Overcoming with the Lamb

(Rev. 12:7-12, I John 2:12-14)

I love John, the disciple and apostle.  While this is subject to scholarly dispute, I think that the experience on Patmos that resulted in the writing of Revelation happened before John wrote his other works.  The unveiling of the glorified Christ so changed John’s perspective, he then wrote in a more profound, more deeply spiritual way.  His mind had been so deeply transformed.  He beheld Jesus Christ in His glory and was never the same again.  So after Patmos, he wrote his gospel account and three letters.

If you read the reference passages, you see a progression in each.  First the background.  In the cosmos exists one who is jealous, envious, and a thief, a liar, and a murderer.  His main weapon is that of accusation.  He accuses God to each of us, and accuses us to God.  And he accuses us to one another.  So John tells us the accuser has been cast out of heaven, cast down to the earth.  Now we must overcome him here and now.  Notice that angelic forces threw him out.  A battle has been fought and won by the Lamb of God and heavenly armies.  Through death He destroyed him who had the power of death even the devil.

I believe, I understand, the blood of Jesus Christ has ended the ability for the devil to accuse mankind before God.  I believe he no longer has access because it the blood on the heavenly mercy seat simply drives him away.  Not to mention that Michael and the hosts of angels have thrown him out.  So he has only to try to wreak havoc among us here.  For years I would hear believers plead the blood of Christ as if that phrase was the answer to every problem.  I did not understand.  A few years ago, it was clarified for me.  When accusation comes in that legal sense, the atmosphere of a spiritual courtroom, we answer that the blood of Christ cleanses us from all sin.  And we simply walk out of that legal atmosphere free to be led by His Spirit.  “How do you plead,” an earthly judge may say.  We do not respond by what we have done, or not done.  Yes, we may have sinned, but the greater reality is His grace poured out through Jesus Christ.

Now John, having seen the glory of Christ ascended and seated, writes the same message.  The mercy seat is there, you know, in heaven, where the Lord beckons us to draw near.  He called to John to come up higher.  It will cost you all your self-reliance.  First John fell on his face.  We have failed, all of us, but He says draw near with full assurance of faith to find grace to help.  Realize that John had been with Him in His earthly days and been through much.  Records tell us the Roman emperor had dipped our brother in boiling oil to no effect.  Away with him to the vile, the insane on Patmos!  That earthly fiend did not know he was sending John to the place of heavenly revelation!

So John expresses our growth, our progress in two different ways.  We overcome the accuser by the blood of the Lamb.  That is first, the foundation.  Then the word of our testimony.  The testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of prophesy.  The power of an endless life resides in words that truly speak of who Christ is.  And we love not our lives, our earthly lives even unto death.  See the previous blog post for Jim Elliot’s words.  In his letter, John writes of us as little children, whose sins are forgiven, and that we know our heavenly Father.  Young men are those who have overcome the wicked one, the devil himself.  They are strong and the words of God have a home in them.  And of fathers, those who are mature, and bear spiritual children, John repeats the same words twice.  They know Him who was from the beginning.  They know by intimate relationship the eternal One, they have grown to be sons of our Father.

John was such a one.  In his writings he so focuses on Christ.  Apart from Revelation, he does not refer to himself by name.  Perhaps that was done in wisdom to avoid earthly traps but I sense a deep humility.  Nothing compares to the work in our hearts as what is accomplished by a revelation of Christ to our souls.  John experienced an open, heavenly vision.  May we pursue the same, walking by the Spirit, and allowing Him to bring us through trouble to such a place.

