Joshua and Judges: The doctrine of leadership part 66 - Essential qualities of leadership: The filling of the Spirit; spirituality is productive; Gal 5

Title: Joshua and Judges: The doctrine of leadership part 66 - Essential qualities of leadership: The filling of the Spirit; spirituality is productive; Gal 5.

 

Announcements / opening prayer:  

 

 

Principle: Spirituality is productive. Spirituality is not the avoidance of sin so much as it is the outworking of the life that is Christ.

 

We have gone from a servant of the house to a son in the house. The son still has commands to follow, but he follows them in the freedom that belongs to the position of a son.

 

The son is trained in the royal nobility of how to do and what to do and is given divine power from within by which to do, but he is not ever told to do such and such at a certain time, on a certain day. That, he has been given the freedom of a son to figure out for himself, and in our case, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

 

Yet many love rituals and fear freedom. Freedom means more personal responsibility and more personal investment.

 

GAL 5:1 It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject [entangled as in a net] again to a yoke of slavery [under the law].

 

The teaching is that Christ died on the Cross to give us the advantage of having this liberty or freedom. This liberty consists of the Christian's freedom from the law.

 

Under the law, the person has no more liberty than a child in its minority under a guardian. The child has no freedom of action nor right of self-determination.

 

He must move within a set of rules prescribed by his guardian. He is not old enough to act alone. Yet the adult son acts according to a code, and for us in the church, that code is reveled by the Spirit through the word, and the same Spirit empowers us to apply that divine code.

 

Freedom doesn't mean recklessness or anarchy. Freedom has a code that restricts it. Secularly, in the US we are to have freedom to act, speak, assemble, worship, address grievances in the way that we want, but only if that way does not violate the rights of others. Yet for this to work we have to define what those rights are, and not getting your feelings hurt or being personally offended or being comfortable is not a right.

 

The restriction of our freedom is violation of virtue and character, but the opportunity of our freedom is endless in the application of that virtue and character in life.

 

Liberty here does not refer to the kind of life a person lives, but the method in which he lives it. The CA believer has many commands, but he sees their goodness and lives and executes them by means of the Spirit.

 

The Judaizers lived their lives by dependence upon self effort in an attempt to obey the law. The Galatian Christians had been living their lives in dependence upon the indwelling Holy Spirit. Their hearts had been occupied with the Lord Jesus, the details of their lives being guided by the ethics that emerged from the teaching of the apostles, both doctrinal and practical, in what is in essence the character of the person of Christ.

 

The Christian is to act intelligently, not just doing because a law forbids or commands, but because it is right, because it pleases the Lord, and because he loves Him.

 

That's a relationship with a person and not a set of rules.

 

Now, in swinging over to law, they were losing that freedom of action and that flexibility of self-determination which one exercises in the doing of what is right. Paul exhorts them to keep on standing fast in that freedom from law and walk by means of the Spirit.

 

For instance, the law had eating restrictions. Why were these imposed? The law had many rituals that were all types of the coming Messiah. So why does God choose one thing to be a type and not another? God chose 10% to be the tithe. He chose Saturday to be the Sabbath. He chose to create various creatures of all kinds. How could we discern if any of these are right in themselves other than God saying it is a command, or that He made it so? Couldn't God have made zebras with horizontal stripes or chosen Friday to be the Sabbath? We know that God is not arbitrary in whatever He does but we could not say that Saturday is good over and above Friday for any other reason than that God chose it to be so.

 

If I said to you, "Saturday is good and Friday is not." You would have to reply, "For what?" But if I said to you, "Love is good," if you knew love, nothing would be needed for further clarification.

 

Love is good and the goodness of love can now be known by the church age believer through the Spirit of God, rather than just determining that love is good only because God says so.

