The Prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee (Matthew 21:11)

            What a bazaar Man!  Who in their right mind would go from being accepted by the entire city and its leadership straight into the epicenter of the city’s fame and start tipping over furniture, ranting about His Father’s house and then stop at the sight of lame and blind men and heal them?  Only Jesus.  Who else could do all of this in righteousness of word and motivation?  Only Jesus.  Only He would accept the praise of children and reject the recognition of religious leaders and demons.  Only Jesus would do things the way He did them.  Only He is wise enough to do these things.  Only this Man could walk in the foolishness of God, destroying the wisdom of the world in His body through love.

            Here is the scene.  Jesus rides in on a donkey to fulfill Zechariah’s prophecies concerning Him, is accepted by the people with shouts appropriate only for the Messiah, and when the uninformed citizens ask about Him, the crowds respond that He is “the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee”.  Immediately after these things are declared, Jesus throws a wrench into their concept of the Messiah, of prophets and of who He is by going into the Temple and manifesting the “tornado anointing”.  Then He stops in the middle of His controlled rage and heals blind and lame folks.  When the children declare Him to be “the Son of David” and ask for deliverance – “hosanna” – He does not stop them even when the religious leaders want Him to.  Yeah, He doesn’t operate like us.

            When Jesus inferred that He is a prophet, He said that prophets are rejected in their home towns (Matthew 13:57).  When the crowds called Him a prophet His immediate actions directly after is to go and do one of the most offensive things He did while living on earth – offensive to those who don’t know Him, that is.  He is not worried about His reputation, His Word is far more important to Him than His Name (Psalm 138:2).  He cares more about righteousness in His Father’s house than He is concerned with the fulfilling of the false perceptions that people have of Him.  When they thought He came to bring peace, He assures them that He comes with the sword.  He’s not like us.

            Though the people called Him “the Prophet”, it would be just as accurate to call Him “the Prophecy”.  Like any good prophetic voice, messenger or teacher, Jesus didn’t just prophesy, He lived His words – He was the Word made flesh.  His every action was a prophetic declaration.  Like the Old Covenant prophets, laying on their sides for months, building models of Jerusalem, marrying a harlot, not weeping at the death of a wife and any other unusual demonstration of the Word of the Lord Jesus was a prophetic word.  Jesus was not a time waster; He only did that which He saw the Father doing.  So when the people called Him a prophet, the Father’s response was to show up in the Temple and purify the worship therein.  Obviously Jesus is not a big fan of distractions from Abba.

            In addition to His actions, His words are very prophetic.  All of the Scriptures are from God, but when the Messiah, the Prophet of prophets, the Son of the Living God says something, we ought to pay particular attention.  This is not to say that the red letters are more inspired, but I think they carry a little more weight.  It would be a wise and worthwhile endeavor to sit down with just the red letters and read them all straight through in one sitting.  He has a lot of good things to say, or so I have heard.  Instead of getting excited to hear a preacher or a prophet at a service, we have a greater opportunity, to read and listen to the Word Himself speak truth into us.  He is our most sure Word.

*Prophet of prophets, would You speak Your Word into us and make us a manifestation of Your Word?  We need desperately to be like You and unoffended by You.  Amen*

He who comes in the Name of the LORD (Matthew 21:9)

            One fundamental understanding that we must gain concerning the nature and character of God is that He comes.  He is not the prey, He is the predator.  He is not the object of pursuit, He is the Pursuer.  We only love Him because He first loved us.  If we get so self-focused as to think that we dictate our relationship with Him, we have drifted into a sad valley that leads to disappointment and further disillusionment.  He is the Ultimate Initiator, not us.  The ball is in our court from the time we are born, but that is because He already served the ball and has frozen the ball in front of us until we realize we are playing with Him.  He not only originates, He sustains and maintains all things.

