Thurlow Switzer: Casting Charms Beneath Green Trees

Recently the Lord has impressed on me an urgent message about the need for revival and restoration, an impression which originated from a prophetic reading from Jeremiah 3:1-19 (NKJV). In the days of Josiah the King, Jeremiah saw the nation of his day involved in divorce, adultery, pollution, wickedness, shameless conduct, treachery and pretense. The nation had played the harlot with many lovers without shame (3:1-10). They would not acknowledge their iniquity and transgression; they had “scattered their charms to alien deities under every green tree” and had not “obeyed the voice of the Lord” (3:12-13). God cannot bless a dysfunctional, worldly, compromised church. Yet, often the enemy may work to create an appearance of success.

When will the church wake up? We live in a new day and a positive direction is happening across the country and the world today with a genuine return to New Testament Christian apostolic faith. This trend will become more dramatic as the darkness becomes more emphatic and as mere religion becomes more sensate and external in nature.

What is the nature of this return to New Testament Christianity? Spiritually, God is restoring a people for His name, a bride for His glory, and a nation for His dominion. Functionally, God is restoring local church body-life, church-of-the-city unity and working regional relationships as the true expression of Kingdom life and Godly reality. Practically, saints are being edified, workers trained, and leaders equipped. The church of Christ is prayerfully moving to a more mature and glorious state.

The apostles in Acts 3:19 proclaimed they were in the “days” which were the “times of the restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of His holy prophets.” Jeremiah is speaking to necessary realities for a church or leadership team committed to walking and serving in the fullness of New Covenant truth.

Jeremiah prophetically spoke of several dimensions that are critical to a biblical restoration.

(1) God will restore “SHEPHERDS ACCORDING TO HIS HEART;” shepherds who will feed the people with knowledge and understanding (Jer 3:15).

(2) God will reestablish the “ARK OF THE COVENANT” even in the face of many people forgetting about covenant between brothers (vs.16).

(3) God will magnify “THE THRONE OF GOD” and all peoples will be gathered to the name of the Lord (vs. 17).

(4) God will bring His people from diverse identities and associations (e.g. Israel and Judah) to a place of unity and working together so that they may be able to appropriate the “INHERITANCE.” (vs. 18).

(5) God will bring His people to a time when those children of God who have not turned away from God will acknowledge the FATHER and receive the beautiful heritage of the host of nations (vs. 19).

This positive restoration in the Jeremiah passage is set against the backdrop of a society, which had fallen into a backslidden condition and many were tossing their “charms beneath green trees” (v. 15). Today, not only are there many in the general so-called Christian world but also there are many in a charismatic movement that has gone amuck in many ways; who are involved in the “charms” of religion, instead of the full reality of Biblical discipleship in Christ. Such folks are superficial and seek to avoid any sense of responsibility and going deeper in Christ. They are scattering their charms to alien deities under every green tree, but not obeying the voice of the Lord.

May you be faithful my brother as a true saint among God’s people to bring knowledge and understanding to God’s people. May God restore an emphasis on the Ark of the Covenant and may His leaders seek the “covenant of brotherhood” in their city. May Christ Jesus be enthroned as Lord with His name exalted. May the Church in unity seize its inheritance, and may the heart of the children be restored to the heart of the Father. These Biblical mandates may sound simple, but they require a total consecration of heart.

Jonathan Switzer: God Can Use the Cruel In Our Lives

Jonathan Switzer, Pastor, Crossroads Valley Chapel, Frederick, MD

I want to talk about an issue that has only at times been my own. Since it is not something that I deal with significantly personally, I want to request your permission to talk about it. I have not had as big a problem with this issue because my parents, though imperfect, were mostly godly, humble and prayerful. As such, they were very good models for me. Again, they were not perfect, but they persistently exuded grace from God and not legalism or harshness. I have had little reason to rebel from their exercise of parental authority in my life.

My topic?…recovering from harsh and legalistic parents and authority figures.

