WBS.046
FUNDAMENTALS
OF DISCIPLESHIP
A KINGDOM HEART – XVI
Kingdom heart: a heart that offers no resistance to the
performance of the will of IAUE.
Romans 12:1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of
Elohim, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto
Elohim, which is your reasonable service.
Last week,
we returned to “the first lesson in discipleship” in order to firmly establish
some of the basic concepts of discipleship.
Matthew
11:29 Take my yoke upon you,
and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto
your souls.
- Inside
the yoke, I am harnessed to be the servant of another; and his will alone is
all
I am
free to pursue.
- Voluntarily entering the yoke
with Messiah necessarily means we have made an active
choice to deny ourselves.
- When we come to Messiah and bow
our knee to him as our Master; and we voluntarily
take his yoke upon ourselves, we give up our own soul’s right to direct
our lives. We
forfeit the right to evaluate and choose based on our own understandings
and preferences.
We humbly bow to the superior knowledge, the superior wisdom and the
superior ability to
comprehend the outcome of the Master’s choices for our lives. This is
the rest unto our
souls that is brought to us by the yoke.
- If the idea of this total relinquishment
of your freedom of choice, of your free will, is
abhorrent to you, then you are
not a disciple.
This past week, I was discussing with friends that, over time,
the church has made certain words in the Scripture to become “religious” words
with “religious” meanings; and the consequence has been to create a religion
that displaces true faith. Replacing the
natural definition of words in the Scripture with “religious” meanings deprives
us of the opportunity to see the message of the Scripture clearly. These religious words have become buzz words
in the church. You say them, and
instantly, the hearer is thinking something incorrect. For example:
Grace: The religious meaning is “unmerited favor.” The religion it produces is the erroneous
belief that believing in Yahushua secures our place in Heaven regardless of our
life on earth. The truth is, grace is the power that IAUE gives to us
that enables us to do His will. He
gives it for that purpose alone; and if we are not allowing the power of His
grace to motivate our obedience to Him, we will be rejected by Him in the
judgment. (The religious definition actually works to
undermine the reality of what grace is and why it is given. With the false belief that IAUE’s grace has
secured my place in Heaven, I no longer need give any consideration to obeying
Him. What would be the benefit in denying
my own self interests in this life, now that I am eternally secure?)
Saved: The religious meaning is “forgiven of sin and
going to Heaven when we die.” The
religion it produces is the erroneous belief that there is a specific point in
time when our eternal destination is secured by the utterance of a magical
prayer of accepting Messiah into our hearts. The truth is that being saved
means being rescued or delivered from something that threatens our lives. It does not imply that threat cannot return to
endanger our lives. (Example: I went to the “wrong side
of town,” and a man attacked me. A
policeman arrived and “saved” me from my attacker. In that moment, I was “saved” from the threat
of the attacker. The policeman’s action
does not save me from future potential attackers, as his action does not
prevent me from going back to where I can again be placed in danger.)
Salvation: The religious meaning is the noun form of the
verb, “saved,” or “that state or condition in which a person’s eternal
destination in Heaven is secured.” The
religion it produces is the erroneous belief that man was ever destined to go
to Heaven; and that life in the hereafter will be an eternity of bliss
(although they have no clue what we will be doing for an eternity). The truth is, salvation is the present
continuous state of freedom from that which has prevented us from doing the
will of IAUE. It is not a permanent
condition while we are in this body of flesh, as the threat can return to our
lives and hinder our obedience to IAUE. This condition is dependent upon our responding
to the grace that is given to us to empower our obedience to IAUE. (Using
our example above, it is a condition that exists as long as we do not return to
a place where our lives are endangered; and we can always choose to go there at
any time.)
Religion does not tolerate change or growth. Religion is controllable and manageable; and
man likes that. Religion can be used to
manipulate crowds or pacify one’s own conscience. Grace is a wild card. With grace comes instruction; and that instruction
might be direction to do or say something that religion does not appreciate;
like King David going into the Holy Place to eat the shewbread reserved for the
priests; or like the entire Hebrew people violating the Sabbath as they marched
around Jericho every day for seven days; or like Hosea taking a wife from among
the prostitutes; or like Messiah healing on the Sabbath; or like you not giving
your tithes and offerings to your church.
The myths created by changing these words from their real
meaning into some religious concept have interfered with genuine discipleship.
They have robbed the church of Yahushua of its vital motivation. Religion is self-focused. It is a “me-based” belief system. True faith is not about us. It is about IAUE and His son, Yahushua. This
brings us to our opening verses for today.
Romans
12:1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of
Elohim, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto
Elohim, which is your reasonable service.