            In Eden’s Garden, when Adam, the man and the woman, had eaten of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil it isn’t long before they hear the sound of the Lord walking in the Garden during their normal walking time, the cool of the day.  The Lord was on time for their date, they were not.  Realize that He was already aware of what was happening, He was coming to deal with the problem.  When Adam sinned, He came.  When we sin, He comes.  When we sin tomorrow, next week, next month, next year and every other time until the Second Coming, He will come.  That is who He is.  He is not threatened by our sin, neither is He surprised by it.  He is also not absent-minded as though He forgot where He put Adam and was trying to find Him.  He knew.

            One concept that is circulating about the Bible, which I enjoy, is that if you take the first three chapters of Genesis and the last three chapters of the Revelation, you get a full story.  Granted, there are some incredible details, and certainly we could not throw out the chapters of the Scriptures in between, but boiling things down is helpful.  The first time words, places or names show up in the Scriptures is normally significant – so also are the last times these things appear.  So what is the very first question asked by God in the Bible?  In Genesis 3:9 we read God’s first recorded question: “Where are you?”

            If we skip ahead to the next-to-last verse of the entire Bible we see something that may fascinate you as much as it fascinates me.  It seems that we can take God’s first question and last statement and put them together and find a part of His heart that we may not have seen before.  The final statement of our Lord is this, “I am coming quickly.”  When God asks where we are, when we have fallen short of His glory, He does not wait for us to tell Him what He already knows, He comes.  He doesn’t just come, He comes quickly.  He is not reactionary, we is preemptive.  The Lord of glory was crucified from the foundations of the world.  Before the atoms existed in the whips that tore His flesh, He had the scourge-marks.  Before nails had been invented, He had holes in His hands and feet.  Before the first Adam was made, archangels bowed before the Last Adam.

            It doesn’t matter where we are, He is coming.  It doesn’t matter if we are afraid that He is coming or if we are excited about His return, He is coming.  Neither our belief in nor our understanding of His coming are prerequisites for His ability or desire to come.  He does what He pleases (Psalm 115:3), He is right to do so because He is greater than all things and knows all things and, out of love for His creation, died for all things.  He comes.  He comes with blessings and rewards, with power over death and judgment in hand.  He comes with love for people and hate for evil.  He comes as only He can.  He comes by the authority of His own Name and when He does, the wise will receive Him.

*Coming One, grant that we would feel You coming, not just hear about it.  Amen*

The King of the daughters of Zion (Matthew 21:5)

            Realize that if you read this verse in Matthew 21, the actual Name is “your King”.  But for the sake of understanding, I’ve rearranged and inserted parts to arrive this Name.  Though this isn’t as literal, it may help us see the love the King has for His people.

            In order to be in Christ we must be born from above, that is, to change citizenship to a City that will come from the Father – the New Jerusalem, Zion.  We who are in Christ, who have been born again of the Spirit into the New Creation Race, are the daughters of Zion.  We are sons of God, but daughters of the Great City.  We are also the Bride of Christ, but that is all another discussion for another day.  We have a King in our city, this is not a Divine democracy – this is a Theocracy.  Our King is not like any other man; He leads like no one we have ever encountered.  He is committed to His people.

            It is a privilege to eat of the Tree of Life.  King Jesus offers this gift to those who overcome in Ephesus.  The true Tree of Life is the Cross.  It was not until after He was resurrected that He breathed on His disciples and they received the Spirit.  That wind, that atmosphere-shifting wind, was given to those who become citizens of Heaven.  These citizens carry the character of their citizenship, you can tell where some people are from by their actions, others by their accents and others by their personality and mannerisms.  It is the same with the daughters of Zion, the world will know us by our love.  They will know us by love because our King is Love, we will be like Him.

            The other attributes of the atmosphere of Zion are the rest of the fruit of the Spirit.  As the wind of the Spirit blows through the City, there is a tangible Presence left their of the Spirit.  As we walk in the Light of Zion, we bring this Presence with us.  The air of Zion is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  These are attributes of the City because they are profound characteristics of the City’s King.  He is loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle and fully in control of Himself.  We could study, meditate on and increase in these all our lives.

