TO KNOW AND BE KNOWN

TO KNOW AND BE KNOWN

                Jesus had a way of exposing empty traditions and overturning finely crafted apple carts. He had come to His own chosen people. He had come to those whom the Lord had called out of the kingdom of darkness to be the keepers of the oracles of God. But when Jesus finally came to fulfill His Word and to make good on His promises, He found a people so steeped in tradition that they could no longer recognize Him.

                Jesus said something near the beginning of His ministry that must have shocked everyone that heard Him. He said: “For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.” Mt. 5:20

                As you picture this scene can you not see a few dozen Jewish jaws dropping to the ground? After all, the Scribes and Pharisees had burdened the people with impossible loads of rules and regulations and they had set themselves up as the guardians of righteousness. People had to sweep ants off the sidewalk to keep from killing them… not an easy way to do farming or to carry on in the market place.

                Now, here this young prophet is telling them that they must do better than that? Was this Jesus now going to add a whole new list of rules to the 613 they were already not keeping? How could anyone ever enter the kingdom of God under such impossible circumstances?

                Then to top it off, Jesus said to them” Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Nobody is as perfect as God, so how could He say such things and what was this He was saying about God being our Father? What kind of blasphemy was this?

                I’m sure that some people drew closer to Jesus to find out what He meant, while others walked away in disgust… and if they didn’t walk away then, they certainly did walk away when Jesus started talking about eating His flesh and drinking His blood.

                Interestingly enough even to this day, some are drawing closer to the Lord to understand what He is saying, while others are walking away in disgust. These are still the same issues that will divide the church in the end, between those who follow the Lord and those who surrender to the antichrist.

                Today there are still legalists that are trying to please God by keeping the Law and there are liberals that just ignore the truth and sort of make it up as they go. In other words we still have Pharisees and Sadducees and Scribes among us in spite of the fact that Jesus didn’t have a single good word to say about them.

                The bottom line is that the Gospel operates on a totally different level. Our goal is really to know and be known… and for this reason Jesus gave us examples of those whom He would know and those whom He would not know when He returns.

                In Mt. 25:1-12 Jesus gives us an example of ten virgins. Five were ready for the marriage feast because they had oil in their lamps and 5 were not ready because they did not have oil in their lamps. Five went into the marriage feast while the others had to go and buy oil, and when they returned the door was shut and when they banged on the door He answered from inside saying: “Truly I say to you, I do not know you.” Mt. 25:12 Oil obviously had something to do with knowing and being known by Him.

                We don’t want to be among those that Jesus doesn’t know when He comes and so we keep asking ourselves what it is that Jesus is looking for in us. If the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees was not enough then obviously keeping the Law better isn’t it. And just as obviously, Jesus only knows those whose lamps are filled with oil. So how do we make sure our lamps are filled with oil?

                Throughout all of scripture, oil has represent the Holy Spirit. People were chosen and anointed with oil, meaning that the Holy Spirit had designated them for a certain role, whether it be a king or a priest, or a servant of God. In the Old Testament, as is usually the case, physical oil was used to represent the Holy Spirit whereas in the New Testament, we may receive the Holy Spirit directly by the laying on of hands or even by asking the Lord for the Holy Spirit. We still use anointing oil in praying for people, but it is recognized as a symbol of the Holy Spirit and not the reality of the Holy Spirit.

                But given Jesus’ parable of the ten virgins, we certainly want to be sure that we have the Holy Spirit. We don’t want to presume that we have the Holy just because we are trying hard to please God. In fact, one cannot even begin to please God until he has the Holy Spirit, for the whole plan of salvation is based upon our being temples of the Holy Spirit. This is what Adam lost in the fall that Jesus came to restore. So being filled with and baptized in the Holy Spirit should be absolute priorities in our Christian walk.

                Today many Christian denominations use the Holy Spirit as a byword… a name they invoke in water baptism, but they do not operate in the Holy Spirit. They have no evidence of the Holy Spirit such as the evidences that the apostles looked for in the book of Acts.

                “Now when the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent them Peter and John, who came down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit. For He had not yet fallen upon any of them; they had simply been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they began laying their hands on them and they were receiving the Holy Spirit.” Acts 8:14-17

                Ananias said to Paul after his conversion: “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road by which you were coming, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” Acts 9:17

                Peter said: “And as I began to speak the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as He did upon us at the beginning and I remembered the word of the Lord, how He used to say, “John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”

                In Corinth, Paul and Apollos asked the people saying: “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?”  And they said to him, “No, we have not even heard whether there is a Holy Spirit.” And he said to them, “Into what were you baptized? And they said, “Into John’s Baptism.” And Paul said, “John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in Him who was coming after him, that is in Jesus.” And when they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came on them and they began speaking with tongues and prophesying.” Acts 19: 2-6

                In the home of Cornelius it says: “And all the circumcised believers who had come with Peter were amazed, because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out upon eth Gentiles also for they we rehearing them speaking with tongues and exalting God.”

                I find it interesting that many denominations to this day baptize their converts with the baptism of John. They do not lay hands on them for the infilling of the Holy Spirit and they have no way to know if the converts have been filled with the Spirit or not because they don’t believe in the gifts, especially tongues by which the early apostles identified those who had received the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

                When it comes to things of such importance as this, I am not going to trust in the opinions of men. I am going to ask for prayer and the laying on of hands by those who have the gifts of the Spirit according to the Word. This I did many years ago and I received what is promised and it changed my life in more ways than I can count. Jesus is going to hold us accountable for receiving what He has offered to us, because unless we are anointed with the Holy Spirit we can do nothing for others, but give them more opinions, or argue doctrine with them. We need to be able to impart life to others and this is what the Holy Spirit does… and He does it with love and compassion.

