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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 begin a series about discipleship Clickable hymns on this page require RealPlayer to be installed on your computer. The download is free. Possible songs include the following hymns: Weekly ReadingsFor the Sabbath of November 11, 2006
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. The
person conducting the service should read or assign to be read Matthew chapter
19, verses 1 through 15. Commentary: The first twelve verses of the reading are about “divorce,” the last
three about children, or so subheadings in most Bibles would cause the passages
to appear. But the passages are all within the context of last things, those things Jesus did and said near the end of his
three and a half year earthly ministry. Jesus entered Jerusalem on the 10th
day of the first month in chapter 21. Most of what is recorded about Jesus
concerns the beginning of His ministry and the events immediately preceding
Calvary—Jesus is the cornerstone of the house of God as well as the capstone of
this same house; He is the alpha and
the omega, the first and the
last—thus, those passages relaying what Jesus said concerning divorce that come
to endtime disciples in Matthew chapter 19 are visibly [physically] and invisibly
[spiritually] audience specific. Jesus addressed His words to the Pharisees,
the sect of natural Israel that believed in the resurrection; so His words
convey “difference” from His words to Sadducees that were delivered a short
while later. The reader should now read Matthew chapter 22,
verses 23 through 33. Commentary: The issue in the foreground is the resurrection, but behind what is
obvious lays the shared assumption that God permanently binds marriages so that
even after death the marriage is bound. Jesus
told the Sadducees that they knew neither the Scripture, nor the power of God.
Simply put, Jesus told the Sadducees that they were physically minded,
spiritually deaf and dumb, and that Theos
was not the deity of the dead but of the living. He told these Sadducees that
physical marriages do not pertain to the dead, but to the living—and here is
where wisdom is required: He said that Theos
was married to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob while the four lived. Pharisees and
Sadducees [and all of Israel] claimed to be the natural sons of Abraham; they
claimed Abraham as their father. They contended that Jesus was a bastard, an
illegitimate son. The reader should now read John chapter 8, verses
12 through 59. Commentary: Yes, the Jews claimed Abraham as their father, a man who had died
1800 years or so before when Jesus came claiming to have been sent by God. What
might seem to be a wandering away from the subject of divorce really isn’t: if
neither the Sadducees nor the Pharisees understood Scripture and the power of
God, then how is it that physically minded “Christians” can understand what
equally physically minded Israelites could not understand? The answer is,
simply, they cannot. The
Apostle Paul said that “not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel,
and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring” (Rom
9:6-7), but it is through only Isaac, the son of promise, not the son of flesh,
that the offspring of Abraham will come. Paul said elsewhere that the natural
descendants of Abraham are the offspring of disobedience, the offspring of
slavery, the children of present day Jerusalem (Gal 4:21-31), not the heavenly
city whose designer and founder is God (Heb 11:8-10). When
Paul constructs the above allegory, he establishes the correspondence that
Jesus used to confound the Sadducees … Paul understands what Jesus said to the
Sadducees and Pharisees two days before Jesus was betrayed. The Father, the God
and Father of the resurrected man Jesus (John 20:17), is the God of living Abraham,
living Isaac, and living Jacob, no one else. He is not the God of Babylonia or
Egypt, Greece or Rome. Nor is He the God of Ishmael or Esau. He is not the God
of spiritual Ishmael, or of the hated son of promise, spiritual Esau. He is
only the God of disciples of Christ Jesus, men and women whom He has made
spiritually alive through receipt of His divine Breath [Pneuma ’Agion]. And the glorified Jesus will only give life (John
5:21) to those disciples of His—already made alive through being born of Spirit—whom
He knows (Matt 7:21-23) and judges worthy upon His return (1 Cor 4:5). What
Paul understands is that every person, regardless of race or nationality, is
spiritually dead (having no life in the heavenly realm) until the Father draws
the person from the world (John 6:44) through giving the person the earnest of
spiritual life, this “earnest” [like earnest money given when a real estate
