IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 164

YES, HE is Talking to YOU! (continued)

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

Yesterday’s post should have served to make our point that all of the Master’s teachings, regardless of the subject of which one may assume He is speaking, are oriented around the single idea of keeping the word of God and thereby the words of the Master. We know of course that these words are ONE as He does tell us: “….the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me….” (John 14:10) and in this we should see that based on the idea that Jesus is for us the example of the man perfected in God, that both the Father and the Son are with us always. And this is our theme for all these posts; that should we focus on the Father and on the Son as they exist within each of us and that it is this power that will overcome the world and make of us True Sons of God. Speaking of the Master the Apostle John tells us that “because as he is , so are we in this world” (1 John 4:17); he says this as a confidence to those of His who may be fearful but it is an important saying for all who seek discipleship which can be understood as growing upon any who seek Him diligently. We speak often about ranges and degree and in this idea of discipleship, if we can but see it, this same is at play. As one stays on the Path and does “strive to enter in at the strait gate” (Luke 13:24), he comes more and more into possession of the energies and the forces of Soul Life as they operate within his conscious personality. These invariably bring into one’s conscious Life the Love and the Wisdom and the Light of the Christ Within and, of course, His Peace, all of which we can know as His Glory and of which the Master says: “and the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one” (John 17:22).

All this from the simple praise of the woman who heard the Master speak about devils and demons, about the illusion of the scribes and the Pharisees, about the habits of the demons that haunt us all and about the treasure of the heart. She heard Him speak and, in our view of it, she heard some of the deeper meanings with a degree of understanding. She says “Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked“; the Master however shrugs off the praise and puts it firmly on us who “hear the word of God, and keep it” (Luke 11:27-28); on those of us who are striving to enter and who are among those who heed His words to: “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened” (Matthew 7:7-8). Asking and seeking and knocking are lifelong pursuits, they are never complete; for whatever we may think that we know there is yet more and still deeper understanding waiting to be uncovered. Vincent tells us about these in a quote from Trench saying: Ask, seek, knock. “these three repetitions of the command are more than mere repetitions; since to seek is more than to ask, and to knock than to seek” (Trench, ‘Parables’)⁴. While the context is unclear in Matthew’s Gospel of just what we should be asking and seeking and knocking for, Luke makes it clear in telling us that the Master says: “…how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?“(Luke 11:13). We know from our previous posts that the whole idea of asking and of receiving is sorely misunderstood in the church today as many relate it all to the things of this world.

There are also so many ideas in the church today about how to get the Holy Spirit, how to ‘be filled’ and how to tell if another is filled. With some there are requirements, be it a baptism of a special type or the laying on of hands by another who is ‘filled with the Spirit’; others say it is just a matter of hearing the word, by which it is assumed that hearing is understanding and believing. Many believe that the only evidences of the Holy Spirit in ones life is in their ability to ‘speak in tongues’ which is not another language but the ‘utterances of the Spirit’. While individually those professing that they know the ways to ‘be filled’ with the Holy Spirit with each believing it in their way and eschewing the ways of others, we should be able to see the degree of confusion at play here. The idea of being ‘filled with the Spirit’ has been taken to be a separate and a unique thing that is only for those who are ‘born again’ according to a particular doctrine and then to be baptized in some way ‘in’ the Spirit.

For us the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God as it is manifest in this creation; to have this Spirit in one’s life is the equivalent of having the Christ Within functioning within one’s conscious personality. This is the whole of the idea of Life in form; to bring the forces and the energies of the Soul into outer expression through our personalities and to live the Life of a Son of God here on this Earth. It is as we do this that we come into the Presence of God and into His Kingdom here and now. Being filled with the Spirit as a man in form is to have a personality that is focused on God in all His aspects and on doing His words. For us, the idea an evidence of being filled with the Spirit would be that such a one who is so filled would exhibit the Love and the Wisdom of the Lord and would be letting his Light shine forth through in his good works, and all this away and apart from the self-centered ways of the world.

This is not where we intended to go with this and so, getting back to the point we were making: In the Gospel of Matthew it is unclear as to what we should be asking and seeking and knocking for while in Luke’s Gospel we have the idea that we are asking for the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God to be active in our lives. This is a better understanding than the uncertainty left in Matthew but we should look here a bit deeper and see the context of the words in both gospels; we should find in the end that we are asking for Wisdom, the Wisdom to act in this conscious Life in a way that reflects the Spirit of God and the words of the Master. In Matthew’s Gospel this verse on asking comes near the end of the Sermon on the Mount where the Master teaches us who and what we are as disciples and aspiring disciples; that we are the Light of the world and the salt of the earth and that as such we must keep His commandments and be righteous among men. He teaches us to regard anger in much the same light as killing and to quickly seek reconciliation whenever there is conflict. He teaches us to regard matters of lust in a sexual respect as adultery and that we should not swear oaths but to stand on our honest word. We learn from the Master here that we should not resist or oppose evil directed against us and that we should willingly give, lend and forgive all in an attitude of peace. He tells us to Love our enemies and do good to those who would  do us harm as well as to pray for those who despitefully use  or abuse us  and those too who may persecute us. He teaches us to pray, how to ask for the Will of God to be known and for our daily needs and for God’s forgiveness and deliverance. He teaches us not to be hypocrites in giving nor in praying nor in fasting, to not do things for the being seen doing. Then Jesus tells us to not store up the treasures of this Life on Earth but to store up treasures in heaven, to garner for ourselves the fruits of the Spirit, and He tells us what is in our hearts, our conscious Lives, depends on which treasure it is that we choose. He tells us to have a single eye, to be singleminded because we cannot serve both God and the world of things and that, looking toward God, we need not worry or even think about the things that we need for this Life in flesh, not food and not clothing, as this thinking will not get you what you need. He closes these thought with this favorite saying: “seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33). Going on the Master tells us that we should not worry about, or even think about, tomorrow or what it will bring as living the right Life today is sufficient. He then tells us about judgement and that we should avoid it else it come back upon us and He tells us of the error of being willing to see the evil in one’s brother while not seeing the same or worse in ourselves. All these things does the Master say up to the point of our verse which is to ask, to seek and to knock.

With all of this in one place here, can there be any real question as to what the Master is truly saying? Are not all these things are what we do call the Wisdom of God? In Luke’s Gospel the Master gives us His saying on asking and seeking and knocking after teaching the prayer as noted above. From the prayer Jesus goes directly into the Parable of the Friend at Midnight which we recently covered (In the Words of Jesus parts 148 and 149) and of which we say that it is a parable about asking. We said that because there is a friendship that the one will not find shame in asking and that the other will do as he is asked, not because of the reason of friendship, but that he was asked by a friend. The Master then likens this to asking of the Father, that we, asking shamelessly, will get what we need and it is here that Luke places the Master’s saying that: “And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?” (Luke 11:9-13).

Can we find any reason to believe that the whole of this idea from the Gospel of Luke has to do with asking for anything other than the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of our God and His Love and His Wisdom. Today’s post is not what it was intended to be as we were going to continue in our journey through the sayings that we have been discussing and coming up to the point where the Master is asked to show a sign. We were going to begin this part with the idea of generations and of Wisdom and as a seed thought we had intended to use these verses below. We will pick up on this in the next post.

“And the Lord said , Where unto then shall I liken the men of this generation? and to what are they like? They are like unto children sitting in the marketplace, and calling one to another, and saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned to you, and ye have not wept . For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine; and ye say, He hath a devil. The Son of man is come eating and drinking; and ye say, Behold a gluttonous man, and a wine bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners! But wisdom is justified of all her children” (Luke 7:31-35).

Note on the Quote of the Day