Corrie Ten Boom was a prisoner of war in Nazi Germany during World War II. Her sister, who died in the same prison camp, amazingly, helped her to learn to love the Nazi soldiers who were their captors. Corrie learned to love the cruel and harsh soldiers while they were being cruel and harsh to her. As a result, she ended up leading several of them to Jesus Christ.

There seems to be a need for believers to recognize that some of the people that were abusive to us in the past were actually often teaching us things that were important to learn. More importantly, God was supervising them to teach us those good things. Please follow me here…God was always there with us protecting us even from harsh and abusive parents/authorities.

I will explain this more fully, but for now please consider your response to those harsh authority figures.

I am going to speak in the language of “we” and not “you” because, though my parents were very godly, they were not perfect; but more difficult for me, I did have other authority figures through the years that were legalistic and harsh and from whom it was difficult to learn.

Because we were learning from abusive teachers (coupled with our resentments and personal sinful attitudes) we often did not learn lessons fully. Other times, we learned the lessons but due to our own sinful responses to their abuse we ended up learning abusive behavior along with the lessons.

God’s Discipline is Life
We possibly did not understand at the time that God can use ALL things for our benefit. As a result, now, we often don’t know how to let God finish teaching us those lessons. Our past hurts can, as a result, often limit our ability to receive from God the discipline that he has always had for us.

His discipline is life. Pastor John Schuch, a close minister friend of mine, likes to use the word train instead of discipline because the word discipline had been poorly used in his upbringing.

The point is that God wants to prepare us and train us. God’s discipline was never intended to be harsh and punitive but rather life-giving and helpful. Not that God is unwilling to bring a firm correction or rebuke when necessary, God certainly does that. But the LARGE MAJORITY of God’s discipline and training is not intended to be punitive but rather uplifting and building. God wants to teach us good things, right things.

So, if we were taught by imperfect or downright poor models, we need to learn to get back on the discipline horse. We often need to revisit the very painful ways that we were “disciplined” by our imperfect authority-figures and ask God to re-train us to do what our parents over-trained or poorly trained us to do. Often, the absent parents are the worse. They train nothing; leaving a child learning lessons all alone, feeling unloved.

Personal Inventory
In fact, it would be wise to do a personal inventory of those things that we were poorly taught to do by our parents. After doing the inventory we would ask the Lord to show us how to forgive our parents for exasperating us; for over training us; for not training us at all. Then, after God shows us how to forgive them, we should ask God to re-train us to do what our parents so poorly trained us to do.

This could include mundane things like cleaning our rooms, budgeting our finances, managing our time, maintaining priorities, taking care of cars and houses. Most importantly it could include learning to be self-controlled, resolve conflicts, avoid immorality or be at peace…anything our parents tried to teach us but did so poorly.

Attitude Most Important
I remember one time that I was trying to teach someone a skill. I was being harsh with them. I realized that I had been taught that particular skill by a harsh person. Because I did not let God use that harsh person, my attitude about that skill also ended up harsh.

We need God to re-teach us the right attitude to have. Our parents and authority figures often taught us to do things but to do them with a wrong motivation. We need God to teach us how to do those things with grace and not harshness or stress. We need him to show us better motivation to do those things; so that they come from a heart of gratitude toward God and not a need to please people; not from pride.

However, if we are not willing to let God teach us to do those things, then we will possibly find ourselves passing on to our own children the same harshness that we received OR, and this is just as bad, we can find ourselves overcompensating and not disciplining our children enough (that is spoiling them).

The Lord disciplines the son in whom He delights/loves. However, we can often limit how we want God to discipline us due to our bad memories. We can often totally reject a certain form of discipline that God wants to bring into our lives simply on the basis of our bad experience with that form of discipline from abusive and poor teachers/parents or mentors. As a result, we develop a philosophy of life; a view of life; that is faulty and ultimately man-centered (i.e. trying to not be like our parents).

