The following Scripture passages are offered to aid beginning fellowships. The readings and commentary for this week are more in line with what has become usual; for the following will most likely be familiar observations. The concept behind this Sabbath’s selection is humanity being consigned to disobedience.
Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of July 13, 2013
The person conducting the Sabbath service should open services with two or three hymns, or psalms, followed by an opening prayer acknowledging that two or three (or more) are gathered together in Christ Jesus’ name, and inviting the Lord to be with them.
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For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. (Eph 1:15–2:7 double emphasis added)
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Apparently the most difficult aspect of modern culture, modern society, is comprehending that we as the holy ones of God do not today live in the kingdom of God; that there is no on-going societal battle between good and evil occurring, with evil winning most skirmishes. Although we as sons of God wage war against spiritual wickedness in high places—against the prince of this world and his angels—we do so within the individual, within ourselves, with our inner selves as sons of God being free to keep the commandments of God and do what is pleasing to Him, but with our outer selves, our fleshly bodies, remaining consigned to disobedience until the Second Passover liberation of Israel. Thus, as Paul said of himself, he did the very things he hated (Rom 7:15, 19), while not fully understanding why he couldn’t do what he wanted, that is keep the commandments of God. So there is no societal battle between Christ and the Adversary occurring (that would be giving to the Adversary greater power than he has or has every had); there is no battle between good and evil occurring except within sons of God. Elsewhere, there is only sin [unbelief of God], either cloaked in the mantle of righteousness or revealed in all of its ugliness; for evil is nothing more than refusal to believe and obey God.
Paul wrote of himself, “For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin” (Rom 7:14) … what Paul wrote is central to Christianity: the flesh is sold (delivered) to sin, to unbelief of God. But Christians are not their fleshly bodies, the temporary houses in which they dwell. Rather, Christians are their inner selves, resurrected from death through a resurrection like that of Christ Jesus. Actually, firstborn sons of God (true Christians today) will be twice resurrected, the first time by the Father when He gives life to the inner self of the person, an event that has already happened for every person truly born of spirit, and a second time by Christ Jesus when He causes the mortal fleshly body of the disciple to put on immortality upon His return as the Messiah.
The determiner for whether a disciple has truly been born of spirit is in whether the person, the Christian, feels inwardly compelled to keep the Law.
For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to spirit [pneuma] set their minds on the things of the spirit [tou pneuma]. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on spirit [pneumatos] is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh but in spirit [pneumati], if in fact spirit of God [pneuma Theou] dwells in you. Anyone who does not have spirit of Christ [pneuma Christou] does not belong to him. (Rom 8:5–9 double emphasis added)
Only within individual Christians truly born of spirit [born from above through receiving a second breath of life, pneuma Theou in pneuma Christou, euphemistically known as having received the indwelling of Christ] is there a true on-going battle between good and evil; between righteousness and unrighteousness; between belief of God and unbelief. For every person who truly believes God will want to keep the commandments and will have love for neighbor and brother. The person who contends that he or she is not under the Law isn’t under the Law for this person has not yet been truly born of spirit, but is a bastard son of the Adversary—
The Apostle John wrote,
See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know Him. Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who thus hopes in Him purifies himself as He is pure. Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that He appeared to take away sins, and in Him there is no sin. No one who abides in Him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen Him or known Him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as He is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother. (1 John 3:1–10 emphasis added)
If a person cannot come to Christ Jesus unless the Father draws the person from this world (Jesus said, “‘No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day’” — John 6:44), and if the person who has been genuinely drawn from this world desires to keep the commandments because of the indwelling of Jesus in the person, then it logically follows that if there is no desire to voluntarily keep the commandments of God, including the Sabbath commandment, there is no indwelling of Christ Jesus, no spiritual birth, no living inner self. The person is either a pious son of disobedience, the state of the majority of Christians (the present status of the man in the moon), or the person is in open rebellion against God, the status of the majority of Americans today.
Abortion is evil; is the murder of the most helpless members of a culture. Marriage between same sex individuals is evil; for marriage reflects the relationship between Christ Jesus and His disciples, with Christ Jesus in the form of the indwelling of His spirit [pneuma or breath] (from Rom 8:9) in the spirit [pneuma] (from 1 Cor 2:11) of disciples reflecting the head/helpmate relationship between a man and a woman in marriage, with the man functioning as the head of his wife and with the woman functioning as the body of her husband …
The Hebrew word often used for man [ish] is similar to the word used for woman [ishshah] and with these two words sounding similar when uttered, with the man [ish] linguistically being in the woman [again, ishshah].
