“But far be it from me to glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world hath been crucified unto me, and I unto the world”Galatians 6:14.
It is interesting to notice the particular way in which the apostle speaks of the world here. That term is a very comprehensive term, and includes a very great deal. Here Paul gets right down to the spirit of the thing. You notice the context. It is well for us to take account of it. “For not even they who receive circumcision do themselves keep the law; but they desire to have you circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh” (verse 13).
What does the apostle mean? They want to say, See how many proselytes we are making! See how many followers and disciples we are getting! See how successful our movement is! See what a power we are becoming in the world! See all the marks of divine blessing resting upon us! The apostle says, That is worldliness in principle and spirit; that is the world. He sets over against this his own clear spiritual position. Do I seek glory of men? Do I seek to be well-pleasing to men? No! The world is crucified to me and I to the world. All that sort of thing does not weigh with me. What weighs with me is not whether my movement is successful, whether I am getting a lot of followers, whether there are all the manifestations outwardly of success; what weighs with me is the measure of Christ in those with whom I have to do. It is wonderful how this at the end of the letter comes right back upon these Galatians. We recall the words in which that object is summed up. “My little children, for whom I am again in travail, until Christ be formed in you”.
Christ formed in you, that is my concern, he says, that is what weighs with me, not extensiveness, not bigness, not popularity, not keeping in with the world so that it is said that this is a successful ministry, and a successful movement. That is worldliness. I am dead to all that. I am crucified with Christ to all that. The thing that matters is Christ, the measure of Christ in you.
You and I in the cross of the Lord Jesus must come to the place where we are crucified to all those other elements. you may be unpopular, and the work be very small; there may be no applause, and the world may despise, but in it all there may be something which is of Christ, and that is the thing upon which our hearts must be set. There are few things more difficult to bear than being despised; but He was despised and rejected of men. What a thing is in God’s sight must be our standard. That is a resurrection standard. Now that is the victory of the cross. “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ…”

Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
Save in the death of Christ my God!
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to His blood.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDkuxEIcpdI

Enigma:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDkuxEIcpdI

And so Jesus also suffered OUTSIDE the City Gate to make the people Holy through His blood,Let US(Christains) then GO TO HIM OUTSIDE THE CAMP,bearing the disgrace He bore.for here,we do not have an enduring City,but we are looking for the City that is to come...Hebrw13:12-14.
Thanks bro.

You have not come to the mountain that may be touched and that burned with fire. (Hebrews 12:18)

How vast is this movement from that old economy to the bringing in of the New Economy. There is one thing only in your New Testament, introduced by Christ in the Gospels and followed out by the apostles; and in this letter to the Hebrews, the solid object of the whole letter is the transition from one economy to Another. Oh, read it again and glory in it. Read that letter again to the Hebrews. Glory in this: “My, what a thing we have been brought into.” Tabernacle? Yes, says the writer, there was a tabernacle on this earth, and for the time being... until the time. That is all gone, he says, and now we have come into the True Tabernacle not made with hands, which God has made, a Heavenly Tabernacle. See how wonderful the transition is! – the passing over from one economy to Another.

I must pause to ask, is this where Christendom has gone astray? – 

Is it still holding on to the old economy?
Is it still in the grave clothes?
Is it still that old Mosaic economy with its forms and ways?
Is it not emancipated into the Heavenlies?!
That is what the Lord wants to do with us here.

Things have gone away, gone wrong, got out of God’s way, and God is returning to where they went wrong. God usually does that with us. And so what is God’s beginning? It is His Son before the foundation of the world. Right back in the eternal counsels His Son was made the beginning, God’s starting place. Men have all gone astray, because of history, “all of us like sheep have gone astray.” God gets back to His beginning, His Son. Christendom has gone astray, and the only way of saving Christendom is to get back to God’s beginning, a true and right apprehension of His Son.

Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, says the Lord of hosts. (Zechariah 4:6)

Does it not strike you as significant, and very impressive, that when the veil was rent Israel was set aside? Israel had been called in to maintain a testimony in types. Christ had come and fulfilled all the types, and being the center of all the types, the veil, all that kept God shut off from man, was now dealt with, and the way was open. There was no need for types now. So the custodian of the types departs with the types. This is not the dispensation of the types: this is the dispensation of the reality, the dispensation of a heavenly union with a risen Lord, and of all that that means. Our danger is of bringing back types. The types have gone and that is the whole message of this letter to the Hebrews. Christ is everything. The outward order of the Old Testament is set aside, and now all that obtains is Christ Himself. He is the Priest; you no longer have priests on earth in the Old Testament sense. He is the Sacrifice; there is no need for any other s acrifices. He is the Tabernacle; He is the Temple; He is the Church.