God Always in Control
Consider Joseph, for example. The reality is this: to the extent that our parents or bad authorities trained us up according to worldly principles and not godly ones, they allowed humanistic, ultimately satanic influence into our lives. This influence, however, was NEVER beyond God’s control. God was always supervising. He allowed that bondage or suffering to happen only for a season, only for a time. Nevertheless, we often ended up getting tied up inside our heads and hearts due to our own and our parent’s sinfulness.

Like Joseph who was trained by Potiphar and the prison guards, God is still in control. What the devil meant for evil, God meant for good.

Nevertheless training toward good habits can be done poorly leaving us thinking/feeling that perhaps those habits are not really good or important. Yet, if we minimize those habits we can end up coddling ourselves and others. This can leave us spoiled brats in those areas. The point is that if our parents trained us poorly we can often give ourselves permission to be bratty or undisciplined in those areas of our lives.

Birth of Rebellion
Think about it. Twenty years of harsh, angry training is enough to make any of us want to push away, rebel and declare our freedom. Nevertheless, our freedom, or rebellion, can lead us to overcompensate. We can unwittingly fall into license where we spoil ourselves. We can find ourselves feeling vindicated every time we rail back at someone who tries to encourage a particular habit in our lives. We can find ourselves railing at God himself in the name of grace and freedom. We can feel like we have the right to be spoiled and bratty.

This is called a rebellious attitude.

I am sure that many of us have felt that burn of childish, selfish rebellion to things that we know deep in our gut were forced down our throats as children.

Satan’s desire is to make us feel horrible. His goal is to cram everything down our throats so that we give up hope and throw off all righteousness. His desire is to make us sick and tired of righteousness and breed into us a resentment of all authority and all discipline. This is why rebellion is said to be as the “sin of witchcraft”.

God’s Grace Redeems the Past
I had one person in my early life who was very meticulous about everything. I found it hard to be around them due to the sense that I was about to do something wrong. My heart began to resent having to “get things right”. I was starting to think that I would rather not worry about getting things right. My view of God’s grace began to fade.

However, the Holy Spirit comes and reminds us of the great good things that God has for us in the Gospel. The Holy Spirit pours out grace through Christ; enough grace that we can now go back and not just forgive our parents, but even allow God to use those same parents/bad authorities (or people who remind us of them) to train us in areas that they previously horribly failed to train us.

You very likely will say, you’re just not ready to go back and change in those areas. You are still too hurt to go back into those areas of your life. Well, that is fine. God is patient. This is why he calls us to just be willing and to submit to the voice of the Holy Spirit. God knows that you are not ready.

However, He also knows that you are ready for more than you think you are. He knows that Satan continues to lie to us to make us think that we are just worthless and will never be able to change; that we will never be ready. He knows that Satan’s lies can have the effect of making us lazy and ultimately wicked in any area of life.

Spiritual Laziness
The lazy man says there is a lion in the streets. Laziness comes either because of the perception of danger or because of actual danger. Fear of getting hurt again can produce in us the unwillingness to do even what is healthy and normal. It can drive us into our spiritual beds and away from the truth.

In Church history spiritual laziness is called sloth.

The point is that we need to recognize that our enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. We must be vigilant to not base our response to life on satanically produced fear leading to spiritual sloth/laziness. The fear of roaring lions must not be our motivation.

Walk by Faith, Not by Sight
I often find that I can not trust my heart. When it comes to what other people think of me, I have had to learn to trust what God says, not what my head is telling me.

We will have to walk by faith. Satan is a factor. He leaves you and I with a perverted view of reality. Further, Satan’s temptation, sin to be precise, further distorts our perspectives. Our eyes, our perceptions, are skewed. We are no longer able to identify what is right and what is wrong. We are often paranoid. Other times we swing the other way and are foolishly oblivious and naïve. This happens because Satan and sin are working to subvert reality. It leaves us confused.

Because our perceptions are skewed, we find ourselves in the lamentable position of no longer being able to trust our eyes. We are no longer able to trust our perceptions; not even our hearts can be trusted. This is why we have to walk by faith and not by sight.

