Joshua and Judges: The doctrine of leadership part 79 - Essential qualities of leadership: The filling of the Spirit; He fills those who are rightly adjusted to God, 1Co 11:31.

Title: Joshua and Judges: The doctrine of leadership part 79 - Essential qualities of leadership: The filling of the Spirit; He fills those who are rightly adjusted to God, 1Co 11:31.

 

Announcements / opening prayer:  

 

 

In 1Jo 1:9, confess, homologeo, literally means to "say the same." John is saying here that to say we do not have sin or we don't sin is a lie and so when we do sin, rather than justifying it or tolerating it and so continuing in it, that we must agree with God or say the same that God would say about sin. It is against Him and as children of God we are now set free from its mastery and so it is not who we are anymore as new creatures. We are agreeing with God that we thought according to the old nature and so opposed God and grieved the Spirit of God. Knowing this we say the same as God - we acknowledge or confess the sin, think the godly truth again, and move on knowing that we have been fully forgiven at Calvary and that God has cleansed our souls.

 

If you remember, the first reaction to the first sin was to hide it, and then when we couldn't hide it any longer we blamed someone else for it.

 

Sin is against God and as children of God we are now set free from its mastery, therefore it is not who we are anymore as new creatures. We are agreeing with God that we thought according to the old nature and so opposed God and grieved the Spirit of God. Knowing this we say the same as God - we acknowledge or confess the sin, think the godly truth again, and move on knowing that we have been fully forgiven at Calvary and that God has cleansed our souls.

 

All mankind have been invited to enter into God’s glory, and not as a mere spectator, but to actually become a part of it.

 

Joh 14:20 "In that day you shall know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.

 

Sin has no part in this glory. To enter into the glory that is Christ and to sin against itHim is foolishness. Yet we are sheep and we will sin, even after we come to hate sin, and so part of entering into the glory of Christ is entering in to the blessedness of forgiveness.

 

Christ’s glory is us and understood leads to a heart of obedience rather than a desire to continue in sin, which opens up a much deeper understanding of His glory.

 

Joh 14:21 "He who has My commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves Me; and he who loves Me shall be loved by My Father, and I will love him, and will disclose Myself to him."

 

Since we are all partakers of His glory there is unity for those who understand and no condemnation of one another, but rather there is agape love, one of the brightest parts of this glory.

 

Joh 17:22 "The  glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; 

 

Joh 17:23 I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. 

 

Joh 17:24 "Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.

 

Joh 17:25 "O righteous Father, although the world has not known You, yet I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me; 

 

Joh 17:26 and I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them." [NASU]

 

Yet the Christian can find himself removing the eyes of his heart from the glory of Christ and the Father and fixating them on the flesh and the world. This is foolishness since the believer has entered into the glory of Christ forever, yet according to the scriptures, it is clear that it happens. Due to our identification with Christ in His crucifixion, we can enter into God’s forgiveness of all sin by recovering our proper focus in repenting or changing what our eyes behold and therefore changing what we honor.

 

If we insist on keeping evil or earth, we shall not see heaven or glory. If we accept and desire heaven and glory we shall not be able to retain even the smallest souvenirs of evil and earth.

 

Mat 18:7 "Woe to the world because of its stumbling blocks! For it is inevitable that stumbling blocks come; but woe to that man through whom the stumbling block comes!

 

Mat 18:8 "And if your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; it is better for you to enter life crippled or lame, than having two hands or two feet, to be cast into the eternal fire.

 

Mat 18:9 "And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out, and throw it from you. It is better for you to enter life with one eye, than having two eyes, to be cast into the fiery hell.

 

The saved seem to discard this verse since hell is not in their future at all, but I think what the Lord is saying goes a bit deeper than that. We know, thanks to the Corinthians, that believers can live as unbelievers.

 

1Co 3:3

for you are still fleshly. For since there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly, and are you not walking like mere men?

 

Christ is not hoping that there will be a lot of people walking around on this earth wearing eye-patches. The point is that whatever that is of the flesh that needs to be abandoned, even something as seemingly important as an eye, is not really a loss, since what is seen of heaven and glory is not even worthy to be compared with it.

 

Communion 050116 Seeing glory at the cross

 

The people who had the fortune to be a witness to the cross were made of mostly of curious onlookers who were travelers to Jerusalem for the Passover. A good deal of them were mockers. There were a sufficient number of soldiers as well. Of course there were some of His disciples who knew exactly who He was. Yet out of them all there were at least two who walked there as unbelievers and left there as believers. They saw the glory of God in the person of Christ.

 

There was the Centurion who was in charge of His execution:

 

Mar 15:39 And when the centurion, who was standing right in front of Him, saw the way He breathed His last, he said, "Truly this man was the Son of God!"

 

And there was the man on the cross to His right, who was in partnership with the criminal on the Lord's left, along with Barabbas who was set free. This man was a zealot and a murderer, rightly sentenced to execution on the cross.

 

Luk 23:42-43 And he was saying, "Jesus, remember me when You come in Your kingdom!" And He said to him, "Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise."

 

Think of the effect that the glory of God had on these men. Their eyes were opened by faith and they beheld the glory of God in Christ. This changed them forever.

 

All men have the cross brought to them. No one is left unchanged. Many are not changed by the glory of God but through unbelief become more earth bound, more a child of men, and more cynical. Others, through faith, are changed in a way that to them earth and man become smaller and heaven, on the horizon of their sight, become seekers of the heavenly, leaving behind the earthly, even that to which they had the most affection.

 

The sight of God's glory in Christ changes a man completely. We can thank our Lord who brought heaven to earth and brought light and glory into darkness.