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 don’t be presumptuous.
Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of July 16, 2011
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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But I, brothers [the holy ones at Corinth], could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human? / What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building.
According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each one's work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.
Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him. For God's temple is holy, and you are that temple.
Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their craftiness,” and again, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.” So let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are Christ's, and Christ is God's. (1 Cor 3:1–23 emphasis added)
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“Planting” is to lay the foundation for the temple of God … there is only one Bride of Christ, the heavenly city of New Jerusalem (Rev 21:2, 9–11); there is only one temple that grows to become the Bride of Christ; there is only one house of God that is the temple; there is only one foundation laid for that house of God. And the Apostle Paul laid that foundation in the 1st-Century—
Peter [Cephas] didn’t lay the foundation for the temple that becomes New Jerusalem, nor did Apollos, nor has anyone since. The foundation was laid—the seed [Christ Jesus] was planted—in the 1st-Century by the Apostle Paul, with Apollos having watered that seed, that foundation that is Christ in the 1st-Century, but with God giving growth to the foundation that will become New Jerusalem as he sees fit … no record comes to us of what Apollos taught; i.e., of how Apollos watered the seed that is Christ. Is watering not important? Or is it that when Paul wrote, He who plants and he who waters are one, Paul meant that Apollos taught exactly what Paul taught, that in Paul’s writings is heard Apollos’words?
Peter’s ministry was to the Circumcised [biological Jews]. Paul went to the Uncircumcised, with every person humanly born being uncircumcised at birth as the shadow and type of every person being born of God as a son being spiritually uncircumcised at birth. For it isn’t the person who is outwardly circumcised that is a Jew, but the person who is circumcised of heart:
But if you call yourself a Jew and rely on the law and boast in God and know His will and approve what is excellent, because you are instructed from the law; and if you are sure that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth—you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? While you preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law. For, as it is written, “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.” / For circumcision indeed is of value if you obey the law, but if you break the law, your circumcision becomes uncircumcision. So, if a man who is uncircumcised keeps the precepts of the law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision? Then he who is physically uncircumcised but keeps the law will condemn you who have the written code and circumcision but break the law. For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God. (Rom 2:17–29 emphasis added)
Today, a few Sabbatarian Christians “know that the law is good” (1 Tim 1:8), that “the law is holy, and the commandment[s] [are] holy and righteous and good (Rom 7:12), and many of these Sabbatarian Christians desire “to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions” (1 Tim 1:7 emphasis added). They approve what is excellent because they have been instructed from the law, but they do not understand the law nor use the law lawfully (v. 8); for the law as codified in the commandments is for the fleshly body of every Jew, humanly born consigned to disobedience (Rom 11:32). The law is not for the spiritually living inner self, born of God through receipt of a second breath of life, the divine breath of God [pneuma Theon] that is the Holy Spirit [pneuma hagion or breath holy]. For the living inner self is born under no condemnation, but rather is born free from the law of sin and death (Rom 8:1–2); free from enslavement to disobedience; free to love God and neighbor.
Tension exists within every Christian genuinely born of God, tension about which Paul writes:
Or do you not know, brothers [the holy ones at Rome]—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress. (Rom 7:1–3 emphasis added)
The fleshly body of every disciple is to the living inner self as the wife is to her husband, and as the Church is to Christ Jesus: ideally, the body is to obey the living inner self as a wife obeys her husband, symbolized by the wife covering her long hair with a cloth covering as “a symbol of authority … because of the angels” (1 Cor 11:10). The wife is under the authority of her husband for as long as he lives. Likewise, the fleshly body is ideally under the authority of the living inner self for as long as the inner self lives, with the preceding clause introducing a complication ignored by virtually every Christian: the inner self has been made alive through receipt of indwelling eternal life [the life that came from the Father in the form of His divine breath] in a vessel that has also come from heaven, the breath of Christ [pneuma Christos] (cf. Rom 8:9, 11). Hence, when the disciple denies Christ Jesus (see Matt 10:33) by any of many means, with the most common means being denial that the Logos [o logos] who entered His creation as His only Son (cf. John 3:16; 1:14) is the Creator of everything that has been made (John 1:3), the glorified Jesus will deny the disciple before the Father and will simply remove His breath [again, pneuma Christos] from the person, thereby leaving the Holy Spirit representing the bright fire of eternal life that is the glory of God (see Ezek 1:26–28) to destroy the person, thereby permanently severing the person from the vine that is Christ (John 15:1–2). This person—this once-living inner self—having tasted the goodness of God but now cut off from Christ can never be restored to life, but is permanently dead even though the fleshly body of the person continues to live.
So there is no mistake, the fleshly body of the person that formerly obeyed the desires of the flesh and of the mind and was by nature a child of wrath (Eph 2:3), dead in its trespasses (i.e., its transgressions of the law) is free to marry another, the living inner self that has been raised from death as Jesus was resurrected from death, with this living inner self forming the shadow and copy of Christ Jesus through the indwelling of Christ in the person in the form of His divine breath [once again, pneuma Christos]. This marriage of the fleshly body to a living inner self forms a type and shadow of the glorified disciple marrying Christ Jesus at the Wedding Supper—
Paul continues:
Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to Him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code. / What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. / Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. / So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. (Rom 7:4–25 emphasis and double-emphasis added)
As a Christian, ask yourself: is the law good? The Apostle Paul insisted that it was. Every Christian pastor and teacher who waters as Apollos watered and is thereby one with Paul will insist that it is good. And if the law is good, then why doesn’t greater Christendom strive to keep the law, knowing beforehand that every Christian will come short of the ideal until the second Passover liberation of Israel?
