INDEX TO VOLUME ONE(4)
32. God Whom I Serve in My Spirit.
33. What was God’s purpose in the creation of man?
34. A Child of God and also a Son / Daughter.
36. Clean the cup first inside.
39. God wants to reveal His Son in our spirit.
32. God Whom I Serve in My Spirit (Rom 1: 9)
In the previous chapter we wrote about “the assembly of the
perfected righteous” consisting of the spirits of “just men made perfect” (Heb 12:23). God told us the wonderful news that through the blood of His cross, we have already become perfectly cleansed, justified, and sanctified in Christ. This all through the sacrifice that Christ has already made. It is a finished work, completed forever and a great truth that we only have to believe. And if we can believe it, we can then call ourselves righteous and be part of the holy ones in Jashuah. In this chapter, we will need to pay more attention to our spirit.
33. What was God’s purpose in the creation of man?
He sought children, sons and daughters who could love, obey and please Him. He sought offspring of God on earth (Mal 2:15), a family of God (Acts 17: 28-29), His family reflecting His attributes and characteristics. He created the earth for His children (Isa 45:18), His family. Around it, He created a universe with an innumerable number of stars and celestial bodies, all to reveal His great glory and love. The earth was not created for the wicked but for the righteous (Ps. 37:29). It was created for His children who believe that they are justified in Christ through the blood of His cross. He will not stop until this great plan of His is realized. If you have other ideals and plans on this earth than the ideals of God, you must know one thing and that is that you will have to change plans otherwise your plans will not fit in with God’s.
Why did He want the wicked on earth? He surely had a goal with that, after all. Proverbs 16: 4 “The Lord has made all for Himself,
Yes, even the wicked for the day of doom.” His purpose was also to enable people to have a free choice between light and darkness, between injustice and righteousness, so that those who become His children could choose Him through their free choice. If there was no darkness, the light could not shine in the darkness (Gen 1: 1-3). Then also man could not choose between the sonship of God (John 1:12) and being a son of Satan (John 8: 42-44). Also man would not have a free will and therefore would have had no choice but to serve God. God wants children who have chosen Him and love Him out of their own free will (Deut 30: 19-20). He also wanted His children to choose Him above all that the world offers: “The lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the greatness of life…” (1 John 2: 15-17). Yes, above gold and silver, and all the treasures and riches of the world, beyond esteem and honour of men, above glory and honour, yes, above all! That is why He allows the seduction of the world and the god of this world, namely Satan, to have such strong appeal to you that when you choose Him, He truly knows that you want to choose Him above all, and you want to love Him above all.
God longed for Israel to be a son to Him (Ex. 4:22). Jeremiah 3:19-20 “But I said: ‘How can I put you among the children and give you a pleasant land, a beautiful heritage of the hosts of nations?’
And I said: ‘You shall call Me, “My Father,” and not turn away from Me.’ Surely, as a wife treacherously departs from her husband, so have you dealt treacherously with Me, O house of Israel,” says the Lord”. He was looking forward to them calling Him their Father. That is why He called Israel out of Egypt — He called His Son out of bondage so that they could be free from bondage to serve Him in freedom. Even hundreds of years later, when Christ was born, it was God’s desire to call His Son out of Egypt (Read Matt 2:15). Yes, this applies also for you and I today!
So God always wanted children who serve Him in freedom, free from the power and influence of darkness. In Gal 4: 20-31 we read how there are two groups of children: the children of the ‘bondwoman’ and the children of the ‘freewoman’. Read it yourself. You will notice that the children of promise are the children of the free, and they are still persecuted throughout the ages by the children of the slave, the children of the flesh. That is, by the children who are governed by earthly, human, carnal and worldly laws and principles.
34. A Child of God and also a Son / Daughter
If you have accepted Christ as your personal Saviour, you can be called a child of God (John 1:12), but in order to be called a son of God it is necessary that you reveal the characteristics and attributes of the One from whom you were born, your Father in heaven (1 Pet 1:15-17; John 20:17). Such traits and hereditary qualities lie in your divine genes that are set in your spirit. It’s not something you teach yourself such as good manners and decency. It is not learned kindness and love. No, it is part of your divine family traits. These are traits that you inherited from your Father. These are therefore innate qualities that arise from rebirth. This is the divine nature to which Scripture refers in 2 Peter 1: 4. You must certainly please read this.
