WILLY

WILLY

                It was four o’clock this morning and I was performing my very simple first routine. I feed the cats first of all since walking is impossible until they get their breakfast. Then I put on a pot of coffee and retreat to my office/music studio to spend time with the Lord. It has become more and more a habit with me to wait upon the Lord as to what to write each day. Sometimes He prompts me with dreams…more often with the Bible or subjects I am studying. But this morning I was prompted by our volunteer cat Willy.

                Willy came to us a few months back when Bonnie’s sister, Suzanne was visiting. Out in the woods behind our house, they heard the mournful bleating of a very wet and lonely cat that was stuck in a tree. So Bonnie and Suzanne, being consummate animal lovers went out and rescued the cat. He was not much more than a kitten and he was very skinny. Bonnie and Suzanne took him to the humane society to try to match the cat up with his owner, but they said, “Don’t bother. Chances are he was dropped off and, he has not been cared for or fed, so if you have it in your heart to do so, go ahead and adopt him. So Willy became a new member of our household with 4 dogs and now two cats.

                But now, this morning as I was fixing the cat’s food I heard a strange noise outside. It was the sound of the awning on our vacation trailer coming down. (This awning is made so that if it rains real hard, one end of the awning will lower a bit to drain the rain rather than having it pool up on top.

                I turned on the back porch light to see what on earth was making the awning come down since it wasn’t raining and there was Willy, having been scared by the movement of the awning, he had scrambled back up onto the roof of the trailer and now he was going from corner to corner looking for a way down. The roof is maybe 10 or 11 feet high and the only possible way he could have gotten up there was to climb the ladder that is mounted to the back of the trailer. But coming down that ladder head first just wasn’t going to happen and Willy wanted his breakfast.

                So I climbed the ladder and tried to coax Willy over to me, but he was very skittish about coming over to me, so I went and got my ladder from the shop and took his food up so that when he came over to eat his breakfast I grabbed him by the knap of the neck and pulled him into my arms and we made our retreat to the ground. Willy was purring before we even reached the bottom and he seemed very happy to be off of that roof. I don’t know, but he may have been up there for most of the night and hearing me in the kitchen he had come across the awning only to have it sink down under his weight. Being frightened he ran back to the roof. But Willy was in a predicament and now he was once again in a place that was way too high to jump down from. Poor Willy… will he ever learn?

                Our subject this week has been about maturity.  We can spiritualize it as much as we want to, but the bottom line is that maturity and common sense run pretty close together. It has to do with not getting into the same predicaments over and over again as Willy seems want to do.

                We can turn maturity into a religious issue and we can go through all kinds of rituals trying to please God, but really what He is looking for is for us to learn to walk by His side… to trust His Word and to obey Him rather than trying to impress Him with our tree climbing or trailer climbing abilities. And when we find ourselves out on a limb, we can usually figure out that it is we who got ourselves there.

                Yes, God will get out His ladder and rescue us and clean us up and set a table before us in the presence of our enemies, but He is ultimately looking for maturity in us as His children. Some Christians seem to go to the altar almost every week, crying to God to get them out of the tree once again, but they never seem to learn not to get into the tree in the first place. This is not maturity, but meaningless repetition.

                Hebrews 6:1-3 says: “Therefore, leaving the elementary teaching about Christ, let us press on to maturity not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, of instructions about washings and laying on of hands and the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment, and this we will do if God permits. “

                And where does the writer of Hebrews lead us to find that maturity? He leads us directly into the Melchizedek Priesthood of Christ. As children we kept certain parental laws and we did them because we were told to do them. Likewise the Law has been our school master to lead us to Christ, but once we have come to Christ, the school master has finished its work. Gal. 3:23-27

                In order to move on into maturity we need the Law written upon our hearts by the Holy Spirit. What we have learned as children we will now apply to our lives by walking in the Spirit and truth as it is manifested in love for God and for our fellow man. This love will affect every area of our lives, for everything we do in life is either motivated by selfishness or by love. We are either serving God or our own flesh. And even though we may have thought to find loopholes in the Law, there are no such loopholes in the Holy Spirit for we are either being led by the Spirit or we are grieving the Holy Spirit.

                Ephesians 4:30 says: “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”

                Breaking the Law can be very impersonal. We are only infringing upon the rules a bit and we can even feel clever about it if we are not caught… but the fear of grieving the Holy Spirit is very deeply personal… and as David says, “Where can I go from Thy Spirit? Or where can I flee from Thy presence? Ps. 139:7.