God’s Plan To Make Us Like Him
Consider this illustration. If I angrily and harshly yell at my son to clean his room, yes, I have to go and apologize genuinely for losing my temper, hug him, look him in the eye and tell him I love him. But I still need to require him to clean his room.

It is not enough for you and I to just receive from God the love and delight that we never received from our parents or bad authorities. We also need God to discipline us, to train us, to change us into the people that He is capable of making us. Yes, first God heals the hurts from the past where we were abused, let down and broken. But God also, after we are healed, wants to develop our character, develop our gifts, develop our people skills, develop our parenting skills, develop our home-making skills, develop our time-management skills, develop our financial management skills. He still wants to help us to clean our rooms, to be responsible.

Most importantly, God wants to give us love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control. He wants to change us inside first. He wants to teach us to love others and be capable of serving unselfishly.

How God Looks At Us
Ever seen a coach that is always yelling negatively at his players? What about the opposite? Even seen a coach that his players seem to love? Ever known a coach that seemed able to pull things out of his players that no one knew were there?

God loves us enough that He refuses to leave us as we are. He improves us. We are better because of Him in our lives. However, His improvement of us, training and discipline is always surrounded by thorough and complete delight and favor. He wants us to get back on the horse of discipline (from which we fell when we were hurt by people or parents in the past) with a pervasive sense that He is wild about us and thinks that we can do ALL things through Him who is strengthening us.

The point is not that you and I just need to be confident that we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. Rather, almost more importantly, we need to know that God himself thinks that we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.

Do you see the difference? What counts is that God is smiling at us saying, “way to go!” He even does so when we whiff and stumble and miss the ball. Why? Because he sees us trying and willing to do what He is asking us to do. That leaves us OBEDIENT.

As a result, God knows that He who began a good work in us will carry it on to completion. He knows that if we make every effort to add to our faith…it WILL keep us from being ineffective and unproductive in our walk with our Lord Jesus Christ. He knows that if we remain in Him and His words remain in us that we WILL bear much fruit.

How does He know all this? He is God. He knows these things. He made us this way. When we do things the way that He made us, it is amazing how efficiently our lives run. It is amazing how effective our lives can be for building His Kingdom and bringing Him glory. God knows that His word will not return void, but will accomplish that for which it was sent forth.

The Root Problem is Not Bad Parents/Authorities
I had this one teacher in elementary school that had a habit of making fun of me. He would do so in front of my fellow students. He seemed to think shame was a good motivator.

He was wrong…Why did God let him in my life?

Well, the truth is that even when we were being abused by poor parents or abusive teachers or cruel classmates growing up, even then God was superintending and overseeing our personal development. But because we lost faith, our perceptions became skewed and we fell into hopelessness thinking that God just did not care.

Thinking that God did not care, we often took matters into our own hands and let our hearts grow bitter toward the cruel people in our lives. Once we grew bitter and resentful, once we lost hope that God was in control and working all things together for the good of those that love Him, that is when the benefit that God was bringing into our lives through bad and cruel people was lost.

It was not when the bad and cruel people started being bad and cruel that our lives began to go astray. Rather, it is when we lost hope and began to doubt that God was able to use those bad and cruel people to accomplish a MIGHTY DESTINY for us. Of course, many of us never had hope of a loving God in the first place. In which case, the abuse may seem to have had little effect for good in us.

Nevertheless, scripture says that God will restore the years that the locust has stolen. I take this to mean that he can even use past abusive situations to His glory in our lives. What the devil meant for evil, God meant for good.

Job’s Friends/Humanity’s Wrong View of God
This is what was wrong with Job’s friends. At the heart of their bad formula for perceiving reality was the belief that God did not really have a great destiny and loving purpose for each of us; the belief that God did not find pleasure in bringing man into His glory; the belief that God did not so love the world that He would give His only son.

Their faulty belief led them to accuse the innocent, and ruthlessly attempt to impose punishment on Job in the name of God. At the end of the day, they had a low view of mankind. They did not understand that God’s destiny, his predestiny, for man was that man would be made righteous in Christ by faith, be adopted and be seated in the heavenly realms with Christ. Job’s friends did not know that sinful man would be holy and blameless in God’s sight by Christ’s blood.

