By J.Farrell Fisher, Jan.17-18, 2017

A “reject” in our modern day? For some, a “reject” is someone that should just be thrown away, because, in a sick society’s opinion that ‘person’ is unqualified, even for life, and should be discarded, useless to the ‘public good’, unsatisfactory when evaluated by the ‘super smart,’ ‘highly qualified’, or ‘self-sainted’ and certainly able to discern a “reject’s” usefulness to an elite society or not!

Some who become ‘judge and jury’ of a society’s ‘qualifications’ for admittance are certainly adept, professional, and determined not to have anything to do with the “low-lifes,” the “outsiders,” the “uneducated,” the “visibly weak and insignificant”, the “foreigners” to a society’s usefulness in making a nation great, and certainly determined that “these have no part with us”!

And, sadly, my question is: “Does it ever happen in church life that there comes a place in a church’s ministry when “life’s rejects” should be rejected and utmost care given to who it is one gives his/their attention to”?

But be assured of one thing: In the darkest shadows of human existence, Holy God has His eyes on the “least” a modern-day society or “self-serving ‘church’” thinks ‘worthy’ or ‘needy’ of their time, consideration, or witness, because “God so loved the world that He gave His own Son” for their redemption, reconciliation, re-birth, and eternal ‘rest’ in the Holy Family of God!

There’s a quote in Acts 2:21 from Joel when Peter said: “And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (delivered, escaped, freed)!” But today, some refuse ‘ministry’ to rejects?

I don’t know if you’ve sensed it or not in your reading of the Bible, but even Christ Jesus, THE ONLY LORD AND SAVIOR of all mankind – there is no other Redeemer – is considered by many, religious or not, as a “reject” worthy only of the Cross! In Acts 2:22-25 Peter preached to “the men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem,” ( and ultimately Holy God extended that message to all of Israel and to every corner of the globe!), Peter declaring, “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a Man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs which God did through Him in your midst, as you yourselves also know – Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death; WHOM GOD RAISED UP, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it.”

Question. Do you see it, as Christ Jesus was taken by, yes, ‘lawless hands’ and crucified by them, that those who crucified Him were a part of the whole of fallen humanity who needed blood redemption? “God so loved the world!” Even a world of “lawless hands”, ‘religious activity professionals’, the ‘mockers’, lives enslaved to the old sin nature that separates them from God, the promiscuous, the profane, the perverted? “There’s hope for them?” Absolutely!

But in the midst of a “fallen-away world” from Holy God you find ‘life’ primed by self-importance over Sovereign-intent, ‘flesh’s finest’ in place of the fullness of redemptive faith, passionate indulgences in the place of Prince of Peace birthing and blessing, the ‘preyed-on’ by the powers of darkness rather than the ‘prayed-over’ by the conquering King of liberty and freedom from sin’s chains and bondage, internally in the heart satisfied with their ‘self-importance’ more than eternally joined by repentance and faith to the King of kings and Lord of lords!

And, I speak of the ‘good folks’, decent but deceived, productive but paralyzed spiritually, warped in the ‘spirit-realm’ but ‘winsome’ in a sinful society, marred but adaptable, playful but perverted in a ‘people’s world’ of pleasures and perversions and ‘pass-times’ that have forgotten Holy God and majored on the promotion of “satisfying the flesh’!

I’ve often wondered and, yes, examined if what took place in ‘religious’ Israel has any significance of ‘modern-day’ participants as they attempt to adapt their world, their flesh, AND their devil to a ‘desire’ to be a part of God’s family at the same time.

If you were to examine Ezekiel 36 you’d find a true picture of ‘old religious devotees’ and, yes, the true hope of “new covenant blessings”! In Verses 22-27 we find an awesome picture of loving God’s eternal intent! It says, God speaking through Ezekiel to us in the 21^st Century: Therefore say to the house of Israel, “Thus says the Lord God: ‘I do not do this for your sake, O house of Israel, but for My holy name’s sake, which you have profaned among the nations wherever you went. And I will sanctify My great name, which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst; and the nations shall know that I am the Lord,’ says the Lord God, ‘when I am hallowed in you before their eyes. For I will take you from among the nations, gather you out of all countries, and bring you into your own land. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all filthiness and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.”

