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The Daily Word of Righteousness
The Work of Restoration, #8
I beseech you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service [of Divine worship]. (Romans 12:1)
The Altar of Burnt Offering portrays also the believer's total consecration to Christ.
It is impossible for the work of restoration to proceed until at least some of the Christian people offer themselves to God as living sacrifices. In the Kingdom of God, life proceeds from death. Eternal, incorruptible, indestructible resurrection life flows only from the cross.
The Apostles of the Lamb ministered from the cross. They gloried in the cross. When we glory in anything other than the cross we miss God. Every believer who attempts to shun the work of the cross in his life opens himself to satanic deception.
The Altar must be established on its bases. Its bases are the atoning death and bodily resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. As we in our day set ourselves to return to the way of the cross we will be attacked by the world and by worldly "Christians." The cross is a reproach, a scandal to the worldly. They understand neither the wisdom nor the power of the cross.
But to us who love Christ in sincerity the cross is at the center of everything of value. We do not want to hear about another great financial scheme, another famous personage, another brilliant human plan. We want to know more of the cross of Christ. We know the love of God, the wisdom of God, and the power of God are in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by whom the world is crucified to us and we to the world.
Separation From the World
As the work of restoration moved forward, the first strategy of the enemy was to join with the Israelites and help them build the Temple of God.
Now when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the children of the captivity builded the temple unto the Lord God of Israel; Then they came to Zerubbabel, and to the chief of the fathers, and said unto them, Let us build with you: for we seek your God, as ye do; and we do sacrifice unto him since the days of Esarhaddon king of Assur, which brought us up hither. (Ezra 4:1,2)
Any attempt of the Church to have fellowship with those who are not of the Lord's own people, to compromise with them in any manner whatever, will result in loss of the Presence of the Lord.
This does not mean Christians cannot be friendly with non-Christians. We are speaking rather of the building of the Kingdom of God.
The world has no business in the Church of the Lord Jesus. There is to be no fellowship with the world in the work of restoration. We do not need the world and we do not want the world. The mixture of the Church and the world is Babylon (man-directed Christianity). Spiritual Babylon is a prostitute and the mother of prostitutes. Babylon always stands ready to sell her favors to the highest bidder.
To be continued.