            As we manifest these characteristics of the Kingdom, we and those around us can eat the fruit of the Spirit of the King of Zion.  Then we will taste and see that the Lord is not just good, but all the other 8 Kingdom qualities.  It is not hard to be who you are, it is, however, sometimes very difficult to cease being who you’ve been.  It is much easier to be patient, but the hard part is to stop being impatient.  This is because impatience has become a foothold or stronghold within us.  One of the aches of the transformation into the Image of Christ comes from both resisting the sins we have given ourselves over to and removing the strongholds from our hearts.  This is difficult because we have been slaves to sin.  Those who come out of prison after a long sentence don’t usually have an easy time adjusting to freedom because they don’t know how to function in it, they are so used to bondage that they soon wind up in prison again.  We have a new King now.

            The great thing about our King is that He is patient with us as we shake the dust off and walk in His peace.  He is kind to us as He gently points out and deals with the areas of woundedness and old-dominion slave mentality.  He is faithful to finish the work He started when He rose from the grave to give us new life.  It was for the joy that was set before Him that He lovingly endured the Cross, inaugurating the coming of His Kingdom to earth in which He will rule through His Body.  Behold your King, daughters of Zion, meek and humble, riding on a donkey the first time, but a white horse the next.

*We bow before You, King of Zion, for You alone love us faithfully, perfectly.  Amen*

He who created them from the beginning (Matthew 19:4)

            Like all good stories, or all stories for that matter, what we know to exist had a beginning.  There was a point when rocks did not exist and then lo and behold, rocks came into being.  Forget the debating about evolution versus creationism, which one is more epic?  Which one is so obnoxiously outrageous that it has to be true?  One of the big problems with growing up is we think we become better just by the very nature of having existed longer.  This is simply not true, apart from the grace of God man is more like milk than wine as it ages.  The painful reality is that we spoil and go sour; we don’t get more potent and priceless under the right conditions.  This is why Jesus said that unless we become like a little child we will not enter Kingdom-life.  Kids enjoy life.  Adults walk around like they can count to infinity.  Kids aren’t humble, they’re free.

            As we get older we think that we are becoming more “logical”, but it isn’t true.  The word “logic” comes from the Greek word “logos”, which John the Beloved Revelator used at the beginning of his gospel account to describe the Lord Jesus Christ to the philosophers of His time.  Being “logical” means being more lined up with the logos and Jesus, the Word made flesh valued child-likeness.  Imagination loses out when we come up against tribulation.  Instead of turning our children into creative imaginators, we have given them “reality checks” and shut them down, making them into frustrated imitations of our boring selves.  Generations don’t build on each other because they put limits on the following generation to their own experience, which was also limited.

            Taking the mind of a child salvation is amazing.  There is a really big, strong Guy who made everything.  He and His two best Friends thought through all the details – how bark would smell, why oranges always squirt you when you bite them, how a caterpillar walks, how tickles work and why sneezes sometimes hurt and sometimes make your nose buzz.  So this Guy is the greatest Guy ever, He even made people so that He could hang out with them and show them wacky things.  But the first two people that He made didn’t listen to His warnings about one tree that had dangerous fruit, and they ate the poisonous fruit.  Then for a long time the Great Guy was trying to keep the first Couple and their family from dying from the poison of the fruit.  He tried a bunch of different ways.

            After many years, too many to count, the Great Guy sent one of His best Friends to help the people not die.  His Friend was also His Son, they were really good friends.  They knew that the only way to keep the first Couple’s family from dying is if the Great Son died.  But the only people that would not die if the Great Son died for them were those who believed the friends of the Great Son when the friends told them that the Great Son came back to life and wants to meet them.  If they would believe the friends, the Great Son would meet them and give them fruit from another tree that would keep them alive forever.  The Third Friend of the Great Guy and His Great Son was a Great friendly Ghost, and after the Great Son came alive again He went back to the Great Guy’s house in a far-away land and sent the Great friendly Ghost back to live inside the friends of the Great Son.  The Great friendly Ghost would show the friends how to live like the Great Son and eat of the Second Tree until the Great Son and His Great Father came back.

            The End.

            The Gospel is simple.  It only gets complicated when we force it to grow up like us instead of allowing it to be eternally Good News of friendship with the Great Guys.

