ALL INCLUDED

We see here that confession of sin was connected to a sacrifice. They had to first confess that sin and then offer a sacrifice. Leviticus 16:21 is the first place where laying on of hands is mentioned. Aaron was to lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat and confess all the iniquities, transgressions and the sins of the children of
Israel. In Hebrews chapter 6 it says we are to leave these doctrines behind and go on. These doctrines that are mention are referring to leaving those things they used to do under the Old Covenant and to go on unto perfection. I won’t go into any detail here as I posted something on this on October 10 & 11, 2006.

All the iniquities were placed upon the head of the goat and he was sent away into the wilderness. Now we know that this sacrifice of a goat did not take away sin, but only covered sin for the period of a year. The book of Hebrews is a book that relates back to Deuteronomy and Leviticus and it shows the difference between the sacrifice of the goat to cover sins and the sacrifice of Jesus to take away sin. This is a type and shadow of Jesus. This was a goat that was used to show the fashion that our sin would be taken away from us.

Leviticus 26:41 continues on and says they had to accept the punishment of their iniquity and He would acknowledge the covenant He made with them. It was saying that they had to accept the fact that the punishment for their iniquity had been placed upon the goat and once they accepted the fact it was done, they could continue on, knowing their iniquity had been looked after by the sacrifice that was offered.

I have shown the origin of the confession of sin. I think these scriptures make it quite clear how it was done and hopefully I have brought it out in a way that you can understand. Remember that this is contained in the inspired scriptures (Old Testament) and that it was a shadow of things to come (Hebrews 10:1). I believe this has to be understood in order to properly understand how Jesus was the fulfillment of all these things contained in the Old Covenant. I will continue along these lines over the next several days and hopefully you will begin to see the awesome sacrifice that was offered on our behalf on the cross. Stay tuned. J

We all know and believe the flood promise but when it comes to the cross promise we tend to turn away from it and not believe that part of it. More people know about the promise of the flood then they know about the promise of the cross and God made the same promise in both of those as He compares one to the other. The Christian community has problems believing the promise that came out of the cross. The promise of the cross was that He would never be angry or rebuke you again.

In verse 10 he continues on to say what the impact this would have on the entire earth. He is saying here that catastrophic events may happen even to mountains be removed and hills taken away but it will not be His anger that will be doing it. It will just be things that happen. I know each time something happens that everyone gets on the bandwagon and says it is the judgment of God upon sin. I think to say that is a great insult to the blood and the cross of Jesus Christ. All it does is spread fear amongst people and it is just not scriptural that that it is God sending down His judgment. It is saying God didn’t keep His promise as we have seen He promised that it would not happen again.

When we continue on to the latter part of the verse we see that His kindness will not depart nor the covenant of His peace be taken away, regardless of what happens. That covenant of peace is with the whole world because we have seen that He compared the flood to the cross and we know the flood was for the whole world. His covenant of peace will never be removed. He is saying He was making a covenant of peace at the cross and we would never see His anger again.

 He has declared peace through the blood of His Son. It is not because we have done good enough that we have His peace. It is because He promised that as He would never destroy the earth again by water, so He would never take away His peace from the earth again because sin has been judged. We only have peace with God because of His blood and not because of anything else. Is the flood over with? So is the cross and its work.

I was supposed to post part two of the post I had yesterday but I am out of town and cannot access my computer so I am at a library typing this in. I will post the second part tomorrow instead of today.

I was thinking this morning how we have taken the word of God and made what we call Christianity out of a few verses taken out of context. We seem to think that because we have some interpretation that was passed on to us we have a good grip on a lot of things. I am seeing as the days go along that I have had to lay aside all these things and concentrate more on what the Lord is showing me instead of what I may have thought I knew.

It seems that a lot of what I learned over the years separates more than it unites. Take for example the issue of seeing others different than we are because they may be of some minority and may believe different than we do. Or even a bit further, the issue of women. A lot of churches will not even let a woman speak in their midst or a divorcee, or a man with long hair. The list could go on and on but I think you see the direction I am going with this.

