Fear No Fear

(All scripture from the NET, netbible.org, all rights reserved)

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death will not exist any more—or mourning, or crying, or pain, for the former things have ceased to exist.
Revelation 21:4 (emphasis added)

Everything was going fine in the Garden of Eden and then the devil convinced the snake to say some stuff. Then there was a choice. A choice was made. It was the WRONG CHOICE. Now there was death. Before this there had been no death. Among other things that tells us that they were abiding in Adonai. In Adonai there is light and no shadow (James 1:17). They were equipped to do their job and had to do nothing of themselves to do the job. If they had had to struggle with ANYTHING there would have been a reason to want to be like Adonai. But they didn’t think anything of it until someone pointed it out. Once it was pointed out, it was a temptation. They could have engaged with it or not. They engaged and chose sin. They chose to step out of Adonai and into not-Adonai. Adonai is life. Not-Adonai is death. It hadn’t existed before. It does now. And it will be the last thing eliminated.

Eliminated means removed. You can defeat and army, but it takes time to move the soldiers. There isn’t active fighting anymore. Your side has won, but things need to be dismantled, removed, and eliminated. Death will be the last thing because it is the physical (in a sense) manifestation of sin. The physical (in a sense) manifestation of being outside of Adonai. Everything inside Adonai is life. Everything outside Adonai is not-life. When does Messiah Jesus return to usher in the very last of the last things? Once EVERYONE has had the chance to make an informed choice. “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole inhabited earth as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:14). Preaching the Gospel accomplishes the same function as the Law did.

“For the law brings wrath, because where there is no law there is no transgression either” (Romans 4:15). “for before the law was given, sin was in the world, but there is no accounting for sin when there is no law” (Romans 5:13). Without the Law we really don’t know what sin IS. With the Law, we know. It’s clear. So all those people who didn’t know the Law and died? Adonai didn’t hold that against them. I don’t know how He deals with them, but the Word says only those who KNOW the right from the wrong through the Law are held accountable for that knowledge. But we’re not under the Law (Romans 6:14). We’re under Grace. But we need to still make a choice. Do we accept Jesus’ work of Grace or do we reject Him? The world needs to decide too. “How are they to call on one they have not believed in? And how are they to believe in one they have not heard of? And how are they to hear without someone preaching to them? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How timely is the arrival of those who proclaim the good news.”” (Romans 10:14-15). When they hear the Gospel, they have a choice. Believe or not. Accept the sacrifice of Jesus or not. Only after they have made the choice can the end come.

Death is the manifestation (in a way) of the decision to reject Adonai. It will be here until there is no one left who has rejected Adonai. That is why it is going to be the last enemy defeated. The last one done away with. “The last enemy to be eliminated is death” (1 Corinthians 15:26). And when it is, Jesus will wipe away His tears and the Father will wipe away His tears, and it will be over. Those who rejected will be gone. Those who accepted will remain. Done as done. No more rebellion (sin). Since there is no more rebellion, there will also be no more effects of rebellion. We will be in the shade of His love instead of the scorching heat of sin getting spiritual sunburn and dealing with the physical blisters and burns which are sickness, disease, lack, and the rest.

One of the great scientific proofs that the theory of Evolution isn’t that great a theory is entropy. Entropy is the degradation of the matter and energy in the universe to an ultimate state of inert uniformity. Everything is decaying in one way or another and eventually everything will have decayed into nothing. It is the process that all things are in. As far as we can record with our instruments and hypothesise with our knowledge, it has been going on since the Big Bang. So if everything in the universe is decaying, how did only some of it go in the opposite direction? How did it buck the statistical likelihoods of being impossible (which statistically speaking, evolution is WAY beyond the marker of impossibility and many scientists have proven it with math) and create something instead of continuing the universal pattern of degradation? Death and its effects are everywhere. Adonai exists outside the system and can buck any trend He wants, but for us inside the system decay is a fact. It is observable. It is measurable. It is something we live with. It is one of the big things evolutionists wrestle with.

Spiritually, we need to do the same. We need to wrestle with this concept of death and get a hold of it. Because our old nature is dead. It’s gone. It cannot be fed. It is not one of two animals inside us (the other being a good nature) fighting to be fed. I mean, you can cram the carcass full of steak but eventually it is not only going to burst but before that its going to be really unpleasant. We don’t wrestle with the old nature. We wrestle with our MINDS. With the patterns of thought that we have established inside our heads, which feed our hearts. THAT is where our fight is. The mind.

Why is this so important? Because if we don’t wrap our heads around it, we won’t be able to receive from Adonai. We can only wrap our heads around it by trusting fully in who we are in Messiah Jesus, which we don’t do by our efforts. Adonai renews our minds through the Word. If He doesn’t help us see things from His point of view, we’ll never manage to understand and accept what He is really offering. Once you are saved, you see, you aren’t YOU anymore. Not from the Father’s point of view. And if you read through the books of Kings and Chronicles you see again and again that it is from HIS point of view that things are deemed good or bad. It is all in what the Father sees, not what we see.

