Solutions to stumbling blocks – The believer owns nothing on this earth, part 2; John 16:1; Phil 3:8; .

Title: Solutions to stumbling blocks - The believer owns nothing on this earth, part 2; John 16:1; Phil 3:8; .

 

You were challenged to believe facts about the identity of the Christian as delineated in the NT; things about yourself and your destiny in the heavenly future. If you doubt them then you miss out on living the CWL in time. How sad it is for Christians to strive for earthly blessing and rule when something so much more magnificent is promised for all eternity. Again, this is not said to degrade earthly blessings at all, but just to simply put them in their correct priority appointment.

 

But, it will be remembered, the Christian possesses:

No land; Ex 20:12

Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the Lord your God gives you.

 

There is a vast difference in how one thinks of material things like land from the viewpoint that it is his as opposed to the viewpoint that God graciously gave it to me to use, but I never own it.

 

No house; John 14:2

In My Father's house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you.

 

You give your life to God and when you are mature enough He gives it right back to you. This is true freedom and truly being first.

 

Husband and wife analogy.

 

Again:No house; John 14:2

In My Father's house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you.

 

though of the household of God; John 8:35

And the slave does not remain in the house forever; the son does remain forever.

 

No earthly capital or city; HEB 13:14

For here we do not have a lasting city, but we are seeking the city which is to come.

 

Israel is looking forward to an earthly city in the Millennium.

 

though living eternal in the NJ; REV 21:9-11

"Come here, I shall show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb." And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God.

 

 

No earthly throne; HEB 4:16

Let us therefore draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and may find grace to help in time of need.

 

No earthly kingdom; 1 Thess 2:12

so that you may walk in a manner worthy of the God who calls you into His own kingdom and glory.

 

No king to whom he is subject other than Christ; 1 Tim 6:15

He who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lord

 

Even Christ acknowledged the authority of Pilate over Him:

John 19:11

Jesus answered, "You would have no authority over Me, unless it had been given you from above;

 

No altar other than the cross of Christ; HEB 13:10

We have an altar, from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat.

 

And doesn’t even possess himself; 1 Cor 6:19-20

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.

 

Many doctrinal believers assent to these things, but if they truly believed these things then how would they live?

 

Phil 3:3 for we are the true circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh,

 

Phil 3:4 although I myself might have confidence even in the flesh. If anyone else has a mind to put confidence in the flesh, I far more:

 

Phil 3:5 circumcised the eighth day, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the Law, a Pharisee;

 

Phil 3:6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless.

 

Phil 3:7 But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ.

 

Phil 3:8 More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ,

 

Graciousness doesn’t interfere with or neglect your own spiritual life and the support of your family and it doesn’t hurt the one you are giving to.

 

It’s not giving away everything and living on the street, but it fosters a graciousness that doesn’t interfere with or neglect your own spiritual life (I gave away my car and now I can’t make it to Bible class) and the support of your family and as well, doesn’t hurt the one you are giving to. God commands the mindset or the system of thinking and the believer priests through God the HS makes the complex step of application to every circumstance in each one’s peculiarity.

 

In fact, if I don’t own anything then how could I give it away?

 

The Holy Spirit, the owner of everything, will guide the positive believer to apply graciousness wherever and whenever prudent to give glory to God.

 

After discussing the concept of “my time” in the sense of a time that a human has to amuse himself in any way he wishes, Screwtape continues to write to Wormwood about how to influence his “patient” in the subject of ownership.

 

[begin quote] The sense of ownership in general is always to be encouraged. The humans are always putting up claims to ownership which sound equally funny in Heaven and in Hell and we must keep them doing so. Much of the modern resistance to chastity comes from men’s belief that they ‘own’ their bodies - those vast and perilous estates, pulsating with the energy that make the worlds, in which they find themselves without their consent and from which they are ejected at the pleasure of Another! It is as if a royal child whom his father has placed, under the real rule of wise counsellors, should come to fancy he really owns the cities, the forests, and the corn, in the same way as he owns the bricks on the nursery floor.

 

We produce this sense of ownership not only by pride but by confusion. We teach them not to notice the different senses of the possessive pronoun - the finely graded differences that run from ‘my boots’ through ‘my dog,’ ‘my servant,’ ‘my wife,’ ‘my father,’ ‘my master’ and ‘my country,’ to ‘my God’. They can be taught to reduce all these senses to that of ‘my boots’, the ‘my’ of ownership. Even in the nursery a child can be taught to mean by ‘my teddy bear’ not the old imagined recipient of affection to whom it stands in a special relation (for that is what the Enemy will teach them to mean if we are not careful) but ‘the bear I can pull to pieces if I like’. And that other end of the scale, we have taught men to say ‘my God’ in a sense not really very different from ‘my boots’, meaning services and whom I exploit from the pulpit - the God I have done a corner in’. [the God I have cornered for my own purposes.]