 When we see the world out there doing these things like treating different people differently, we immediately scream DISCRIMINATION!!! We call these people that may look at blacks, women, gays, divorcees, Italians, etc. as just having different views when it comes to Christianity. (just using a few things here to make my point) But is that what it really is? If we see these things going on in the world out there, we cry RACIST and I am sure we have all seen and heard these things said over and over again.

I said all that to say this. If the “world out there” is called racist for doing these things, then what should we be calling those that are a part of Christianity that do the exact same thing? Are we to call what they do by a different name that what it really is? Is it diferent than being racist if it is done in “the name of God”????? I don’t think it can be called anything else but that.

I can see eyebrows raising as I type this today but I think we should call a spade a spade. Try and see what the word discrimination means and maybe you will be able to get the gist of what I am saying here. I am not doing this in a harsh manner whatsoever but simply trying to point out what I saw in my own heart this morning. Let us remember that we are all one in Him. There is only one body. To treat one part of it any different than another has to be called by what it is. He made all into one new man (creation) and we are all equal in His sight. Let us try and see others in that same light.

Isaiah 54 beginning at verse 7 has a prophecy that God showed Isaiah concerning the coming redeemer and I think all will agree that this is talking about the cross. In verse 7 it says that for a small moment have I forsaken thee and I think we can all see that these are the Words Jesus spoke on the cross when He said My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me? I verse 8 it talks about why God’s face was hidden from His Son for a moment and that is because God’s wrath was being poured upon Him.

Now that we have established that this is talking about the cross and I doubt anyone can say otherwise as it is made quite clear that is what he is talking about. Then we continue on to verse 9 and we see that Isaiah is saying “for this is as the waters of Noah unto me. What does he mean by “this”? What is this he is talking about? He is of course continuing on talking about the cross and what happened there. He has not changed the subject but is still on the subject of the coming Redeemer and what He would accomplish at the cross. He is making a comparison with the flood and the cross.

We can have a great amount of understanding of something when we have something to compare it with. In this case he is comparing the flood with the cross. Let’s look a bit at what happened when God flooded the earth in the days of Noah. We know that the flood was judgment upon the whole world. We know this flood was not just for a chosen few but for all. What about those that didn’t even believe in God at the time? Were they washed away in the flood as well as all the others? Of course we know the answer to that is yes.

In the latter part of verse 9 we see that He says that in the same way He would not flood the earth with water ever again, so He would not be angry or rebuke anyone any longer after the cross. Remember that it is God showing Isaiah, and it is Him comparing the flood to the cross. We know that at the cross judgment for all sin was placed upon Jesus. We hear constantly that we are to look for judgment for sin and that God is still judging sin in people. If judgment for sin was upon the cross and people are still being judged for their sin, is it some sin that was left off the cross? It has to be because God judged all sin when His wrath was poured upon His Son.

There will never be another flood to judge the earth and neither is there any judgment coming for sin. It is not me making the comparison to the flood and the cross. It is God doing it Himself so we can better understand what happened at the cross. If anyone is telling you that sin will still be judged, then they are insulting the blood of Christ and saying some sin was left out.

We have no problem believing that the earth will never be destroyed by water ever again but when we see that God says the same thing about His wrath having poured out upon Jesus at the cross, and then we begin to doubt that that part of it is true. These scriptures are quite plain that God is making a comparison. If you believe the first part of it (the flood) then you must also believe the second part of it (the cross).

The flood included the whole earth and the judgment on the cross included all mankind as well. Even those that had no idea a flood was coming were included and swept away. This is the same as far as the cross goes. Everyone was “swept away” by the blood of the lamb when He took the judgment for all sin. The comparison is God’s, not mine.

Continued tomorrow…..

If you are basing your relationship with God on your flesh and what you do, even on your best day you will know that you are not good enough, let alone living out the days that are not your best days. If you base your relationship with God on what He has done through Jesus on your behalf on the cross, then there will be no condemnation. The condemnation mentioned here is not that God condemns you but you will be condemned in your mind because you are looking at everything with the wrong mind.