Death has been conquered (1 Corinthians 15:55). Jesus accomplished that through the cross (Revelation 1:18). The end result hasn’t happened yet, but death is dying. Since Adonai knows the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:9-10) He views us through the lens of the ending, which is today’s verse. When we are in Messiah Jesus and abiding connected to Him (John 15), Adonai treats us as if we were what we ought to be (as if we WERE Jesus). Through the Ruach HaKodesh, He helps us become what we are capable of being. He expects us to be the best because He honestly believes that we CAN be the best. That spiritually we already ARE the best. One of the reasons He gave us the Ruach HaKodesh is so WE will believe it too. How can we not when we see the fruit on our branches that Jesus produces within us?

Oh, but not everyone evidences the fruit. The truth of it is that it is an automated result of knowing who you are in Messiah Jesus. We are soil. If we are good soil, then when the seed of the Word is planted in us it will grow. You can go a step further and say WE are the seed that is planted in the soil of Messiah Jesus when we join Him in His resurrection (Romans 6:5). The Old Testament records the Old Covenants. The ones where we were to try and live a certain way to show us how helpless we are on our own. We had to learn trust in the sacrificial process of Him cleansing us. The New Testament records the Blessing of the New Covenant. All the ways that we will naturally act when we are abiding in Him – with none of the condemnation if we flub it. He corrects us with love and through that love equips us to succeed. As long as we stay connected to Him.

We settle for a second best salvation because it is the path of least resistance. We don’t have to dominate the flesh, give anything of substance up, and we can coast along accepting ‘good enough’ life instead of the ‘abundant’ life which is better. We don’t have to experience frustration striving for the abundant life that He has available to us because He also gives us the skills and resources to manage what He says we can manage. There is a high personal cost in improving from good enough to abundant. It’s easier to settle. But when we do we trade short term gain (no effort) with long-term loss (no relationship). You won’t get maximum benefit (full Blessing) without paying the cost (taking up your cross – Matthew 16:24-25).

Why does death and life get involved in a devotional on healing if you’re not talking about life threatening disease? Because healing is as serious as life or death is. The level of trust needed to receive healing is on par with the level needed for the life or death decisions of salvation. It’s always been recognised to be that way by followers of Yahweh. “When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, “Am I God? Can I kill or restore life? Why does he ask me to cure a man of his skin disease? Certainly you must see that he is looking for an excuse to fight me!”” (2 Kings 5:7). I can’t see my spiritual life. I can’t see my spiritual death. But I can sure feel their effects. I cannot SEE a healing that happened over two thousand years ago (Matthew 8:16-17; 1 Peter 2:24). I have to receive it as accomplished already. In essence I have to accept delivery for the vehicle that they haven’t built yet when I click the ‘Buy Now’ button. That takes real trust.

It is not an easy trust, but it IS a simple one. We have to believe Him. Of course we might need some revelation knowledge on this. Some commentary by the Ruach HaKodesh on the Word. But as we look at the Word and what is in it, that trust is built up and strengthened. Because we can see the Word working. We can see it as a living, breathing thing. As Jesus telling us HIS love story. The one about a Father on a throne, unreachable except by a purely righteous being. Looking down on His children, tears gather in His eyes. But His Firstborn Son. Designated as the Light of the World (Genesis 3) as He came out of His Father’s Light. That Son submitted to the boundaries and limitations of the Flesh. That Son submitted to being the one to die in spite of not transgressing even once. He did that and made a way for the children to enter into Him and ascend, entering the Courts of Heaven and fellowship directly with the Father once more.

When we trust THAT we trust it all. It is only a matter of reaching into the Word looking for light. His Light. It is LIFE and it is WATER and it is FOOD. It is the barbells He uses to build us up. It is the meal He has prepared. It is the cup of fluid He uses to slake our thirst. He is everything to us … IF we will let Him be. There are wonders in the Word we don’t see unless we look. He gives us the wisdom to look. The knowledge to comprehend. And the trust to trust in it. Death? What death? We can be so saturated with His Living Water it cannot touch us. Not really. None of its effects that drag us down. No infirmity. No sickness. No deterioration. Full use and faculty and strength and health and wholeness until we’re done our mission and take off the meat sack to enter into His presence fully for the first time.

Death? It has NO sting. Not even a needle’s prick. We are surrounded, sustained, and succoured in Jesus. Amen and Amen.

Daily Affirmation Jesus IS Messiah: Psalm 118:17-18

“I will not die, but live, and I will proclaim what the Lord has done. The Lord severely punished me, but he did not hand me over to death.” Messiah’s Resurrection is assured. Unlike those who were raised only to die again, Messiah would not be raised from the dead. He would be RESURRECTED. Raised INTO resurrection. A permanent shift from death and all its effects into life and all of ITS effects. A total victory throughout His spirit, soul, and body. It would the the FIRST of its kind. “The women were terribly frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has been raised! Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.”” (Luke 24:5-7). “But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20). Messiah Jesus was the first. But He has not been the last. We can join Him in that resurrection. Raised into it when we die to ourselves and life to Him. “Or do you not know that as many as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may live a new life” (Romans 6:3-4). We can abide in Jesus. We can be joined with Him into the New Covenant between the Father and the Son. Jesus IS the Messiah!

Your Daily Confession of Jesus/Yeshua’s Identity:

Yeshua is the Christ, the Son of the living God.

Matthew 16:16b