FOCUSING ON THE ONE
“For I
am already being poured out as a drink offering and the time of my departure
has come. I have fought a good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the
faith; in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness which the
Lord, the righteous Judge will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but
also to all who have loved His appearing.” 2 Tim. 4:6-8
We know
that Paul was eventually beheaded for his faith and it pains us to think that his
great mind was carelessly cut away like so much meat . At least that is what we would have seen from a physical
point of view. But here Paul talks about his departure. In the physical realm
we see a bloody head rolling away from the chopping block, but Paul was seeing
something else.
For him,
to live was Christ and to die was gain. Phil. 1:21. For even as his physical
head was rolling away, His lifelong dream was being fulfilled, for he tells us
in Phil. 1:23 that his great desire was to depart and be with Christ. For him
it was the sacrifice of a servant’s heart to be willing to remain on in the
flesh for the sake of those who needed him. But now the time of his departure
had finally come.
Our New
Testament is largely made up of Paul’s writings. He was the great theologian
who brought the life, death and resurrection of Christ into focus for us. He used
his in depth knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures to build a gospel of Christ
upon the foundations laid by Moses and the prophets.
Interestingly
Paul, in spite of building his Gospel upon the foundations of the Hebrew
Scriptures, the Law and the feast days and such, then summarily turns away from
it all. His learning under Gamaliel, His credentials, his heretofore perfect
record, he now cashes in saying: “But whatever things were gain to me, those
things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that , I count
all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus
my Lord; for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them but
rubbish in order that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a
righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith
in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I
may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings,
being conformed to His death in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.” Phil. 3:7-11
It is
tempting to get sidelined her by a new doctrine of the resurrection that Paul
was introducing with this statement, but I will deal with it later. Let me just
say that he introduces a resurrection FROM the dead, (the Greek being “ek” out
of or out from the dead) which is very different than the resurrection OF the dead.
For instance a resurrection OF the dead would indicate a resurrection of all the
dead, both the saved and the unsaved. But a resurrection FROM the dead indicates
that a person or a group of people would be raised FROM among the dead and it
was that special resurrection that Paul says in verses 12-14 that he was
striving for.
Paul
was certainly not striving to be saved, for his entire treatise is that you can’t
gain salvation by works, but only by faith. So what was Paul striving for that
he said he had not yet attained? This was not a resurrection of the Body of
Christ, but a resurrection of the Bride of Christ. He wanted to be a part of the
Bride.
So now
back to 2 Tim. 4:3, 4 He mentions something that must be very important because
he is virtually giving this prophecy on his death bed. He said: “For the time
will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their
ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with
their own desires and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn
aside to myths.” Does this not remind you of some of the mega ministries these
days where the preacher says what the people want to hear, rather than what the
Lord is saying?
Having
grown up in a very doctrine oriented church, I immediately concluded that the sound
doctrine that they would not endure, would be all of the doctrines I learned
growing up. But now I realize that he was not talking about church doctrines,
creeds and traditions as such. His doctrine involved the cross and death and resurrection
of Christ and Christ in you, the hope of glory.
In 1
Cor. 2:2 he stated: “For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus
Christ and Him crucified.” And in 2 Cor. 4:7 He talks about this treasure we
have in earthen vessels that the surpassing greatness of the power may be of
God and not from ourselves.” And in Col. 1:27 he reveals to us the mystery
among the Gentiles which is Christ in you the hope of glory.” In Galatians he
goes on at length about our salvation apart from the Law which is based upon
faith in Jesus Christ, and in chapter 5 he talks about the fruit of the Spirit and
in 1 Cor. 14 he talks about the gifts of the Spirit. And in Colossians 2: 16,
17 he lets us know that rules concerning food and drink or festivals, new moons
and Sabbaths are all mere shadows of what is to come, but the substance belongs
to Christ.
In all
of this Paul was trying to get us to focus on the One. The Pharisees had
focused on doctrine and tradition, so that by the time Jesus came they did not
recognize Him. Now Paul knew that the church was in danger of doing the same
thing… getting involved with all of the side issues while losing sight of the central
theme which is Christ.
So what
does this tell us about the last days that we now live in? It tells us that our
focus must turn to the One… and not as a doctrine that we talk about, but as a
living reality… Christ in us, by means of His Holy Spirit completing the work
that He started by bringing in the last great harvest.
For
this Paul assures us that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, of which
he is now a part that is cheering us on to the finish line. We are the generation
that must carry the baton across the finish line and we must finish that which
none of the Bible characters before us could finish.
In
Hebrews 11 after listing off many of the heroes of faith that make up the cloud
of witnesses in heaven, Paul says: “ And all these, having gained approval
through their faith did not receive what was promised, because God had provided
something better for us, so that apart from us they should not be made
perfect..” Heb. 11:39, 40.