What is the Church? It is Christ in living union with His own, that wheresoever two or three are gathered together in His name there He is in the midst. That is the Church. You do not build special buildings and call them "the Church." You do not have special organisations, religious institutions, which you call "the Church." Believers in living union with the risen Lord constitute the Church. This is the reality, not the figure. That is to say, His flesh, human limitation, is done away. Now in union with Christ risen all human limitations are transcended. This is one of the wonders of Christ risen as a living reality. We are brought into a realm of capacities which are more than human capacities, where, because of Christ in us, we can do what we never could do naturally. Our relationships are new relationships; they are with heaven. Our resources are new resources: they are in heaven. That is why the Apostle wrote to the Corinthians and said that God hath chosen the weak things, the foolish things. The things which are despised, and the things which are not, that He by them might bring to naught the wise, the mighty, the things which are. Why did God appoint it so? Because it is not by might, nor by power, but by His Spirit; and to show that there are powers, energies, abilities for His own which transcend all the greatest powers and abilities of this world....

^ This is not to flatter you but to encourage you the more in Grace. ^ By the above, you carry a message of Grace for this generation. I encourage you to soak more into 'manifold' Grace buried in the New Testament which was a shadow of the Old like you mentioned. I believe you carry something for this age and generation. Sitting now & relaxing to be refreshed by God's Spirit. Thank you for the article, God bless you.

wow!! that was so uplifting and edifying

your write ups above are wonderful brother.May God almighty bless you richly and increase you in the knowledge of him.

It's all about Christ really...nothing about religion

Goshen360: ^ This is not to flatter you but to encourage you the more in Grace. ^ By the above, you carry a message of Grace for this generation. I encourage you to soak more into 'manifold' Grace buried in the New Testament which was a shadow of the Old like you mentioned. I believe you carry something for this age and generation. Sitting now & relaxing to be refreshed by God's Spirit. Thank you for the article, God bless you.

May He continue to empower and uplift you too in Jesus name.

Candour: wow!! that was so uplifting and edifying

your write ups above are wonderful brother.May God almighty bless you richly and increase you in the knowledge of him.

It's all about Christ really...nothing about religion

Yes bro its all about Him,the Bible from Genesis to Revelation has Him in full view.
May He continue to enrich and uplift you too in Jesus name

^ Exactly the same I've been saying to folks here - When the read the Genesis to Malachi & Matthew to Revelation, what do they see? If you can't find Christ as the fulfillment of the Law & the prophets, then one is probably read literature. Maybe I will join you...by God's Grace to start revealing Christ in the Old Testament. I hope I have the time in His Grace!

Goshen360: ^ Exactly the same I've been saying to folks here - When the read the Genesis to Malachi & Matthew to Revelation, what do they see? If you can't find Christ as the fulfillment of the Law & the prophets, then one is probably read literature. Maybe I will join you...by God's Grace to start revealing Christ in the Old Testament. I hope I have the time in His Grace!

Thank bro,
I purpposely ignore the thread opened by frosbel about the Law.
The Law of God is Holy,how can the children of Israel upholds the Laws of God which is Holy?.its immpossble.even sinnless Adam can't up hold jus one moral Law given to Him by God.
So I believe God gave us the Law intentionally for us to break it.by so doing His Son Redemptive work on Calvary will be fully accepted and appreciated.
Any Christain trying to uphold the Law is no longer under Grace,meaning that he/she has rejected or is not satisfied with the works of Christ on the Cross.

Honestly, @i.chuka, I asked God for forgiveness in my heart because I have often MIS-understood you to be a man of the Torah. Now, I'm cleared. Torah must first be cast out, then Grace can be planted and have its root in the lives of believers. Keep the good work still.

Anyone who reads my posts is fully aware that my position is that of keeping the commandments of GOD by the Spirit through grace.

Some of us do not read to understand, we 'rash' off to half baked conclusions. ( Rash intended instead of Rush for context )

frosbel: Anyone who reads my posts is fully aware that my position is that of keeping the commandments of GOD by the Spirit through grace.

Some of us do not read to understand, we 'rash' off to half baked conclusions. ( Rash intended instead of Rush for context )

Brother,
I read and understood perfectly well your post.your questions are valid and I was'nt even reffering to your post but the sudden attack on bro GoGoshen'by some brethern.

