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“Judgment Begins in God’s House”
Part One of Two
Job 42:5-6, “I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you. Therefore, I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” Job’s declaration of repentance, stated in the above scripture, takes on life and truth because of a change in his relationship with God. That change states that Job is now seeing God beyond just hearing about Him. From Job’s situation we can learn that judgments from God are for a nature and relationship change in order that we may see Him as He is.
God’s nature of honesty and His desire for man reflects upon the visible Christian community of today. Showing that there is a need to see clearly the condition the Christian community has fallen into and that which she manifest before the world. In this realm of being honest, the Christian community must look at itself, with eyes open to see that a lack of true spiritual understanding is what motivates them. For the most part, this lack of spiritual understanding causes them to be prisoners of a natural carnal and religious mindset, which limits knowing God and His true purpose for and in His people. In this, God reveals His progressive steps to bring enlightenment to humanity. That is, bringing the light of understanding to His creation. 1 Cor. 15:46 states, “However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, and afterward the spiritual.” Herein God reveals the progressive order He uses in the enlightenment He gives to man in bringing forth His likeness and image as stated in Genesis from the very beginning. This enlightenment is for the available purpose concerning all humankind in coming to know who they really are in Christ.
Man, in his beginnings after Adams fall, became limited by knowing, seeing, and hearing only after the natural fleshly order of their existence. In this natural order of things, God released unto man His law. This law was set in motion to subject man for gaining an understanding of the weaknesses and fallacies of his natural flesh. Herein, man came to know that the natural flesh man called self cannot live successfully under the requirements of a righteous law. This law, coming from God, was and still is in opposition to fallen man’s nature, which speaks of the mind, the will, the emotions and desires of the carnal flesh man.
For these reasons the Christian community was being offered the power of God’s Holy Spirit, as sent from Him on the day of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit was sent to enable the man to receive and mature into the like kind nature as Christ. For the most part though, man has rejected this power and is continuing to or reverting to live under that powerless law. Man must understand that the law of death is powerless to and cannot make nor bring any man to the perfection of God’s likeness because its only power comes from the weakness of man’s own flesh.
Therefore, with the availability of the Holy Spirit, as given by God for the opening of man’s spiritual eyes, God is now calling upon a people concerning the time and condition the world is in today. God is rising from within certain receiving men by maturing and enabling them to escape from the realm of the natural man, to move into the realm of the spiritual man as manifested from Christ. This means a people are released from the prison house of the natural realm to have freedom to walk in the spiritual realms of God. This speaks of dying out to the carnal realm of the flesh man to know a new birthing into the realm of God’s life-giving Spirit. This likewise means that receiving men shall no longer be limited to a natural understanding of God’s Word, the dead letter only. But now, by the indwelling Holy Spirit, they are receiving a knowing and transition into the realm of spiritual understandings.
2 Cor. 3:4-6 declares, “And we have such trust through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, who also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life”. Did not God send His Son to die for us that we might have His life? Did not Jesus Christ send the Holy Spirit to empower His people to overcome through His life?
In this we see a calling, we see a people invited to receive a new covenant, a new understanding. This covenant is not formed after the letter that kills, but by a spiritual enlightenment after the order of God’s new creation order, a new covenant. (Read Heb. 8:7-13) with Heb. 8:10 stating, “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days [those who are in Christ are of the house of Israel], says the Lord: I will put my laws [His nature] in their mind and write them on their hearts [soul]; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people”.
The above has a meaning for this new covenant people; God shall enlighten them into spiritually knowing that all the shadows and types are but examples for us to learn from, as given through the natural house of Israel. These receiving one’s shall know the spiritual meanings and verbiage contained in the written Word. Thus, we see a people who begin to walk according to the heavens, a people who begin to know God’s ways as their lives manifest those ways. This manifestation comes, not from the natural order of things, but from the spiritual heavens that abide within the vessel, a new nature birthed to manifest God’s first-fruits many member man-child.
Mt. Zion, a natural hill that sits in the land of Israel, begins to be seen and heard of anew as it speaks loudly of becoming a spiritual manifestation used to reveal and manifest the first-fruits of God’s harvest. Zion, spiritually understood as the abiding place of God’s glory, manifest from within these sons that are the dwelling of spiritual Zion. Zion becomes a people living in the authority of God with a purpose. This purpose is to establish the kingdom of God throughout the earth.
Jerusalem is a natural city within Israel, and when understood spiritually, it speaks of God’s true church, the bride of Christ, who becomes one with Him in spirit and truth. Herein, we can see that God’s many promises are greater as they move from the natural realm into the spiritual, manifesting from within. Every promise from God becomes a part of today’s receiving people because of the results of Jesus Christ and His death, burial and resurrection. As we receive Him into our lives, our character make-up progressively changes to become one manifesting a Christ-kind nature, birthed from within to become His heirs. Gal. 3:29, “And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” As Abraham’s seed, we receive the promise as heirs, not from the natural order of things, but by a blending in with the spiritual realm as a part of the heavens of God. This speaks of the heavenly spiritual revelation and understanding of God swallowing up and taking authority over all that is of the natural order of man.
