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This Is My Body
(Matthew 26:26) Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.”
The Atonement, Jesus self-sacrifice that cleans us from all sin, is essential to the new covenant. Essentially this is a reset to the Garden of Eden in the sense that we become like Adam or Eve: without sin. But then what? This question comes home to me forcefully for two reasons; first because I have been working on a book that covers this very topic, but more importantly because I recently read a book on Grace as a part of a School of Supernatural Ministry that I am attending. This book is what the proponents would refer to as Finished Works theology, and the detractors would refer to as hyper-grace. Joseph Prince's Destined To Reign suggests that “The Ten Commandments have been made obsolete” (page 122) and “the Holy Spirit never convicts you of your sins. He NEVER comes to point out your faults”(page 134). Unfortunately, for those of us in the body of Christ, we know that neither statement is true. For those of us who love Jesus, but are not always fully in harmony with Him, we do need occasional reminders. It is significant to note that Paul's letters all contain suggestions and downright rebukes. Even Jesus speaking through John in the Book of Revelations tells the churches, “I have this against you…” (Revelations 2:4 & 2:20). But this is the point, we should be working towards a relationship with Jesus and the Holy Spirit which makes the Law obsolete and even the slightest “check in the Spirit” unnecessary. I don't want to sound too critical. Prince does say that his target audience are those who have grown up under heavy legalism and judgmental correction and need to know that God embraces them warts and all. And we all need grace. Grace is essential to enjoying a life with Christ.
Here is the second part of our covenant with God: What You Need, Heaven Supplies!
(John 6:51) “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
(John 6:56) “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.”
When Jesus says, “I am the bread of life” (John 6:35), He is saying I will provide your physical needs, and He is saying I will provide for your spiritual needs. But He is saying more. Jesus provides for us in ways and places that we don't even know that we are in need. Jesus paid for our sins on the cross. But Jesus also overcame the devil's authority. Satan has no legal rights left. None. All authority belongs to Jesus to spend on those who He knows will spend the proceeds for God's purposes.
We see this in John chapter 12, Jesus is speaking of His coming death on the cross:
(John 12:27-28) “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.”
Immediately God speaks from heaven:
(John 12:28) “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.”
Jesus proceeds to explain what God means:
(John 12:30-32) “This voice has come for your sake, not mine. Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”
(Revelations 2:27) “I myself have received authority from my Father.”
The ruler of this world is cast out. All things have been placed under the authority of Jesus Christ from the moment on the cross when He spoke the words, “It is finished” (John 19:30). Satan, having lost all authority has been growing weaker and weaker, while Christ has been asserting a gravitational pull towards His kingdom authority. God has never forced us to come to Him. He is calling us, drawing us to Himself. Whether you are pressing into a deep connection with God, or whether you are drifting Godward, or even if you have decided to turn and run, God's Kingdom will be realized through Jesus Christ, His anointed King. When we turn toward God, when we answer the call of Christ, we have immediate access to Kingdom authority and that means power.
So why is it that I can't just say I want something and put Harry Potter to shame? Is there anyone who hasn't prayed for some good and Godly need, but seemingly not gotten an answer? I am going to take a side trip before I give you my answer. It is now the year of our Lord 2020, so let's look at a 20:20 verse:
(Exodus 20:20) Moses said to the people, “Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin.”
The children of Israel have just heard God speak audibly the Ten Commandments and they were shaking in their sandals. It would seem that Moses is saying that God is trying to scare the Israelites into being good. We could say, God is trying to “scare the devil out of them.” The Welsh Revival, Azusa Street and other Pentecostal revivals of the early twentieth century came out of the Holiness movement. This movement emphasized a Holy living before God. Its fruit is clear. But Holiness had a downside. As you can well imagine, an emphasis on holiness can lead quickly to legalism and judgmentalism. In fact much of the Holiness movement was unable to embrace their wild Pentecostal child.
But I do not think Moses is trying to terrify Israel into moral rectitude. Moses has stood in the presence of God many times. He will soon be coming down from the mountain with so much of the presence of God on him that his face shines. Moses knows a few things about the presence of God, so when he says, “God has come to test you” he is speaking of the refining brought on by the very presence of God, up close and personal.
(Zechariah 13:9) “And I will put this third into the fire, and refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested. They will call upon my name, and I will answer them. I will say, “They are my people”; and they will say, “The LORD is my God.”
I want to emphasize two aspects: first, it can be very scary, but not because God means to do us harm. God is scarey because He is so different in perfection, in power, in love, in everything good that He can overwhelm us. Anything in us that excusing our behavior so that we move in ungodly directions finds itself painfully exposed in that presence. We can lie to ourselves, but we cannot lie to God. But most of all, His desires for us are beyond our ability to comprehend.