[Would it be important to examine what it means to “profane God’s holy name among the nations”? What is one’s ‘filthiness’ or one’s devotion to idols? And do you grasp and understand “hearts of stone”?]

And one does that knowing also that Holy God declared in Ezekiel 36:26-27, which I want to repeat: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.” Life’s ‘rejects’ received, beginning the journey of ‘royalty’ in the Holy Family of God and found faithful because of the Spirit God puts within us!

LIFE’S REJECTS RECEIVED? Let’s look to John 4 where Holy God unveils the receiving of life’s rejects! It doesn’t take long there to see and sense Holy God’s overseeing and, yes, His determination of one who NEEDS Him! It’s about a Samaritan woman who meets Christ Jesus! What thrills and touches my heart and mind so deeply? John 4:4 states, “But He (Christ Jesus) needed to go through Samaria.”

What was “the need”? What was pressing in on His spirit to ‘go through an area that most Jews considered being defiled by one’s presence there’? Does ministry to the ‘unclean’, the ‘foul’, the ‘dirty’, the ‘polluted,’ the ‘tainted’ automatically corrupt the true saints of God? That thought is so foreign to the nature, the character, the eternal intent of Holy God! “God so loved the world that He gave His Son” to come and rescue the rejects! That has never changed and has stood even before the world was formed and man had been created!

It was Bernard Iddings Bell in his writing “Argosy” who said: “I should like to see Christian leaders disregard their timid followers and, like Francis of Assisi or John Wesley, go out of the church buildings, shake the dust of denominationalism from impatient feet, and appeal to the folks generally. Americans will listen to religion if and when it claims to have relationship to real life. Let the churches recognize that their job is not to nurture the pious nearly so much as it is to rouse, convict of sin, convert, a pagan nation.” Amen?

But notice in Verse 7 of John 4 that a ‘woman of Samaria’ came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink.” The Samaritan woman said to Jesus in Verse 9, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.

Verse 10, Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” She’s dumbfounded! She responded in Verse 11, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do You get that living water?” In Verse 13 Jesus said to her, “Whoever drinks of this (well) water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.” She said to Jesus in Verse 15, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to drink.” Verse 16? Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” Verse 17, The woman answered Him and said, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You have well said, ‘I have no husband,’ for Verse 18, you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; in that you spoke truly.”

The ‘religious defense’ is intensified as the woman, in Verses 19-20 said to Jesus, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.” Jesus then said to her in Verses 21-24,

“Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and truth.” This woman at least professed an awareness of the “Messiah coming (who is called Christ). When He comes, He will tell us all things.” Jesus then said to her, “I who speak to you am He.” She “rested” in Christ and became a “rest-teller”!

Life’s rejects received? It’s so interesting to me, and heart and mind gripping, when I come to John 5 and see Jesus going up to Jerusalem. He went to a pool that had five porches. John 5:3 says, “In these lay a great multitude of sick people, blind, lame, paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water.” [Are there ‘porches’ today where ‘sick people’ scurry about hoping for a ‘stirring’ and ‘healing’ of what ails them?].

John 5:5 says, “Now a certain man was there who had an infirmity thirty-eight years. WHEN JESUS SAW HIM LYING THERE, and knew that he already had been in that condition a long time, Jesus said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” What a question! But so legitimate because many settle in to what a ‘fleshly life’ offers and have no ambition for “healing grace and mercy”! In Philip Bennett Power’s book, “The ‘I Wills’ of Christ”, [The Banner of Truth Trust, 1984,pps.51-52], Power spoke of “the one great truth that is all powerful everywhere,” then sharing , “There was once a caravan crossing to the north of India, and numbering in its company a godly and devoted missionary. As it passed along, a poor old man was overcome by the heat and labours of the journey, and sinking down was left to perish on the road. The missionary saw him, and kneeling down at his side, when the rest had passed along, whispered into his ear, “Brother, what is your hope?” The dying man raised himself a little to reply, and with a great effort succeeded in answering, “The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin!” and immediately expired with the effort. The missionary was greatly astonished at the answer, and in the calm and peaceful appearance of the man, he felt assured he had died in Christ. How, or where, he thought, could this man, seemingly a heathen, have got this hope? And as he thought of it, he observed a piece of paper grasped tightly in the hand of the corpse, which he succeeded in getting out. What do you think was his surprise and delight, when he found it was a single leaf of the Bible, containing the first chapter of the first Epistle of John, in which these words occur! On that page the man had found the gospel.” “The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin!” Has He cleansed you?