Follow the Lamb

(Rev. 14:4, Luke 12:32, Matt. 11:29)

Are you following the Lamb, Himself?  We are His sheep and He is the good shepherd.  In the opening of the heavens, John, the one who laid against His chest, saw Jesus Christ glorified.  He was then, and is, no longer the man Jesus who walked on the earth.  He has been glorified.  Those who truly see Him are changed and will never be the same after that vision.  The Lord chooses to whom He reveals Himself and He does so for us according to His wisdom and His purpose in our lives.  And when we do see Him, we cannot help but to want more.  If we resist, He will hide Himself and wait.  Jesus gave an open invitation when He said, “If any man would come after me, let him pick up His cross and follow me.”  The cross is the means by which our self-centered life is removed.  We find things that mattered are no longer so important.  Jim Elliot said it well, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep (this earthly life), to gain what he cannot lose (eternal life with the Living God)”.  Parenthetical thoughts are mine.

A dear woman, Dr. Sandy, spoke at a local church one Sunday.  We had never met before but we were in instant fellowship.  We had separately been on the same path after the Lamb.  She mentioned that in that record of that awesome revelation of Christ that John received, Jesus Christ is referred to 39 times as the Lamb of God.  Once He is called the Lion of the tribe of Judah.  Today I hear more about the lion, not enough about the Lamb.  Everyone wants to be a lion.  No one would dare touch you.  A lamb is vulnerable.  I see another difference between the two descriptions.  One is related to God Himself; the other to an earthly tribe.  What is our identity?  Related to men, we ought not back down to men, yet if we want someone to spend time with us, we need to be vulnerable.  We want real relationships, not superficial.

Jesus was only tough with the religious and I do not think He was ever mean or harsh, even with those who opposed Him.  They opposed their own eternal destinies, for no man has an eternal destiny, and eternal hope, apart from Christ Himself.  Do you want the Lord’s fulness in your life?  Follow the Lamb wherever He leads you.  Along with overemphasis on the lion, I do not hear enough of the fact that the new covenant in the blood of Christ has supplanted all other covenants including that made at Sinai.  Read Galatians 4: 21-31 and focus on the last verse.  While many may not see this, Paul’s words are clear.  We are not children of both.  The Jerusalem above is the mother of us all.  So elsewhere we read that the blood of Christ, the blood of the Lamb, is the blood of the eternal (unchangeable) covenant.  Every other covenant has failure because it depends on human behavior.

As we follow Christ, we are confronted with our inability to do so based on any resource apart from His life.  So Paul could write, “It is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me.”  That is the gospel.  Jesus calls us to abide in Him.  We wander but as we go on with Him, we realize that wandering costs us something.  A security comes as we draw near and learn to stay near.  Farther on, we know we are seated with Him in the heavens, in the place of absolute, certain authority and we learn to allow that authority to flow through us to others and it is the river of His life.  We live in the throne room, in His presence and there we know the fulness of His joy over us.

The reference verses confirm this simply.  He redeems all our failures.  He washes them away in His blood.  Let them go and continue following Him.  It is His Spirit leading you into true righteousness.  We do not have to fight our way into the kingdom.  As we follow Him, it becomes the Father’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom.  We apprehend the kingdom in greater and greater measure.  The violence that is necessary, is the violence to our self-centeredness.  That was accomplished at the cross but we must agree and allow it to work in our lives.  I see it as experiencing the pain of childbirth.  With all respect for women who experience that, a man can experience something akin in the spirit.  Christ is in us and we must cooperate with the spiritual contractions and allow our souls to be transformed.  As we learn to lean on Him and move progressively closer, we stay in His yoke.  And in that place we find Him meek and lowly in heart and we find rest.  And we know the heart of our Father.

Fortified Cities

(Read about kings of Israel and Judah, II Cor. 5:20)

As I write this, I must remind myself, I am writing to an audience that has some faith in Jesus Christ.  If you are not a believer, none of this will make sense.  Last year the Lord showed me that he sees us, each of us, as living stones in the wall of His city.  When we read of the heavenly city, New Jerusalem, the names of apostles, and the sons of Israel are assigned to the foundation stones and to the gates of the city.  One cannot ignore the true sons of Jacob, whose name the Lord Himself changed to Israel.  So, the Lord takes us, as His children, His living stones, and places us in the wall of the city.  More than doing the work of a watchman on the wall, we are being living stones set in place by the Master Builder.  When we try to be watchman by working at it, we will come short of the real thing, and learn that it takes the life that Christ is in us, and then we shine without human effort.  No stone is too small, none too large; He positions us and fits us together perfectly.  And He continues to polish us so we shine more clearly.