Goshen360: Honestly, @i.chuka, I asked God for forgiveness in my heart because I have often MIS-understood you to be a man of the Torah. Now, I'm cleared. Torah must first be cast out, then Grace can be planted and have its root in the lives of believers. Keep the good work still.

Thanks bro,
Though I believe its only when Grace abides more abundantly in us that Torah is definitely cast out.
Just as it was when n Isaac(a type of Grace)was weaned that Ishmael(a type of the law)was cast out..Gen21:8-14)

I tell you the truth, when you were young, you were able to do as you liked... But when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and others will dress you and take you where you don’t want to go. (John 21:18 NLT)

There is no safe place, apart from the constant application of the principle of the Cross. Safety absolutely demands it. Nothing is safe in our hands. The more the Lord blesses, the more peril there is. The greatest peril comes when the Lord begins to use us.... It is a most perilous thing to be entrusted with Divine riches, so far as our flesh is concerned. The only safe place is where the Cross is still at work, touching all that is ourselves, touching all our independence of action.

Take all these Apostles – take Peter, a man who would act so independently, who liked to do things on his own and do what he wanted to do. We find it cropping up constantly. He is the man who acts without stopping to ask anybody. We have no hint that he ever got into fellowship with his brother disciples and said, "I am thinking of doing so and so; I would very much like you to pray with me about it, and to tell me what you think; I have no intention of going on unless there is one mind among us." Peter never did that sort of thing. He got an idea, and off he went. The Lord summed him up very well when He said: "When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not" (John 21:18). That was Peter before the Cross was in-wrought in him. But see him afterwards... "Peter an d John," "Peter and John," "Peter and John." Well, they are moving together now, there is relatedness. Is it an acknowledgment that Peter felt his need of cooperation and fellowship, that he had seen the perils and disasters into which independent action led him, even when his intentions and motives were of the best? These are just glimpses of how the Cross touches us in our impulsive, independent nature, our self-will, our self-strength. The Cross has to deal with all that to make things safe for God, and to keep us moving in the way of increasing knowledge of the Lord, which, as we have said, lies behind all our value to the Lord, all our usefulness, all our service.

what a message!! what a reminder!! you've just brought sunday service into my office now as i'm currently on an assignment now and can't fellowship with other believers.

It's all about Christ really. Nothing about trying to maintain particular laws of Moses. Christ works in me to fulfill the purposes of God. No boasting, no sense of accomplishment because when my works are weighed on their own without Christ, they are found seriously wanting and lacking in substance. Christ works what he wills through me and i'm grateful for the opportunity.

I have accepted his gift of righteousness for all my goodness are filthy rags even in my own eyes.

God bless you my bro

We PREACH Christ and Him CRUCIFIED ...

I'm blessed again by your write up again @ Chuka. The cross of Christ, a great divider and crosses a man from 'there' to 'here'. The cross of Christ itself is a revelational message specially revealed and given to the Apostles, it's not just and event. Somethings took place on that cross and since Christ died, He had to reveal what took place on the cross to them because he wasn't physically on earth to tell it to them.

So, the cross, death, burial AND RESURRECTION is the finished and complete works of Christ. All what is revealed in the New Covenant are rooted in these four.

Again, thank you @ chuka, reading you first thing this morning is so refreshing.

Candour: what a message!! what a reminder!! you've just brought sunday service into my office now as i'm currently on an assignment now and can't fellowship with other believers.

It's all about Christ really. Nothing about trying to maintain particular laws of Moses. Christ works in me to fulfill the purposes of God. No boasting, no sense of accomplishment because when my works are weighed on their own without Christ, they are found seriously wanting and lacking in substance. Christ works what he wills through me and i'm grateful for the opportunity.

I have accepted his gift of righteousness for all my goodness are filthy rags even in my own eyes.

God bless you my bro

Act2;46;New International Version
Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts.
my brother like you said its all about CHRIST nothing more and theres no special day.
Bless you too bro.

Goshen360: We PREACH Christ and Him CRUCIFIED ...

I'm blessed again by your write up again @ Chuka. The cross of Christ, a great divider and crosses a man from 'there' to 'here'. The cross of Christ itself is a revelational message specially revealed and given to the Apostles, it's not just and event. Somethings took place on that cross and since Christ died, He had to reveal what took place on the cross to them because he wasn't physically on earth to tell it to them.

So, the cross, death, burial AND RESURRECTION is the finished and complete works of Christ. All what is revealed in the New Covenant are rooted in these four.

Again, thank you @ chuka, reading you first thing this morning is so refreshing.

