THE GOD OF NEW BEGINNINGS
NEW BEGINNINGS
This
weekend we celebrate Jesus, the God of new beginnings. Indeed when Jesus died
on the cross and then rose from the dead, He brought one era to a close and
ushered in a completely new era. And whether mankind fully understood it or not
we reset our calendars to mark His entrance into our dark world to bring the
light of a new day.
With
His death and resurrection Jesus brought the reign of fallen Adam to a close by
becoming the new Adam for everyone who enters into His death and resurrection
by faith. With His death and resurrection He brought the Old Covenant to an end
and ushered in a completely New Covenant. He brought the temporary, the symbolic,
the type, and the shadow to an end by being the real thing, the true Lamb of
God, the long awaited Messiah, the Good shepherd, the eternal Sacrifice for our
sin.
By His death
and resurrection He brought the reign of Law to an end by sending His very
Spirit into our lives, not only to convict us of sin, righteousness and
judgment but to transform us from the inside out. (John 16:8) So Jesus brought the old and took
it to rest with Him in the tomb and then rose again on the 8th day,
the day of new beginnings. He presented Himself to the Father as the first
fruits of the resurrection. He then as our High Priest entered the Most Holy
Place to sprinkle His blood on the Mercy Seat where He also became our High
Priest… a priesthood of a completely new order called the Melchizedek
Priesthood.
Melchizedek
was a priest without genealogy, for His line was not traceable as was the genealogy
of the Levites. Melchizedek came 430 years before the covenant of Law and He
established a covenant with Abraham that pointed to the real Messiah and that
is exactly why, when we receive Jesus as our Messiah, our Savior and Lord, we
become Abraham’s seed and heirs according to promise and not Moses, for Moses could only bring us to the
cross… to the Jordon River, but He could not take us into the Promised Land for
as Paul explains it, the Law can only condemn us for our sin, but it is the
cross into which we must enter and the resurrection into which we must rise in
order to join Jesus in the era of new beginnings.
And
even though the Old Covenant serves as a foundation for the New and it teaches
us through types and shadows and laws and holy Sabbaths and feast days… the Law
nevertheless can do nothing to rectify the situation of our fall, for the blood
of the true Lamb of God is the only blood powerful enough to wash away, not
only our sins, but earth’s history of sin with its temporary solutions.
Jesus
is the real thing! He is the God of the New Day, the New Era, the New
Priesthood and the New Covenant. There is no way we can take the death and
resurrection of Jesus lightly. Satan has tried to trivialize it and paganize it
and disguise it with Easter bunnies and painted eggs, but Resurrection Day
still stands as the day of new beginnings. It is the day that made Pentecost
possible.
Jesus
told His disciples after His resurrection, after having appeared to them again
and again for 40 days after His resurrection, He then instructed them to tarry
in Jerusalem in prayer and unity and anticipation of His very Spirit that would
become the power of the new beginning.
Just
moments before Jesus went back to heaven to be our High Priest after the order
of Melchizedek, His disciples asked Him saying: “Lord, is it at this time You
are restoring the Kingdom to Israel?” But Jesus had a plan that was much bigger
than they could comprehend at the time, for he said to them: “It is not for you
to know times and epochs (eras) which the Father has fixed by His own
authority, but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you;
and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and even
to the remotest part of the earth.
So yes,
Jesus came into this world as the Jewish Messiah, but He had the whole world in
mind and even thought they had a covenant that pointed forward to His sacrifice
and His new priesthood, that covenant could only take us as far as the cross
and no further. We now live in the era of new beginning and it exists under the
jurisdiction of His Holy Spirit, to transform every soul that comes to Him in
faith.
So the
Law has never been the goal, but a tutor to lead us to Christ where we then die
to the Law and we are born again into the kingdom of Christ where we begin to
live by His Spirit. Our rest is now in Christ, just as the Sabbath of the Law
taught us… and since the Law had no power to actually transform us, we now live
by His Holy Spirit and thereby put away the deeds of the flesh, so that by His
power we can be transformed into His image.
I don’t
think that most of Christianity really understands the extent of what Jesus
did. Some try to supplement what Jesus did, by keeping the Law, but the Law has
no power to transform us and certainly no power to conform us to the image of
Christ. Only the Holy Spirit can do that.
Still
others think to solve the problem by doing away with the Law, but it is the Law
that identifies us as sinners and brings us to the foot of the cross. So the
Law remains in jurisdiction for every person who has not entered into the death
and resurrection of Jesus so as to live by His Holy Spirit.
This is
why Jesus told us that not one jot or tittle will be removed from the Law until
all is completed. (Mt. 5:18, Lk. 16:17) The Law has a job to do and that is to
condemn sinners and to bring them to the foot of the cross. There they have a
choice to enter by faith into Jesus’ death and resurrection and to be born
again into His kingdom, or they can choose to live for themselves and thereby
to die for their own sins in the judgment. Or they can try to earn salvation by
keeping the Law, but that ends in death as well… for as Jesus told Nicodemus, “We
must be born again.´ (John 3:3)
So,
just as Paul explains, the Law is not for the righteous man who has passed
through the death and resurrection of Jesus and has entered into the new life
in Christ, for it is those who are led by the Spirit of God that are the sons
of God Romans 8:14. The Old Covenant Law has the function of condemning those
who have not received the blood of the true Lamb of God for their sins, or been
born again to live by the power of Christ which is His Holy Spirit.