offer is tendered] of the Spirit being real life in the heavenly realm, but
spiritual life domiciled in a tent of flesh. Thus, the mortal tent of flesh
must put on immortality; the perishable must become imperishable through the
glorified Jesus giving life to whom He will. And unless the mortal puts on
immortality—unless Jesus gives life to this born of Spirit disciple—the life
given by the Father will be lost in the lake of fire, the second death. Every
person receives physical breath when born of the water of the womb. This
breathing creature is of the first Adam. Thus, when this breathing creature
marries another breathing creature, also of the first Adam, God has no input
into that marriage; for God consigned all of humankind to disobedience (Rom
11:32) when the first Adam was driven from the garden (Gen 3:22-24) before the
man could eat of the Tree of Life. Literally, God gave humankind over to Satan
so that He could have mercy upon whom He will have mercy, with mercy eventually
being extended to all in the great White Throne Judgment, this mercy being a
second birth through receipt of the divine Breath of God. Judgment comes after
death (Heb 9:27), but the dead know nothing (Eccl 9:5). So judgment does not
come after death until the person is born a second time through receipt of the
divine Breath of the Father. Therefore, a person must be born of water [of the
first Adam] and of Spirit [of the last Adam, a life giving Spirit — 1 Cor
15:45] before the person can see the kingdom of God (John 3:3-8) or understand
the spiritual things of God (Rom 8:7). Until
a person is born of Spirit, the person is hostile to the things of God, and
indeed, cannot keep the commandments of God. The carnally or naturally minded
person will label those disciples who, by faith, keep the precepts of the law
as legalists, a moniker that every
disciple who would be of endtime Israel will bear … again, wisdom is required
to understand that two sons are presently struggling in the womb of the last
Eve, who is also spiritual Isaac [with God, there is neither male nor female];
who is the Zion that will bring forth a nation in a day (Isa 66:7-8), who will
bring forth children, two sons, one hated by God, one loved but deceitful (Rom
9:10-13). And it is this hated son that labels his righteous brother as a legalist. The
hated son is presently under Grace, the righteousness of Christ Jesus that
every disciple wears as a cloak that conceals the disciple’s sins from the
Father and from angels. But a sin concealed from God by Christ’s righteousness
is not a sin unknown to the Father and the Son. The Father knows whether the
disciple as a son of His strives to live by the commandments of God, or rejects
these commandments, believing that since Jesus fulfilled the law, the disciple
is under no obligation of live by the laws of God written on his or her heart
and mind through receipt of the Holy Spirit; believing that the disciple has
nothing to do but hear the words of Jesus; believing that the disciple does not
have to live by every word uttered by the Father, these words delivered by
Jesus as either the Logos [Theos] or as the only Son of the Logos. It is not hard to understand why
this disciple is part of the hated son, spiritual Esau. Nor is it difficult to
understand why the garment of Grace must be stripped from the Body of the Son
of Man when the seven endtime years of tribulation begin: through empowerment by
the Holy Spirit, the Son of Man, Head and Body, will be revealed (Luke 17:30)
to make known to the third part of humankind (Zech 13:7-9) the distinction
between the hated son and the beloved son. The
disciple [i.e., the “Christian”] who does not by faith keep the precepts of the
law (Rom 2:26) does not value either his inheritance or his birthright as a
spiritual Israelite enough to strive for the promise of entering into God’s
rest. This disciple can utter many words against legalists; he or she can profess great love for the Father and the
Son; but this disciple really loves disobedience, and the prince of
disobedience. The god he or she worships is the Adversary, who could care less
about the disciple once this disciple mentally rebels against God through
choosing death on his or her day of salvation. For once the disciple chooses
death Christ Jesus sculpts the person into a vessel of wrath to be endured for
a season. The disciple is held to the decision he or she made when the promise
of entering into God’s rest still stood. And though Paul told Timothy that if
anyone cleansed him or herself from what is dishonorable the person would be
made into a vessel for honored usage (2 Tim 2:20-21), what must be grasped is
that no person will cleanse the self from what is dishonorable unless the