Outside of marriage—a man to a woman—a man has no body by which he can bring forth seed or offspring: he is missing the needed [shah] radical to produce seed. And a woman has no head that can give life to the unfertilized seed she carries. A man lying with another man as he would with a woman causes one of the men to linguistically disappear and become a non-person, not a human being; for the man penetrated by the other will excrete the seed of the other as he would the flesh of a hog he has devoured, flesh that he passes in a bowel movement … a man lying with a man fertilizes the earth with his dead seed; for he himself and his seed have no more worth to God than the sun-bleached skeleton of a spawned humpy [Humpback salmon], caught in the spindrift of a receding river, has to an angler.
Prior to God giving His breath of life to the newly baptized man Jesus the Nazarene, all of humanity was without indwelling eternal life—and would have remained without a means to escape the fate of spawning salmon, their carcasses providing the nutrients needed to bring forth another generation of fry in the otherwise sterile waters of coastal streams of northern rainforests.
People are not humanly born as sons of God, but become sons of God through receiving a second breath of life, the breath of God [pneuma Theou] in the breath of Christ [pneuma Christou]—a second birth, that of the inner self, the soul of a person.
Again, for pedagogical purposes, human persons are not humanly born with immortal souls that need regenerated, but born consigned to disobedience (Rom 11:32) and death, hence inwardly dead. And this is what Paul in his epistle to the Ephesians drives home: every human person is born as a son of disobedience, walking in the ways of the Adversary, the present prince of this world, the prince of the power of the air. An infant’s human nature is not neutral, but the production of the infant being born in mental serfdom (and by extension, physical serfdom) to the Adversary. The human infant is no more able to obey God than a coyote is able to not kill sheep.
When a newly born human infant draws his or her first breath of life so that the infant is no longer sustained by the mother’s breath of life, the nature of the infant is malleable even though the infant is born as a son of disobedience and logically is a slave of the Adversary, whose nature the infant receives through the Adversary being the prince of the power of the air.
Because the physical reveals and precedes the spiritual, a physical firstborn son of God (from Ex 4:22) is outwardly circumcised on the eighth day—
And God said to Abraham, "As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised. Every male throughout your generations, whether born in your house or bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring, both he who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money, shall surely be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant." (Gen 17:9–14)
Paul writes to the Galatians,
But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise. (Gal 3:22–29)
Faith is belief of God (cf. Rom 14: 23; 1 John 3:4) that leads to the person voluntarily keeping all of the commandments—and faith doesn’t come of a person’s own accord. No person can force God to call the person, to draw the person from this world. Therefore, among sons of disobedience, even the most pious is inherently evil through being a non-Believer … the righteous Muslim is evil through being a non-Believer; the righteous Jew is evil through being a non-Believer; the Christian that attempts to enter into God’s Rest on the first day of the week is evil through being a non-Believer. And these are those who believe themselves to be the “good” of this world.
What becomes of the ones who are truly evil; who openly spurn the things of God and mock those who would be righteous as Jesus was righteous? What is their fate? Being elected to public office? One potential fate. Or being executed for their abominable deeds, another fate that awaits some in this world?
Firstborn sons of God should not deceive themselves into believing that their deeds in this world will somehow convince the unrighteous to repent and believe God … there is nothing short of God intervening in the life of a man who lays with another man that would cause the man to give up his abominable ways and begin to keep the commandments of God. In fact, there isn’t much that a genuine son of God can do or say that would cause a Christian within the greater Church to quit eating hog, a nearer cousin to the Christian than he or she imagines. Therefore, the firstborn son of God that today lives in America can inwardly wince and grieve because of the murderous practices of a society that kills its most innocent members through legalized abortions; or the son of God can groan at the wrong being committed by a society that condones same-sex marriages, or even shacking up [co-habitation] before marriage. The firstborn son of God needs to understand that the United States of America, humanity’s grand experiment in self-rule, has to fail before the kingdom of God can be established here on earth.
Whether anyone wants to admit it, the United States of America is no longer either a democracy or a republic. It is a failed nation state, one ruled by a bureaucratic elite that keeps fanning the flames of liberty that are but dead embers, remembrances of when the NSA was another acronym, one that neither collected nor stored electronic communications.
We wouldn’t expect ethical behavior from coyotes; we wouldn’t expect rattle snakes not to be venomous; nor should we expect a socialist President to be a man of integrity. And while President Obama is no Hitler [a National Socialist] nor Stalin [an International Socialist], he is not far from ruling entirety by decree. So what presently separates him from the socialist tyrants of the 20th-Century is the quality of his character, an unknown to be discovered in 2014 and 2016, years that will bring almost unimaginable challenges to all Americans as the countdown to the Second Passover liberation of Israel continues, not missing a beat.
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The person conducting the Sabbath service should close services with two hymns, or psalms, followed by a prayer asking God’s dismissal.
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"Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright ©2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved."