FUNDAMENTALS OF DISCIPLESHIP
Heb
12:1 Wherefore seeing we also are compassed
about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and
the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race
that is set before us,
2 Looking
unto Yahushua the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was
set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the
right hand of the throne of IAUE.
3 For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners
against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.
4 Ye have
not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin.
Last week’s post ended with this comment:
There
are three reasons why we who are disciples still sin.
1. Our minds are in agreement with the impulses of our
flesh. We enjoy sin, and want to
continue therein.
2.
Our minds are not
renewed to understand what is the good, acceptable and perfect will of IAUE;
and we sin ignorantly, not even knowing we are failing the will of IAUE.
3.
Our lives have been
so consistently disobedient to the will of IAUE that we have allowed the
influence of demonic spirits into our life that are now generating almost automatic
behavioral responses to certain “triggers” in our life.
Sin, by definition, is disobedience to the will of IAUE. Think of that for a moment. We have but two options in our life. We may do the will of IAUE, or we may disobey
the will of IAUE. We either do the will
of IAUE, or refusing, we commit sin. Therefore
our lives are either committed to doing the will of IAUE, or we are sinners,
plain and simple.
This is the picture
described by Messiah when he discussed the broad path and the narrow path (Matthew 7:13-14). Men choose the
broad path because the
gate is hard to enter and the path narrow to follow that leads to life. Choosing the narrow
path is narrow for one reason only. There
is only one will controlling life down that path. There is no freedom to do our
own will down that path. On the broad
path we may do as we please; but of course, that path leads to death. That isn’t very inspiring; and yet it reveals
what we consider to be important. It
demonstrates that the masses prefer a pleasant selfish life NOW, forsaking any
respect for their eternal future, over disregarding the pleasantries of the
flesh, now, for an eternity of LIFE with IAUE.
(I have said it
before; but let me say it again. The
broad path is not Messiah’s illustration of the lost in this world. It is his illustration of the kind of path
that is CHOSEN by those who think they have made a decision that is correct and
satisfying to IAUE. They have chosen to
enter a specific gate and are walking the path that lies beyond that gate,
thinking they are going the right way with their life. The masses of the lost in this world have
made no such choice. Making this fact clear, Messiah follows his remarks about
the broad path with warnings about false prophets, false fruit, and the fact that
not all who call him Master, and not all who do supernatural deeds in his name
are even known by him.)
Matthew 7:21 Not every one that saith unto me, Master, Master, shall enter
into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father
which is in heaven.
Do you see what is
important to IAUE? It is fulfilling the
purpose of our design. We are created to
do His will; and doing His will is the ONLY thing that will ever satisfy Him.
Hebrews 10:5 Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and
offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me:
6 In burnt offerings and
sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure.
7 Then said I, Lo, I
come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to
do thy will, O Elohim.
8 Above when he said,
Sacrifice and offering and burnt offerings and offering for sin thou wouldest
not, neither hadst pleasure therein; which are offered by the law;
9 Then said he, Lo, I
come to do thy will, O Elohim. He taketh away the first, that he
may establish the second.
10 By the which will we are
sanctified through the offering of
the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
We see in this
passage in Hebrews that Messiah was sent to replace the practice of sacrifice
for sins with enabling man simply to do the will of IAUE, rather than always
having to cover up his disobedience and his conscience of sin. Messiah came to put an end to our disobedience
and the need for sacrifice for sin; and to usher in an age of deliverance from
all that has kept us from simply fulfilling the purpose of our design---of doing
the will of IAUE .
The very concept of
sin evidences that we are born to do the will of IAUE. We are created for it. It is the purpose of
our design as human beings. If we do not
dedicate ourselves to that for which we were designed, we sin. How, then, can
we even entertain doing our own will?
One of the major
problems in modern Christendom is the inability of the masses to think intelligently
about their faith. I say this not to be
insulting, but rather to awaken the church to a problem it does not know even
exists. Just as in worldly society, so
in the church there has been a progressive dumbing-down of the masses. It is rare to find anyone in the church who
can explain doctrinal concepts. If you
ask100 believers at random why Messiah had to be born of a virgin, you will get
dumbfounded looks from most of them; and maybe a dozen different attempts at an
explanation. If you ask them what it
means to be “saved” you will get at least a dozen different answers. If you ask
them what it takes to be saved, watch out for the wild guesses and abject lack
of any certainty in their answers. If
you ask them what righteousness is, those dumbfounded looks will reappear.
Maybe 2% will have studied the Scriptures enough and contemplated them before
IAUE enough to be able to provide answers they can document with scriptural
support.
Given the lack of
concern for any basic understanding of the Scriptures, it is little wonder the
church is still living in such reckless abandonment to their own will…I mean,
sin. They still think sin is “bad stuff,”
and doing their own will is seldom “bad” in their estimation. The masses of
believers (and you can include the rest of the world in this as well) do not
think of sin as anything and everything that is not the will of IAUE. The definition of sin to most is simply, the
things they have done that they regret having done. This is why the response to the contemporary
(false) gospel message that “Jesus loves you, and if you ask him into your
heart, he will forgive you of your sins,” is responded to with such emotion by
so many. They find this message appeases
their sense of guilt for the things they have done that they regret having
done; or that they regret the consequences caused by those actions. They find this message frees them to go on
doing their own will with no more guilty conscience over the “bad stuff” they have
done. It does not enjoin them to
forsaking their will to do the will of IAUE.
That brings us to
our first reason why disciples still sin.
1. Our minds are in
agreement with the impulses of our flesh.
We enjoy sin, and want to continue therein.
Until
we come to a revelation of the nature of sin, we will always find a reason to
love it.
It is not enough to have an academic understanding that sin is wrong;
that disobeying the will of IAUE is wrong; we must move beyond the “marketing”
of that idea and “purchase the product.”
Knowing this only intellectually/academically is why, after we have
sinned, we tell ourselves, “I knew better than to do that.”
When we
ask to know what His will is, and then having heard what is His will, we
evaluate His will against our other options, we have sinned already; because
even if we then choose to do what He revealed is His will, it is no longer His
will that is being performed; it is OUR will.
We have evaluated that what IAUE wants is, in our opinion, the best
option. It then becomes the choice of
our will rather than our obedience to His will.
Proverb 14:12/16:25 “There
is a way that seems right to a man; but the end thereof are the ways of death.”
We have
all heard the saying, “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” Even that which seems good and right to man
is still, by definition, the pursuit of his own will and not the will of IAUE. This is why Solomon correctly identified it
as the ways of death; or in Messiah’s terms, the broad path.
Knowing
what sin is with the head is not the same as understanding it by a revelation
in the heart. The Scripture tells us that it is impossible to please IAUE if we
walk in the flesh. It tells us that the
flesh is at war with IAUE and is against IAUE’s purposes. It tells us that we who have died to sin
should no longer live in sin (disobedience to the will of IAUE). It tells us that IAUE resists the proud
(those who seek their own will); but gives grace (the power to do His will) to
the humble.
We KNOW
all of this; and yet “our
minds are in agreement with the impulses of our flesh.” We still choose to sin. Why?
1. Because we love certain things so much we don’t care
if they are wrong to IAUE.
2. Because we love ourselves more than we love IAUE.
3. Because we do not understand that sin is ANY and ALL
disobedience to IAUE’s will.
4. Because we do not understand that doing our will is
sin, even if it is to do good.
5. Because we have never repented (in the Scriptural
sense of the word).
6. Because we believe lies for doctrinal truths that
lead us to believe that our eternal security is totally unrelated to our doing
the will of IAUE.
7. Because we have not aggressively pursued being
transformed by the renewing of our minds.
This,
by no means, is intended to be an exhaustive list; but rather a relative sample
of the reasons why we still CHOOSE to sin, to disobey the will of IAUE. If we would be disciples of Yahushua, we need
to resolve this first reason why sin persists in our lives, immediately. We need to sever, to break the agreement
between our minds and the impulses of our flesh. That agreement is strictly in the way we
think about sin.
That
brings us to the next reason…next week:
Our minds are not renewed to understand what is the good,
acceptable and perfect will of IAUE; and we sin ignorantly, not even knowing we
are failing the will of IAUE.
Kingdom heart: a heart that offers no resistance to the performance
of the will of IAUE.
