Resurrection From the Dead, Part 6

 

August 3, 2018

 

And away we go for today.  There is a lot of territory to cover, so let’s get started.

 

Hebrews 4:15-16:  For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.  Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.

 

Because we are applying this scripture a bit differently than we might normally use it, I need to amplify this from the Greek so that you can see its application to Resurrection Life.

 

We do not have a high priest who is impervious to the testings, the trials or the proofs of our behavior in the face of feebleness, moral frailty or weakness; [Jesus] experienced all manner of trial and the need to overcome every failure and weakness of the flesh, thoughts and emotions, and He never failed to rise above it all, nor missed the mark.

 

As a consequence, we can come with all assurance and bluntness unto the Throne of Grace — that Throne which empowers us to rise above and overcome every weakness and failure — so that we may obtain compassion and receive the empowerment needed to rise above and overcome every weakness or failure. (Hebrews 4:15-16, RAC Translation & Amplification)

 

Are you seeing the application?  Good!

 

Before we continue, let’s take this word, Resurrection, and dissect it for a minute.  Its root is “to resurrect, to bring back to life, to restore to normal living.”  The New Testament Greek term is anastasis.  This is a compound word which has a fistful of applications.

 

The first is: to cause to rise up, to raise up.

 

Then you have the following: to raise up from laying down; to raise up from the dead; to cause to be born, to cause to appear, to bring forward.

 

From there we have: of those who leave a place to go elsewhere; of those who prepare themselves for a journey.

 

Thayer adds the following: to appear; to stand forth; of kings, prophets, priests, leaders of insurgents.

 

He finishes with: the resurrection of certain ones’ history who were restored to life.

 

And I’ve only scratched the surface of meanings.  We generally tend to apply this word only with resurrection from the dead, but as you can see, it has so many applications, we have to stop and consider its usage in our walk in Resurrection Life.

 

Jesus was faced with every kind of weakness — whether physical, mental or emotional — that we face.  Every issue that He encountered, which could have been death to His physical being, thoughts or emotions, He overcame and rose above.  Jesus lived and walked Resurrection Life.  In His 33-year (approximate) lifespan, even before His baptisms and recognition by Father, He lived a normal (by human standards) life.  He was a carpenter, a businessman and a man who lived in and among society with all its foibles and shortcomings.

 

Once Jesus was announced by Father as His Son and began to walk in a supernatural dimension, the attacks, the tests and the trials only magnified.  The Greek word used in Hebrews 4 which is translated in the KJV as “tempted” is the word, peirazo.

 

This word has a broad scope of applications for “testing” but J.H. Thayer tells us that one of its uses is defined like this: in a bad sense, to test one maliciously, craftily to put to the proof his feelings or judgments.

 

Jesus was absolutely tested in this way by the Scribes and Pharisees.  They wanted to undo His authority.  They wanted to try to prove that He really wasn’t the Son of God.  They did everything in their power to destroy Him, and Jesus overcame their maliciousness and craftiness.  It was all part of the Resurrection preparation.  He had to walk this overcoming.  He had to live it in front of the world.  He had to live it in such a way that it became life to the Disciples.

 

Della and I were having this discussion earlier and talking about those folks who’ve said to us, “Well, are you saying that Jesus experienced the pain of divorce?  Are you saying that Jesus knew what it was like to have someone walk away from Him and cut Him off from their life?”

 

The answer is, Absolutely!  Of course, Jesus was never married in the way we think of marriage — not in this life, anyway — and never went through divorce, but He certainly experienced the same kind of pain and emotional upheaval that people go through with divorce.

 

Let’s go back to the prophecy of Isaiah.

 

He is disdained and scorned, and considered as having ceased to exist by men: a man of anguish and pain, and has known grief by seeing and experiencing it; and we hid as it were our faces from Him; He was disdained and scorned, and we maliciously fabricated, invented and treated His suffering and death as void.

 

Surely He has suffered and accepted as His own our maladies, our anxieties, our calamities, our disease and sicknesses, and carried our anguish, pain and grief: yet we fabricated and maliciously invented His being stricken violently, beaten, punished, wounded and slaughtered as if by God -- choosing to believe that God browbeat, demeaned and looked down upon Him.

 

But He was broken and profaned for our rebellion, our revolt, our apostasy and our [religious] quarrel against God; He was crushed, oppressed and smitten, and (emotionally) broken into pieces for our perversity, our evil, our mischief, sins and faults; the breaking and ridiculing of our peace, our welfare, our prosperity, our health and our safety was upon Him; and with His bloodied and blue wounds we are cured, mended, repaired and made thoroughly whole.  (Isaiah 53:3-5, RAC Translation & Amplification)

 

I was awakened at 2:00 AM this morning by the Holy Spirit.  He quoted to me the statements by Paul in Hebrews 4:15-16, and reminded me of Isaiah’s prophecy.  Then He said to me, “There is NOTHING you have experienced, or will experience, that Jesus did not experience!  That’s why you have the Throne of Empowerment set before you.  No matter what you go through, no matter what your place of potential failure — or real failure — might be, you can come with absolute assurance and conviction that you will receive the ability to rise above and overcome.”