The apostle Paul entreated the
Romans to do the reasonable thing; to do that which is sensible in response to
what IAUE has done for them. (For example: If you drove over to
my house in a brand new car; and upon your arrival you gave the car to me; it
would be a reasonable service for me to offer to drive you back to your home or
to wherever you wanted to go. With this
idea of a reasonable service; let’s look at another illustration: If you witnessed a car accident and you saw I
was pinned inside with the wreckage on the verge of igniting the gasoline and
exploding; and you came to my rescue, pulling me out of the car; but as the car
exploded, you were severely injured; it would be a reasonable response for me
to care for you as long as you needed care.
You had exchanged your life for mine; and I would not be alive were it
not for your action. Caring for your every need would be a reasonable service
on my part.)
Paul said that presenting their
bodies as a living sacrifice to IAUE would be a reasonable service from them
because of “the mercies of Elohim.” What does Paul mean by beseeching them “by the mercies of Elohim.” He had just explained in the prior chapter (Romans 11) that it was through the mercy of Elohim, by
bringing a blindness over Israel, that the message of the gospel was brought to
the Gentiles.
In Acts 1:8, Messiah had
instructed the apostles and disciples, “ye shall be witnesses
unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria,
and unto the uttermost part of the earth.” The apostles and disciples began
testifying of Yahushua in Jerusalem and Judea; but for years they did not move
out of these principally Jewish areas.
IAUE had to instigate persecution against the disciples in order to
drive them out of Jerusalem and Judea.
Acts 8:1 And Saul was consenting unto his death. And at that time there
was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem; and they were
all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judaea and Samaria, except the apostles.
The Samaritans were half-breeds,
left over from the Assyrian captivity of the northern Kingdom of Israel. The Assyrians, in an effort to undermine any
reprisals or uprisings from the people they had conquered, forced them to
intermarry with other peoples and nationalities in order to erode any
cultivation of patriotism or unification of culture that might form the
foundation of a revolt. The Jews in
Israel had been forced to marry gentiles and their half-breed descendants were
unacceptable to the “undefiled” Jews.
Persecution was the motivation for leaving Jerusalem and Judea to go to
Samaria; and once there, the gospel was preached to them.
Many years passed and the gospel
was still not carried to “the uttermost parts of the earth.” Even Paul’s first missionary journey focused
on the synagogues to speak to the Jews; until he reached Antioch in Pisidia
(the southern coastal region of modern day Turkey).
47 For so hath IAUE commanded us, saying, I have set thee to be a light of the Gentiles, that thou shouldest be for salvation unto the ends of the earth.
48 And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad, and glorified the word of IAUE: and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed.
Persecution moved the gospel from
Jerusalem and Judea out to Samaria; but it was blindness brought upon the minds
and hearts of the Jews that moved it beyond Samaria “unto
the ends of the earth.”
31 Even so have these also now not believed, that through your mercy they also may obtain mercy.
32 For IAUE hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all.
This blindness was the mercy of
IAUE bringing the Gentiles into His family.
At the cost of generations of Jews, unto whom belonged the covenant and
the promises of IAUE, the mercy of IAUE opened the door to the Gentiles. What would you suppose would be the
reasonable service of those who have benefited from such mercy? Paul says offering our bodies as a living
sacrifice is reasonable.
What is a living sacrifice? A sacrifice is something that is killed,
slain as an act of worship to IAUE. In a
living sacrifice, our right over our own body is what dies. Our bodies are to
be offered up as a sacrifice, leaving us and our own interests to it as dead.
We pass ownership of our bodies to IAUE, yielded unto Him to serve His
interests and His will; and we remain nothing more than stewards exercising the
body in whatever manner IAUE instructs. This is evidenced by the very next verse.
Romans 12:2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing
of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect,
will of Elohim.
Once we have offered up our bodies
to IAUE as a living sacrifice, His first instruction to us as stewards of our
body is to renew our minds so we are capable of knowing and understanding His
will. Our knowing his will is a necessity for IAUE to be able to make any
profitable use of our bodies. Our participation with the performance of His
will as the steward of the body we have offered to Him, is the beginning of our
experience with salvation. This is the
moment when we begin to realize why man was created by IAUE in the first place;
and the moment when we begin to experience the joy of fulfilling the purpose of
our design.
If you do not comprehend that
yielding up your life to allow IAUE’s will to control your life is a reasonable
service in response to the mercy IAUE has given and revealed to you; then you
might be clinging to a self-focused religion rather than being involved in a
vibrant life-giving relationship with the Creator.
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