The second thing to know about the strong presence of God, something Moses knew: the presence of God changes a person. God is clean and pure. He is holy. The more we enter into the presence of God, the more we are changed to be what He desires us to be. We become holy. This doesn't just mean that we have learned the Law of God, it is now imprinted on our hearts, and we are morally perfected. C.S. Lewis puts it well:
“The Holiness of God is something more and other than moral perfection… God may be more than moral goodness: He is not less. The road to the promised land runs past Sinai. The moral law may exist to be transcended: but there is no transcending it for those who have not first admitted its claims upon them, and then tried with all their strength to meet that claim, and fairly and squarely faced the fact of their failure.” (C.S. Lewis, 1996. Pages 59-60).
In this sense, to answer Joseph Prince, it is possible to live entirely free of God's law. It happens when I realize that I cannot live a Godly life without God's up close and personal presence in my life, and then I pursue His presence to the point that questions of the law of God never haunt me. But, as Lewis suggests, there is more to God's presence in my life, more to holiness than moral perfection. Two of the twelve spies that are sent to spy out the promised land had already grasped this. When they entered Canaan and see giants, the Anakim, they didn't see strong towering men, they saw men who were weak because they lacked the Spirit of God to strengthen them. One was Joshua who will succeed Moses and lead Israel into the Promised Land. The other was Caleb of whom God says:
(Numbers 14:24) “my servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit and has followed me fully, I will bring into the land into which he went, and his descendants shall possess it.”
God says, “he has a different spirit.” Caleb hears God, either because of his trust in Moses, or because he is hearing from God directly. We know this because he follows God fully. God says so. Forty-five years later, Caleb, now eighty-five years old, is still seeing the Anakim in the land. He presents himself before his long time friend Joshua and says:
(Joshua 14:12) “So now give me this hill country of which the LORD spoke on that day, for you heard on that day how the Anakim were there, with great fortified cities. It may be that the LORD will be with me, and I shall drive them out just as the LORD said.”
Caleb wasn't afraid of the giants at age forty and he is still not afraid of them because he knows that it is God's will for him to take the land. Caleb has something more than moral rectitude, he has lost his fear of giants. Caleb saw the Anakim and all he saw was his destiny on the other side. Even when we know God's will and can speak with confidence, we sometimes need a nudge. Look at this passage in Exodus 14, where the children of Israel are trapped against the Red Sea by Pharaoh's army. Moses knows they are right where they belong. He speaks with confidence, but inside he is calling out, “God help!”
(Exodus 14:13-16) And Moses said to the people, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the LORD, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.”
The LORD said to Moses, “Why do you cry to me? Tell the people of Israel to go forward. Lift up your staff, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, that the people of Israel may go through the sea on dry ground.”
I thought Moses was sounding very confident here, but God knew he needed some help. His marching orders are from heaven, and so God is going to back him up. My sense of this passage suggests that if Moses had pointed at Pharaoh's army and said “be gone”, they would have crumbled before him, one way or another. When Moses hesitates, God just chooses the least likely scenario: walk through the middle of the sea. Moses was letting the details distract him.
Again, since we are entering 2020, let's look at another 20:20 passage: the situation is similar, in this case, a large army composed of three nations had come up against Judah. Everyone is terrified. King Jehoshaphat calls everyone together, especially his prophets. He receives a prophecy that the advancing army will be destroyed by God alone. The assembly worships the Lord. When they wake up the next day, he sends the singers out front to worship, and then Jehoshaphat musters his confidence and says:
(2 Chronicles 20:20) “Hear me, Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem! Believe in the LORD your God, and you will be established; believe his prophets, and you will succeed.”
We know the story, the three opposing armies turn on each with a great slaughter. Judah's armies have nothing left to do but to go out among the dead to collect the spoils. I would like to point out that they didn't just decide they should be victorious, they got together and sought God's help. Then God spoke to them and they believed the word of the Lord.
Sometimes, God is speaking, but our focus is on other things. We maybe hear God, but it has no impact. The cares of this world can steal a precious seed right out from under us. Mark chapter eight recalls for us a scene in which Jesus is with the disciples crossing the Sea of Galilee in a boat:
(Mark 8:14-21; also: Matthew 16:5-12) Now they had forgotten to bring bread, and they had only one loaf with them in the boat.
And he cautioned them, saying, “Watch out; beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.”
And they began discussing with one another the fact that they had no bread.
And Jesus, aware of this, said to them, “Why are you discussing the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Having eyes do you not see, and having ears do you not hear? And do you not remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?” They said to him, “Twelve.” “And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?” And they said to him, “Seven.” And he said to them, “Do you not yet understand?”
