We have been looking at the reasons that we should ascribe dominion and power to God and to Jesus as set out in Jude’s doxology.
We have seen how over the history of humanity that God has remained sovereign but has chosen to share His authority with various sections of His creation. In most cases those given authority abused it and God has had to reclaim it or at least limit it in some way.
However, in general, humans and other created beings have been allowed to continue their disobedience and rebellion and evil and the forces of darkness predominate in creation’s relationship with its Creator. Even the Jewish nation, God’s own especially chosen people, often failed and did evil and gave their allegiance to objects and images that were not even alive. They were disobedient to God’s covenant with them which among other things said
EXODUS.
CHAPTER 20.
2. “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of slavery in Egypt.
3. “Never have any other god.
4. Never make your own carved idols or statues that represent any creature in the sky, on the earth, or in the water.
5. Never worship them or serve them, because I, the LORD your God, am a God who does not tolerate rivals….
They were guilty of worshipping the creature rather than the Creator
We saw how Jesus came into this world of corruption, evil and darkness to rescue humans from their inability to do the right thing and serve God. Rather they served idols or evil and the powerful spiritual forces who controlled this world. While Israel failed often, worse than that was that every other nation on this earth gave no allegiance to the holy Creator God, the one true God. We read of the terrible actions of the Canaanite tribes, and across the world the frequent murders and the use of violence in the shape of dreadful wars to exert influence and control. Life seemed to have little value at this particular time in the history of mankind.
The death of Jesus gave all nations the opportunity to give their allegiance to the only God who could rescue them from this situation.
Through His death He has established a new covenant, an everlasting covenant and not just with Israel but with the whole world.
HEBREWS.
CHAPTER 12.
24. And Jesus is here! He is the one who makes God’s new agreement with us, and his sprinkled blood says much better things than the blood of Abel.
MATTHEW.
CHAPTER 26.
28. For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.
HEBREWS.
CHAPTER 13.
20. Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant,
21. equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.
We noted how the old covenant with Israel was based on temporary cleansing from the effects of repeated sin and that forgiveness came at the cost of countless animal sacrifices.
HEBREWS.
CHAPTER 9.
19. Moses told the people all that the Law said they must do. Then he used red wool and a hyssop plant to sprinkle the people and the book of the Law with the blood of bulls and goats and with water.
20. He told the people, “With this blood God makes his agreement with you.”
21. Moses also sprinkled blood on the tent and on everything else that was used in worship.
But God’s new everlasting covenant brings permanent cleansing and forgiveness which lasts forever on the basis of a one off sacrifice of a perfect human life lived in perfect accord with the will of God. Here was true perfection being offered to pay permanently for the indiscretions of those who were imperfect and who were under the sentence, under condemnation of death and not just physical death but spiritual death which in essence means, after judgment, eternal separation from the presence of God.
HEBREWS.
CHAPTER 9.
11. Christ came as the high priest of the good things that are now here. He also went into a much better tent that wasn’t made by humans and that doesn’t belong to this world.
12. Then Christ went once for all into the most holy place and freed us from sin forever. He did this by offering his own blood instead of the blood of goats and bulls.
13. According to the Law of Moses, those people who become unclean are not fit to worship God. Yet they will be considered clean, if they are sprinkled with the blood of goats and bulls and with the ashes of a sacrificed calf.
14. But Christ was sinless, and he offered himself as an eternal and spiritual sacrifice to God. That’s why his blood is much more powerful and makes our consciences clear. Now we can serve the living God and no longer do things that lead to death.
15. Christ died to rescue those who had sinned and broken the old agreement. Now he brings his chosen ones a new agreement with its guarantee of God’s eternal blessings!
But in order to firmly establish this new relationship between humanity and Himself through the sacrifice of Christ He completely dispensed with everything that had gone before and started from scratch as it were.
There was a whole new message.
MARK.
CHAPTER 1.
27. Then they were all amazed, so that they were disputing among themselves, saying, “What is this? What new doctrine is this, that He commands even the unclean spirits with authority, and they obey Him?”
And after Christ’s return to heaven the apostles continued to preach this same message.
2 CORINTHIANS.
CHAPTER 3.
6. He has also qualified us to be ministers of a new promise, a spiritual promise, not a written one. Clearly, what was written brings death, but the Spirit brings life.
ACTS.
CHAPTER 17.
19. So they took Paul, brought him before the city council, the Areopagus, and said, “We would like to know what this new teaching is that you are talking about.
20. Some of the things we hear you say sound strange to us, and we would like to know what they mean.”
There was a new way to approach God and to have a relationship with Him.
HEBREWS.
CHAPTER 10.
19. My friends, the blood of Jesus gives us courage to enter the most holy place
20. by a new way that leads to life! And this way takes us through the curtain that is Christ himself.
HEBREWS.
CHAPTER 9.
12. He used his own blood, not the blood of goats and bulls, for the sacrifice. He went into the most holy place and offered this sacrifice once and for all to free us forever.
The followers of Jesus were given a new commandment to follow. It was to be an overarching and superior principle to what had previously been in place.