 

And all the time the joke is that the word ‘Mine’ in its full possessive sense cannot be uttered by a human being about anything. In the long run either Our Father [satan] or the Enemy [God] will say ‘Mine’ of each thing that exists, and specially of each man. They will find out in the end, never fear, to whom their time, their souls, and their bodies really belong - certainly not to them, whatever happens. At present the Enemy says ‘Mine’ of everything on the pedantic, legalistic ground that He made it: our Father hopes in the end to say ‘Mine’ of all things on the more realistic and dynamic ground of conquest. [end quote]

 

EPH 4:1

I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, entreat you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called,

 

What have we been elected to that is so worthy of counting all other things as rubbish?

 

Phil 3:10 that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death;

 

Phil 3:11 in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

 

Phil 3:12 Not that I have already obtained it, or have already become perfect, but I press on in order that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.

 

Phil 3:13 Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead,

 

Phil 3:14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

 

Phil 3:15 Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, have this attitude; and if in anything you have a different attitude, God will reveal that also to you;

 

Phil 3:16 however, let us keep living by that same standard to which we have attained.

 

When Christ instructed us to be like children it was in faith and in reverence and not in selfishness, self-absorption, and arrogance. Example: child receiving from a parent inconsistently in his mind but consistently in the mind of the parent because the circumstances are different. “mine, mine, mine!”

 

John 6:41 The Jews therefore were grumbling about Him, because He said, "I am the bread that came down out of heaven." 

 

John 6:42 And they were saying, "Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does He now say, 'I have come down out of heaven'?"

 

John 6:43 Jesus answered and said to them, "Do not grumble among yourselves.

 

John 6:44 "No one can come to Me, unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day.

 

John 6:45 "It is written in the prophets [Isaiah 54:13], 'And they shall all be taught of God.' Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father, comes to Me.

 

This is a prophecy about the Millennium, but Christ is using it as an illustration for all human history and that is that everyone will hear, everyone gets a chance through the gospel. In particular this crowd is hearing the good news from the very one who is going to die for them.

 

John 6:46 "Not that any man has seen the Father, except the One who is from God; He has seen the Father.

 

A person can only be saved through the One who is seen, Jesus Christ. He is the only one who has seen the Father.

 

John 6:47 "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life.

 

This shows us what eating is - faith.

 

John 6:48 "I am the bread of life.

 

John 6:49 "Your fathers ate the manna [bread from heaven] in the wilderness, and they died.

 

John 6:50 "This is the bread which comes down out of heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.

 

John 6:51 "I am the living bread [anticipating the resurrection, ascension, and session] that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he shall live forever; and the bread also which I shall give for the life of the world is My flesh."

 

John 6:52 The Jews therefore began to argue with one another, saying, "How can this man give us His flesh to eat?"

 

John 6:53 Jesus therefore said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves.

 

John 6:54 "He who eats [chew slowly; gnaw; prior uses are to devour] My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.

 

John 6:55 "For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink.

 

In other words, you will never hunger and you will never thirst.

 

John 6:56 "He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.

 

John 6:57 "As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me.

 

John 6:58 "This is the bread which came down out of heaven; not as the fathers ate, and died, he who eats this bread shall live forever." 

 

John 6:59 These things He said in the synagogue, as He taught in Capernaum.

 

John 6:60 Many therefore of His disciples, when they heard this said, "This is a difficult statement; who can listen to it?

 

John 6:61 But Jesus, conscious that His disciples grumbled at this, said to them, "Does this cause you to stumble?

[eat My flesh and drink My blood]

 

John 6:62 "What then if you should behold the Son of Man ascending where He was before?

 

John 6:63 "It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.

 

John 6:64 "But there are some of you who do not believe." For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who it was that would betray Him.

 

John 6:65 And He was saying, "For this reason I have said to you, that no one can come to Me, unless it has been granted him from the Father."

 

John 6:66 As a result of this many of His disciples withdrew, and were not walking with Him anymore.

 

John 6:67 Jesus said therefore to the twelve, "You do not want to go away also, do you?" 

 

John 6:68 Simon Peter answered Him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life.

 

John 6:69 "And we have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God.

 

In contemplating Christ, it is well ever to remember the first syllable of His name, as given us in Isaiah ix, 6. “WONDERFUL:” and part of this marvel is, that in Him are combined the deep thoughts and counsels of God, with the feelings and affections of man.

 

In Him there is no incongruity; in the days of His flesh, and on the cross itself, He was “the same,” the “I AM,” the Son of God, Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever.