in Him? Are you walking in the power of His Spirit? These are all questions that you must ask as you understand that God wants to meet us, because it’s that truth that He fulfilled in coming down to be with you, me, and everyone else on the face of our planet.
He wants to meet with you today so that your life will be forever changed. The choice and the question is; do you want to meet with God? You may be trying to lift your hands up to praise the God you have never know. Your religion may be purely in your head, and not in your heart, and this kind of religion is dead. The knowledge that will change your life is the knowledge that you have experienced in your heart, which in turn will help you to actually change the course of your life, and all of your relationships.
This relationship is available to you, but it starts with a decision. This decision is to “7or, ""Who will descend into the abyss?"’[a] (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). 8But what does it say? "The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart"[b] (that is, the word of faith which we preach): 9that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. 10For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. 11For the Scripture says, "Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame."[c] (Romans 10:7-11).
Perhaps some of you today are saying, “God meet with me today?” Have you tried talking to the Lord lately? If you have tried talking to the Lord lately, have you stopped to listen to what He might have to say to you? God is still speaking today and will continue to speak through His Word and by His Spirit to those who are His. If your not His today then all you must do is believe what Romans 10:7-11, and if you are His, perhaps its time for you to let the Lord into every facet of your life instead of being restrictive. Perhaps its time to let the Lord God come meet with you in your own brokenness, so that your understanding of Him reflects the biblical sense of who He is, which is restorative built upon love, kindness, gentleness, mercy.
Even so, God come meet us where we are in our walks. Take us to that higher place where our hearts so long to dwell. So often we are so thirsty merely desiring what the Lord truly offers too us in that living water for our souls. Come and be refreshed in the rivers of His joy so that your relationships, and also your own personal walk with Him will be challenged. Let your life be challenged by Messiah so that you can go forth with the same challenge to the world to repent of there sins, confess with their mouth and believe in there heart that the Lord Yeshua is the real Messiah; the real truth, the real life, for in that you will have found the Truth that your soul, heart, and mind long to come too conclusion in. Then and only then may you may bask in the knowledge of God coming down to meet with you, and wanting to meet with you everyday of every moment of your life, but also forever and ever in eternity.
Pastor David Jenkins
http://www.servantsofgrace.net