Do you grasp it, rest in it, rely upon it? In Christ, one is translated, by faith, from darkness into Eternal Light, from bondage to liberty, from sin to sanctification, from ‘flesh-realm’ to the “Spirit-world”, from chains of Satanic bondage to the freedom of the character and nature of Christ, from a world of the flesh and hellish existence to the kingdom of the Spirit and heavenly blessings now and forever, from a consciousness of sin-bondage to an abiding confidence in His presence within the repentant heart, and the true recipient of His pleasure, and power! I close with Jesus’ words in John 6:51-58, and notice, Jesus said these things in the synagogue as He taught in Capernaum!

Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me. This is the bread which came down from heaven – not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever.” Reject, renegade, or re-born?

By: J. Farrell Fisher, July 17-19, 2017

“Your life-journey”? There is no doubt all ‘life-journeys’ begin in the ‘natural’ necessitating the need of “blood Redemption” through the Cross of Christ to transform, natural, fallen humanity into sons and daughters of Father-God! Natural man in his highest form of fallen humanity never nears the mind, heart, spirit of Almighty God or the Son who came to be the sacrifice and Savior of the fallen! Natural journeys travel different highways than the Highway of God! Natural journeys, in the majority of lives, are lived to refute the need of God’s intervention in their lives at all!

To ‘trust’ natural abilities is to “step” into the footprints of men very proud of their natural abilities, never considering reconciliation with the eternal purpose of God that Adam and Eve never considered important, in fact, they bought the “lie” of Satan that one can sin and not die!

In Romans 3:23-26 the Spirit-anointed words of Paul must enlighten us all: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, BEING JUSTIFIED FREELY by His grace through the redemption (the “blood redemption”) that is in Christ Jesus, WHOM GOD SET FORTH AS A PROPITIATION BY HIS BLOOD, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”

Dare I say it? I believe I will! Major religions of the world that by-pass, ignore, and seek to negate Christ’s shed blood through His Cross are nothing more than “religious demons” out to uplift ‘natural man’ to ‘godlikeness’ which denies Jesus Christ in every way, other than, “just add Him in as a compliment to what we’re religiously all about,” which is nothing more than “spitting” in Jesus’ face as they led Him to His crucifixion, proving their ‘justification’ of one’s religious “best”!

“Life-journeys” that flow out of unrepentant, unbelieving hearts are the journeys of wanderers who’ve been blinded by the powers of darkness to God’s amazing grace and unending love, wandering in the regions of worldly, fleshly, and demonic activity, like a ‘desert-journey’ with no shade, no springs, striving to make it through to a ‘comfortable place’! “Nature-lovers” ought to be God-lovers, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they are re-born sons and daughters of God, though one would hope, pray, and desire that they truly be “Mastered by the Master”!

It was George B. Cheever, in “The Encyclopedia of Religious Quotations,” (P.316), who wrote: “The man who can really, in living union of the mind and heart, converse with God through nature, finds in the material forms around him, a source of power and happiness inexhaustible, and like the life of angels. – The highest life and glory of man is to be alive unto God; and when this grandeur of sensibility to Him, and this power of communion with Him is carried, as the habit of the soul, into the forms of nature, then the walls of our world are as the gates of heaven.”

Did YOU receive it? “The highest life and glory of man is to be alive UNTO GOD”, and, of course, with Heaven’s Gates widely opened “to the repentant heart whose faith is in Christ alone”!

One of the sad words in the New Testament is found in 2 Timothy 4:16-17 when Paul wrote: “At my first defense no one stood with me, but all forsook me. May it not be charged against them. BUT the Lord stood with me and strengthened me, so that the message might be preached fully through me, and that all the Gentiles might hear. Also I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion.” Didn’t David write in Psalm 22:21, “Save Me from the lion’s mouth and from the horns of the wild oxen”? You are aware that ‘animals’ often represented physical and religious enemies of divine truth. Enemies often appear ‘domesticated’ when in reality they are only waiting on their opportune moment to shame, defame, or lead one astray from his/her devotion to Christ Jesus!