*Hey Great Guys, we miss You three.  Come back so we can all eat good fruit.  Amen*

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As a student at MorningStar School of Ministry, I have a full schedule. I have class four days a week, I am involved in the church ministry and am part of the “Special Forces” division of the school which trains the students in living more practical and radical lives in the Kingdom. In addition to these time requirements, I have ministry assignments, reading and writing assignments, there are four services per week at the church/ministry center and I must keep my heart before the Lord in love for Him. In the time still available I squeeze in my writing for this blog, which I am very dedicated to and enjoy desperately. This leaves very little time to work. If you would like to make a donation to help support me, click here.

Thank you very much for your prayerful support.

Vince

The God of Israel (Matthew 15:31)

            Context.  Context.  Context.  Life is linear and unbroken.  You cannot be who you are without having been who you used to be and I cannot be who I am without you being who you’ve been.  It would be very encouraging for some people to see what life would be like for those around them if they had never existed – for others it would be a shocking reality check.  We must see ourselves as a part of familial heritage, national history and global position or else we will repeat the follies of our ancestors.  Beyond the avoidance of inheriting folly due to ignorance, we want to know who we are, where we are going, what is in us and what we are capable of – these things come through connection to our heritage.  Spiritually, we must be aware of the rock from which we have been hewn.

            The Lord doesn’t play favorites, but He does have them.  The fact of the Incarnation necessitates that He choose one over another.  He chose the inner circle of three over the other nine disciples, who He chose over the other hundreds of followers, who were chosen above the rest of the nation of Israel, God’s favorite nation on God’s favorite planet in His favorite galaxy in His favorite universe.  As far as the Incarnation of God goes, He chose to be born from the descendants of Abraham, but Abraham had three sons – He chose Isaac.  Isaac had more than one son, God chose Jacob.  Jacob had many sons, God chose Judah.  Judah had sons who had sons who had sons, and if you read Matthew 1 or Luke 3 you can trace the Messianic lineage.  This all boils down and you realize that He didn’t chose Ishmael, Keturah, Esau, Reuben, Levi, Naphtali or Gad.

            So God chooses some over others.  He didn’t choose Egypt or Babylon or Assyria or Edom or Italy.  He chose Israel.  He is the same yesterday, today and forever.  He was, is and always will be “the God of Israel”.  That means that today, if you want to worship the God of the Bible, Jehovah, the Creator, then we must worship Israel’s God.  In order to worship Him in Spirit and in Truth, we must know the God of Matthew through Revelation in relationship to Genesis through Malachi.  The God of Acts is the biggest fan of the book of Leviticus ever.  Christianity is not a separate religion from Judaism, it is the fulfillment of Judaism’s hopes and prophesies.  We cannot divorce the Covenants.

            True faith in Jesus without the Old Testament is anemic.  Anemia is a medical condition basically having to do with the lack of vitality that comes from deficiency in blood.  Not only does mono-testimental faith lack depth, but one cannot fully understand the faith expressed by the apostles if it is not in the context of the Old Covenant with Israel.  God is absolutely committed to Israel.  The turning of the nation of Israel is one of the signs that the Lord is returning to the planet.  If you try to replace them, you have missed part of God’s heart for restoration and misunderstand His dedicated faithfulness.

            Whereas Paul mostly wrote to churches and people that he had personal contact with, when he wrote to Rome he was addressing people he didn’t know because of serious error that had to be corrected.  Over night, the leadership of the Roman church went from Jewish to Gentile.  Throughout his letter, Paul confronts both sides’ desires to oppress the other.  He tells the Gentiles not to forget that the Messiah came from Israel, but in the next breath he rebukes Jews for forgetting that only through the fullness of the Gentiles will Israel return to the Lord.  Neither Jew nor Gentile can fulfill their destiny alone.  These two brothers must unite under the God of the limping wrestler, Israel.