You mean to tell me there is a wrong mind? Well the Bible tells us in 1 Corr 2:16 that we have the mind of Christ. If you are living out of this mind set then you are in your right mind. If you are living out of the mind set on the flesh and what you do or don’t do then you are living out of the wrong mind. If you are in a performance mode and trying your best to live your life in that way, then you are not in your “right mind”. I know this is different than what you may have heard being in your right mind is, but I think we have to really look at what having the mind of Christ means. Having His mind means seeing things the way He does. It means seeing yourself the way He sees you and that is perfect and holy and righteous.

In verse 2 of chapter 8 Paul says living under law will bring sin and death. This is a man that knew the law better than anyone else alive at the time and he knew what the law would do. Paul was attacking the law as he knew his fathers before him could not keep it and neither could anyone else. He saw the law as bringing forth sin and death. He understood that Jesus came to fulfill the law because He knew none could keep it. He was telling them to stop living out of the wrong mind set because it could bring nothing but sin and death.

There is the law of the spirit of life which is only in Christ Jesus and there is the law of sin and death. To be in your right mind is to live out of the mind of Christ and see that your relationship with God is not based on what you do but is based on what He did. If you are in your “right mind” you will see that everything is ok between you and God. If you live out of the “wrong mind” you will see that it is the mind of the flesh and you will constantly strive to be right with God and you will suffer condemnation.

Being in the right mind will make you see you are ok. You are a child of God and everything is alright between you and your Heavenly Father. The prodigal son is an excellent story of mankind walking away from God (wrong mind) and then returning back, his father ran down the hill and told them to prepare a feast for his boy that was returning back from a wrong mind to a being in his right mind. All the time the son was gone, he did not cease to be his father’s son. He simply went to living from being in his right mind to being in the wrong mind.

It is time to go out of our minds. I know most of you think I am already there and I must say I agree with you. I am out of my own mind and I am beginning to see that if I live out of the “right mind” which is the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus then I can see that there is no condemnation in living out of that mind. It’s time to lose your mind and beginning to see through the mind of Christ. There is no condemnation there but if you live from the wrong mind you will suffer condemnation. Not before God but in your own life as you try and live this life constantly trying to perform to be made right with God.

A dictionary will tell you this word means “to restore friendship or harmony; to settle or resolve differences”. In the Greek dictionary it literally means to take two or more elements, in this case God and His creation, who were separated by differences completely out of harmony with one another and to bring them back together again in unity, peace and friendship, resolving all strife that may have existed. (I took this quote from an article I read a long time ago and I am using this author’s words to explain the meaning)

When we look at the verse in the Bible that says Jesus’ last word were “it is finished” I believe that what He meant by those words is precisely what I have quoted in the above paragraph. His Father had restored everything back to Himself through what Jesus had just finished at the cross. It was not a work of man by any stretch of the imagination but was totally and fully a work of God because it says that “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself”. It was totally and fully by grace apart from man’s involvement.

If you read Romans 5:8 – 10 you will see when this event happened in our lives. It was while we were enemies that God reconciled us back to Himself through the death of His Son. It was not done at the altar you or I went to. It was done at the cross. It may have been revealed to you at some altar but that is not when it happened. It was done at the cross.

2 Corinthians 5:19 says God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them. Who was He reconciling? He was reconciling the world. The whole world was enemies with God. That’s when He reconciled them all. After it was completed Jesus said “it is finished”. He was not saying there was a future time this would come into effect in our lives. The knowledge of it comes at a later time of course and that is when salvation of the soul begins its process. No, He was saying that the reconciliation process was finished. Like I said in earlier posts, the revelation of it has come at a future time for all of us but the actual fact happened 2000 years ago.

Try and remember that reconciliation, justification, sanctification, salvation etc is totally a work of God and does not involve us in any way shape or form. It is His work and it is in His time that these things are revealed to us. When that happens then salvation of the soul begins its process. Having been made right with God does not begin there as that happened at the cross but the revelation of it begins then. We are already reconciled. We are already right with God and He is not holding any trespass against anyone any longer because the work was finished at the cross. It is finished.