Christ was declared the Son of God by the Holy Spirit through the resurrection from the dead (Rom. 1: 3-4). Thus, the resurrection life received by the Spirit of God is proof that He is the Son of God. Similarly, we cannot expect to be revealed as the Son or Daughter of God without the resurrection life of Jashuah living in us and working through us. That only happens when the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead (Rom 8:11), lives and works in us. This Spirit who should live and work in you in the same way that He works in Christ will also enable you to serve God in your spirit. Therefore, something must first happen in your spirit!
35. New Wineskins (Luke 5: 37-39)
The “Wine skins” Jashuah refers to here is the new container we need in order to receive the new wine. He also says here that he who drank the old wine does not immediately want new wine because the old wine is better for him. The old wine is not only the law of Moses to which He refers. It is also, in the modern age in which we live, the old ways in which Christianity served Him in churches, denominations and structures, each having their own teachings, laws, ways and methods by which they serve Him. He also refers to our own laws. That is how I was taught to do things, how I grew up and used to live, as well as the habits of my forefathers. In Colossians 2:18 to 23, Scripture states that it is a useless religion that extends only to the saturation of the flesh because it consists of various statutes such as “Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle,” which all concern things which perish with the using—according to the commandments and doctrines of men? These things indeed have an appearance of wisdom in self-imposed religion, false humility, and neglect of the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh”. If He then says that no one who had “old wine” immediately wants “new wine”, then He means that it will really take something to get us out of the old wine and give us a desire for the new wine. Therefore, we must first of all be freed of the container of the old wine, namely the old wine skin, and we will then need to get a new wine skin. Isn’t that what Paul is referring to when he says that we should be renewed in the spirit of our minds?: “that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.” (Eph. 4: 22-24). So it says that we should put off the old sinful man and put on the new man, that is, Christ. That is why Paul says in Rom 13:14: “But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts.” He also says in Galatians 3: 26-27: “For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. ” (Some translations say that you are clothed with Christ, the New Man). I know so many people who have been baptized with or in water but I do not notice in their lives the characteristics and attributes of the One from Whom they were born. Therefore, I believe that here in this Scripture, reference is not made to water baptism but to an immersion into Christ’s body (1 Cor. 12: 12-13), and an immersion into His death (Rom. 6: 3-5).
I want to ask you if the previous chapter (Chapter 1) on “The Assembly of the Perfected Righteous” did anything to you? Perhaps it caused you excitement when you read that we were already imputed, via the cross, perfect righteousness and holiness by the sacrifice of Christ. Did it make you happy when you heard that you can now call yourself (Heb. 10: 10-18) “a Holy and Righteous One” because God sees you as such in His Son and also so names you? Did the excitment continue when you read further that if you believe the Word, there will be a working of the Word and the Spirit in you that will ignite (1 Thess 2:13). That it would put to death your old self with all it’s lusts and passions and all that displeas God. Did it make you happy? Were you then able to seize this new truth, or the new revelation of an old truth? Did you experience an all-too-overwhelming desire that it would start to bring the Word to life in your heart? If your answer is “No” then you definitely need a ‘new wine skin’ ! Then I also should warn you that you will find that you are not going to look seriously for the new wine skin because the old wine, with its old wine skin, seems better for you. Why?
The reason for this is a law in nature that we learned about in school in Physics, namely the “law of inertia”. The definition of the law reads as follows: “Inertia is the tendency of bodies to persevere in the state (either rest or movement) in which they find themselves”. This means that you do not want to change direction easily. You are naturally inclined to walk in the same path, believe and do the same thing. It is therefore a law of inertia that appears repeatedly in the natural sciences and also in religion i.e. “The old wine is better”. You will only want to do something new if the old wine is no longer working for you. Still, you always want to hear something new, but not to do it. So you are quick to want to hear something new but slow and lazy to do it! And this is the state in which you will be until God, in His love and care for you, explodes a bomb under you! “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves” (James 1:22)
“Now why do you still write”? you would ask me. I write because God tells me to write “for necessity is laid upon me; yes, woe is me if I do not” (1 Cor 9:16)!
36. Clean the cup first inside
Matt 23: 25-26 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and [a]self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also”.