                Through the years I have often studied the Priesthood of Melchizedek as if it was just another subject to learn. But the Melchizedek Priesthood is the priesthood and the covenant of maturity in Christ. It is a moving beyond the Law to something much more personal between us and the Lord. We are now going to walk by His Spirit and in fact the Melchizedek Priesthood and the covenant that it brings is none other than the New Covenant that Jesus died to bring us. How can we NOT study the High Priesthood of Jesus Christ?

                Jesus went back to heaven in order to administer to us and in us and through us, that which He shed His blood to bring us. The Law of Moses that we spend so much time with was only given as a temporary measure to lead us to Christ and to the covenant of promise that He gave to Abraham in the first place. The New Covenant is not a covenant of Law, but of promise and rather than being written “with ink or on tablets of stone” it is being written on human hearts… for Jesus has made us servants of a New Covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit, for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. 2 Cor. 3:3-6.

                Moving from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant is tantamount to moving from the tree of Knowledge of good and evil and back to the Tree of Life. (Through the Law comes knowledge of sin) So God’s plan has always been for us to live in intimate relationship with Him. It is in this relationship with Him as we live by His strength and not our own that we find our rest. The Law of Moses could only point to these things, but it could not provide them.

                So maturity has everything to do with entering fully into the Priesthood of Melchizedek. It is not like the Old Covenant, as we are told in Jeremiah 31:31-33.

                “Behold, days are coming”, declares the Lord “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, NOT LIKE the covenant I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord, “I will put My Law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God and they shall be My people.”

                This then is the New Covenant and it is administered by a new priesthood, by Jesus our High Priest who lives forever, who is eternal in the heavens and able to dwell in our hearts by His Holy Spirit.

                Somehow we manage to think in our finite minds that this New Covenant is somehow inadequate to save us and so we must borrow from the Old Covenant Law in order to complete something missing from the New Covenant. How can this be? We grieve the Holy Spirit when we do that.

                Hebrews chapter 7 explains how the Old Covenant commandment has been set aside because of its weakness and uselessness because it made nothing perfect and it speaks of bringing in of a better hope through which we draw near to God. So through this new priesthood, Jesus has become the guarantee of a better covenant.

                In the grand scheme of things we realize that this New Covenant was made first of all to Israel and Judah. So what do we see happening on a global scale today? We see Israel rejecting the New Covenant on a global scale. They are preparing to build a temple and to re-establish animal sacrifices in defiance against the true sacrifice of the true Lamb of God and not only that, but they are going to try and enforce this rebellion upon all of humanity through the reign of the antichrist and his mark of the beast system. In this act, false Christianity and false Judaism are joining hands to rule the world.

                A close friend of mine at church works in the utilities field and he told me that they are busy installing the 5G network, which in my opinion is one of the final pieces of the puzzle that will make it possible to go to a cashless society. AI technology is coming along at the same time in order to track and control the buying and selling of every human on the planet. Everything is being set up for the final showdown and in reality it is going to be a contest between those who live in the New Covenant, administered by Jesus Christ as our High Priest and those who reject Him to serve the gods of the New World Order.

                Ultimate rebellion and ultimate faith are going to square off on the battlefield as the antichrist makes war with the saints. Rev. 13:7-8. We are so close to this!

                “And it was given to him to make war with the saints and to overcome them; and authority over every tribe and people and tongue and nation was given to him. And all who dwell on the earth will worship him, every one whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who has been slain.”

                It’s time to enter fully into the Melchizedek Priesthood of Christ and by His power to move on into maturity as sons and daughters of God who live by His Spirit. Romans 8:14. We have dilly dallied between covenants for too long. Shall we not diligently study and pray to enter fully into this covenant that our High Priest has bought for us with His own blood. It is only in this New Covenant that the Law can be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. Romans 8:1-4

                Let’s not keep getting into trouble like Willy, but let us move on into maturity in Christ Jesus our Savior and Lord.

                The Melchizedek Priesthood is not just an obscure subject to study out of curiosity as I once thought, but it is the Very Covenant and Priesthood that Jesus gave His life for. We have not come to Mount Sinai as Israel did when they came out of Egypt. But we have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem and to myriads of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven and to God the judge of all and to the spirits of righteous men made perfect and to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant and to the sprinkled blood which speaks better than the blood of Abel. See to it that you do not refuse Him who is speaking…” Hebrews 12:18-25 (parts)

                This New Covenant in Christ is far superior in maturing us, for it is all done while at rest in our Lord. This is the rest whereby He has called the weary to rest. Isaiah 28:12. I invite you to read Isaiah 28:9-16. Ask the Lord to show you what this is actually saying. You may be amazed.