Remember, God actually sent a prophet, Hosea, to marry a prostitute to show how much He loved the nation of Israel who was, at times, as sinful, if not more sinful, as the rest of the human race. God married the prostitute. He married you and me. He loved us so much that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Sometime, a few years before or after Job, God was going to show Abraham how much he valued man. He was going to start making promises to mankind through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and begin to show them His great love, the glory that He prepared ahead of time to be shared with man through His Son Christ.

However, in Job’s day, Job’s friends seemed unaware of the great destiny God had for mankind. They actually went so far as to compare mankind with a worm or maggot. They actually said that if man were righteous it would still bring no pleasure to God.

Many of us have had people in our lives that treated us as if we were only maggots or worms. Nevertheless, God is able to use what the Devil meant for evil to bring good into our lives. He is able to use our abusive pasts in ways beyond what you and I could imagine.

Conclusion
Our job is to trust God to do so. It is our responsibility to be willing to let God use us as He will. Then He does miracles with everything in our life, including our abusive past.

As a result, we can take any discipline from God about anything and realistically consider it pure joy.

Scott Jennings: The Irony of Freedom Fear

Scott Jennings
Church of the Harvest
Fitchburg, Massachusetts


Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage. Galatians 5:1

That through death He might destroy … the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. Hebrews 2:14-15
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In January 1945, a small group of elite U.S. Army Rangers landed in the dark of night behind enemy lines on the main northern island of the Philippines. Their objective … 513 American prisoners – the last remaining contingent out of almost 12,000 U.S. soldiers captured three years earlier when the Philippines fell to Japan.

These 513 were among those who survived a 100-mile forced march in April of 1942 from Corregidor in the south; a trek now known in infamy as the Bataan Death March. Over 1,000 U.S. soldiers, and many thousand Philippino freedom fighters, died in this march. By early 1945, of the some 10,000 U.S. servicemen remaining after the march, many had died and many others had been shipped to POW camps on the Japanese mainland.

Only 513 remained. And the U.S. military, fearful that these prisoners would be exterminated before the liberation of the Philippines that was now imminent, sent a team of specially-trained and highly-motivated Rangers in to rescue them.

The rescue mission was a stunning success, now well-recorded in the chronicles of World War II history. All the prisoners were located, set free, and returned to the safety of American shores. But a little-known, seldom-emphasized, and shocking fact about the rescue mission would be impossible to believe were it not well-documented by the heroic Rangers who carried out the daring release: After months of careful planning, costly preparations, and perfect execution of an excruciating decision to risk the lives of one group of soldiers for the freedom of another … when the liberators finally reached the prison camp and overcame the Japanese captors -- not all the prisoners wanted to be rescued !

How could this be? Had they become traitors? Had they turned their backs on their nation and its cause? Were they now supporters or sympathizers with a Japanese enemy who had attacked their homeland without warning or provocation? No … none of these things were the case. The truth about the reluctance of the captives to be led to freedom by their brothers-in-arms was much more subtle and troubling.

These were American citizens, being forced to exist in a foreign land, controlled by hostile forces; hardened soldiers who had been constantly beaten, harassed, humiliated, and tortured, day after day, month after month, for almost three years; men who had been constantly threatened by their captors with the promise of death should they fail to comply with even the simplest or most obscure of the rules of their captivity. During this time many did die … executed by their enemy by horrible means that their helpless compatriots were forced to witness. And slowly, even imperceptibly, a dark force gripped the hearts of some of these prisoners. Fear. The fear of the consequences of disobedience to their masters. The fear of the results of standing in opposition to the brutal prison guards who defined the rules by which one might retain life, or assure the sentence of death.

And thus, when deliverance was offered to them by rescuers who had overcome their foes and risked all to bring an escape from the yoke of bondage, the pall of fear and the smell of death were so strong in the souls of some captives that the concept of true freedom could no longer be grasped. What if the enemy was still watching … lurking in the shadows? What if they were recaptured? Were these liberators really fellow-soldiers, or imitators luring them into a trap designed to give their oppressors an excuse to finally end their lives? No, these prisoner thought … it was safer just to sit tight … wait it out … not rock the boat.

