22.2 The Sending
© 2017 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
In Session 20, The Transitional Church, we looked at commitment, placing upon ourselves a godly definition of that decision and action. Here we want to remain with that Godly definition, except to take it deeper, all the way into devotion.
Be holy for I am holy – Be devoted to Me for I am devoted to you.
We share heart with God only as what means the most to God also means the most to us – and that is His Church, stumbling and confused, caught now in her hour of greatest need. And the earnest desire of our hearts is to know God and to know Jesus Sent, this One who carries us all the way through, and to be found utterly in Him as He reveals Himself in all glory.
Union with Christ
Now, before one more word, I want to make something perfectly clear. Your being inside of all that is Jesus and He inside of all that is you has NOTHING to do with your ministry or whether you even know anything about any Tabernacles’ fulfillment. And even more than that, your being inside of Jesus and He inside of you has NOTHING to do with any connection between you and any vision of “community” I might espouse.
Your union with the Lord Jesus Christ, Jesus living as you, has only to do with your knowing Him alive in you by faith. Commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ is not a commitment to any kind of bondage, including to any “revelation” I might teach.
The Kingdom of God
This course is, however, an attempt to understand the full meaning of the Kingdom of God revealed upon this earth inside of symmorphy, that is, inside of we in Jesus and Jesus in us. And so, my presenting of the meaning of commitment and sending inside of the revelation of that Kingdom can IN NO WAY disturb the joy and love of our utter rest inside of Jesus.
If I myself depart from that pure and perfect rest, the joy of being human, the goodness of being weak and incapable, thank God, by getting all in a twist about how “I will be a part of all this stuff,” then I also would be cutting myself off from God showing to me what He has for us. And thus it is entirely out from the joy of being carried utterly inside of Christ that we together look at our response to the pro-determination of a Fathering God.
The Invitation
Having established the one side of our picture, an utter rest in Christ living as us now, a picture that is 100% and always, let me set forth the other side of the picture, a side that is also 100% and always.
In Jesus’ parable of the harvest into the Tabernacles of God, we find not just the has-beens and losers, the blind and crippled, rushing into the fullness of Christ, Christ as a corporate Body; we also find those who have held the invitation for all these years, those who have been born again and even filled with the Spirit and who rejoice in our union with Christ. And when they see that God means walking together in love with other Christians, when they see that “Christ” means bearing with all these fleshy people, they say, “No thanks!”
One Quality
Am I wrong? Am I un-Biblical, in placing before you the ONLY end of your faith in God – walking together with other believers in Jesus as the Body of God, loving one another with a pure heart fervently? Am I wrong? Am I un-Biblical, in stating that your love for God is measured entirely and only by your commitment to other believers in Jesus? Here is the truth; those who weep and gnash their teeth in darkness are not removed from being carried by Christ living as them all the way through death and into LIFE.
Yet here is the real heart of the matter. God’s ministry now upon this earth can be identified by one quality – the burning passion of the Lord Jesus through them towards ALL who call upon His name, that they might LOVE one another.
The Sending Five Times
Let’s look first at the sending. Jesus spoke the sending five times, actually.
The first time was in the prayer that birthed the Kingdom, in the early hours of the Friday before the Passover; the second time was that following Sunday afternoon, when Jesus first appeared to His disciples; and the third was about a week later, when Jesus appeared to hundreds and spoke what is called, “The Great Commission.”
Then, the fourth sending was on the day of the ascension, ten days before Christ was planted in the earth as His Church on the day of Pentecost, and the fifth sending is found in John’s vision regarding the proving of Christ – “I will give to My two witnesses and they will prophesy.”
The Five Sendings
Let’s look at those five sendings.
Sanctify them… As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify Myself. – As the Father has sent Me, I also send you. …He breathed on them… “Receive the Holy Spirit.”
All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the peoples… – you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me. – I will give to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy.
In the first two words of sending, Jesus made clear that we are sent by Him in exactly the same way the Father sent Jesus.
Commission
I find that the definitions of “commission” are very useful to us.
Commission (Webster’s 1926): 1. A formal written warrant or authority, granting certain powers or privileges and authorizing or commanding the performance of certain duties. 2. A warrant conferring authority to raise and command a body of troops. 3. Authorization or command made by or as if by such a warrant, as to act in official capacity. 5. Authority given to act for or in behalf and in place of another. 6. A thing to be done as an agent for another. 7. The condition of being empowered by, or subject to, instructions or authority given. 8. Act of committing, doing, or performing; act of perpetrating. 9. Act of entrusting; a giving in charge; instruction as to how a trust shall be executed.