The disciples are like most of us. They are wrapped up in their own concerns, in this case, they forgot to bring lunch. Bill Johnson likes to point out the total disconnect between Jesus saying, “Watch out; beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod”, and the disciples saying, “We brought no bread.” (Matthew 16:7). They heard what Jesus said, but their minds filtered out the meaning and made his comment be about what they were thinking about. Hearing, they did not hear.
We are all familiar with this phenomenon, especially if we have children. And we are all guilty of this hearing but not hearing. When we are around a spouse or a talkative friend, but our minds are distracted by other concerns, the hearing of the ear and the thoughts begin to overlap. I have had great inspirations by extracting something out of someone else's dialogue and it has nothing to do with what they were saying. Sometimes we are aware that we are doing this, and sometimes we are not. In the case above, the disciples were totally unaware that they had tuned out Jesus' point because of their concern for lunch.
In this case, the subject on the disciple's minds is provision. Jesus points out that there is no reason to be concerned with provision. “I am the bread” God provides. Instead, he is suggesting that they should be concerned with bad teaching and a bad spirit. When asked why he teaches in parables, Jesus answers:
(Mark 4:11-12) “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables, so that ‘they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven.’”
Jesus is quoting the Hebrew scriptures, the Old Testament, in this case Isaiah 6:9 & 10:
(Isaiah 6:9-10) And He said, “Go, and say to this people: ‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand; keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’ Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.”
Doesn't God want the people healed? Jesus clarifies that the healing referred to is forgiveness. It would appear that He is referring to forgiveness without a change of heart. Those whose hearts are turning to God will hang onto the words of God until God gives them understanding. This is much like dreams. We can have prophetic dreams that are not clear at first. Only by taking them to God for understanding do they become clear. If on the other hand, we don't take them to God and diligently seek His council, the dream just floats away, like so much trash on the ocean. If our sins are forgiven, but we stay self-centered, what have we gained? I am inclined to agree with men like Bill Johnson, we have gained greater condemnation. God does not want that for us. So He speaks in parables.
“Heaven is not a hall of mirrors in which we will like what we see. And faith is not looking in the mirror and liking what you see in the name of Jesus and the Cross. Faith treats a mirror like a window shade or window shutter, open, and on the other side it sees Jesus; and faith goes out of all of this concern about me, and it goes out and it is satisfied forever with Jesus.”
(John Piper at Resurgence 2004 Conference. ‘The Whole Glory of the Gospel of God: From Him, Through Him, and to Him, Part 1’).
(Luke 13:20-21; also: Matthew 13:33) And again he said, “To what shall I compare the kingdom of God? It is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, until it was all leavened.”
Jesus uses the example of leaven again, but now in the positive sense. The leaven of the gospel brings the Kingdom of God. Leaven in this case can refer to good teaching, but I think it is important to see that having the right spirit, the right heart and the right relationship with God is much more important. I have long felt that Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity suffers from poor theology and a lack of historical understanding, yet they are being blessed by God. On the other hand, churches with sound theology or a strong sense of historical precedence are hamstrung by being theologically right or standing in the traditions of spiritual giants but with very little of the Holy Spirit. I would rather hang out with theological goofballs who know God up close.
More than anything else, the gospel is a re-direction of our attention from the things of this world to the things of God's world, heaven. A few weeks ago Pastor Bo showed a Bill Johnson video. If you recall he was telling of praying for his son Eric who was sick with a fever. Their prayers were not working, so he and Benny decided to worship, knowing that this can bring healing. Right in the middle of worship, Johnson says, God stopped him to say he was trying to twist God's arm for healing (I am paraphrasing). In other words, Johnson was worshiping God, but his real attention was on the problem he wanted solved. When God brought him up short, he apologized to God, and he put his full attention on heaven. When he did, the problem here on earth was solved.
I think we are often guilty of running from Sodom, but looking back all the time. We pray to God, but our mind is on the things of this world. Spending time in the presence of God before the issues of the day consume our attention is the best inoculation against being overwhelmed by the cares of this world.
(Hebrews 10:19-25) Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.
To quote the title of a recent book, Heaven Is For Real. We spend time with other Christians so that hopefully we are being reminded of God's goodness and keep praising. The more we look to God, the less tightly we cling to the things which do not profit, whether that is money or it is concern over things that we have no control over. I have found in my own life that the more I interface with God, I enjoy His presence and lay my issues before Him, I see His love for me manifested. My favorite term for this is the dance. I am dancing with God. The more I dance with God, the more I am confident that the issues of life are solvable in Him.
“May your relationship with Him be your bread, and may His life in you become manna to many.” (Mark Chironna, 2013. Page 227).