                I would say that the infilling and baptism of the Holy Spirit are the key ingredients of the Christian life by which we may know and be known by our Lord. In fact Paul states emphatically in Romans 8:9 saying: But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.” And in verse 14 he says, “For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.”

                Now once we have received both the infilling of the Holy Spirit and the baptism of the Holy Spirit, there are other things by which we can know and be known by Jesus. But first let me explain for those who don’t understand. The infilling of the Holy Spirit comes to all who receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. This infilling is given so that we might produce the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. So every genuinely born again Christian has the infilling of the Holy Spirit. If not, then he is not born again.

                This infilling corresponds to Jesus breathing on His disciples and saying to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” And yet, after this He told them to tarry in Jerusalem to await the promise of the Father. So on the day of Pentecost they received power to do the works that Jesus had done. In fact just before He left, Jesus told His disciples that He would send His Holy Spirit saying: “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses…” Acts. 1:8

                Why is it that we settle for programs when we could have power? The Holy Spirit has only one program and that is to both preach and to demonstrate the powers of the Gospel of the Kingdom just as Jesus did and when we have done that, He will return.

                This is why we desperately need to pray for revival my friends. The church has become weak and carnal and largely unable to demonstrate the miraculous power of the Gospel of the Kingdom. We ourselves are sick and in need of the life-giving power of the Holy Spirit in far greater measure than we are experiencing Him today.

                And perhaps we don’t have the power because we are not on God’s program, because we see in Mt. 25 that when He returns, He will gather the nations before Him and He will separate the sheep from the goats based upon whether they fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, clothed the naked, took in the stranger, and visited the sick and the prisoner.

                Perhaps we don’t experience more of the power of the Holy Spirit simply because we have shut ourselves up in our own little comfort zones and we have not gone out like Jesus did to minister to the world. After all Jesus stated His mission from the beginning saying:

                “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, to comfort those who mourn and so on. “ Isa. 61: (parts)

                So maybe we will see more power when we are doing what Jesus called us to do. Instead we often resemble the Pharisees more than Jesus. We haggle over fine points of doctrine, even as we miss the entire purpose of His mission to save lost souls.

                All I know is that when He comes I want to know Him and to be known by Him. I want to be found as a temple of His Holy Spirit and I also want to be found operating in the powers of His kingdom to be able to bring the power and love of the Holy Spirit into lives that I touch from day to day.

                Should we settle for anything less?

                And who are these so called evangelists out there on the internet that keep claiming that speaking in unknown tongues is of the devil? Don’t they know that they are committing blasphemy against the Holy Spirit? Maybe they should read 1 Cor. 14 a little more closely.

                Of course Satan has a counterfeit gift of tongues… in fact He counterfeits nearly everything that is true. He has a counterfeit healing program, but we don’t stop praying for the sick, He has a counterfeit gospel, but we don’t stop preaching the true Gospel.

                The GIFTS OF THE Holy Spirit are the promise of the Father. Everything that Jesus did on this earth He did so that He could send us His Holy Spirit. His plan is that in Him we die to this world and we are born again and made alive by His Holy Spirit so that the works that He did, we might do also. So we must pray for these things until we have entered fully into all that Jesus has made possible for us. We are at the end of the age. We are the chosen generation upon whom the ends of the age have come. We have been handed a task such as no other generation before us has been called to. We must carry the baton to the finish line.

                We have been called upon to bring in the final harvest in the midst of the greatest time of trouble this world has ever seen. And for this reason Jesus wants to pour out upon us a level of power never seen in this earth. We are now being called upon to do His works and even greater works. Every miracle we see in the Bible and even more will we do in these final closing hours of earth’s history.

                But He needs a mature people to do it. There is no way we can be trusted to do the miracles of Christ unless we have the character of Christ. Our flesh must be dead and our spirit alive. All traces of pride and self-sufficiency must be gone so that we will not misrepresent our Lord of the harvest. The leaven must be baked out of us so that it will not spread and infiltrate us as in times past.

                This is why God is going to turn up the heat in the last days. We will not place our full sense of security in God until we have lost our sense of security in the world. That’s why God is going to remove all security from the world. Is our faith in our money? The money will be gone. Is our faith in our homes and our belongings? They will disappear, taken away in a moment of time. Is our security in politics or government? They will be taken away and replaced by an evil global tyrant who wants to kill everyone that loves the Lord.

                Our doctrines of escape may sound good now, but where will they be when we are in prison for our faith? We have no idea how much we will have to face before Jesus calls us home. We don’t give much thought to it here in America but one of the greatest holocausts of all time has been taking place in the Middle East over the past few years and millions of Christians have died and even been beheaded for their faith in Jesus. Another great holocaust is going on in China, in Russia, in Africa and in other places as thousands of Christians are being slaughtered for their faith.

                It is coming here next and we desperately need to learn how to live by the power of the Holy Spirit, not just as a doctrine or a nice idea, but as our very reality. One day we will wake up to find that everything has changed. Our freedom will be gone. Our electricity, our money, our food and water and every other thing that we have trusted in will be gone. And then we will either learn what it means to live by the Holy Spirit and the Word, or we will surrender to the Mark of the Beast.

                God would not have warned us of these things unless we were going to face them. So we must learn how to live by the Spirit and to minister in the Spirit, because it is when gross darkness has covered the earth that God will call us to arise and shine for the glory of the Lord has risen upon us. Isa. 60:1, 2.