And a lawyer stood up and put Him to the test, saying,
"Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" And He said to
him, "What is written in the Law? How does it read to you?" And he
answered, "YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH
ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND; AND YOUR
NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF." And He said to him, "You have answered
correctly; DO THIS AND YOU WILL LIVE." But wishing to justify himself, he
said to Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" Jesus replied and said,
"A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among robbers,
and they stripped him and beat him, and went away leaving him half dead.
"And by chance a priest was going down on that road, and when he saw him,
he passed by on the other side. "Likewise a Levite also, when he came to
the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. "But a Samaritan, who
was on a journey, came upon him; and when he saw him, he felt compassion, and
came to him and bandaged up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them; and he
put him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn and took care of him.
"On the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper
and said, 'Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I return I will
repay you.' "Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to
the man who fell into the robbers' hands?" And he said, "The one who
showed mercy toward him." Then Jesus said to him, "Go and do the
same."
(Luke 10:25-37)
We have
been speaking at great length about our destiny. The whole point of the atonement of Yeshua on
the execution stake, what is commonly called the cross, was to restore that
which was lost, our destiny as sons and daughters of God.
When we
look at this conversation, first we see the legitimate question about the
inheritance. Yeshua answers the lawyer,
the legalist, with a question. The
question is a reference to Torah. This
is evidence that the Torah contained the keys to eternal life all along. The lawyer answers that the key is to Love,
to Love God first and to love others.
Now notice the key is in the heart, NOT in the mind. The heart comes first, not the knowledge of
the mind.
Then the
Lord affirms that this is the truth, Love is the key that opens up eternity
into our lives and unlocks our destiny.
This love has to include loving our neighbor.
The
lawyer then determined to live out of his head instead of opening up his
heart. He asks the question “who
is my neighbor?”.
This is the crux of the matter.
He is asking from the perspective of law. Yeshua discerning the heart responds by
teaching him the heart of being the neighbor.
This is because the command is to love the neighbor as we love ourselves
and we cannot love the neighbor without becoming a neighbor.
At the
center of this is the question of religion.
You see there are priests and Levites.
These are the worshippers of God, they are the ones who attend the
meetings. They are the ones who have the
commandments, the oracles of God. They “knew”
the Word to love their neighbor. Yet
what they lacked was “being” a neighbor. They had a form of godliness but not the
power thereof. This is us. We are the priests and the Levites.
The Samaritan,
felt. He felt the compassion
of the Lord. He had love inside his
heart and poured out of that place. He
was the neighbor loving his neighbor outside the church on the road with the
oil and the wine, the power of God and His Love and the provision. Now, we could even go deeper into this, but
for today, I just want to ask the question, why? What did he have that the others didn’t
and why? Now, we know the answer is love
and mercy, but why not the others?
More
importantly, what does this say about us and eternal life. I think to begin to answer these questions we
look under the surface to what inhibits us from being ourselves and allowing
freedom to direct our hearts in love?? I
believe it all has to do with our image, how we see ourselves in that seeing
how we see life. TURN WITH ME TO GEN
1:26-28
Then
God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them
have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and
over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that
creeps on the earth." So God created man in his own image, in the image of
God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And
God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue
it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens
and over every living thing that moves on the earth." (Genesis 1:26-28)
We are created in an image. Our image is the expressed image of
our Father. Our image includes
fruitfulness and dominion, to rule as the ambassadors of the King.
Let’s look a little further into this:
TURN TO GENESIS, CHAPTER 2, VERSE 18-25
Then the LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be
alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him." Out of the ground the
LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought
them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a
living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the cattle, and
to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there
was not found a helper suitable for him. So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to
fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the
flesh at that place. The LORD God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had
taken from the man, and brought her to the man. The man said, "This is now
bone of my bones, And flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, Because she
was taken out of Man." For this reason a man shall leave his father and
his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh. And the
man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. (Genesis 2:18-25)
First, we see the declaration that man is not by design made for
isolation. Man is created for fellowship
and communion. Remember this is the
image and likeness of God that is created not to be alone.
Look at the power. Adam
named every animal and named woman.
BUT, here is the big key to eternal life and destiny: they were naked and unashamed. There was no self-consciousness, as we know
it about our differences being something to cover up. There was an openness to one’s
nature as a created God-image bearer.
Shame causes us to lose this freedom of being.
In the next chapter we read of the fall from this image, from the
loss of identity and destiny.
Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field
which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, "Indeed, has God
said, 'You shall not eat from any tree of the garden'?" The woman said to
the serpent, "From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but
from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said,
'You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.'" The serpent
said to the woman, "You surely will not die! "For God knows that in
the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God,
knowing good and evil." When the woman saw that the tree was good for
food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to
make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her
husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and
they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made
themselves loin coverings. (Genesis 3:1-7)
This is the story of how we became chidden of a lesser god whose
name is shame. It begins with hearing
another voice. The purpose of this voice
is to bring about fear and shame. He
does this by simply getting us to engage with him, be tempted to violate the
trust we have in our Father and act on that mistrust. The result is we become aware of our
differences from each other and become afraid of those differences. We sew fig leaves to cover ourselves and hide
from God and man. The ones who we
created to for love and intimacy become chameleons, lizards who want to blend
in and disappear. We cannot be the
Samaritan in the story because, we fear exposure and death. LET’s
CONTINUE:
They heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in
the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence
of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. Then the LORD God called to the
man, and said to him, "Where are you?" He said, "I heard the
sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid
myself." And He said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you
eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?" The man said,
"The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I
ate." Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have
done?" And the woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."
(Genesis 3:8-13)
Shame has taken possession of God’s beloved children. First and foremost shame causes us to avoid
the Presence and Voice of the Lord. Oh,
we will go to church, as truly chosen levites and priests but we don’t
enter in. We hold back and hide in our
shame. Or we don’t even
come because shame causes us so much fear that even this closeness to God is
scary.
You see God hasn’t lost Adam. He isn’t asking a positional question. He is asking a relational question. It isn't Adam’s physical location that God is
questioning. No it is his heart. Shame causes us to hide our hearts from God
and from each other.
The reason is the feeling of being naked. Now naked again isn’t just
our fear of being undressed but what is behind that our fear of being
ourselves. You see what was lost was our
identity, that unique quality that is only in me, or you. The bible calls this glory. What was lost was the glory. God’s glory is His uniqueness. There is only one God. Now, we take that as a positional
statement. There is only one God, like
the idea of many gods is wrong. That is called pantheism. But that’s actually true, pantheism. There are many gods, little “g”. Mammon is a little god. Fear is for many of
us a god. SO, pantheism from a
positional reality is actually true. But
there is only one God, the creator of heaven and earth. This is a relational reality. Shame keeps us hidden from that reality and
we create little gods as fast as we need them.
The result of this is we lose the Glory, the true identity of God and
what should be the place of God in our lives becomes the habitation of many
gods, none of which have the true Glory, or identity of God with all that this
means.
In the same way, shame has caused us to lose our identity, our
uniqueness and actually fear ourselves.
We run around hiding who we are and putting on masks which are designed
to make us blend in. So like Adam we are
in hiding and it because of this question:
“Who told you that you were naked?” You see it wasn't that the fruit was the source
of shame but the voices that tell us that we are naked and that we shouldn't
be. The Hebrew word for naked “arum”
means to seen for who we are. To have
the glory that is our unique identity as a child of the One True God, the one
who is light and love be expressed in the earth. Now, why am I talking about this? This is an attack on love and love growing
cold is the enemy’s tactic in this hour. Look at Isaiah 54 with me:
"Shout for joy, O barren one, you who have borne no
child; Break forth into joyful shouting and cry aloud, you who have not
travailed; For the sons of the desolate one will be more numerous Than the sons
of the married woman," says the LORD. "Enlarge the place of your
tent; Stretch out the curtains of your dwellings, spare not; Lengthen your
cords And strengthen your pegs. "For you will spread abroad to the right
and to the left. And your descendants will possess nations And will resettle
the desolate cities. "Fear not, for you will not be put to shame; And do
not feel humiliated, for you will not be disgraced; But you will forget the
shame of your youth, And the reproach of your widowhood you will remember no
more. (Isa 54:1-4)
You see our destiny as a ministry, as a people, and as
individuals is connected to the removal of shame and fear. We cannot inherit our prophetic promise if we
do not allow Him to remove our shame. He
says we will forget it. We will walk in
our inheritance when shame stops stopping us from living the Gospel.
Altar call for repenting of false identity, hiding and wanting to
stay safe.
Next time, we will look at how to access fully and on purpose our
righteousness in Messiah.
This weeks offering teaching: Kingdom of God vs Kingdom of Worry
One New Man ministry is committed to causes of healing the sick, setting the captives free, binding up the broken hearted and bringing the good news of the Kingdom of God. Please partner with us.
You generous donations are appreciated.
For additional study about abiding in His love in the times we live in, obtain and read the book "Love versus Law, or BOTH!" by David Mitts.
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