person has been born of Spirit, and then, only the person born of Spirit who
keeps the precepts of the law by faith has truly cleansed the heart. Every
other person born of Spirit—with the promise of entering into God’s rest
standing open before the person—makes him or herself part of the hated son that
is still covered by Grace, and covered until the person is “revealed” in his or
her judgment. Then, the disciple who presented his or her members to sin as
instruments for disobedience will be condemned by the law that the disciple
contended against. Today,
all disciples are of Isaac, but with some hated and some loved prior to the
birth of spiritual Esau and spiritual Jacob. When the seven endtime years
begin, Zion will give birth to these two sons of promise, one rejected as the
natural son of Abraham was rejected; one accepted, but through much
tribulation. And God (because he is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) does
not enter into the marriages made between dead tents of flesh, for death ends a
marriage (Rom 7:1-3)—and death before life functions as death after life. A
radical concept? Death before life … the person who, during his or her
lifetime, never knew God has no sin reckoned against the person (Rom 5:13) even
though the person has died; thus, this person has earned no wages for sin (Rom
6:23) for this person was never “alive.” And without having sin reckoned
against this person because of his or her absence of life, then this person can
marry and divorce and marry again as the person wills—God enters into none of
these marriages of the dead who bury their dead, or of the dead who eat and
drink, marry and give in marriage as humankind was doing until the day Noah
entered Ark. To put God into the marriages of the dead is to make God the God
of Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech, Tiras, Cush, Egypt, Put, Cannan,
Elam, Asshut, Arpachshad, Lud, Aram; whereas God says that He is the God of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The
Ark of Noah formed a physical separation between the dead and the living; the
Ark of the Covenant forms a physical and spiritual separation between the dead
and the living. No natural Israelite dwelt inside the Ark of the Covenant. All
were dead (i.e., spiritual lifeless) as was all of humanity physically dead
except for the eight who entered Noah’s Ark … understand well, Noah’s neighbors
who mocked him for spending a century building a very large ship were dead meat
that still breathed throughout that century—they were dead meat when they “took
as their wives any they chose” (Gen 6:2). The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great
in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only
evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and
it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have
created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and
birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” But Noah found
favor in the eyes of the Lord. (Gen 6:5-8) For the sake of
Noah, God does not immediately kill all of humanity. But every person is as
good as dead, for none of them will be allowed into the Ark. Not Noah’s
beautiful young neighbor, nor Noah’s talented second cousin, nor any of the
mighty men of renown. Every one of these men [and women] was dead even though
they continued to walk around for a century. They were dead because God drove
Adam from the garden before he could eat of the Tree of Life; they were dead
because Adam had not covered his nakedness with obedience; they were dead
because they grieved God that he had made adam
[lower case “a”]. The
Ark of the Covenant was carried by poles on the shoulders of Levites, the
natural sons of Abraham, with Levites now being like the waters that covered
the earth in the days of Noah. Stay with this analogy: the sea of humanity is
as the waters that covered the face of the depth in the “P” creation account
[the Genesis abstract for the plan of God]—and as these waters were divided, so
too was humanity divided through birth from above (being born of Spirit). Thus,
physical waters are lifeless until lifted above the heavens through spiritual
birth (day two of the abstract; Gen 1:6-8), and on the following day, from
these lifeless lower waters emerge the beasts of Daniel chapter 7 as well as
the amalgamation of these beasts (the spiritual kings of Greece sans the body
of the king of the North) three and a half years later (cf. Dan 7:11-12; Rev 13:1-3). The king of Greece (cf. Dan 8:21; 10:20; 2:39) is not a
single demonic spirit that rules over the earth through the appetites of the
flesh, but a coalition of five demonic kings, the first or great king of this
coalition to be broken in a manner foreshadowed by the death of Alexander the