What do
we have that they did not have? It is Jesus Christ as He is manifested in our
flesh by the Holy Spirit. For as Jesus told His disciples just before His
death: “IF you love me you will keep My commandments and I will ask the Father
and He will give you another Helper that He may be with you forever: that is the
Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive, because it does not behold Him or
know Him, but you know Him because HE ABIDES WITH YOU AND WILL BE IN YOU.” John
14:15-17
In John
13:34 Jesus tells us what His commandments are saying: ‘A new commandment I
give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also
love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you
have love one for another.”
Jesus
also said in John 14:20, 21: “In that day you shall know that I am in My father
and you in Me and I in you. He who has My commandments and keeps them, he it is
who loves Me; and he who loves Me shall be loved by My Father and I will love
him and will disclose Myself to him.”
The book
of Hebrews tells us that Jesus represents a change of priesthood. He is of the order
of Melchizedek… (Heb. 7:1, 2)and Hebrews goes on to say that where there is a
change of priesthood there is of necessity a change of law also. (Heb. 7:12) And
then in Hebrews 8:8-10 Paul quotes Jeremiah 31:31 saying that the Law will now
be written in our hearts, thus making the Law on stone obsolete and ready to
disappear.
Now
this transition does not in any way diminish the Law, but in fact magnifies it
for from now on we live by the power of the indestructible life of Christ who
dwells within us by His Holy Spirit.
In my
study of Bible prophecy I turned back to the early church, to the Messianic
movement to re-establish the foundations of our faith. After all, the types and
shadows, the tabernacle and all of the feasts of the Lord, form templates of the
truth. They serve as a sort of DNA of the Gospel by which we can know if we
have drifted off course. It is not as though we are now required to go back and
to observe these feasts physically, but we certainly must understand their
messages.
But even
as we looked back for a while, we are now looking forward, for God is about to
pour out the Holy Spirit upon us with a power 7 times greater than Pentecost. We
are the generation that saw the fig tree blossom. We are the generation that
Jesus said will be alive when He comes. And what is the focus of this final
outpouring and message to the final generation? It is and must be our focus on the
One… on Jesus Christ.
It is
all about Jesus as our Savior and Lord. It is all about Jesus as He dwells in
us by His Holy Spirit. It is all about Jesus as Israel’s Messiah. It is all
about Jesus as our High Priest. It is all about Jesus as coming King and Judge.
It is about Jesus and His kingdom as He comes to rule and reign on the earth
for 1000 years. It is about Jesus and the new heavens and the new earth that He
will create on the 8th day.
In a
wonderful prophetic revelation that we listened to last night, the prophet
Bruce Allen, revealed that we have entered the 7th day. In parallel
with the days of creation we have now entered into the Sabbath millennium. It
calls for complete rest from our own works and complete trust in His Work in
and through us. It calls us to lay aside every encumbrance and to turn our
entire focus on the One… on Jesus the Author and Finisher of our faith… on Jesus,
the Lord of the harvest.
When it
gets right down to it, every doctrine, every type and shadow and truth in both the
Old and New Testaments boils down to one thing… Christ in you the hope of
glory. We enter into Him through the cross and He enters into us through the resurrection
and we, having died to the flesh are now learning to live by His Spirit.
It is
absolutely essential for us to get our focus on Jesus in a way unprecedented in
history. The church is weak and living far below its potential largely because
our focus has been scattered by many side issues. We fill our lives with busy
work which we us to replace actual power. In our frantic efforts to serve God,
we concentrate on everything but the core issue. We are the sons of God for
whom all creation waits in eager anticipation. Rom. 8:19 We are the final
generation that the cloud of witnesses is waiting to cheer on to the finish
line. We are the generation that must find the power of God to do the works
that Jesus did and even greater works because He has gone to the Father. We are
to generation of the last great harvest.
It is obvious then that if we are to pull any
of this off, we need to learn how to put on Christ. We need to learn how to
wear His full armor. We need to learn how to truly die to the flesh so that we
can live by the power of His resurrection. We need to reflect His character as
a Bride without spot or wrinkle. We need to focus our eyes and ears and hearts
on the One. It is Christ in us the hope of glory and so we must now push on to
know what this means to the fullest extent.
We are
being called to operate in the powers of the age to come and we will need these
powers because as we know, the antichrist and the false prophet are going to work
great signs and wonders so as to deceive many. But we can never be entrusted
with these great powers unless we have the character of Christ to go with them.
The final harvest will not be carried out by ego driven TV super stars. It is
going to be carried out by the nameless, faceless nobodies… those who in the privacy
of their own closets forge out a relationship with Jesus that kills the flesh
and humbly embraces the power of Christ not yet seen by either men or angels.
For
this cause we need to train our focus on the ONE. Hebrews 12:18-29
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