And so
many Christians hang out between two covenants not knowing for sure which one
we are in today and some don’t like Paul because he tells us the truth about
the new era of the Holy Spirit that we now live in, while others don’t like
Moses, because the Law continues to condemn every person that is not truly
living by the Spirit of Jesus Christ.
“So”
some may ask, “If we are to live by the Holy Spirit and not by the Law, then
why does the book of Revelation identify God’s Remnant people as those who keep
the commandments and have the testimony of Jesus?”
The
truth is that without the Holy Spirit we cannot keep the Commandments and this
is borne out by the fact that Jesus is the only one in the entire history of
the world who has been sinless. That means that all have broken the Law and
therefore all deserve execution and eternal death. So the only solution to our
infinitely difficult problem is to receive Jesus’ death in our place, thus
dying to the Law in order that we may live by the same Spirit by which Jesus
overcame the world. Can we get that?
Remember
this, our problem is not only that we commit sin because we have a sinful and
fallen nature, but our biggest problem is that we fall short of the glory of
God. Mankind was originally created to share in and participate in the glory and
the power of God. So when Adam sinned we lost the ability… we lost the Spirit
that had empowered us to be in His image.
The Law
pointed this out, but could do nothing about it, so Jesus came to fulfill the Law
and to overcome sin and then to restore to us the same Spirit that Adam lost in
the fall so that we can be restored into the likeness of the first creation…
into the likeness of Jesus.
So yes,
this weekend we celebrate the death and resurrection of Christ and we do it on the
8th day, the day of new beginnings… the first day of the new era.
And
there is yet one more 8th day to enter into, for after the millennial
reign of Christ will come the 8th millennium, the dawn of our
eternal 8th day… the beginning of eternity…in an era when sin has
been finally dealt with forever and mankind can go forth to fulfill that for
which he was created in the first place and that is to rule and reign with
Christ forever in a kingdom and government that will never stop expanding and well
never end. Isa 9:6, 7
So
forget the Easter bunnies. (They are only one of Satan’s many distractions) And
honor Jesus by studying what Jesus has brought to an end in types and shadows and
what He has introduced to us in terms of the realities of His kingdom. We need
to learn to live in those realities rather than to hang out between two
covenants for as I keep saying. “For all who are led by the Spirit of God,
these are the sons of God.” “For whom He foreknew He also predestined to become
conformed to the image of His Son that He might be the first- born among many
brethren.
Jesus
brought the era of Law to an end for all who truly receive Him; for indeed it
had no power to make us into sons of God. Only His indwelling Holy Spirit can
do that. Satan is not threatened by those who try to be saved by keeping the
Law because he knows they have no power. What he does fear and what he does
hate are those who live by the Spirit of Christ, for it is that same Spirit
that conquered Him and brought his reign of terror to an end in the hearts of those
who now live by the power of Christ.
The
church, the true church of Jesus Christ made up of all those who are born again
and Holy Spirit filled, needs a major revival... some have chased after the gifts
of the Spirit while ignoring the Word… while others have pursued the Word
without the Spirit and this is why Jesus said:
“An
hour is coming and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in
spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshippers. God is
spirit; and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth.” John
4:23, 24
So why
does the book of Revelation identify God’s Remnant people as those who keep the
commandments and have the testimony of Jesus? It is because as it says in
Romans 8:1-4 The Law is fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh
but according to the Spirit… this is the only way that the Law can truly be
satisfied in which we can not only stop breaking it, but being conformed into the
image of Christ and being filled with His Holy Spirit we enter into the rest
that Hebrews 4 tells us that Israel failed to enter.
“For the
one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works as God did
from His. Have you fully embraced the kingdom of Jesus Christ into your heart
so as to be conformed into His image, or are you still trying to fulfill the
New Covenant in an old covenant way? It
is time to die to the old and to be fully born again into the day of new
beginnings in Christ Jesus, for in this era we live by the indwelling power of
His Holy Spirit. We have become temples of the Holy Spirit. 1 Cor. 3:16
I read
an article this week reminding us that we must become aware of the new spirit
man that God has created in us and to live by that spirit man that is part of the
new creation, rather than by the flesh which is a part of the old creation. ”
In Adam all die, but in Christ all are being made alive.” 1 Cor. 15:22, 23.
Have a wonderful Resurrection Day this year and seek to celebrate it with a
deeper understanding of what Jesus actually brought to us upon His resurrection.
And for
those who have been born again, this day would serve us well if we were to ask
ourselves if we are actually living by the Spirit, or if we are living by the
flesh? Which one gets our most attention? Which one drives us and motivates us.
What is our priority when it comes to worshipping God… loving our neighbor…
spreading the Gospel… visiting the poor, the naked the hungry the destitute…
who or what is number one in our lives… is our old man on the throne or is the new
man in Christ on our throne? Isn’t it time to revisit the death and
resurrection of Christ?
Jesus
said,” If you love me you will keep my commandments.” One of His commandments
is that we must be born again. Another is that we must love each other even as
He loved us. Another is that we must deny self and take up our cross and follow
Him. It seems to be human nature to ignore the commandments that Jesus gave us
that would form the basis of His New Covenant and to revert to the Laws of
Moses that cannot save us. Maybe we should take a new look at what Jesus
actually instructed us to do and how to do it. The commandments that Jesus gave
us can only be accomplished by His Holy Spirit in us.
Comments
Post a Comment