The guest of a man who is a sinner (Luke 19:7)

            Unlike most of humanity – religious, Christian of otherwise – Jesus is unoffendable.  He is unaffected by our righteousness or lack thereof.  He has already paid the price for our salvation, we are the reward of His suffering, all He is concerned about now is claiming and fellowshipping with His Bride.  The religious leaders and the disciples were surprised that the Lord would associate with wicked people; we are astounded sometimes that the Lord would move through someone that has theological issues or even integrity and character flaws.  However, the Lord is not like us in this.

            In Luke 19, Jesus was called “the guest”, He was invited to fellowship with this man who was a sinner.  What this shows us about Jesus’ personality is that He was not hard for sinners to feel comfortable around.  That is the major difference between Real Jesus and the religion that tries to attach itself to His glorious Name, sinners like to be around Him and are repelled by religion.  We can fairly well judge our evangelistic efforts or our lifestyles of bringing sinners to the King of Forgiveness by the litmus test of whether or not sinners feel judged and uncomfortable around us.  When Jesus is exalted, all men are drawn unto Him.  That is just the inevitable result of His Presence.

            One night recently, two friends of mine and I went out to get a late night burger and just hang out to talk about life.  Our first choice was closed, which we were bummed about, but eventually saw it as providence.  Upon finding another burger joint, we ordered and sat down to eat.  After a while, we were just getting so much revelation and encouragement from each other that it changed the atmosphere of the restaurant and a man came over just to find out what we were talking about.  He just burst right into our conversation because he wanted in on what we had.  Long story short, we ended up prophesying to him and were so accurate that he thought we were from a cult, telling us that we should “tone it down a little” with the level of prophetic accuracy.

            The Presence of God does not repel wickedness, it destroys it.  When a demon is in a human body and that person enters a place saturated with the Presence of the Lord, you better believe that the demon is going to find another way to leave.  But the previously possessed person, who was made for freedom, longs for what they were made for and thus longs to be where the Presence is.  The sinner wants to be with the King, the spirit does not.  And once the house is cleaned out, the former sinner will invite the King to come as a guest into their heart and eventually the King will live permanently in him.

            Jesus has an uncanny ability to separate the sinner from his sins.  He does not associate the man with his actions.  This one major contributor to why unbelievers feel safe in the Presence of the Lord as long as it isn’t accompanied by a religious spirit that would twist the Lord’s burning anger for the spirit and place that sense of wrath to come on the image-barer.  Jesus loves people.  Jesus loves sinful people.  Jesus loves homosexual people.  Jesus loves angry people, lustful people, intellectual people, retarded people, righteous people, indifferent people, Muslim people – red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight.  His arms were nailed wide open, not because He would be tempted to close off His love, but because He wanted to display His commitment to open affection.

Jesus loves you.

*Lord, be the Honored Guest in my heart, all the days of my life.  Amen*

A judge or arbitrator (Luke 12:14)

            Our decisions are ours to make.  All too often we put responsibility onto the Lord when it is not His job to exert authority on the earth.  There are two realms that we live in, Heaven and Earth.  Only one Person of the Trinity is on the earth right now, the Holy Spirit.  The primary way in which the Holy Spirit exerts the rule of the Kingdom of God is through the Body of Christ.  As the psalmist wrote, “the Heavens are the Lord’s, but the earth He has given into the hands of the sons of man.”  We are in charge down here.

            One of the greatest pictures of redemption in Scripture is the book of Ruth.  Redemption, particularly in Ruth’s case, was a right.  A man had the right to redeem something if he was the closest relative of a recently deceased man.  The redemption of land and other possessions was much like receiving an inheritance, but if the deceased had a wife but no children, the “kinsman redeemer” had to provide an heir through the widow.  The redeemer had to provide a seed for his brother so that the deceased’s inheritance would not be lost but would continue on in the “heir of the redemption”.

            Only one man stood between Boaz and Ruth in relation.  So Boaz went to the closest of kin to Ruth and presented him with the option of redemption, but he said he “could not” redeem Ruth.  Boaz is a prophetic picture of Jesus, the Redeemer of our souls.  Religious law cannot redeem us.  By the Law, this other man had the right to redeem Ruth from whom the Messiah would descend, but Boaz wanted to redeem her. 

            The closest of kin to the first Adam was the Last Adam.  In order for Jesus to redeem mankind, He had to be fully a man, fully God’s Son and He had to provide Seed to produce an heir of redemption to inherit what Adam lost in his death.  This Seed was the Holy Spirit, who comes into the Bride, birthing the “New Creation Race”.  To these heirs of salvation Adam’s authority and inheritance are given, bridging the thousands of years of iniquity and handing the earth over to the sons of the Last Adam – these sons are provided by the Redeemer for the first Adam’s honor.

            In Psalm 115:16, quoted earlier, the phrase “the sons of man” is two words meaning “son or heir that builds the family name” and “man” is the word “Adam”.  So the earth has been given to the sons of Adam, but all the authority over the earth was given to Adam in his pre-Fall state.  God said that Adam would die the day he ate of the forbidden fruit, on that day his inheritance from God was up for grabs to any who could redeem it.  For six thousand years there was no one who could redeem Adam’s inheritance, until Jesus.  When He died and rose again He proved He was Adam’s closest kinsman because He was the only other Man directly descended from God Himself.  The only task left for Jesus was to provide Seed for the First Adam through the resurrection.

            The sons of the Last Adam’s redemption are on the earth today.  These are the men and women who have the supernatural seed of the Holy Spirit in them from the new birth.  These are the ones who have Adam’s inheritance, the sons of Adam in whose hands is the earth.  So when this man in Luke 12 tells Jesus to arbitrate between him and his brother, Jesus explains that getting the abundance of things is unimportant.  This is because our inheritance is not things on the earth, but the earth itself.  Remember the Sermon on the Mount, the meek are blessed for their inheritance is the earth.  One day He will judge and arbitrate for us, but it will be on a eternally better scale.  For now, we have our hands full learning to walk in the authority we have over the inheritance that we have received from the first and Last Adams.

*Redeemer, give us wisdom and faith to rule our inheritance well.  Amen*