In this passage, Jashuah speaks to the Pharisees and scribes. They wanted to be seen by the people (verses 5-7). The apostle Paul also addresses the Galatians seriously because they still maintained the circumcision, which was an Old Testament institution, just to make a beautiful display in the flesh. Read Galatians 6: 11-16. How many things do we do to make a beautiful display in the flesh? If we lived alone on an island we would have done many things differently! One friend asked me one day if I was expecting visitors when he saw how I was tidying up my yard. Of course, I also make my yard tidy for myself because I am a neat person, but I would not have squandered my body and put so much pressure on myself if I was living on an island alone. I might have done everything much more calmly. Have you ever heard a mother say to her children, “Hurry up, we have visitors coming”? Or “I’m ashamed of these weeds that grow in our garden”? Is it all just to make a nice showing in the flesh?
But in Christianity, a beautiful display in the flesh became a great encouragement for sanctification. Have you ever heard a mother say to her children, “Don’t curse in public like that”? The wife of a pastor who once visited us said that they saw growth in their congregation because their people no longer smoke in public! And this is what the Pharisees and scribes did. How striking is it that friends and people can determine our “fruits of the Spirit”!? Is it then fruit of the Spirit, or just a beautiful display in the flesh? And then we ask the question: Aren’t we just serving God in our flesh and not in our spirit? Is our service to God not merely as a ‘learned man’ (Isa 29:13) – according to the tradition of our ancestors (Matt 15: 6-9).
Here, I also have to give a very serious warning, namely that to turn a “new leaf”, as the expression says, does not at all mean that the cup was cleaned on the inside. Many times people say, when they look at someone else, “There has been a great change in this person”. Then the question is, is it just a cleaning of the cup on the outside, or is there perhaps an ulterior motive? We have had many people in the past who suddenly became kind to us, while in the past they were enemies. Then many of us, who are naive about such things, thought that there was a change on the inside of such people. Later, however, we found out that the people only wanted something from us, and when they got what they wanted, they turned into enemies again! And doesn’t the whole world work like that? Aren’t there countries that look to America for military aid or financial donations? Don’t we see it in our own country as well? People can become so lovingly friendly and submissive just to take advantage of you! It is certainly not a cleansing of the cup on the inside, and it is always proven in due course.
Something must first happen to us inside – something that God works from above, for all good gifts descend from above, from the Father in heaven (James 1: 16-18). If it is not given to you from above, you cannot accept it anyway (John 3:27). Even if you read the most wonderful words and truths in the Bible and understand them with your mind, you will not be able to accept them in your spirit if God does not grant you the ability to receive them. We can only walk in the good works if we walk in what God has prepared for us (Eph. 2:10). We must be taught by the Father and then drawn to Jashuah, otherwise we cannot come to Him (John 6: 44-45). Does this feel like a very harsh word, a hard truth? It also sounded harsh to the crowd around Jashuah, so much so that they left Him and no longer wanted to follow Him (verses 60-69). But, if there is a renewal in your mind as the Spirit of Christ now fills and controls you and you are no longer controlled by your own soul (carnal man), there will truly come a whole new purpose in your life. You will just want to love God more and more and please Him in everything. Every day, you will desire to come closer and closer to Him until your life is hidden with Christ in God (Col. 3: 3).
37. A Renewing of Your Mind
Rom 12: 1-2: “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God”.
Here we speak of a “renewal of your mind” and that it is a very important aspect when we want to test what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. This renewal of our minds coincides with the laying off of the old man (Eph. 4: 22-24). To lay off the old man indicates that this is something you want to do through your own free will. You lay it down–willingly and voluntarily. You are tired of mistreating God by walking in your own ways in what is good in your own eyes. You now want to do what is right in God’s eyes, His good and acceptable and perfect will. You now want to be His son/daughter in whom He is well pleased. Therefore you lay off the old man. You do this by speaking it and believing it as Romans 10 teaches you. Read verses 8 to 10. It is very important! So, you will get rid of the old wine bag, your old mood. The Explanatory Dictionary says that your mood is: “The innermost of man, conceived as the seat of his feelings, passions, moods, consciences”. It can also be explained as one’s disposition – a person’s inherent qualities of mind and character. One gets the impression then that the mind refers to the new wine rather than the new wine skin. Now, in Luke 8:15, when you read about the seed falling into the good ground, He describes the “good ground” as “the noble and good heart” that holds the seed of the word. And this is also when you can bear fruit, when you “keep the word in a noble and good heart”. And this is also what it means to receive the new wine (the seed of the Word) in a new wine skin (The ground of your heart) (Luke 5: 37-39): You must receive the Holy Spirit, or the living Word, in a new heart or mind. And How do you get the new heart or the new disposition/mood? You pray for it! You bow down to the living God knowing that you can do nothing for yourself to save yourself from your lost state. You are also begging Him to enable you to receive the new life (the Word of life by which you are born again –1 Pet 1: 23) into a new mind.