If Paul in his mind served the law of God, then in Paul’s mind [i.e., in his living inner self] Paul was under no condemnation even though his fleshly body still did those things that he hated … Paul’s fleshly body was under condemnation, and hence died physically and is no longer here on earth except as dust, elemental elements blown about by the winds of this world.
The foundation of the house of God that Paul laid—the foundation upon which every Christian ministry must be built if that ministry is of God—is embedded in a Christian dogma known as replacement theology, a body of teachings holding that endtime Israel is not the modern nation state of Israel in Judea, nor is endtime Israel the biological descendants of the patriarch Israel, but rather, endtime Israel is the “nation” composed of living inner selves, each born of God as a son and each circumcised of heart after having cleansed hearts through a journey of faith that is the mental or spiritual equivalent to the patriarch Abraham’s physical journey of faith from Ur of the Chaldeans to Haran then on to the Canaan, represented in type by Sabbath observance. Endtime Israel will love God, will love brother, and will love neighbor, even when that neighbor is as antagonistic as Hamas is to the modern nation state of Israel.
It is understanding there can only be one foundation laid for the temple of God (for New Jerusalem) where the Christian busybodies that prey on silly women come up short; for these busybodies refuse to labor with their own hands but use their idleness to teach what they do not understand, thereby causing many to profane the body and blood of Lord by taking the sacraments of bread and wine without discerning the body of Christ, thereby taking condemnation upon themselves, thereby bringing illness and death upon human beings whose greatest fault is having listened to a person not called by God to teach. Not one of these Christian pastors or wannabe teachers will escape paying with the person’s physical life the death penalty the person brought upon those silly women and weak-minded husbands that the person taught without having been called to teach. Hence, the Christian who teaches a doctrine different from the one that the Apostle Paul taught will physically perish and possibly spiritually perish for being presumptuous, especially if the person continues to teach after it has been brought to the person’s attention that he or she hasn’t been called to teach.
The Christian who teaches without being called to teach will not understand spiritual birth, nor the spiritual maturation process without having instruction from someone called to teach as Paul was called to understand the mysteries of God—and that instruction is not a “calling” to teach. Hence, every person—every Christian pastor and teacher—who presently teaches a gospel of grace, or who desires to be a teacher of the law needs to either stop teaching anyone immediately, or needs to become one with Paul as Apollos was one with Paul, with the person teaching what Paul taught … one problem immediately surfaces: the person who has been teaching without having been called to teach has already done great damage to infant sons of God and to potential sons of God, damage that cannot be undone, damage that can be likened to the damage Paul/Saul caused when he persecuted the Church. Hence, the Christian pastor or wannabe teacher, having killed many infant sons of God, must admit what Paul admitted: “For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God” (1 Cor 15:9).
The pastor or teacher who teaches without having been called to teach is unworthy of being a teacher because he or she was presumptuous. … The history of Sabbatarian Christendom is littered with the carcasses of wannabe teachers of the law, with many more carcasses to come following the Second Passover liberation of Israel. Possibly without exception, each of these wannabe teachers felt the need to spread the good news of Christ to others. But to teach without having been called to teach is, again, presumptuous—an act of hubris.
It is not enough to feel the need to teach others the basic principles of Christ—feeling a need to teach is not a calling to teach, but rather, is evidence of having tasted the goodness of God.
The Adversary was presumptuous:
You [the spiritual king of Babylon] said in your heart,
“I will ascend to heaven;
above the stars of God
I will set my throne on high;
I will sit on the mount of assembly
in the far reaches of the north;
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High.”
But you are brought down to Sheol,
to the far reaches of the pit.
Those who see you will stare at you
and ponder over you:
“Is this the man who made the earth tremble,
who shook kingdoms,
who made the world like a desert
and overthrew its cities,
who did not let his prisoners go home?”
All the kings of the nations lie in glory,
each in his own tomb;
but you are cast out, away from your grave,
like a loathed branch,
clothed with the slain, those pierced by the sword,
who go down to the stones of the pit,
like a dead body trampled underfoot.
You will not be joined with them in burial,
because you have destroyed your land,
you have slain your people. (Isa 14:13–20)
The Christian pastor or the wannabe teacher of the law that teaches presumptuously is of the Adversary and will come to the same fate regardless of how good, how sincere the intentions of the person unless—and this is an important caveat—the person becomes one with Paul as Apollos was one with Paul; for to teach without being called to teach inevitably causes irreparable harm to the holy ones. The wannabe teacher simply will not understand what it was that Paul wrote, the reason he or she has no business teaching. And this goes for seemingly mighty men [and women] of God such as seen on television just as it goes for the solitary busybody that gallivants around the countryside, running to and fro, not working with his or her hands to support the person but filling idle time with idle words.
The law—the commandments, including the Sabbath commandment—are for the fleshly bodies of the holy ones, bodies in which the law of sin and death continues to dwell, and will continue to dwell until the Second Passover liberation of Israel. The Christian is to outwardly keep the law, with the law being a disciplinarian of the flesh because sin and death continues to reside in the Christian’s fleshly members. But inwardly, there is no need to keep the law if the inner self believes God and delights in the law of God; for the inner self is not born under condemnation (i.e., born as a slave to disobedience).
The man Jesus, in His personage, forms the living shadow and copy of every living inner self born as a son of God.
And the preceding is enough for one reading … the person who has been teaching others without having been called to teach is of the Adversary, because he or she is not one with Paul. Hence, little or no growth has been given to the Body of Christ since the 1st-Century. What passes in this world as the greater Christian Church is a cancerous growth that will shortly be destroyed.
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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."