I know we call this time in our lives the day “we got saved” and needless to say, something did happen on that day and things in our lives began to take, at least for some of us, a dramatic change. We were of course told at that time that we needed to “accept” Christ and we were “invited” to do so. We were told our eternal destiny hung on whether we made the decision to “get saved” or “stay lost”. If we walked away from this “altar” we were taking the chance that we may never have the chance to “get saved” ever again and would suffer eternal torment at our death.

I now see there was something really wrong with that picture. What I see wrong with it now is that we were being told WE had to do these things in order to “get saved”. It was by our will that we either chose to begin our journey to Heaven or we made the decision we were choosing hell instead by not saying some prayer and responding to some form of pleading by a minister.

I would say that very rare is the person that when asked when He got saved, they will answer that it happened two thousand years ago. It is only in the past few months that I have heard anyone say those words and I as well now use the same words because that is exactly when everyone’s salvation was put into effect. It was not when a prayer was said at some altar and your measure of sincerity in whether you received the Lord or not was based upon how many tears you shed and then on how faithful you were in attending church and tithing etc. They immediately began to measure you by your works and not by the works of the cross.

As Kenneth has said in a comment a few days ago, “By being continually told that they have to keep themselves alive by their dead works. I know when I look back, that was exactly what I was told. I was not told of course they were “dead” works but they were works nonetheless. Paul says it well in Galatians 1:15 when he mentions his experience on the road to Damascus. “When it pleased God, who separated me from my mothers womb, and called me by His grace”.

I don’t see Paul saying that he stopped on the road, said a prayer, invited the Lord in, cried a few tears to maybe make it a bit more real, etc. He made no claim to having “found the Lord”. He took no credit to having “made a decision” or that he used his own free will to decide to serve the Lord. It was not when he answered an altar call or said a sinner’s prayer, but when it pleased God to reveal His Son. There was no invitation extended to Paul. Paul saw it exactly how it was. He saw it was a total work of God that brought salvation to his soul. He knew it had been instituted at the cross and it was revealed in Him when God so chose, in this case it was on the road to Damascus.

There was no invitation given to Paul nor was there one given to us. What began at that time was a revelation of what had already happened 2000 years ago. In my case I was in a tent meeting in 1978 that I learned I was saved 2000 years ago. That is not how it was told to me at that time but I now see that it was the beginning of the Lord revealing Himself in me. He was revealing in me what He did for me 2000 years ago.

We have to come to a realization that the work of redemption and salvation is totally a work of God that He chooses when and where He will reveal it to us. It has nothing to do with us at all and it is totally by His will. For by grace are you saved…it is a gift of God given to every man that has come into the world. Not by works lest any man should boast

To just use “much more” does not really do justice to the meaning of this term. It actually means that grace “hyper-super-abounded” and it “super abounded in excess” of what the transgression had done to the human race. Please remember that in the same way the transgression was inherited by all of mankind, the free gift of Gods grace was also inherited by all except in a way that is so much more powerful than the offense. The reason I believe is because over the centuries the transgression increased to such an extent that only God could even begin to count their number.

This grace that came by Christ overcame the penalty of death which came from the one transgression of Adam. It super abounded to such an extent that it wiped out every single transgression that had increased over the years and years. Note also that the term is not “where sin abounds” but it says that where sin abounded (past tense) verse 20. The latter part of the verse says that grace did much more abound. Grace super abounded at the cross and wiped out every single transgression there ever was.

Who were the recipients of this tremendous grace that came? It was the condemned of course. So if the condemned received this super abounding grace then what happened to Adam’s transgression? It was totally wiped out…annihilated. It was replaced by His grace. Condemned people no longer existed nor do they exist today.

18 says it clearly that the offense came to all men to condemnation by the offense of one. So who received this super abundant grace that is spoken of here? It super abounded, wiped out every transgression and it brought justification to all men. It was powerful enough to not only wipe the slate clean for all mankind but the slate was thrown away. It does not exist any longer due to the hyper-super-abounding grace that came through the sacrifice of the cross.

