Hebrews 11 speaks of those who if they wanted to could return to their Homeland. But that they sought a new one, a Heavenly one, “therefore God is not ashamed to call them his children. For he has a place prepared for them”. They knew they were sojourners and pilgrims on earth looking for a heavenly city made up not of the elemental building blocks of time and matter.
And this is what the gospel does. It offers us a promise of something new, something different from the old.
People go through and read the promises of God, but then not having the faith to believe the invitation, God provides a back door for them to go back to where they were. Maybe your belief mechanism, which is your faith in God, is too small to receive the things that God has said. We say in our hearts “Hath God really said”? And if we persist in that way of not adopting His Words at face value, to receive the provision, the potential to stay where you are in the faith, or even go back to where you came, becomes stronger and stronger. But because the faithful do not desire to go back, God gives them, meaning us, something much greater of a heavenly estate.
A trade takes place. Something physical for something invisible. For “He is the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that don’t exist as though they do”. For us the elect this glorious truth is more substantial that all the luminaries in the sky combined. They were made on the forth day. Our God given glory is pre-existent because it came from the pre-existent one.
We then being joint heirs with Christ of the Heavenly pleasures, are partakers of the blessedness that Christ enjoys even now. The same blessedness He had before He said “let there be light” is what He is offering us. If you are able to receive it.
Scripture says that “God has given us every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ”. And “God has given us everything that pertains to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who calls us to Glory”. But we just have a hard time believing this invisible reality, so many wait for a next saving called a second coming Jesus, to deliver the goods of the things “God hath said”. But it is God who said “let there be light and there was light” who said some other things with the same immediate results, but you just can’t see them with the old human thinking. It is the old human thinking that translates God into physical things, but it is God who translates us into spiritual. Scripture must be “spiritually discerned”. So you must be born again of the spirit to do so.
We see that with Paul speaking to the Thessalonians, he said that “because some did not like to retain the truth of God, that God gave them over to the lie if possible to deceive the elect. He gave them another way to persist in their rejecting “Him who is invisible”. He gives them something tangible to appease the carnal senses. But those of us who know, know that “flesh and blood does not inherit the Kingdom of God”. But the rescripted mind of the spirit does. That if they would have received the truth, then when plan B came along, they would have rejected it. But they took the option that didn’t need faith.This is how God separates the wheat from the tares. He gives them a strong delusion. 2 Thes 2.11
But that’s not what Abraham did, that’s not what Isaac or Jacob did. They didn’t take facts over faith. They believed and confessed that they were pilgrims and sojourners on Earth as they looked to the Heavenly City. No earthen city would sufficeth, so they wandered without compromise. What about you?
So there are those today who wander in another way. And when you wander from God you don’t get the next best thing. You get the exact opposite. God gave the Israelites the law culture to show them their sinfulness. “For them it became line upon line, precept upon precept. Why? To be taken snared and caught”. “To make sin exceedingly sinful”. It was called “the covenant of death” till Christ came and abolished the law, the prophets and that culture. He took away the first covenant to establish the New Covenant.
But today many like the wine of the Old Covenant better and get the expectation of an un-holy city on earth with a monstrous looking Jerusalem not patterned of David or Solomon’s Jerusalem, but the synagogue of Satan of those who are falsely called Jews. Never the less, they stole the old names and call it Israel and Jerusalem in our day. And because many reject the “Kingdom of God at hand” they look for another. They get a rehashed, refabricated, truncated version of the fullfilled and expired culture of the law, wanting to mimick all its feasts, sacrifices, language and plot of land on earth and thereby reject the Heavenly calling. They are not pilgrims with a heavenly quest but choose to remain of the earth. “For the time that is coming now is when you will not worship God in Jerusalem but in Spirit and truth for the Father seeks such” (John 4) Such are we who are born again. We don’t fall for that lie in our day.
It is “all the Earth and all its Works shall be burned for the Eternal to remain. So what manner of person are you to be an all holy conduct”. We wait for the eternal and despise the counterfeit in our day.
So it is today as if the gospel message is wore out. Many churchgoers have acquiesced and accepted that lie. Very much like the Jews of old of whom it was said in Revelation that they were “the city called Sodom where the Lord was slain” describing their spiritual condition. But as we know the Lord was slain by the Jewish culture, that was condemned and put out of business. The Kingdom was torn from them and given to others. Why? Because they “were not entering the Kingdom, nor allowed those who were trying to do so”. And in this way they rejected the call. It was the Jews that cried out “no he is not our King crucify him”. Why? Because they could not receive him as he is. They saw the pauper on a donkey, but He was the One on the white horse whose attire was dipped in blood, whose name no man can say, Who is called the word of God. We are still saying His name today. He cannot be reduced to the simple spelling of a name without meaning.
When the Jews were first given the Oracles of God written by his finger, he told them that these things are supposed to be in your heart. But that’s a transition that didn’t happen for they were more gratified as to have reminders hanging up and sacrifices and continual feast. They told Moses “His Words are too fearful. You talk to God”. And when the people asked for meat to eat and things to do, the lord gave it to them. He gave them meat “till it came out their nostril”. He was showing for us in parable form, that these people wanted something to do. So He gave it to them till it came out their nose and it’s called the law. The details in Leviticus are just this. Let it come out your nose till you get sick. But the law itself was supposed to show something invisible however they would have none of it.
And we are in the same predicament as the Jews of old. The second coming message of another Jesus with another saving and another struggle with Satan sin and death, blatantly rejects the saving called the gospel, and aligns the Christian denominations today who fail to believe in the saving of the cross as our crossover point, our passover, our passage to safty, our baptism, buried with Christ , raised New in Christ. These take the back door and sit and wait with the wicked servant who said “my Lord delays His coming”. They wait for “The Second Coming”. They have the same mind set as the Jews of old and say in their heart “no he is not my savior. No, not this one”. They despise the gift at the cross and insult the spirit if grace and walk away. Where are you going? Or like “Adam where are you”.
They partake of the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah as did the Jews who crucified Christ. And the Sin of Sodom was? Bring them out so that we can see them and know them. They wanted tangible proof. But the persons of the Godhead are not physically tangible. They cannot be carnally known or assimilated. They are heavenly. They are elementally different. They call us to adopt Their attributes. To put Them on. To “put on Christ” one attribute at a time until we look likeHim. We put on godliness, god-like-ness. To awake to the truths defined in Gods Word. His Word is our New definition of ourselves as “we behold like in a mirror the Glory of the Lord, we transfigure into the self same image as by the Spirit”. This is our full duty, sum role and goal to God and our purpose as sojourners to arrive there and fullfill the scripture that says “Father, that those whom you have given Me may be with Me where I am”. And so we are because the Father never denied “the Only Beggoten”. You have to believe this.
The purpose of the gospel is to bring us to this point. Ephesians 4.13 “till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; (an exactitude a perfect replica, just like Christ. There is no other passage to the heavenlies but by faith in the gospel, the good news)14 that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, 15 but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ”. This is our destination as sojourners. Any other savior or saving or transfiguration than the cross is just a dillusion to deceive.
Revelation 3.2020 Behold, I stand at the door (of your heart) and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with and the Me. 21 To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me (immediately) on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne”.
And because everything about God is invisible, to sit with Him we have to understand that even His furniture is invisible. Just as the fish, birds and mammals live in elements consistent with their nature, so does God and His Children. We are those “who worship God in Spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such”. Such are we who have made it past the debris of false doctrines and dillusions and carnal representations of invisible things of the old testament culture of the law and the prophets. “When that which is perfect has come, that which is in part is done away with”. This saying is fulfilled in our hearing.
22 “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says”.
The Kingdom of God is at hand.