Great—broken because he is the figurative firstborn son of the Adversary; a
firstborn not covered by the blood of the Lamb of God; a firstborn analogous to
the firstborn of Pharaoh (Exod 12:29); a firstborn broken by the giving of
lives in heaven and on earth for the ransom of spiritually circumcised Israel
from bondage to sin and death (Isa 43:3-4); a firstborn by being the first
angel to succumb to the iniquity found in an anointed cherub (Ezek 28:14-15). God
claims all firstborns as His own, but He took the descendants of the tribe of
Levi “from among the people of Israel instead of every firstborn who opens the
womb” (Num 3:12). The Levites belonged to God to do with as He pleased in lieu
of all firstborns: ‘“On the day that I struck down all the firstborns in the
land of Egypt, I [YHWH] consecrated
for my own all the firstborn in Israel, both of man and beast. They are mine: I
am the Lord’” (v. 13) … natural
Israel was the firstborn physical son of God (Exod 4:22), the nation that is to
God as Ishmael was to Abraham. And the Levites were taken as the firstborn of
this firstborn physical son. The
Apostle Peter said that since Calvary, disciples “are a chosen race, a royal
priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his [God’s] own possession” (1 Pet
2:9). As natural Israel was the holy nation of God (Exod 19:5-6), the firstborn
physical son of Yah [Theos], disciples collectively as the
Church are now the holy nation of the Father [Theon]. And as Yah took
the tribe of Levi to serve Him in lieu of taking the firstborns of all Israel,
the Father has taken the Radical Remnant that left spiritual Babylon in the 16th-Century
to spiritually serve in the temple of God as the Levites served in the physical
temple … a bold claim? Too bold? No, not too bold, but a claim made that will
be difficult for spiritually circumcised Israelites who have remained in
Babylon to accept; for those disciples still in Babylon fear even the shadow of
the Sabbath, the least of the commandments (Matt 5:19). They are an extremely
fearful people; they are cowards who will not enter into God’s rest. They spurn
legalism as if keeping the precepts
of the law by faith were the spiritual Black Plague. But
not all of the Radical Remnant is of this Remnant, just as not all of Israel is
of Israel. Most of this remnant is of Babylon, an easy call to make, one
visible in heaven and on earth through when the disciple enters or attempts to
enter God’s rest. Thus, whereas Anabaptist disciples are spiritual Levites, it
is Sabbatarian Anabaptists who have the spirit of prophecy (cf. Rev 12:17; 19:10) that form the
seven named churches of Revelation chapters 2 and 3. In topology, this Remnant
is the reality of the seven pair of clean animals and single pair of every
other species that entered the Ark with the Eight, now Christ Jesus and the
angels to the seven churches. The seven named churches are foreshadowed by the
seven pair of clean animals—and by Joshua. The single pair of every other
species is the antetype of those endtime disciples who leave the hated son,
spiritual Esau, to join with the seven named churches as Caleb joined with
Israel prior to the Passover liberation of the natural nation from physical
bondage. Caleb was of Esau. And the Remnant of the Woman’s Offspring will be to
the third part of humanity (Zech 13:9), born of Spirit halfway through the
seven endtime years, as the Lamb of God is to the 144,000 (Rev 14:1-5) during
these same last three and half years; hence, this Remnant will empowered by the
Spirit as the two witnesses were empowered through their 1260 day ministry in
the first half of the Tribulation. This Remnant will also have a 1260 day
ministry, during which it leads the third part of humanity as Joshua and Caleb
led Israel across the Jordan and into the Promised Land of God’s rest; the
victory won by patiently enduring to the end. All
of the above is truth that the one who would teach the Remnant of the Woman’s
Offspring will acknowledge—the teacher of spiritual Israel who does not
acknowledge the above is true does not build on the foundation Paul laid in the
heavenly city. This teacher will die either physically or spiritually during
the first 1260 days of the Tribulation so that he or she cannot teach the third
part of humanity that today is hostile to God. Therefore, the problem of
divorce remains to be unraveled: since Anabaptist disciples are spiritual
Levites, separated from Christianity as the descendants of Levi were separated
from natural Israel, then do the additional restrictions placed upon the
marriages of Levites pertain to the Remnant? Again,
wisdom is required: merely because a person was born into and has been reared
in an Anabaptist household doesn’t make the person a disciple of Christ Jesus.