 

Consider what Paul writes to the Ephesians:

 

Ephesians 3:17-19, AMP:  May Christ through your faith [actually] dwell (settle down, abide, make His permanent home) in your hearts! May you be rooted deep in love and founded securely on love, 

 

That you may have the power and be strong to apprehend and grasp with all the saints [God’s devoted people, the experience of that love] what is the breadth and length and height and depth [of it];

 

[That you may really come] to know [practically, through experience for yourselves] the love of Christ, which far surpasses mere knowledge [without experience]; that you may be filled [through all your being] unto all the fullness of God [may have the richest measure of the divine Presence, and become a body wholly filled and flooded with God Himself]!

 

Let’s take it the next step:

 

Ephesians 2:8: “For it is through the direct influence, (grace) empowering and drawing of Holy Spirit that you are saved, healed, delivered, made whole, protected and made to prosper, through and by means of faith, and that faith doesn’t come because you willed it or made a decision in your mind (humon): it is the sacrificial gift — a present — of and from Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”  (RAC Translation & Amplification)

 

John 1:12-13:   But as many as believed in and responded to Him, to them He gave the authority and ability to become – and be transformed into – begotten children of God, specifically to those who entrust their future existence and well-being by faith in His name, rank, position, character, personality and being;

 

Who were begotten, not of flesh and blood, nor because human flesh determined it by its own decision, nor because the mind and intellect of man seized upon it and willed it into existence, but by God as a sovereign act of His Will and determination.  (RAC Translation & Amplification)

 

THAT, folks, is the power of Resurrection Life.

 

Let me take you down a bit of a rabbit trail for a few minutes and talk about the culture of death that we live in.  We are so contaminated by the death mindset that reversing that overcoming its tentacles in our lives takes a miracle only the Lord can accomplish in us.  It has to begin with our agreement with Him, with what He has done for us, and his Word becoming our flesh.

 

Think about this for a minute.

 

We work on changing the confession of our mouths.  We think we are making progress, but it is our actions which are tell-tale.  We gamble with our health and we gamble with our lives.  How, you ask?  By buying life insurance and health insurance.

 

I know.  The next question is, So where is the gambling?  Look at it this way.  The insurance company is gambling that you are going to live a good, healthy life.  You are gambling that you are not, and so you pay them money.  The insurance company is making money off your doubt, fear and unbelief.

 

The same applies to life insurance.  The insurance company is gambling that you are going to live a long and productive life.  You are gambling that you are going to die, and you pay them good money because of it.  Again, the insurance company is making money off your fear, doubt and unbelief.

 

Think I’m nuts?  Think I’ve gone off the deep end?  That’s OK.  Once you start digging into the actual practices of our lives, you soon discover we are so impregnated with the Fear of Death that it is woven into the core of our beings.

 

Allow me to digress for a minute and share with you some personal experiences from the past few weeks.

 

Most of you know that I had a bout with the flu and pneumonia during the Christmas/New Years holiday and was hospitalized for a week.  In the weeks that have followed, I’ve had many follow-up visits to the doctors and clinics.  One of the doctors is a cardiologist who is a professing Christian (I wouldn’t be surprised if they all were, but this one is quite outspoken) and she is from Nigeria.

 

One of the blood tests run in the lab indicated that my potassium levels had spiked to what they considered a critically dangerous level, and this doctor called and insisted that I check into the ER, where they kept me for the better part of two more days to flush the potassium from my body.

 

None of it made sense to me since not three days prior I had gone through a bio-scan (called an Oligo Scan) which showed my potassium levels on the low end of normal.  Some research determined that one of the doctors had prescribed a wrong combination of meds which caused the reaction in my liver and caused the spike.

 

I’ve never been a fan of the medical profession in general, and this experience did nothing to improve that impression.  Della and I have spent most of our lives avoiding things pharmaceutical and relying instead on natural supplements.  While I have been faithful to take the meds prescribed by the doctors, it is also clear that I get much better results from natural supplements.

 

In this instance, in a conversation with the cardiologist, the subject of natural supplements came up, Della showed the doctor the list of supplements we are taking.  She became angry and flipped the page back to Della with a snort and a comment about “bad science.”  It became clear that all of her medical education was predicated on the efficacy of the pharmaceuticals with zero tolerance for natural supplements based on what God created for us in the first place.

 

It was a reminder that much (although not all) of the medical profession relies on “treatments” — NOT cures.  “Healing” and “wholeness” are not words you will hear very often from doctors and nurses.  They are programmed by the pharmaceutical industry to think “treatment” but not “cure.”  This way, they create a dependency on the profession and on the industry, relying on the Fear of Death, which so permeates the human frame, to fill their financial coffers.  If we are to live Resurrection life, we have to destroy the mindset that operates in fear, doubt and unbelief — and Jesus has made that available to us!

 

You’ll excuse me if I get or sound very opinionated on this topic, but that comes from walking and living in the realm of the Spirit and seeing how our Resurrection life in Christ Jesus actually works.  See you next week.

 

In case you are missing out on real fellowship in an environment of Ekklesia, our Sunday worship gatherings are available by conference call – usually at about 10:45AM Pacific.  That conference number is (712) 770-4160, and the access code is 308640#.  We are now making these gatherings available by Skype.  If you wish to participate by video on Skype, my Skype ID is regner.capener.  If you miss the live voice call, you can dial (712) 770-4169, enter the same access code and listen in later.  The video call, of course, is not recorded – not yet, anyway.

 

Blessings on you!

 

 

           

Regner A. Capener
CAPENER MINISTRIES

RIVER WORSHIP CENTER
Temple, Texas 76504

Email Contact: CapenerMinistries@protonmail.com

 

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