Freedom fear gripped their hearts.

Were it not for the compassion of the Rangers, their forceful insistence, their unwillingness to leave even one compatriot behind in spite of this shockingly unexpected reception, some would have been left languishing in their confused and pitiful state. But, by the grace of God and the diligence of their friends, all were set free.

So what, you may ask, does this have to do with the Christian life?

I shudder as I think of the times through the years that I have sat with dear brothers and sisters … citizens of heaven and heirs of the promise through faith in Jesus Christ … yet finding themselves entangled in the yoke of bondage subtly placed around their souls over years of oppression, lies, and threats by a relentless enemy. Fellow-soldiers in the army of the Lord who have been isolated from their comrades and taken captive by sin, pride, the deceitfulness of riches, the cares of life. And slowly but surely, the lure of the world has blinded them to the liberty by which their Messiah sets them free.

I speak to them of true freedom. I remind them of their inheritance. I point them to a city yet to come, made without hands, whose Builder and Maker is God. And yet, so often, I see Freedom Fear grip their hearts. At what cost do I have to make these changes, they ask? How much do I have to give up? Where might this new direction take me, and will my friends, my family, follow? It’s safer just to sit tight … wait it out … not rock the boat. And in spite of my compassion, my forceful insistence, my unwillingness to leave even one behind ... sometimes they choose to remain in captivity.

If you are the captive, dear saint … you who are reading this today … open your heart to the love of Jesus, the Savior and Deliverer of your soul. Let the perfection of His love for you cast out the fear that has made you a subject of bondage in this foreign land. Those who the Son has set free are free indeed.

If you are the rescuer, and you feel that your calls to freedom are being ignored by those whom you have been sent to release … don’t give up. Your sacrificial love and gracious, persistent encouragement may be used by God to help overcome the fear of freedom and release a brother or sister from bondage. Be faithful to your mission … God will be faithful to deliver.

Rob Grindley: Ministers of the New Covenant

By Rob Grindley, Missionary to Botswana

In the last few weeks I have been looking closely into something which up until this time has been somewhat of a closed book to me, although I realize for some what I am about to write may be review. I have, in my ministry, focused much on what Jesus has accomplished through His cross, His death, burial and resurrection. This has caused me to preach on forgiveness, redemption, and Healing. With all these areas I have been blessed; being allowed by God to see wonderful fruit. I have seen the Lord Heal people of all types of maladies and pains, and I have seen and felt the joy of sins forgiven.

Yet as I searched the scriptures preparing for a bible class, I found myself taken aback by my lack of knowledge of (and the lack of preaching I had done on) the work of the Spirit in a believer’s Heart and life. As I considered 2 Cor 3:5-6 …not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything, as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God, who also made us sufficient to be ministers of a New Covenant, not of letter, but of Spirit; for the letter doth kill, and the Spirit doth make alive.

I began to question did I even understand the New Covenant, and if I did not, how was I a proper minister of it. Was it the New Covenant I was preaching?

I would like you to consider two passages with me. In first Samuel Chapter 6 we have a story about the Philistines’ test to see whether the Ark of the Covenant had brought the plagues on them. The test was quite interesting. It involved taking cows that recently had given birth and attaching them to a cart with the ark placed on it. They knew that the cow’s natural desire would be to be with their calves. Yet if the cows were motivated to take the ark toward Israel and away from their calves they would know God was in fact involved. The Philistines seemed to understand that God’s Spirit had the ability to overcome natural desire and instinctual behavior, even in cows.

In fact, is this not what we look for in a believer’s life, motivation from God to go in the opposite direction of Natural(fleshly) desire? Yet I have found for the most part, I was trying to motivate myself away from natural and carnal desires. This has led to periods of success that would be followed again by a failure, if not in deed, at least in Heart.