MATTHEW.
CHAPTER 5.
17. Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
ROMANS.
CHAPTER 7.
6. But now we have died to those laws that bound us. God has broken their effect on us so that we are serving in a new spiritual way, not in an old way dictated by written words.
This was the reply Jesus gave to a lawyer who asked Him about the Law of Moses which governed behaviour.
MATTHEW.
CHAPTER 22.
35. Then one of them, a lawyer, asked, tempting Him and saying,
36. Master, which is the great commandment in the Law?
37. Jesus said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.
38. This is the first and great commandment.
39. And the second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
40. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.
Love was to be the new and principal focus of the law. It was to be the governing factor in their relationship with God and with each other and so Jesus said this.
JOHN.
CHAPTER 13.
34. I give you a new command: Love each other. You must love each other like I loved you.
35. All people will know that you are my followers if you love each other.”
But perhaps more important than all that, those who accepted the gift of salvation made possible through the acceptance of and belief in the sacrificial death of Jesus as a substitute for their sin were to be made completely new.
God’s first creation, because of sin was marred and the resulting curse affected all of humanity. Each of us, without exception, were under that curse and the judgment that resulted from it. That curse, it would seem, was best removed by making those who accepted the redemptive work of Jesus a whole new creation, no longer subject to the curse resulting from the disobedience of that first creation.
The Psalmist cried out in anguish –
PSALMS.
PSALM 51.
10. Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.
And many years later this is how God responded –
EPHESIANS.
CHAPTER 2.
10. God has made us what we are. In Christ Jesus, God made us new people so that we would do good things. God had already planned those good things for us. God had planned for us to live our lives doing those good things.
2 CORINTHIANS.
CHAPTER 5.
17. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, all things have become new.
And as at the first creation when the Creator breathed into man the breath of life, so in the new creation God would breathe into man His Spirit, the Holy Spirit to give not just life but life that lasts for ever.
Here is what is said of the first creation.
GENESIS.
CHAPTER 2.
7. Then the Lord God took dust from the ground and made a man. The Lord breathed the breath of life into the man’s nose, and the man became a living thing.
And this is what is said of the new creation.
JOHN.
CHAPTER 6.
63. What gives life is God’s Spirit; human power is of no use at all. The words I have spoken to you bring God’s life-giving Spirit.
Under the first covenant or agreement that God made with the children of Israel, with the Jews, the covenant was established through the ritual of male circumcision. Under God’s new covenant this was no longer required and the covenant was available to the whole world and not just to Jewish people. What now mattered was whether or not we accepted God’s new covenant by believing that Jesus died to remove the curse of sin from our life, with the result being that He would make us a new creation
GALATIANS.
CHAPTER 6.
5. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision has any strength, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.
COLOSSIANS.
CHAPTER 3.
10. Each of you is now a new person. You are becoming more and more like your Creator, and you will understand him better.
At the first creation man was created in the likeness of God, in the image of God.
GENESIS.
CHAPTER 1.
26. Then God said, “Now let’s make man. We will make people as a copy of ourselves. People will be like us. They will rule over all the fish in the sea and the birds in the air. They will rule over all the large animals and all the little things that crawl on the earth.
27. So God made people in his own image. God made people as a copy of himself. God made them male and female.
But because of the sin of disobedience that image became flawed and men no longer reflected the true image of God. However in the new creation that likeness is now restored and redeemed humans once again reflect the true image of God.
EPHESIANS.
CHAPTER 4.
22. to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires,
23. and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds,
24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
COLOSSIANS.
CHAPTER 3.
10. and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.
Those who place their belief in and give allegiance to Christ and are baptized, in their baptism they are publicly declaring that they have indeed put off the old nature and intend to walk, with God’s help, according to the values of God’s kingdom. They affirm that they have reckoned that their old way of living governed by the principles of the world and the flesh are as dead and that from henceforth they intend to live a new life, that they will live in obedience to their Lord and Master, Jesus
Have we all made that public declaration? If not, then please make a request for baptism.
ROMANS.
CHAPTER 6.
4. Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also should walk in newness of life.
Now we have previously seen that the death and resurrection of Jesus had as one of its consequences the defeat of Satan and the abolition of the power of death and sin over the lives of those who accept God’s gift of salvation
And yet we read these words in Scripture.
2 CORINTHIANS.
CHAPTER 2.
11. Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices.
1 THESSALONIANS.
CHAPTER 2.
18. Wherefore we would have come unto you, even I Paul, once and again; but Satan hindered us.
1 PETER.
CHAPTER 5.
8. Be on your guard and stay awake. Your enemy, the devil, is like a roaring lion, sneaking around to find someone to attack.
But there is a solution and we should never forget it. It is outlined in these verses.
JAMES.
CHAPTER 4.
7. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
EPHESIANS.
CHAPTER 6.
11. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
But it would appear that God has his own reasons, His own purposes for allowing the devil to continue to function. He is defeated and God has complete power over him and gives us the power as well, to resist his attacks.
EPHESIANS.