Full Symmorphy
As you can see, commission is a much stronger term than commitment, equivalent to how we would define the Greek “apostle.” Yet it is, in actuality, a complete interweaving of Jesus’ soul with ours.
A question was raised, “How can we be one with Jesus, Jesus as our only life, and yet it be we inside of Him and He inside of us? How can both be true?” My answer was simply, “God says both; I believe both.” One in union, two in fellowship, one in expression – full symmorphy. Soul with soul is fellowship, coming out of our intrinsic union of heart; yet our expression, our appearance, is as one.
Be Holy for I Am Holy
Embracing all the meanings inside the definitions of “commission” means embracing Jesus as my only life AND Jesus Himself inside of me. It is He, yet it is also me, yet it is always He. God’s incredible mystery of symmorphy, God manifest in the flesh.
Be holy for I am holy is not an “instruction to obey” as if we, of our own fleshy selves, could mimic God. Rather, Be holy for I am holy is God speaking into us His creative word of power, causing us to be as He is. That is, God speaking Christ into us. Jesus saying to us, I send you as the Father sent Me, operates in the same creative way.
Aspects of the Sending
The sending has several aspects; here is one. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8). The greatest work of the devil is to place himself before all mankind and most of Christianity as the lens through which to see “God,” the image of what God looks like.
Here is a second aspect of the sending. The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord (Luke 4:18-19).
Authority Given to Us
Remember that our commission is identical to Jesus’ commission, in fact, it is He, now, in and through us. I do not need to expand on these things, for they are power and they are authority and they are given to us.
Here is a third aspect of the sending. I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do. – I have manifested Your name to the men whom You have given Me… (John 17:4&6). Jesus came to reveal Father – the meaning of glory.
It is the work of the Son to defeat the evil one; it is the work of the Holy Spirit to bring life and healing to all. And it is the work of the Father to make Himself known by all.
Who Will Open the Doors?
And all of these three sendings are fulfilled through us. Yet it is a fourth aspect of the sending that I want to focus on here, an authority, a commission given to us, that we carry as all the intensity and purpose of our beings.
Who will open the doors of Tabernacles?
You see, we are talking and talking about being filled with all the fullness of God, about rivers of living water flowing out of us, about casting down all accusation – BUT – none of it is known, none of it is changing all the appearance of creation. We have 2000 years of a gospel in our hands, but unfulfilled, of a church as Christ planted in the earth, yet without any measure of success – and Christian’s continue not knowing God.
Who Will Break the False Lens?
The first Day of Tabernacles is the moment when all that changes. It is the beginning of God made known.
I look across the earth and see horror unimaginable unfolding before our eyes. People think they can continue living in the easy and comfortable lives they presently enjoy. When the system breaks, and it will, you will have no food where you live. None. What will you do? Without seeds you cannot garden. I look at my own children, and my constant intercession before God is, “Oh my Father, keep them from evil.”
Who will open the Doors? Who will break the lens of the serpent? Who will reveal the Father upon this earth?
The Laborers Are Few
But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest” (Matthew 9:36-38 & Luke 10:2).
The laborers are few. One would not think so in the Christian world today, with all the millions of “evangelists” preaching “the gospel.” Yet they preach a “gospel” through the lens of the serpent. Even though Jesus moves through anything as Savior and as Salvation, yet He is speaking here entirely of Tabernacles.
Elijah Is Now Come
And thus all the millions of “evangelists,” and especially all those now calling themselves, “apostles,” stand as the anti-thesis to the opening of the Doors of Tabernacles, for they present a false image of God, an image that must be shattered.
Who will shatter that image? Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord (Malachi 4:5). – Elijah is now come.
You see, one action has two sides. The same action, on the one side, shatters the image of the serpent before all the Christian church, and the same action, on the other side, flings wide the Doors of God into the fulfillment of all that Tabernacles means.
Seized into God
I will give to My two witnesses and they will prophesy.
I have presented to you, in this lesson, only an outline. The real commission of God, His sending of you with all the authority of the Kingdom, is a transaction that takes place only between Father and you.
Be holy for I am holy. Be devoted to Me, for I AM devoted to you. There is a deep and profound “Be it unto me according to Your word,” that seals us utterly into Father, seized into God.
And then we know this. The Jesus who fills us with His glory pours us out with all abandon – for the sake of His Church.