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Colonizing the Creation
…let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
We all know what it means to be in a time of need. We have all stumbled in our walk with the Lord and quickly saw our need for His mercy. Heaven’s solution for us was to immediately draw near to God’s throne of grace. At the center of the universe is a throne founded upon and consisting of the grace of God. Just as any kingdom has at its center the throne from which the sovereign reigns, so it is with God’s governmental rule.
Many will then ask, “Well where is the Kingdom of God?” The answer is actually quite simple. In discerning His grace, we discover the expression of His rule. For example, when we first experienced His grace to believe or when we began to notice it in others who ministered in various ways, it dawned on us that we were seeing to some degree the governmental activity of our King. In encountering His grace, we experienced His kingdom. Then to our amazement, He began to release His grace in us to serve others so that His rule could be extended in their lives. And we found that we needed to continually draw near to Him in order to find His grace to help us in our times of need – not only for when we stumbled and sinned, but when He would send us to prophesy, to counsel, to witness to the lost, to serve others in practical ways. And His empowering grace was always found at His throne. As a result, we began to realize why one had to be born again in order to even see this kingdom (John 3:3).
And Jesus knew He was to reign. Many people might think of ruling in terms of grasping for position and then controlling their subjects. But Jesus saw that the route to all authority in heaven and on earth ran through the cross. It was as He submitted to His Father that He then came into His present role. Heaven’s kingdom functions by humility and submission. Then, this amazing King ascended back to heaven to become our great high priest. And He did not grasp for this role either. Even as in the temple system where the call to priesthood was not attained but received from the hand of God (Hebrews 5:1 - 4), so also our Lord did not seize His present priestly ministry for Himself.
So also Christ did not glorify Himself so as to become a high priest, but He who said to Him, “YOU ARE MY SON, TODAY I HAVE BEGOTTEN YOU”;
At His resurrection, Jesus was begotten of the Father as the firstborn from the dead (Acts 13:33) (Colossians 1:18). As He faced Calvary, He had to trust that His Father would raise Him from the tomb and that He would then establish Him at His right hand in His heavenly priesthood. Again, it was Christ’s submission not a desire to grasp anything that brought Him to His present role.
just as He says also in another passage, “YOU ARE A PRIEST FOREVER ACCORDING TO THE ORDER OF MELCHIZEDEK.”
Here was God’s oath to His Son. In His earthly years, Jesus could read this promise often in Psalm 110. And He would know that His coming Calvary experience would not be an end but the means of coming into the fulfillment of His Father’s promise – His Melchizedekian ministry. But having that promise did not alter the intensity of what He was about to experience nor the passion with which He faced it in His prayers.
In the days of His flesh, He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from (Greek, EK – out of) death, and He was heard because of His piety (Greek, EULABEIA – reverence, godly fear).
Jesus was not saved from death, from experiencing it; He was saved out of it. For that to happen, He had to first yield to it. And in embracing death, He then defeated it through the power of His indestructible life. But in the time leading up to Calvary, He gave Himself to much intense prayer and the Father heard Him because Jesus’ whole life was one of reverence and godly fear.
One could quickly ask, “Why would Jesus need to fear God?” Why would the sinless Son of God who was destined for the throne of the universe need to live in such a way? And what did such a lifestyle even look like? According to the prophet Isaiah, one of the distinguishing features of the coming Messiah would not only be His fear of the Lord but His delight in it.
The Spirit of the LORD will rest on Him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and strength, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD. And He will delight in the fear of the LORD, and He will not judge by what His eyes see, nor make a decision by what His ears hear.
The Messiah would both delight in the fear of God and then not judge nor make decisions by what He saw or heard. People today who assess and then come to conclusions based simply on what they observe going on around them reveal in their own lives a lack of the fear of God. The proper way to think, speak, and live cannot be based on our circumstances, no matter how intense they may be. A true kingdom lifestyle is rooted in the reality of God in our lives, in then knowing Him, and then making Him known. Too often, we reveal a lack of godly reverence when our lives closely resemble the unbelievers around us, because like them, we tend to more react to events than bear the presence of God into them. And Jesus always revealed the Father no matter what the circumstance; Heaven governed His whole life.
As a result, His words struck the earth expressing righteous judgment on behalf of the poor and afflicted. And when He spoke, the Spirit empowering His words guaranteed destruction for the proud and unrepentant.
But with righteousness He will judge the poor, and decide with fairness for the afflicted of the earth; and He will strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath (Hebrew, RUACH – Spirit) of His lips He will slay the wicked.
And presently from heaven, His words continue to sound forth on earth through those living in union with Him. O Lord, make Yourself known on earth through Your people in these days – especially when as we look around us, we can all see the need for greater justice in our nation. Help us to remember our calling – to know You and to make You known.
But a lifestyle on earth that unveils Heaven will experience opposition. And indeed, the Gospels reveal the great recurring resistance our Lord encountered two thousand years ago. And there was pain in it for Him.
Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered.
Since obedience is not a gift but a learned lifestyle of response to whomever we serve, even our Lord when He stepped into the midst of fallen men had to consistently choose the Father. And it was not always a painless choice. In each decision to obey, there was a cost. Every circumstance gave Him the opportunity to either assess and speak based only on what He saw and heard around Him or to reveal the Father. And He always chose the Father. Yet Heaven’s increasing requirements meant an increasing learning experience as Christ’s heart was stretched even to the point of His obedience at the cross.
And having been made perfect (Greek, TELEIOO – to come to final completeness), He became to all those who obey Him the source of eternal salvation,
Jesus came into final completeness, into everything that was in God’s heart for Him as a man. He fell short in nothing. He was not only sinless in His nature but also in His lifetime of daily lifestyle responses to Heaven.
But humanity needed its incalculable debt of sin to be paid. And no one else in all of human history had ever been found worthy to satisfy the holy conditions of perfect righteousness. No one was worthy to plead our cause before the court of perfect justice. Who could possibly stand and say to heaven’s eternal Judge, “I have a solution for humanity’s deserved death.”? So, the Eternal One Himself came from heaven, was born of a virgin, and became the perfect expression of God put into human terms. And as a man He then became the sacrificial Lamb to take into Himself the sin of the whole world and embrace the death we deserved. The costly wages of sin were paid, the holy requirements of justice were satisfied. And when He who was without sin became sin and then died, its power was broken. And the outpouring of His blood then became the mighty river of Heaven’s cleansing power flowing into the ends of the earth to all who would believe.
Here was Heaven’s solution; here is our amazing God. Truly, His love, mercy, and compassion are as amazing as is His relentless commitment to fulfill His purpose in us.
And so, Jesus became the source of eternal salvation to all who would listen, believe, and respond to Him. Because of His success at Calvary, He has now stepped into His role as the high priest of a whole new order rooted not in the temple sacrificial system of animal blood sacrifices but in the power of His own indestructible life.
being designated by God as a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.
And just as He succeeded in His earthly ministry, so shall He equally succeed in His present heavenly role of intercession as He brings about among men the full expression of His eternally designed purpose. Let us anticipate with joy the glory yet to be revealed.
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