There should be no question in anyone’s mind as to who the second half, which is grace was for. It was to bring life to all. If we are to believe the first half of this which is the fact Adam’s transgression was passed to all men, then we must also see that the second half of this is for all men as well. I don’t know how anyone can look at this in any other way. To believe one is to believe the other. To not believe this is to say that Adam’s sin had more power over us than the blood of the cross. ALL men dead in Adam; ALL men made alive in Christ. I am not sure how clearer this can be made than this.

I know most will have no problem believing that the entire human race partook of what Adam did. No one in modern day Christianity that I know of has any problem believing that what Adam did was passed on to all men. They accept that without any second thought, even to the fact that they had absolutely nothing to do with it and it was actually “imputed” which means given without asking for it. I think that part of it is settled in most people’s hearts and minds and they have no problem with that at all.

In Romans 5:12 it says Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. There is little argument amongst the professing Christian community to what this verse says. Sin entered into the world through the disobedience of one man Adam. Adam went into unbelief when he partook of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and that was passed on to all mankind. He permitted the nature of his soul (mind, will, emotions) to begin reigning in his life instead of God. Adam had sealed the condemnation of all men. Death was passed through the lineage of Adam through generation after generation and none were exempt. I think all will agree that this is a “done deal” and it had nothing to do with us at all. We did not ask for it nor do anything to get it. It was just given.

The entrance of sin into the world and death through sin left no one unscathed and this was all done by the disobedience of one man. The act of one man put that sentence upon all. Even though sin was not imputed to the multitudes who lived from Adam until the law, nevertheless, death reigned (Romans 5:13). This sentence of death was all inclusive and not a single one would escape. When God spoke the sentence of death to Adam He was speaking it to all of mankind. I think we all agree on this don’t we? I know of no one that considers themselves to be believers will dispute what Adam did and that it was passed on to all.

Tomorrow we will look at the other Man in this verse which is of course Jesus.

There is only one death that Father God could accept as sufficient and that was the death of humanity which is why the entire human race was brought into Jesus and then death occurred. The entire human race under Adam was totally annihilated at the point of death of our Lord and Saviour. He took all of humanity into Himself and died with them. The reason for this is that all of humanity deserved to die because of the sin of unbelief of Adam. Jesus had become in perfect union with the first Adam so much so that he was the first Adam on the cross.

Jesus who knew no sin (sin=the first Adam) was made to be sin (the fallen Adam) so he could die and redemption was instituted for all mankind at that time. Father saw the travail of His soul as the first Adam (Isaiah 53) and He was satisfied. He was satisfied that all that Adam was, was in Christ and He was taking it to its death. God was satisfied that the issue had been properly dealt with and redemption was now freely given to the entire world because Adam (sin) had been destroyed.

Jesus is called the last Adam (1 Corr 15:45) because there will never be another Adam that will bring death through sin to the world. Jesus totally destroyed the first Adam and all he represented. When He rose again He rose with a new righteous creation because all of humanity had died with Him and all of humanity was now risen to new life in Him. He rose from the dead with a new creation because He had destroyed the old race.

People are still trying to work at their own dying to sin because they cannot rest in the finished work of the cross. You do not have to work at any of that. Instead you rest in the fact it is already done. God sent His Holy Spirit to reveal to us a death already past. We can identify with that death because to identify with something means to partake of the same. We partook of that death because we were in Him and we rose again with Him as well. Some are working at trying to kill some aspect of themselves they do not particularly like.

When we look back at history we see that the people of that time knew this had happened because they even went to the extent of beginning counting years all over again and began at the year one. They knew that the old creation under Adam was gone and they were beginning in new life through Jesus and what He had done at the cross. They understood that they now had new life in Him and were no longer under law and their deeds and actions would no longer be held against them. They knew the penalty had been paid in full and the law and everything under the Old covenant had now been fulfilled. They knew all these things and saw the new life that Jesus had purchased on their behalf. They had finally been set free. And we were also set free at the same time, in Him at the cross.