1 Corinthians 1:18-31
King James Version (KJV)
18 For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.

19 For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.

20 Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?

21 For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.

22 For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom:

23 But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness;

24 But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.
My brother preach any thing to the World and you will have peace,but preach the CROSS (CHRIST CRUCIFIED) then you are there worst enemy

I went in response to a revelation and set before them the gospel. (Galatians 2:2 NIV)

How important it is that every fresh undertaking in work for God should come by revelation to those chosen for it. Because God has so spoken and given revelation to some chosen instrument and a truly spiritual work has been done, others have taken it as a model and have sought to imitate it in other places. The result has been, and is, that they are called upon to take responsibility for it – find the resources of workers, funds and general support. This, in turn, issues in many sad and pathetic, if not evil and worldly, methods and means being employed, and those concerned find themselves in a false position. Conception, not imitation, is the Divine law of reproduction. Anointing, not human selection, is the Divine law of succession. The fact is that the work of God has become a sphere for so manynatural elements to find expression and gratification. Man must do something, see something, have something. Ambition, acqu isition, achievement, etc., have found their way over to Christian enterprise, and so, very often (let us be quite frank) things have become 'ours' – 'our work,' 'our mission,' 'our field,' 'our clientele'; and jealousies, rivalries, bitterness and many other things of the flesh abound.

It is a very difficult thing, a CRUCIFIXION indeed, for the natural man to do nothing and have nothing, and especially to know nothing. But in the case of His most greatly used instruments, God has made this a very real part of their training and preparation. The utter emptying of all self-resource is the only way to have "all things of (out from) God" (2 Cor. 5:18). On this basis, even Christ elected to live. We need not remind you of Moses' "I am not eloquent" (Exo. 4:10), and Jeremiah's "I am a child" (Jer. 1:6), and Paul's "that we should not trust in ourselves" (2 Cor. 1:9). These were of a school in which the great lesson of the difference between natural and spiritual was taught experimentally.

We were burdened beyond measure, above strength, so that we despaired even of life. Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead. (2 Corinthians 1:8,9)

It is a part of the nature of things that we never learn in a vital way by information. We really only come into the good of things by being "pressed out of measure." So the Lord has to take much time to make spiritual history. When at length our eyes are open, we cry, "Oh, why did I not see it before!" But everything else had to prove insufficient before we could really be shown, and that takes time. Thus it was that we were turned in that dark hour to Romans chapter six, and, almost as though He spoke in audible language, the Lord said: "When I died, you died. When I went to the Cross I not only took your sins, but I took you. When I took you, I not only took you as the sinner that you might regard yourself to be, but I took you as being all that you are by nature; your good (?) as your bad; your abilities as well as your disabilities; yes, every resource of yours. I took you as a 'worker,' a 'preacher,' an organizer! My Cross means that not even for Me can you be or do anything out from yourself, but if there is to be anything at all it must be out from Me, and that means a life of absolute dependence and faith."

At this point, therefore, we awoke to the fundamental principle of our Lord's own life while here, and it became the law of everything for us from that time. That principle was: "nothing of (out from) Himself", but "all things of (out from) God." "The Son can do nothing of (out from) Himself, but what He seeth the Father doing: for what things soever He doeth, then the Son also doeth in like manner"(John 5:19). Such a revelation, if it is to be a staggering and breaking thing, so that there is no strength left in us, requires a background of much vain effort. But then, it carries with it a great implication. While an end is written large in the Cross, and while that end is to be accepted as our end indeed, so that there can be no more of anything so far as we are concerned, Jesus lives! And that means boundless possibilities.

Self efforts in ministry will always lead to crooked practice as the minister seeks to adopt worldly methods to achieve heavenly success. He must therefore go the way of the world because his 'success' had become defined by what the world calls success.

No matter what, if its of the Lord, he knows what to make of it and he alone can define what success is. So Christ can authoritatively say where 2 or 3 are gathered in his name, he's there in their midst. The world will disagree with this as to the world, bigger means better and more means success.

May God help us see his strength even in our times of weakness and may he let us see his hands working in us even when the world terms us failures.

God bless you abundantly bro

Candour: Self efforts in ministry will always lead to crooked practice as the minister seeks to adopt worldly methods to achieve heavenly success. He must therefore go the way of the world because his 'success' had become defined by what the world calls success.

No matter what, if its of the Lord, he knows what to make of it and he alone can define what success is. So Christ can authoritatively say where 2 or 3 are gathered in his name, he's there in their midst. The world will disagree with this as to the world, bigger means better and more means success.