 

When it comes to the character of God, of the Son of God incarnate, of the fruit of the Spirit, these virtues are right or good. We don't do or not do based on the restrictions of a guardian, but because we have been given the reality of godly character, which we can see and understand, and we can act upon it freely, always knowing what to do or not to do, but without the specific details of the circumstance, on paper in front of us. Agape love is good when one comes to understand it and it becomes very obvious why it is good. The same is true of all the other virtues. That can't be said of a ritual. A ritual depicts something else and so in essence, a ritual can never be set alone as reality in itself and therefore it cannot be good in and of itself. Why is it good that God chose a red heifer as the symbol of cleansing? We say it is good because God chose it, but couldn't He have chosen another? Is the red heifer good in and of itself? It only provided outward, ceremonial, ritual cleansing and so it is not the reality of cleansing. Yet Christ is the reality of cleansing. If God chose another animal than the red heifer He would not have ceased to be God, but if He chose not to love, then He would not be God. One is a type of a reality and the other is a reality that is pure goodness. Now, we who are new creatures in Christ, can, through the Spirit and the Word, come to understand that goodness and walk in it.

 

Hence, the law and slavery to it, is for the child under the guardian while grace and freedom are for the adult son, matured to the point of understanding.  

 

Therefore, we have left behind rituals and types for life and reality. The Law wasn't devoid of all reality, but even that reality was a shadow of what was to come in Christ. This is why the law is summed up in two commands, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and secondly to love your neighbor as yourself. But even that was lacking the very love of Christ, to which He gave a new command.

 

GAL 5:1 It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject [entangled as in a net] again to a yoke of slavery [under the law].

 

The Galatian Christians, having escaped from the slavery of heathenism, were in danger of becoming entangled in the meshes of legalistic Judaism.

 

GAL 4:1 Now I say, as long as the heir is a child, he does not differ at all from a slave although he is owner of everything,

 

GAL 4:2 but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by the father.

 

GAL 4:3 So also we, while we were children, were held in bondage under the elemental things of the world.

 

The OT believer, though blessed by God, did not see the fullness of times, and so, spiritually, he was treated as a minor. Thus he had restraints.

 

We could say that the great men and women of the OT, those of great faith and faithfulness, were great minors.

 

LUK 10:23-24

"Blessed are the eyes which see the things you see, for I say to you, that many prophets and kings wished to see the things which you see, and did not see them, and to hear the things which you hear, and did not hear them."

 

JOH 6:32-33

"Truly, truly, I say to you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread out of heaven, but it is My Father who gives you the true bread out of heaven. "For the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven, and gives life to the world."

 

ACT 3:22

"Moses said, 'The Lord God shall raise up for you a prophet like me from your brethren; to Him you shall give heed in everything He says to you.

 

ACT 13:38-39

"Therefore let it be known to you, brethren, that through Him forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and through Him everyone who believes is freed from all things, from which you could not be freed through the Law of Moses.

 

HEB 3:1 Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the Apostle [sent forth, used in GAL 4:4] and High Priest of our confession.

 

HEB 3:2 He was faithful to Him who appointed Him, as Moses also was in all His house.

 

HEB 3:3 For He has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses, by just so much as the builder of the house has more honor than the house.

 

HEB 3:4 For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God.

 

HEB 3:5 Now Moses was faithful in all His house as a servant, for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken later;

 

HEB 3:6 but Christ was faithful as a Son over His house whose house we are, if we hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope firm until the end.

 

Moses: servant of the house.

Christ: creator of the house.

CA believer: the house.

 

Now, these are metaphors used to describe position and privilege. We are not an actual house but like a house since we are in union with Christ. The OT saint is the spiritual minor while the CA believer is the spiritual son.

 

HEB 8:1 Now the main point in what has been said is this: we have such a high priest, who has taken His seat at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens,

 

HEB 8:2 a minister in the sanctuary, and in the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, not man.

 

HEB 8:3 For every high priest is appointed to offer both gifts and sacrifices; hence it is necessary that this high priest also have something to offer.

 

HEB 8:4 Now if He were on earth, He would not be a priest at all, since there are those who offer the gifts according to the Law;

 

HEB 8:5 who serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things, just as Moses was warned by God when he was about to erect the tabernacle; for, "See," He says, "that you make all things according to the pattern which was shown you on the mountain."

 

HEB 8:6 But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, by as much as He is also the mediator of a better covenant, which has been enacted on better promises.

 

HEB 8:7 For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion sought for a second.