*God of Israel, grant the powers of the age to come to adopted olive branches that will faithfully bring the Kingdom and draw Your people back to Your Son.  Amen*

The carpenter’s “son” (Matthew 13:55)

            Familiarity breeds limiting judgments.  One of the hardest things about living in the Kingdom while living on the yet-to-be-redeemed earth is that we don’t always see each other as kings and queens of the Age to Come because we see one another too often.  We forget to relate to others as ones of whom the world is not worthy because we see the things that religion tells us are disqualifications that make us unworthy.  When Jesus revisits Nazareth, though He astonished the synagogue-goers with His depth of insight, they thought they knew Him and wrote Him off as just “the carpenter’s son”.

            This was not just an error of missing what was in front of them they were also making a jab at the questionable nature of His birth.  They knew the stories of His mother’s “immaculate conception” and more likely than not assumed that this was a lie invented to cover her immoral sexual immorality.  Just like David was not considered one of Jesse’s sons when the prophet came looking for the king from the house of Jesse, the Son of David was assumed to be the product of an immoral relationship, covered up by a tale of angels and supernatural dreams and “God-ordained” moves to foreign lands – conveniently timed so that people would not remember the rumors upon their return.

            So when Jesus tried to teach, the only thing people were able to concentrate on was trying to remember what the exact circumstances were around his familial origins.  Their familiarity with Jesus limited them in their ability to receive from Him.  They had no idea who He really was, though.  John, Jesus cousin, was preaching once and he said “there is someone among you who you do not know” – speaking of Jesus, whom they did not really know was royalty.  Jesus stood among them and they didn’t recognize Him.

The unfortunate truth is that we still relate to Jesus in an unworthy manor.  We do not see Him rightly; we do not discern His body correctly.  This is cause for many of us being sick and many die in their faith and their bodies.  If we truly did see Him as He is, we would be transformed into His likeness and would then move in the same power and victory.  Imagine what your day would look like if you didn’t just know intellectually that Jesus is King, but you woke up and saw Him standing at the foot of your bed, crowned.  Life changes when we have the right perspective of reality, ourselves and others.

When we see each other in the Light of the Kingdom, we see them as they will be rather than how they have been.  It isn’t hard to be who you really are, it is, however, hard to stop being who you’ve been.  No one is a big fan of their past, nearly everyone is trying to escape their past at least a little, yet when we relate to others we look through “past-colored glasses”.  Imagine what it would be like if church was a safe place, where you are related to according to your destiny.  What if in our education system we spoke life into our children, recorded the words of past years in their permanent records and past on these insights to the teachers of future years?  What if at graduation from high school a student was handed a diploma and 13 years worth of prophetic declarations?

We must relate to Jesus and His brethren according to the Spirit in order to walk in the fullness of our callings individually and corporately.  Solomon saw that the Lord had placed eternity in our hearts in the book of Ecclesiastes, the concept of eternity in the Hebrew Scriptures is that of a horizon vanishing point – the point beyond which you can see.  If we see the eternal vanishing point in others, beyond what we can yet see, we can call it forth and assist one another in manifesting our destiny in the earth.

*Misunderstood step-Son of a carpenter, Thy Kingdom come on earth and in us.  Amen*

Someone greater than Jonah (Matthew 12:41)

The Prophet Jonah was obviously a great preacher. Nineveh took a whole day for Jonah to walk through and preach the immanent judgment of the Lord, and after only one walk-through the whole city turns and repents. The marvelous thing about this is that Jonah didn’t even want Nineveh to turn, that is why he delayed and went on His sea voyage. But the sign of Jonah that Jesus says would be given to His generation was not great preaching, it wasn’t even apostolic-power or prophetic evangelism that turns whole cities. Those are good things, and a generation is arising that will do those things by the power of the Holy Spirit. But the sign of Jonah is the resurrection from the dead.

If you grew up in Sunday school with flannel graph boards, you have undoubtedly seen this story told as Jonah being thrown overboard into the sea. The typical understanding of this event is that the great fish was waiting right there for Jonah and Jonah probably never got wet but went right into the belly of the great fish. You may have also seen a flannel graph picture of Jonah just standing around in the fish’s belly, walking around, pacing because he was distressed about his predicament. That was not the case. If you read the book of Jonah, he writes a song to the Lord from Sheol, the place of the dead. If you don’t believe that he died, look at what Jonah says happened to him. He says that the waters passed over him and engulfed him, meaning that he went into the water. He said that the waters encompassed him so much that he was to the point of death, but that could mean that he almost died – unless you keep reading Jonah 2.

