Thursday, June 8, 2023

THE GARDEN OF GOD ON NEW GROUND

Yesterday the commentary was about anger with a brother without a just cause. As it turns out, it seems that Jesus was previewing their own judgment of Him with them having no cause. Today, judgment will be explored further, to wit: 

KEY VERSES: 23 Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; 24 Leave there thy gift before the altar and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift. (Mat 5:23-24)

 The topic of conversation was judgment — that someone is angry with their brother, from the previous passage, specifically if someone is angry with you, even without a cause. In other words, you have not judged wrongly, but must reconcile with another person who judged you wrongly.

Again, let this apply to the case of the multitude vs. Jesus. Jesus is their spiritual brother. At best, they would be adopted of God; Paul wrote, speaking of the firstfruits of God, “Even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body” (Rom 8:23).

Converts are the seed that are planted; some mature and the others do not, as is learned from the parable of the seeds: 

And these are they by the way side, where the word is sown; but when they have heard, Satan cometh immediately, and taketh away the word that was sown in their hearts. (Mark 4:15)

 The ”Gift” in the key verses may apply to Jesus Himself! The Holy Spirit is the “good gift,” according to Jesus (Luke 11:13). When Jesus was crucified, He gave up the Ghost (Mark 15:39), revealing that Jesus was indeed the Son of God since the Spirit of God was the Gift from God (2 Cor 9:15).

Those who heard and believed had received the Gift, but Satan quickly stole the God-given Gift.

In the case of Jesus, it was Him that bear the Gift. He gave up the Gift for his “brothers” — all who would follow Him; “brothers” in the sense that they gave up their “father the Devil” and came to the Father of all — the Invisible God — who adopts all that call on His Name.

Jesus was the supernatural child of God, having the Spirit of His Father. Everyone else were “bastard” children of the Devil some of whom were seeking Comfort in the bosom of Jesus. [1]

The point here is that Jesus was speaking of brothers in a spiritual sense; He was perhaps not speaking of reprobate pagan enemies as “brothers.” As the “Last Adam” Jesus was the eldest “brother” of all of Adam’s kind. He surely was not only speaking to only potential Christian “brothers” in general, but possibly Himself!

Referring again to the key verse, Jesus brought the Gift to the altar; the “altar” being the sacred Cross. There He remembered that a brother had something against Him. There were many there who before had not been “brothers” at all but adversaries: Pontius Pilate, the repentant thief Dismus, and the centurion who pierced His side. Each of them saw Jesus as God in the flesh as He shed His Blood for them. All three of them became “brothers” as they realized that they were witnessing God in the Body of Jesus.

Jesus remembered them as He was dying. He said to Dismus, “Today shalt thou be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43). “Today” would be soon after He gave up the Ghost because the Jewish Day would end about fifteen minutes before dark. Jesus made it dark at the sixth hour and it lasted until He gave up the Ghost three hours later. Dismus went to Paradise as it was dark, not in body but in Spirit. The Gift that Jesus gave Dismus was the Holy Ghost who accompanied the still living soul of Dismus to Paradise.

Pilate and Longinus, the centurion, at the very time Jesus gave up the Ghost, received the Gift. They too would be part of the reconciliation, “There rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee.” Jesus remembered them because they believed that He was God!

Jesus followed through with what He had preached to the multitude, “Leave there thy gift before the altar and go thy way.” Jesus left His Holy Ghost — His Gift — at the altar, and He went His Way to the sepulcher.

What had happened in the three hours of darkness? His Spirit emerged from Him on the altar and seeded the “crop” of spiritual brothers all over the land. Jesus, without even a moon to sow under, sowed a new “crop” as the Father had done in the beginning: 

6 There went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. 7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. 8 And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. (Gen 2:6-8)

 You may have missed it before, but Adam was the first “plant” in the Garden of God, and Eve was of the shoot of Adam. God took a piece of Adam and planted it alongside Him, and the two were meant to grow good fruit.

Eve was trespassed upon and she too made a bastard child and named him “Cain.”

Adam and Eve were of the same “tubular” (root) and were made for each other and no one else. The Devil, cleverly disguised as another image (nahas), made all of Eve’s kind bastard children since she was the “mother of all living” (Gen 3:20), implying that Adam was not their father. Cain’s father was the Devil, the same as ours.

As Mark wrote, Satan (that image in the Garden), “Taketh away the word that was sown in their hearts.”

The word, “word” should be capitalized. The “Word” as John wrote is God in the flesh, or Jesus (John 1:1-14). Satan ravaged the Garden of God once in the beginning and many times thence. He can ravage it again to destroy the crop that Jesus sowed when He shed His Water and Blood (1 John 5:6). The “water” was the “Living Water” the Holy Ghost that He shed for them… the “Gift.”

The Blood that He propitiated was for “sins that are past” (Rom 3:25) — the sins of Eve (the First Adam; not the male Adam), for she, not Adam, was the progenitor of all the living. The Blood of Jesus would fix Eve’s original sin — adultery — and with even another kind of being. The Blood of Jesus had the genetics of God within it. Those genes were the new seeds sown to improve the crop fit enough for God to harvest!

And not to forget the key verse, “First be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.”

Jesus reconciled with all his brothers past, present, and future. He opened the ground wherein His Blood flowed and planted His seed to reconcile with all mankind. He fixed Eve’s sin, David’s, Moses’s, and all the patriarchs who came before Him. Then His seed was left in the Earth for all future generations. Indeed, God planted another Garden with the glorious Seed of His “Son,” not in the sense of the “son” being the offspring of the father, but having the gens (genetics) of God, the Father.

Jesus gave His Gift directly to Dismus and left His Seed in the earth on Earth for all mankind for all generations in perpetuity. Dismus was engendered from God above (“born again:” John 3:7) by His “Seed” — the Son.

Was Jesus, in the key verse, speaking of His own (God’s) reconciliation with His creatures? Perhaps so. It seems that the crucifixion was God’s Reconciliation with mankind, and that it was:

9 Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. 10 For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son. (Rom 5:9-10)

 The multitude to which Jesus was speaking were not “brothers” but those elect who would hear Him. Some would believe on Him, and some would not. Some would believe for awhile but later turn on Him. However, they were all brothers in a spiritual sense because even the evilest had potential to survive the Garden of God on new ground that Jesus would plant.

It was Him that was the Vine that would produce new creatures from the husbandry of God, and they were the “branches” who could either grow or wither (John 15:1-2).

At first glance, I was ready to dismiss the key verse and gloss over it as an example or human reconciliation. Reconciliation was in the Plan of God and I almost missed it!



 

 

 

 

 



[1] The Dead Sea Scrolls refers to “bastards” as the mixed breed resulting from the sons of God coupling with the daughters of men.

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