Do you believe His word has creative power? Do you believe the Scripture that says, when there was only darkness in the time of creation (Gen. 1: 1-3), God made the living Word shine in the darkness by speaking only one Word, a living Word: “Let there be light” !? If you believe this, you can also believe with the same faith that God speaks eternal life into you through the same living Word. And if you now give Him the opportunity to renew your whole mind (the new wine skin) and make it so receptive that you believe He is speaking life (the new wine) into you. Then you now have the new wine skin to receive the new wine (His life). And then you have now also received the new wine. If you start praising and thanking Him for this, you will notice that life begins to burst into your mind and it will always become more and more as you only thank Him more and more for the new life (new wine) and the new mood or mind (wine skin) in which you could receive it. It all comes from Him, from above!
38. A personal testimony
I have been through a very difficult time lately. As it has become darker in our country and also around the world, I have personally realised my responsibility to the people of God, the body of Christ, as well as to each individual, more than ever before. For many years, I had a great desire to serve God in my spirit. Also that God will reveal His Son IN me, although I was not at all ungrateful that He revealed His Son TO me in the past. I began to pray more earnestly until some weeks ago I experienced how the Spirit of God began to cry out to God through my spirit: “Oh, my Father, I can no longer hold these constant thoughts of the world’s obligations and responsibilities in me. I just can’t tolerate it within me any more. As I sit before You and I see in my imagination how I sit at Your right hand in Christ and worship You and listen to Your words, then mental thoughts flow into me with so many different things in my soul and spirit. Things that every human being on this earth surely has. Then it takes me hours at night to bring these thoughts to a standstill before You, one by one. I thank You and believe that I don’t need to overthink all these things. You will meet every need, give wisdom in every matter and prepare all that is needed to complete these matters according to Your will, Father”. Recently, one Saturday morning at a men’s meeting, before we started working, we had a young man who asked me this question: “Uncle Eugen, how are we going to get rid of all the ‘mind traffic’? It was a big question and we have been discussing the matter ever since on following Saturday mornings. When I then fell on my knees and called more seriously than ever before to deliver me from this stream of mind traffic, I felt that something was happening in my spirit. For days after that I experienced a tremendous peace in my whole mind. I felt like I was free from this mind traffic. I was walking in uninterrupted fellowship with my Father and with His Son. Nothing drew my attention away from Him. But, unfortunately, a few days later a storm of thoughts poured into my soul and spirit and sparked a war within me that is still ongoing. I also became ill in my body and experienced a weakness in my soul and in my body that I had never known. Where I used to work like any young man, I have now become weak and helpless in an instant. In an instant I became an old man who can boast in nothing except the grace of God. I then had to discover that, over the years, though I had given God the honour for the physical strength I had, to be able to work without ceasing, there was nevertheless pride and boasting in my spirit. A thing of which I was unaware.