But my deep conviction? To be Heavenly relevant is to be earthly radical in willing obedience to all our Lord Says! In Luke 6:46 Jesus said, “But why do you call Me ‘Lord, Lord’, and not do the things which I say?” True disciples, deeply convicted, openly honest before Holy God, willfully trusting the words of Christ Jesus, breaking the bonds of fleshly obedience in the sinful way, full confession, full confidence that Christ Jesus means what He says, convicted and convinced by the Holy Spirit, a man, a woman, boy or girl, “confesses, surrenders, and rests in Christ alone for eternal life now and in the hereafter”, even ‘leaning not to their own understanding (fully), but “trusting” the Lord with all their hearts, leaning not to their own understanding, but in all their ways giving Jesus His rightful place in their hearts, yes, to direct every step, with the Proverbs author saying in Proverbs 3:7-8, “Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and depart from evil. It will be health to your flesh, and strength to your bones.”

The beloved John really hit a strong ‘home-run of faith and obedience’ when in 1 John 3:7-10 he wrote: “Little children, let no one deceive you. He who practices righteousness is righteous, just as Christ the Messiah is righteous. He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. FOR THIS PURPOSE THE SON OF GOD WAS MANIFESTED, THAT HE MIGHT DESTROY THE WORKS OF THE DEVIL. Whoever has been born of God (“New birth”, birthed of the Spirit, second birth!) DOES NOT SIN (Present tense, continuous action! Doesn’t sin and keep on sinning!) Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God.”

Do you understand or realize that every day of a disciple’s life there are huge choices of “doing sin like the rest of the fallen world” OR “doing righteousness as your chosen way of Life in Christ Jesus”? And didn’t John say in 1 John 3:7, “Little children, let no one deceive you. He who practices righteousness is righteous, just as Jesus is righteous.” In fact, in 1 John 2:29, John had said, “If you know that He (God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, the ‘three in One’!) is righteous, you know that everyone who practices righteousness is born of Him.” In Christ we are no longer ‘slaves’ to one’s old sin nature but “servants” of the “Master of Service” who didn’t come to be served but to serve and to lay down His life as the ransom for many!

Man in a fallen world, under the domination of Satan himself, under the powerful influences of godless men, men in a fallen world who will, for some, ‘profess’ allegiance to religious trends which are feeble imitations of “Resurrected Life, Resurrected Power, and Resurrected Hope” that comes only through the Resurrection Presence of Christ in his/her “new-born Life in Christ”! It’s the “burning bush” of Old Testament fame that has come in the fullness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ! It’s the same voice of God speaking to Jeremiah who calls each of us by name, knocks on our heart’s doors, illumines our minds in the glow of His grace, telling each of us as He did to Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1:8), “Do not be afraid of their faces, for I am with you to deliver you”, says the Lord.

And, certainly, our major enemy is Satan himself, along with his well-deceived ‘demons of darkness’ trained by your enemy, Satan, to influence you to “the best of your natural life”, to immerse you in the ill-advised life-influence of ‘self-assertiveness’, self-independence from any ruling authority but your own mind, your diseased ‘flesh’, and your darkened ambition of making sure any sinful thought in you comes to full fruition’! A godless world, a rebellious Satan, and a natural sin-nature blinds unbelievers in the world and even some ‘compromising’ individuals in the church, in attendance, every time their church doors are open so they can camouflage their darkened, demonized, and undisciplined ‘walk of faith’!

And you’ve often wondered why Jesus said what He did in Matthew 16:24-26? “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross (The “sentence of death daily”?), and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life (for self-indulgence?) will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake (living to honor Christ only!) will find it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?”