How shall such a transition as this take place? God’s Word declares and reveals the needed coming judgment concerning rebellion, that such a transitional birthing could take place. Afterward, in receiving, it becomes man’s reality. 1 Peter 4:17, “For the time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the end of those who do not obey the gospel of God”? With man’s nature being the product of a fallen condition received at birth, it continues to manifest corruption. This results in the many influences of the world that are instrumental in forming the characteristics dwelling within each vessel.
Because the vessel’s worldly nature separates them from God, therefore they are vessels that cannot know nor understand the true purpose in God’s creation order. Thus, we have a law given by God to rule over the fleshly carnal man. This law was put in place for the purpose of exposing the weakness of the natural man’s flesh and his inability to obey the law or his lack of understanding the nature of God. For this reason, Christ came, He became the Word made flesh, becoming the sacrifice given by God for humanity’s reconciliation back to God. In man’s need for reconciliation, know that each person is a world unto himself that produces the fruit of his fallen soul. Thus, fruit manifested reveals the nature of the man, be it from a fallen nature or one restored by God. Herein let us take notice of the parable of the wheat and tares as explained by Jesus (read Matt. 13:24-30).
With Matt. 13:37-43 explaining, “He answered and said to them: He who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world, the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked one. The enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of this age. The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness, and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He, who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
What is it that the Father is desirous for man to hear? In these above scriptures, Jesus spoke to the people in a parable. He did so to relate to humanity a very important message of truth wherein they might begin to understand it. The word spoken here relates to the natural world that we are and that we live in. This natural world consists of two specific orders or governments that rule in the arenas of economics, politics, and education, along with the different cultures of society and religion.
These arenas, separated with purpose, with one being the fruit of light and the other being the fruit of darkness in knowing a world of carnal darkness or a world of the spiritual enlightenment of God. This parable reveals the time when a definite separation takes place called the “end of the age.” This “end of the age” speaks to us of this day and time when maturity is the revealing factor as to which part of the harvest each vessel is a part of; vessels of truth, light and glory or vessels of deception, perversion and darkness.
Apart from the natural order of things, God reveals the activities that are taking place within the spiritual order of heavenly things. With each vessel being a world unto himself, each contains the ability to receive seed and the seed brings forth its own fruit. Remember, man from Adam is one with a fallen sin nature that receives seed (the seed of the wicked one) into his world (spirit, soul, and body) which if left alone will grow until maturity to become the mature offspring of the wicked one. When man has Christ in his spirit, the heavenly seed is awakening (the seed of the Son of Man, Christ), to bring forth after its own kind unto a full measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Thus, we have a man (a world), typed as a field with two kinds of seed growing and maturing from within the soul.
The people, without the Christ seed maturing within, are the world that manifest only of the tares. Those who have received Christ into their hearts now have growing within their field both tares and wheat. God says this continues until a time called “the end of the age” when maturity brings forth judgment. This judgment time reveals the need for the removal of the tares. This work of separating the wheat from the tares is even now taking place among the Christian community. The tares, which is all that offends and practices lawlessness, are being removed and cast into a fire to be burned up. Fire represents the act of God’s judgment, which is His perfecting power. Fire removes from the repentant vessel any and everything that is not of God. These things shall perish (wood, hay and stubble) leaving only the gold of purification which represents the nature of Christ.
Let us take notice, what are these removed tares? “Tares” are a false grain, a noxious and poisonous weed whose fruit is the blackness of corruption. The fruit of “tares” is a black seed that speaks of false apostles, prophets, evangelist, shepherds and teachers, deceitful workers that transform themselves to appear to be ministers of Christ. They have the appearance of wheat until they are revealed through maturity, which uncovers them for what they really are; ministers of deception and death. Herein we should note that now is the time of maturity. These carnal minded doctrines and traditions are the fruit that limit God’s people from what God desires for them to be in Him.
In comparing these tares with the “wheat”, we see that “wheat” is from a root word which means “to gleam (a reflected brightness, to appear or be revealed suddenly), bright, white”. An understanding concerning to be white or to “gleam” is revealed for us in its fullness at the time of Jesus’ transfiguration. Matt. 17:1-2, “Now after six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, led them up on a high mountain by themselves; and He was transfigured before them, His face shone like the sun, and his cloths became as white as the light”. Remember, the “wheat” is a people purified from all the tares. They will “gleam” with a reflected brightness from God. These purified ones are the first-fruits manifesting in the establishing of God’s kingdom. 1 John 3:2, “Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed [is He not being revealed now by the Holy Spirit?], we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is”. Christ being revealed is now enabling a people and they are beginning to see Him as He really is.
“To be continued”
Duane Stewart
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