CHAPTER 1.
19. And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us‑ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power,
20. Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places,
21. Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come:
22. And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church,
But God allows the devil, and his forces, to be active, at least for the present.
This is what we read in Revelation.
REVELATION.
CHAPTER 12.
10. And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.
And there are many things that he can accuse us of because though we are a new creation God allows our bodies, the handiwork of God’s first creation, now marred by sin, to remain. And because these bodies are imperfect, through them we are tempted by Satan, as he functions with God’s permission, to sin, to commit evil, to be disobedient to God.
This is what the writer of the book to the Romans said –
ROMANS.
CHAPTER 7.
18. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.
19. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.
GALATIANS.
CHAPTER 5.
17. For what the flesh wants is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit wants is opposed to the flesh. They are opposed to each other, and so you do not do what you want to do.
ROMANS.
CHAPTER 7.
22. With my whole heart I agree with the Law of God.
23. But in every part of me I discover something fighting against my mind, and it makes me a prisoner of sin that controls everything I do.
So our bodies still flawed by sin and subject to physical death, disease, sadness and grief, sickness and decay, division and anxiety are a real and ongoing problem.
But our allegiance is not to the devil and evil but to God and we need to continually declare that that is so.
ROMANS.
CHAPTER 6.
10. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts,
ROMANS.
CHAPTER 10.
9. If you declare with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
And how often is that title Lord and Master applied to Jesus, We are His because He has bought us. Because He owns us He makes us His child.
1 CORINTHIANS.
CHAPTER 6.
20. For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.
So as God’s child how do we deal with the problem of the devil and live with the ever present problem of a defiled body.
As we have already seen we need to give our allegiance to God, to demonstrate that He rules us and not evil, that He is our Lord and that our bodies, the flesh as some Scriptures call them, are not allowed to dominate us.
So as we have seen we do this by submitting our wills to God. We need to declare that the power of sin in our bodies has no real life but is dead.
GALATIANS.
CHAPTER 5.
24. And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.
We are to live by faith and not in response to fleshy desires and stimuli.
GALATIANS.
CHAPTER 2.
20. so that it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. This life that I live now, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave his life for me.
We do not allow fleshly, worldly desires to function in our lives.
R0MANS.
CHAPTER 13.
14. Instead, live like the Lord Jesus Christ did, and forget about satisfying the desires of your sinful nature.
As another translation says we are to make no provision for wrongdoing. We are not to think about wrong actions or thoughts.
We are to follow what God wants as revealed to us by His Spirit and His word.
GALATIANS.
CHAPTER 5.
16. This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.
1 JOHN.
CHAPTER 2.
16. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.
And our allegiance is to God and not the world. He is our Master and we obey Him.
ROMANS.
CHAPTER 6.
6. Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.
And as a deliberate act we let those wrong desires know their place.
1 CORINTHIANS.
CHAPTER 9.
27. But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.
And while this following verse declares what we should do for others I have no doubt that we should apply it to ourselves as well.
2 CORINTHIANS.
CHAPTER 10.
5. we pull down every proud obstacle that is raised against the knowledge of God; we take every thought captive and make it obey Christ.
Jesus, Himself, said these words to his disciples.
MARK.
CHAPTER 14.
38. Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
We have already noted the apostle’s lament –
ROMANS.
CHAPTER 7.
24. What a miserable person I am. Who will rescue me from this body that is doomed to die?
We have just seen the solution. So let’s do an audit, an evaluation. How are we doing? Can we put a tick on each of these?
1. Have we reckoned our bodies to be dead?
2. Are we living by faith?
3. Are we making no provision for the flesh?
4. Are we giving our allegiance to God?
5. Are we controlling our fleshly and worldly desires?
6. Are we watching and praying?
If we are following these things there is really no need for negative thinking. Please be encouraged by these verses.
The Psalmist says this –
PSALMS
PSALM 115.
3. Our God is in heaven. He does whatever he wants.
And what does He want? It is to reclaim power given to the abusers of it. It is to use His superior power to rescue us from the power of evil, temptation and sin.
The Apostle Peter says these words and he would know better than most the reality and strength of temptation.
2 PETER.
CHAPTER 2.
9. And so the Lord knows how to rescue godly people from their trials and how to keep the wicked under punishment for the Day of Judgment
1 PETER.
CHAPTER 1.
5. Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
6. Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations:
EPHESIANS.
CHAPTER 1.
19. and how very great is his power at work in us who believe. This power working in us is the same as the mighty strength
20. which he used when he raised Christ from death and seated him at his right side in the heavenly world.
21. Christ rules there above all heavenly rulers, authorities, powers, and lords; he has a title superior to all titles of authority in this world and in the next.
22. God put all things under Christ’s feet and gave him to the church as supreme Lord over all things.
23. The church is Christ’s body, the completion of him who himself completes all things everywhere.
So, we the redeemed, need to give Him the dominion, to allow Him to rule. Our determination should be to be no longer rebellious but faithful servants and allow the power of the living Christ to operate in our lives.
May we do that this week as we seek to serve Him.