Oswald Chambers, in his book “My Utmost For His Highest”, wrote: (p.256), Galatians 5:24-25, “And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.” Chambers wrote: “It is the things that are right and noble and good from the natural standpoint that keep us back from God’s best. To discern that natural virtues antagonize surrender to God, is to bring our soul into the center of its greatest battle. Very few of us debate with the sordid and evil and wrong, but we do debate with the good. It is the good that hates the best, and the higher up you get in the scale of the natural virtues, the more intense is the opposition to Jesus Christ. ‘They that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh” (Daily!!) – it is going to cost the natural in you everything, not something. Jesus said: “If ant man will be My disciple, let him DENY HIMSELF,” i.e., his right to himself, and a man has to realize Who Jesus Christ is before he will do it. Beware of refusing to go to the funeral of your own independence.”

Do you remember what Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 1:9-10? “Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves (actually saying in 1 Corinthians 15:31, “I affirm, by the boasting in you which I have in Christ Jesus, I DIE DAILY”) – that’s, yes, DAILY taking the sentence of death to one’s old sin nature and fleshly desires in order that RESURRECTION LIFE IN CHRIST MAY BE MANIFESTED IN MORTAL FLESH MOMENT BY MOMENT, not when you get to heaven someday!

I hate to disappoint many ‘professing believers’ but Christ’s TRUTH can never be hidden – He spoke with eternal intent to turn men away from Satan’s deceptions to bring men into the Light of His eternal Truth! He said in Luke 14:27-33, “Whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it – lest, after he has laid a foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish’? Or what king, going to make war against another king, does not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? Or else, while the other is still a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks conditions of peace. SO LIKEWISE, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple.”

Have you ever heard it? “I’d be a disciple of Christ IF…”, or “I’d like to be a part of kingdom living under Christ’s Lordship IF..” or “It’s inviting and alluring, but there are parts of my personal desires I want to hold onto,” or “My vision for my earthly existence doesn’t include taking that sentence of death unto myself”, or “God’s vision for me is not what I desire to satisfy my own inner self” – on and on and on, unbelieving men will choose ‘self’ over the Savior, ‘my will’ over the eternal divine will of God, ‘my fleshly ambitions’ over Holy God’s eternal intent for my life, with some even determining “satisfying my earthly dreams over any eternal purpose of your Holy God”!

Again, Oswald Chambers wrote, (p.92), “All that we build is going to be inspected by God. Is God going to detect in His searching fire that we have built on the foundation of Jesus some enterprise of our own? These are days of tremendous enterprises, days when we are trying to work for God, and therein is the snare. Profoundly speaking, we can never work for God. Jesus takes us over for HIS enterprises, HIS building schemes entirely, and no soul has any right to claim where he shall be put.” IS THAT CLEAR?

There’s an old hymn entitled “The Haven of Rest”, (copyrighted in 1889 by John J. Hood) – it says: “My soul in sad exile was out on life’s sea, So burdened with sin and distrest, Till I heard a sweet voice saying, “Make Me your choice,” And I entered the haven of rest.

I yielded myself to His tender embrace, And, faith taking hold of the word, My fetters fell off, and I anchored my soul: The haven of rest is my Lord.

The song of my soul, since the Lord made me whole, Has been the old story so blest, Of Jesus, who’ll save whosoever will have A home in the haven of rest.

Oh, come to the Savior, He patiently waits, To save by His power divine; Come, anchor your soul in the haven of rest, And say, “My Beloved is mine.”

I’ve anchored my soul in the haven of rest, I’ll sail the wide seas no more; The tempest may sweep o’er the wild stormy deep, In Jesus I’m safe evermore.”

Has that been sealed in your heart? “Safe evermore – in Christ alone?” Dallas Willard, in his writing “The Great Omission” closed out his book saying: (p.228), “Those who think that the cultivation of inner Christ-likeness through personal discipleship to Jesus amounts to a “privatization” of our faith in Him (“quietism” and “pietism” are words often used in that connection) simply do not understand how the spiritual life in Christ works. You CANNOT privatize the fire of God that burns through the life of a disciple of Jesus. This was Jesus’s point in saying that “a city built on a hill cannot be hidden,” and that one does not “light a candle and put it under a bushel.” (Matthew 5:14-15; Mark 4:21; Luke 11:33).

Be assured! Man-made inventions of ‘religious faiths’ may survive through men’s earthly pilgrimages, but not before the Throne of Almighty God! His question to you in that moment before His Throne? “What did you do with Jesus called the Christ?” That determines your destiny in the here and now AND before the Judgment Throne of Holy God!