Submission to His love in the process polishes us up so that His glory shines through.  That is who each of you are!  By His wonderful working in you.  It is your identity in Christ.  It touches everything you do.  As you are a wife, a mother, a father, a husband, a son or a daughter, you shine Christ within your immediate circle of influence.  Hear that word, IN FLOW ENCE.  What flows through you to others?   As you believe in Him, out of your innermost being, your deep places, will flow rivers of living water.  That is the working of God’s Spirit in you, and through you.  You may react and say, “That’s not working.  It’s not happening.  I am hard on myself, and then on my family.”  Go to Him, pour it all out.  We are all psalmists, you know.  The same Spirit that moved David to write psalms is in us.  Go to Him with all your words.  You will find His grace at the end of yourself.  We are transformed in His presence by going to the throne of grace.

At the turn of this year, the Holy Spirit changed the picture for me.  He expanded it.  He says He is seeing us as fortified cities, standing firm.  In the days of the Lord’s expressions through the prophets, the kingdom of David and Solomon was divided due to human failures.  The kingdom of Judah was that closest to the Lord’s purpose.  It was the remnant of that day through which the Savior would come.  Jesus said that He is the root and the offspring of David.  That is deep truth.  The root and the offspring.  The kings of Judah had a sense that preservation was important.  Among those kings who were aligned and seeking the Lord’s purpose were those who rebuilt and strengthened fortified cities.  These would stand against the enemies’ attacks.  The Lord today is building us individually and corporately to be strengthened with might in our inner man.

We must cooperate with Him in this building.  How are we fortified?  Part of that process is praise.  It was Judah that was chosen to be in line with God’s purpose.  Israel’s apostasy was greater yet Judah could be self-absorbed, the prophets rebuked her as well.  DeVern Fromke alerted us to the fact we can get caught up in the experience of worship and lose focus on the Lord Himself.  The worship is for Him.  Yet I have found we can allow our enjoyment of His presence.  The Holy Spirit brings us to a place where we simply praise, sing, dance, and act our worship. And we know the joy of His presence.  And if we don’t “feel” it, we continue because He is worthy.  The Lord’s purpose has always been to have a people who represent Him, bear Him witness in the earth.  Israel, through Solomon, failed and the Lord maintained a remnant in Judah.  Struggle continued as leadership faltered among Judah’s kings as well.  The Lord was preserving a line which ran through David, for the seed, Christ, to eventually come.  As we have said, the best of Judah’s kings knew to fortify cities against the enemy.  These cities were then places of safety, of refuge, for the Lord’s people, for His remnant.

As we struggle through our lives here and overcome ourselves and spiritual enemies that resist Him, we need to follow the Lord’s example as evidenced in measure by those “good” kings of Judah.  They were not without faults but they sought the Lord.  They broke down places of idolatry.  They received His prophets.  They restored and maintained worship in His house.  We need to pursue the sanctification which brings alignment with His purpose.  Glorify the Son and the Father by the Spirit.

So for us today, be spending time in His presence, praying in the Spirit, we are strengthened.  Pray with the Spirit (heavenly tongues may be, and can be, part of that), pray also in the Spirit in your earthly language.  Thereby, you pray also with your understanding.  But pray!!  Let your prayer time mature.  Pray the scriptures.  Pray the psalms.  Pray Paul’s letters.  Commune with your God.  Build up yourself on your most holy faith. Jude 20-21.  He is near to strengthen you.  You yourself are being made a fortified city.  And moreso, as we gather together with others who love the Lord Jesus Christ, we are built together in an expression of the New Jerusalem.  Is she not the bride and are we not being built up into an expression of His beauty and glory in the earth?!  Keep building us, Lord!  We are willing.