Jonah says that “weeds were wrapped around my head”. Sea weed does hang out toward the top of the water when you are close to shore, but Jonah had been dumped out in the middle of the sea where the rowers could not get the boat back to land. The sea weed that wrapped up his head was almost certainly on the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea and it would be a far stretch to believe that he did not die. He goes on to say that God brought his life up from the pit, where the bars of the earth were over him “forever”. The word “forever” used in Jonah 2:6 is the same that Solomon uses in Ecclesiastes when he says that God has “set eternity in our hearts”. It means the vanishing point of existence, it means eternal spiritual reality after death. Jonah was saying that he was locked in the eternal state of death, in Sheol where Jesus would one day bring the captives out on His way to the Father. Jonah was dead, ladies and gentlemen – D-E-A-D.

The sign of Jonah was that he was alive though he was dead for three days. This was the sign that Jesus said His generation would receive. Jesus also said that Nineveh will one day stand up against His generation as a sign of judgment because they turned at this sign and His generation did not. They turned at the preaching of Jonah, but what was Jonah’s sign except that his God raises the dead? So Jesus informs the scholars and the religious leaders that there is Someone greater than Jonah among them. Jesus is not just One who would be raised from the dead after three days, He is the resurrection. It is He who deals out eternal life. It is He who is able to lay down His life and pick it back up again. He is the first fruits offering of a new creation race whose words carry weight because they carry around the dying of Christ within themselves daily so that the resurrection life of Lord may be released. Oh, He truly is greater. Only He could have gone down to Sheol and released those captives and then presented Himself as the wave offering before the Father as proof of His resurrection. Only He could do what He did.

*Sign of Jonah, revive these dry bones that a resurrection army may come forth. Amen*

My Beloved Son in whom my soul is well pleased (Matthew 12:18)

            Order is important.  Matthew gives a prophetic commentary of the events that he was recoding in Matthew 12:17-21, saying that what happened in verse 15 was a fulfillment of what King David prophesied in Psalm 2 and Isaiah prophesied in Isaiah 42.  But the important thing to observe in the way Matthew presents it is that the delight of the Father precedes the empowerment of the Spirit.  In order to be most effective in our ministries and lives we must first have an encounter with the delight of the Father.

            It was at Jesus’ baptism that we hear the Father roar from Heaven and declare His delight over the Son.  The striking timing of this declaration is astounding because Jesus had not yet done any miracles, He had not yet overcome the temptations of the enemy in the desert and He had not yet endured the Gethsemane garden warfare.  The Father’s delight rested on the Son completely apart from His proving of His character or the displaying of His power.  This is a vital understanding for all who are called to move in the power of the Holy Spirit, because the gifts and callings of the Lord are irrevocable and we can move in power without the revelation of His delight.  This must be avoided because power devoid of intimacy will breed identity in ministry in place of relationship.

            Our identity must be primarily found and connected to our friendship with the Son of God, the Father of Creation and the Spirit of the Lord.  If we stray into finding our identity elsewhere we begin to build our lives on foundations other than the Lord Jesus.  This is a dangerous error that will lead to unfruitfulness, delusion and confusion.  You are not a tool primarily, you are a jewel.  There is no one like you.  When you worship, even if you sing poorly, you are singing with your voice and you are singing what you are singing at that time – you are creating a unique sound that God has never heard before and He enjoys that.  You are not just a link in the genealogical chain of humanity, you were crafted and designed by the most detail-oriented Man ever to walk the earth.

            Back to Jesus.  When the Father declared His great pleasure over His Son, He said that His own soul was well pleased in Him.  The Father’s mind, will and emotions were invested in His Son and found pleasure therein.  As the Father thought and evaluated the Son, pondering His ways, His actions, His words and thoughts, He was astounded by the righteousness and purity that permeated His character.  As the Father considered His own will, His desires in the earth and all that He had planned for humanity, the overwhelming answer was His Son because the Son forsook His own will for the will of His Father, He valued the plans of God above the pleasures of man – though the plans of God many times grant pleasure to man.  And as the Father’s heart turned toward the Son there was nothing but jubilant dancing, speechless affection and robust respect.  His soul was full.