Unless a person cleanses his or her heart—the Father begins this cleansing by
drawing the person from the world as Abraham’s father Terah took his sons from
Ur to Haran on the way to God’s rest, but contrary to what Evangelical
Christianity teaches, the disciple by faith must complete the mental journey
from the land of his or her nativity to spiritual Judea—the person is not
circumcised of heart and mind. And if not spiritually circumcised, the person
is only outwardly a Christian, or an Anabaptist, a state analogous to the
situation that affected natural Israel in the 1st-Century CE, the
situation that Paul discusses in Romans chapter 2. It
can be here said that no one is merely a Christian outwardly through professing
with one’s mouth that Jesus is Lord of God—through mumbling the Sinners’ Prayer—but a Christian is one
inwardly who has been circumcised of heart and mind, with the heart cleansed by
faith before circumcision. The benchmark for circumcision by faith is the faith
displayed by the patriarch Abraham prior to circumcision (Rom 4:11-12). “By
faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to
receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By
faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in
tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise” (Heb 11:8-9).
The disciple [that person the Father has drawn from the world] will by faith
mentally journey to spiritual Judea, a mental landscape unknown to the person,
and the disciple will dwell in this landscape as a stranger in the land of his
or her inheritance: the person will live as a spiritual Judean, keeping the
Sabbaths of God, keeping the precepts of the law (Rom 2:26), doing those things
that will make the person a Jew inwardly. The
Christian who by faith keeps the precepts of the law and the Observant Jew who
by faith professes that Jesus is Lord (Rom 10:6-9) are both inwardly standing
on the foundation that Paul laid in heavenly Jerusalem. They stand together,
and they will inherit together—and none other will inherit as firstfruits, for
there is no other foundation for the house of God but the one Paul laid. The
vast majority of self-professing Christianity remains in Babylon. Most
“Christians,” including Anabaptists, dwell in Babylon without yet being born of
Spirit, and most of those who have been born of Spirit dwell as spiritual
beasts waiting to be slaughtered at the dedication of the house of God. Only
those “Christians” who have about them a different Spirit as Caleb had a
different spirit (Num 14:24) will enter into God’s rest. Thus—and here is the
difficulty—most “Christians” are as spiritually common or unclean as
anyone in the world. They are not holy, and a person of the Remnant should not
marry one. Because
of inner blindness, there is always difficulty in moving from physical to
spiritual; from taking a an audience specific passage from Moses and applying
its principles to endtime disciples. Overviews are somewhat easy, but the
following is not: The reader should read Leviticus chapter 21, verses
1 through 15, followed by 1 Corinthians chapter 7. Commentary: Until a person has been born of Spirit, the person is spiritually
dead—and all this person does in the flesh is only of the flesh. The person is
a spiritual corpse in a manner directly analogous to how the first Adam was a
physical corpse until Elohim
[singular in usage] breathed into his nostrils (Gen 2:7). Thus, those things
done in the flesh are forgiven by Jesus’ death at Calvary and exist no more
when the person is born of Spirit, even though the person retains memory of
those things. A
marriage made between two spiritual corpses is not a marriage made in the
heavenly realm, the logic behind what Paul writes in his epistles to the saints
at Corinth. Therefore, if one of these spiritual corpses wishes to leave a
marriage made in the flesh when the other spiritual corpse receives spiritual
life through being born of Spirit, the one who has been made alive is not bound
by the marriage made in the flesh, but becomes free to marry again, but only to
a person who has been born of Spirit … here is the problem: how does a disciple
know if the other person has been born of Spirit? And for a spiritual Levite,
spiritual birth of the spouse alone is not enough: the disciple must also be
another spiritual Levite. But
marriages are only made in the flesh, between the tents of flesh in which
born-from-above sons of God dwell. Every disciple will, as the lawfully
betrothed Bride of Christ, remain single in the heavenly realm until the
Wedding Feast following Christ Jesus’ return. The
Apostle Paul wrestled with this problem which Moses never addressed because no
one prior to Jesus as the last Adam had been born of Spirit, with actual life
in the heavenly realm. Jesus did not address this problem for the same reason.