As I began to study the New Covenant I found a great unexplored area for me was the New Covenant’s effects upon the Heart. Although much of what has to be said about the New Covenant or everlasting covenant appears to be for in the future for Israel, it becomes clear by God’s grace He is allowing the church to step into its benefits now.

As Eze 36:26-27 states, “a new Heart also will I give you, and a new Spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony Heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an Heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.” Here, God says not only will I give you a new Heart. I will put my Spirit within you, and I will cause you to walk in my ways. Here, God under the New Covenant is taking responsibility for the believer’s behavior. He says, I will do it, I will motivate you from within, not from outside, to walk in my ways. If God can cause a cow to move away from natural desires how much more by putting His Spirit within can He cause us to walk before Him and toward Him.

Now God’s requirement is not simply obedience but rather faith in the New Covenant. Faith releases God to fulfill His covenant, work in the Heart and cause the obedience He has always desired. In fact, is this not the way to the highway of Holiness.

Jesus stated He came to give us life, and life more abundant. He did not intend for us to struggle under the weight of sin, and carry the burden of failure that the old covenant revealed. It was, as we remember, a ministry of death. Jesus came to give His people ZOE, the God kind of life, He accomplished this by making a way through the New Covenant for God’s Spirit to get on the inside of us, and cause us to walk in His ways.

So many Christians who have New Covenant privilege and blessing are still walking under the weight of self-effort which the old covenant revealed was simply designed to bring us to Christ. Yes, many have trusted Him for eternal life, but instead of the just living (zoe) by faith, we have started in the Spirit and sought to be made complete by the work of self-effort.

I hope brothers and sisters to leave the ranks of those who have failed to be a sufficient minister of the New Covenant. I hope this has sparked something in you, and provides a log for your inward fire.

Daniel Switzer: The Feast of Tabernacles

A Picture of God’s Great Vision for the Church

By Daniel L. Switzer, Ed.D.
Pastor, Northgate Community Church

Recently, our church celebrated the Feast of Tabernacles. This feast is a time of rejoicing for the ingathering of the harvest. During this feast the Israelites were told to live in booths, temporary dwellings called sukkahs.

The Feast of Tabernacles also has prophetic significance for us, and I believe it has much to say regarding God’s ultimate vision for the church. I’ve been giving much thought recently regarding exactly what God’s vision is for the church. We know that Christ gave us his Great Mission to make disciples of all nations, but what is God’s great vision for the Church? What does He desire for the church to become? What does he envision the church being in the end times?

A Rejoicing Church

First, the Feast of Tabernacles shows us that the Church of Jesus Christ is to be a rejoicing Church. Of Tabernacles, God said to “be joyful at your Feast. . . . For the Lord your God will bless you in all your harvest and in all the work of your hands, and your joy will be complete” (Deut. 16:14-15). There’s a celebration going on, and for good reason. The harvest has come in; the ingathering of the harvest has taken place. God has shown us again that He is faithful to be our ultimate provider, and we are celebrating God as Jehovah Jireh!

I was talking to our students at Living Grace Christian School about the Feast of Tabernacles. I asked them what they ate for breakfast. Some shared they had eaten cheerios or fruit loops and such. Children may understand that their food comes from the grocery store, but a successful harvest depends on the right combination of sun, soil, and rain, which ultimately comes from God. A successful harvest is a cause for rejoicing and thanksgiving to God! Tabernacles is a time of rejoicing for God’s provision of the harvest.

We need to remember, and even more so in hard economic times, that if we trust Him, He will provide for us. We need to remember to thank and praise God for his provision in our lives.

Jesus himself celebrated the Feast of Tabernacles. John 7:37-39 says, “On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, ‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.’ By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive.” Jesus also said in John 6:35, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.” God desires us to be a church which rejoices in Him, no matter what the outside economy is doing, because we know we will never go thirsty and never go hungry. God provides for us both materially and spiritually.