            There are realities in the Kingdom that, when understood and immersed in faith, make many other things far easier.  One such reality is the emotional nature of God.  He has emotions, deep and profound emotions that would cause human hearts to implode if they came in contact.  The emotions connected to a believer are dumb-founding, if only a cursory observation is present, but these emotions are echoes off the inner courts of the Heavenly Tabernacle.  The emotions that escape the Godhead are what we catch when we are floored for hours, but the encounter to be coveted is that of being in the room as the Father, Son and Spirit express their love for One another.  We need Their love.

*Pleasurable Trinity, open up Your love to us that we may share Your love.  Amen*

The Lord of the Sabbath (Matthew 12:8)

            Because most people do not keep the Sabbath, it is hard to relate to the fourth commandment and therefore very difficult to relate to the Lord of the Sabbath.  At Sinai, the Lord said to remember the Sabbath – the “keeping” of the Sabbath is not a matter of doing and not doing, it is a matter of remembrance.  So what is being remembered?  We remember the seventh day of creation.  After creating all things in 6 days, the Omnipotent Creator rested.  He was not tired, but He rested.  Creating didn’t tucker old Jesus out, He wanted to enjoy what He had done.  Likewise He encourages us, through the prophet Isaiah, to make the Sabbath a day not of our own pleasures but of delighting in Him as we remember His day of resting.  But how are we to remember a day that we were not at?

            It does seem slightly ludicrous to ask someone to remember something they never experienced.  But that is part of the purpose of the Sabbath, meditating on that which we do not know in order to go where we have not been.  There are places in the Heavenlies, rooms and realms, which we have access to but have never gone to because we did not know we were allowed to go.  In meditating on the day of rest, we come to experience the very Sabbath rest that still remains for us (Hebrews 4).  We experience what we think on.

As we set our minds on things above, we have to let our logical minds take a break and allow our imagination to run around a bit.  Many people do not like the idea of letting our imagination in on our relationship with the Lord, but Paul said that we throw down “vain imaginations that exalt themselves against the knowledge of God”.  First, it is the vain imaginations, those things that are of our selves which are less than “all we could ever ask or imagine”.  Secondly, if we are meditating on Him and what He does and did, our greatest imaginations will not be exalted against the knowledge of God.  He is better.

When we consider the seventh day, we are trying to answer the question “What does God do on His day off?”  He is not just the one who invented resting and the Sabbath, He is the Lord of the Sabbath.  He is the One who knows how to really do Sabbath right.  He is the King of chilling, the Duke of relaxing, the Emperor of enjoyment.  When we see Him rightly we will also see that He is not a God of laws, regulations and “don’ts”.  The Pharisees were so focused on the letter of the law, which kills that they missed the whole point of the Sabbath – to enjoy God.  When the Jews would punish someone, they would whip them 39 times.  Ironically, the Talmud teaches that there are 39 sorts of “work” that you cannot do on the Sabbath to keep it holy.

The real issue is that you cannot make the Sabbath holy, or even in your own ability keep the Sabbath holy.  God made it holy, it will remain holy.  The question is whether or not we will keep it holy within our own hearts, will we honor the Almighty’s request that we enjoy Him and allow Him to enjoy us?  Before you think about trying to keep the Sabbath or any other of the 613 laws in the Torah, realize what Paul explained to one of his churches.  He said that if we bind ourselves to one law, we bind ourselves to the whole law.  And if we are responsible for the whole law, if we break just one of the 613 laws, then we have broken all 613 because the Law is a whole, not many parts.  Our God knows what we need before we even ask Him for it, He knew from the very beginning that we needed to learn how to slow down and enjoy Him.  He is not asking us to follow rules, but to rule the earth for 6 days and then hang out for one with Him.

*Lord of the Sabbath, grant us grace to stop and remember what You have done.  Amen*