Rather, Jesus gave to His disciples the authority to resolve problems such as
these, with these resolutions conforming to the laws of God. Paul’s
opinion was that remaining unmarried simplified problems, but that it was
better to marry than for the hormonal demands of the body to cause the person
to lust after what was not lawful to have. Nothing
has since changed. If the born of Spirit disciple finds that the tent of flesh
in which this son of God dwells is single, life might well be simpler if the
person remained single. If the spiritual corpse to which the born of Spirit
disciple is married wishes to remain married, then God will enter into this
marriage through the one spouse having been born of Spirit. The marriage will
be bound. The disciple will not be free to remarry as long as the spiritually
dead spouse desires to remain in the marriage. If
a born of Spirit disciple is released from a marriage because the spouse does
not desire to live with a spiritual Judean, this born of Spirit disciple can
only marry another disciple as a Levite could only marry a virgin (Lev 21:13).
Now comes the tricky part: if the disciple married proves false through later
rebelling against God and rejecting living by the laws of God, then is this
marriage truly bound by God? The
above condition has afflicted the splintered churches of God since 1994. If a
baptized disciple wants out of a marriage, the disciple need only begin
attending with a different splinter to get one free divorce and remarriage card, which truly accumulates no rewards in
the heavenly realm. Based
upon the track record of the splintered churches of God for the past decade, a
few observations can be made: too many divorces are occurring for trivial
reasons, so the existing policies of Sabbatarian Anabaptists do not work.
Disciples within the splintered churches of God look too much like the world. Change has to occur, and must begin with every disciple. And that
change is within marriages, not after a marriage has failed … it is time for
Sabbatarian Anabaptists to reexamine the relationship between husbands and
wives within marriages. A
failed marriage is akin to law suits between brethren, an evil made necessary
because circumcision of the heart is not readily visible. A
marriage made between two spiritual corpses is not bound by God—neither spiritual
corpse is an Israelite, circumcised of heart and mind. But the practice of
marrying and giving in marriage that specifically typifies the world in Noah’s
day, and again typifies when the seven endtime years of tribulation begin
stands contrary to the intensions of God. Endtime disciples are not to remarry
and give in remarriage as the world does. A distinction must be made. Yah [Theos] divorced ancient
Israel, but was not free to marry again until He left the heavenly realm as His
only Son (cf. John 1:1-2, 14; 3:16)
to die at Calvary as the man Jesus. But Jesus’ disciples seem to believe that
remarriage logically follows divorce … perhaps that old self needs to die on
the Cross before the divorced disciple remarries. If that old self doesn’t die,
the second marriage will, most likely, became a repeat of the first. A
person does not inherit eternal life through fornication in the backseat of a
Chevrolet: sin does not beget everlasting life. Rather, life is the gift of
God, received when the Father draws the person from the world. And if anything
is learned from the splintered churches of God it is that spiritual life is a
gift more rarely given than previously imagined. * The person
conducting the Sabbath service should close services with two hymns, or psalms,
followed by a prayer asking God’s dismissal. * * * * * "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." [ Home ] [ Sabbath Readings ] |