I always knew that I didn’t know what was going on in my mind and soul because the Word says so. Therefore, I could not see into my own mind and thus could not do thorough introspection myself. Therefore, I also could not confess to that which I had not discovered and thereby accept my salvation from it. God alone knows what is going on in the human spirit. If He makes you pray in the Spirit, storming His throne, He will begin a cleansing work deep in your spirit and soul. The day I began to pray in the Spirit, I said to the Father, “Father cleanse me of everything from my flesh, from all sin, from this world and its laws, and also from my own laws. I desire from You a cleansed spirit and soul and body that is holy to You alone as Scripture says in 1 Thess 5:23. But I want to repeat this: it was the Holy Spirit praying through me in that day and no longer me as in the past. When the Spirit enters your prayer, something happens from above. I’m sure you would then ask if all the prior years of prayer didn’t help. Yes, it certainly helped, in fact it is that prayer that I have been praying in the mind all these years that has now led to me praying in the Spirit (1 Cor 14:15). If you did not seek God with your soul and mind over the years, you would not be able to pray in your spirit now. Maybe you and I can say, “I waited patiently for the Lord; and He inclined to me, and heard my cry. He also brought me up out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my steps. He has put a new song in my mouth—Praise to our God; many will see it and fear, and will trust in the Lord” (Ps. 40: 1-4). Notice that Ephesians 6:18 quotes a very important part of the armor of God, namely to pray in the Spirit (with a capital “S”), while 1 Corinthians 14:15 refers to spirit with a lowercase letter “s”. A lower case spirit refers to the human spirit while a capital letter refers to the Holy Spirit. You cannot pray in the Holy Spirit, to which prayer Jude 1:20 clearly refers, if that faculty or division in your being, namely your spirit, is not completely surrendered to God to purify and sanctify it (your spirit). Jashuah did this as He hung on the cross and said, “Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit” (Luke 23:46). If He, the Son of God, could give His spirit into the hands of the Father only from the cross, you and I cannot do it without us hanging on the cross with Him.
As I sit and write here my body is full of pains in various places and today, by the grace of the Father, I am going to continue to build the 8 apartments on Zion. But this time very deeply depending on Him as My strength. There is no more boasting in my spirit. If I boast, I will boast in my weaknesses as Paul says in 2 Cor 12: 9. When Paul brought the gospel to the region of the Galatians, he was sick. Read what he says in Galatians 4: 13-15 about his sickness.
39. God wants to reveal His Son in our spirit
Now read Galatians 1: 15-16. When you have finished reading this, I want you to first bow down to the Father and earnestly pray to Him to bring this word to your heart, and then you read it again.
God does not want to reveal to you a new religion, or an old one. He wants to reveal His Son IN you – in your spirit. Yes, deep within the control room of your whole being, He wants to put His Son in charge of your entire life, and no longer your “own self” or the spirit of this world. Notice that he writes very clearly: “But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb and called me through His grace, to reveal His Son IN Me …”. When you read this, a few things will hit you right away: there is a specific time when it pleases God to reveal His Son IN you. It will also strike you that you have already been called to this from your mother’s womb. And thirdly, it will also strike you that He does not just want to reveal His Son to you, but IN you.
This word I am writing to you this morning speaks more strongly to me than it does to many readers. And if it should be that this Word is only for myself, I will still rejoice, because I realise more and more, now in my 78th year, that God has been dealing with me personally throughout the years, and He still is — now more than ever before. He has truly revealed His Son to me throughout the years. And so my ministry was nothing more than giving to other people what I received myself. So I could give nothing more, and nothing less. Surely I can’t give something to someone else I don’t own! In two years I’ll be 80! If you were to ask me if I would mean anything to God at the age of 80, I would answer you that when Moses was 40, God sent him into the wilderness to raise sheep for the next 40 years, and when he was 80 (Exod 7: 7) God said to him: “Come now, therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring My people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt” (Exod 3:10). The one thing I realise very clearly is that if God reveals His Son IN me, in one single day I will be able to mean more to Him than in all 80 years when His Son was only revealed TO me. Am I arrogant to compare myself with Moses? No, just read 2 Cor 3: 4-9 and then discover that the same applies to you!
I have already said that God has been busy with me personally in recent years. But I also share it with you so that you and I can move together as the Body of Christ to the place where we will serve God in our spirit.
If you were to ask me if I’ve ever met anyone today in whom I’ve seen God has revealed His Son, I cannot think of such a person right now. I can think of many to whom He has revealed His Son – I personally am one of them too. And I rejoice in that! What a great grace it is.
Proverbs 4: 23 says: “Keep and guard your heart with all vigilance, for out of it flow the springs of life.” (Amplified Bible Classic Edition). Your heart is your spirit !! The origins of life lie in it, in your spirit. No one knows what is going on in his spirit. Not even the best psychologist or psychiatrist can look into the spirit of man. What is in it is dark for all people as well as for yourself (Jer 17: 9). Only God who tests the hearts (Prov. 17: 3) knows what is going on and only God can do anything about it. Is your spirit in His hand (Job 12:10)? It is His care that guards your spirit (Job 10:12). You can, however, willingly hand over your heart, your spirit. You can give your heart, or spirit, to God with the desire that He will do within it what He pleases to do, just as Jashuah did (Luke 23:46). Amen.