A Church Indwelt by Christ

Secondly, God’s vision for the church is that we’re to be a church indwelt by Christ. The Feast of Tabernacles is symbolic of Christ tabernacling among us. John 1:14 says of Jesus Christ: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” Christ made his dwelling among us.

Christ has come to tabernacle among us. We are the temple of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, in Tabernacles, we see the glorious truth of Christ in us, the hope of glory, who is full of grace and truth!

God inhabits the praises of His people! He inhabits—dwells within—or tabernacles inside our praises. As a rejoicing church, this is not for the purpose of feeling good, but that we will experience Christ as Immanuel—Christ with us!

In addition to having application to us as individuals, Christ tabernacling among us also has application to us as the Church of Jesus Christ! Ephesians 2:21-22 says, “In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.” As the Church of Jesus Christ, God’s vision is that we be built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit!

We are being built together as a habitation for God’s presence. God’s intention is that together we as the Church would be such that Christ would tabernacle among us, that He would dwell within us corporately, that his presence would be manifest within the corporate Body of Jesus Christ, the Church! This is His vision for the Church, and we see it in Tabernacles!

What does it mean to be a “Body Life Church”? It means that we are dependent upon Christ, dependent upon his presence for the ministry of His life. It means that we come to worship ready with listening hearts—to hear Christ’s voice—and the willingness to speak Christ’s voice through the prophetic word. This builds up the Church! Christ tabernacles among us corporately as we worship together!

A House of Prayer for All Nations

Thirdly, God’s great vision for the church as seen in Tabernacles is that we would be a House of Prayer for all Nations. Tabernacles speaks to Christ’s ultimate vision for the Church—to be a House of Prayer for all Nations!

Zechariah 14:16 says, “Then the survivors from all the nations that have attacked Jerusalem will go up year after year to worship the King, the Lord Almighty, and to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles.” Let me repeat this: People from the nations will go up to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles! This is God’s ultimate vision for the Church.

As Tabernacles celebrates the ingathering of the harvest, ultimately Tabernacles will celebrate the ingathering—the gathering in—of all the nations to God Almighty! Isaiah 2:2 says, “In the last days the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established as chief among the mountains; it will be raised above the hills and all nations will stream to it.” What a picture—all nations will stream up to the mountain of the Lord!

In the last days, “Many people will come and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord’” (Isaiah 2:3). Tabernacles speaks to God’s great vision for the church—a vision of the nations coming together—the gathering in of all of the nations to Christ!

Christ, of course, affirmed this vision for the church. In Mark 11:17, He said, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’?” God said in Isaiah 56:7 that He will bring foreigners who follow Him and hold fast to God “to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.”

This is what the church will be called. This is what God is aiming toward. Breaking down barriers between people—coming together as all nations—is upon God’s heart. In the last days, people from all nations will be worshipping God together. If this is what God says is going to be happening, we should be busy working to see this vision realized now. This is God’s heart; it’s what He desires to happen.

Revelation 7:9 shares the awesome vision of “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb.” These people, gathered together from every nation, cry loudly, “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb” (Rev. 7:10). What a glorious picture for the Church of Jesus Christ!

My encouragement for us is that if this is God’s ultimate vision for the church, let’s get busy about that vision. Let’s not wait. Let’s work toward this vision now. Let’s walk in it now. It’s God’s heart. It’s Christ’s heart. It’s His vision for the Church!

This vision is unique—it’s unique because it is God’s singular vision for the church! Our challenge is to bring together different nations, different ethnicities, under the banner of Christ. And let’s be honest, it is a challenge! We all have our preferences for worship style and “the way things should be done.” But isn’t God’s ultimate vision worth subjugating our personal preferences in order to realize the glorious manifestation of all nations coming together, being ingathered together, to worship the Lord?

Being a House of Prayer for All Nations is a glorious and precious vision; it’s also a challenge. We need to be purposeful about meeting this challenge. Let’s ask ourselves—what can we do to realize this vision? What can we do to be purposeful about Christ’s Great Vision for the Church? I encourage us to be purposeful about becoming more closely aligned with how Christ sees the Church—what He desires the Church to be!