May God help us see his strength even in our times of weakness and may he let us see his hands working in us even when the world terms us failures.

God bless you abundantly bro

very true bro,
Paul said in 2cor:4 8We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; 9persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. 10We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. 11For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. 12So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.
whatsoever they term us, His Cross must preached.
may HIS GRACE never depart from you bro.

Come out of her, My people, so that you don't participate in her sins and also suffer from her diseases. (Revelation 18:4 ISV)

What is the spiritual life in the matter of worship? Oh, it is not ecclesiastical architecture, it is not vestments, it is not ordinances, and it is not rites. They pass out with Calvary; the perpetuating of anything like that is a contradiction of Calvary. See where we are today. The maintenance of that sort of thing is because of a failure to perceive what the Lord Jesus has brought in.... Why, then, perpetuate a thing which God has dismissed in the Cross and, by keeping to the lower, fail to reach the higher? Do you see where things are astray today? I know how sweeping this is, but all this has to do with worship. Now note that when there is a failure to recognize the spiritual meaning of all this and to enter into it... and a maintaining of the old thing... you are still on a soul level, and you are open to deception; the whole thing may be a ghastly deception. And how does that deception work? In this way: that so many good Christian people are absolu tely in bondage to a traditional system which is cutting clean across Divine revelation for them. It is their traditional system which is simply barring the way to spiritual revelation, whereas the Cross of the Lord Jesus represents the liberty in the spirit for God to lead into the fullness of His Life and Light.

That is the whole purpose of the Letter to the Hebrews. It was for that very purpose. Here were a people that had received light concerning the true nature of fellowship with God in Christ – that the Lord Jesus had taken the place of the Temple and the priesthood and the sacrifices and the ordinances... and even the Sabbath. Now it is no longer a matter of form, ceremony, external rites, buildings, priests, sacrifices; it is all Christ. They had seen that. The writer had called upon them to go outside the religious, formal, historic, traditional camp, and that brought persecution, ostracism, isolation, loneliness, and all manner of things. The official religious people made it very hard for them because of that. The price to be paid for what is truly spiritual and heavenly was... and is... great, and they were dangerously in peril of going back to the old thing. The Letter to the Hebrews was written just to save them from that peril and to tell them m ore fully about the great change that had come about in the Cross – the work of the Lord Jesus... to tell them that one system, the earthly representation, had passed and the other, the heavenly reality, had come in.... To know the Lord in Life, we must be free from the grave clothes of outward systems. Why, then, perpetuate a system? The Lord Jesus put all that away in His Cross; it is all gone.

Indeed its all gone. Calvary put an end to traditions. Why continue in the shadows when the substance has come?

The cross put an end to the useless and unprofitable system of laws, ordinances and an earthly priesthood that was only concerned with the outward show and couldn't do anything to help the spirit man. Christ brought a better hope and covenant that works from the inside out to create a new being with fruits visible on the outside.

The old is indeed gone and buried. The new has come. Let us leave it that way. Any attempt to incorporate the old in the new deforms it and renders it unprofitable.

God bless you

Candour: Indeed its all gone. Calvary put an end to traditions. Why continue in the shadows when the substance has come?

The cross put an end to the useless and unprofitable system of laws, ordinances and an earthly priesthood that was only concerned with the outward show and couldn't do anything to help the spirit man. Christ brought a better hope and covenant that works from the inside out to create a new being with fruits visible on the outside.

The old is indeed gone and buried. The new has come. Let us leave it that way. Any attempt to incorporate the old in the new deforms it and renders it unprofitable.

God bless you

Luke 5:36] He told them this parable: "No one tears a patch from a new garment and sews it on an old one. If he does, he will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. [37] And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. [38] No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. [39] And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, 'The old is better.'
very true bro.

The disciples came to Him and asked, “Do You realize You offended the Pharisees by what You just said?” Jesus replied, “Every plant not planted by My heavenly Father will be uprooted.” (Matthew 15:12,13 NLT)

Organized Christianity as it is today cannot understand anything that is not organized, that is not advertised, that is not run. It must have names that carry weight, that mean influence. If you can get people with some title, you are going to have the guarantee of success for your Christian enterprise. And so the letters and the titles strung on are a necessary requisite for the success of the Lord’s work. You must write it up in the press, you must give a report of it, you must be able to make some kind of return that people can read, and say, "This is a successful thing." If you cannot do that, the whole thing is doomed to failure. They say, "You must advertise, you must have publicity, you must organize, you must bring in all these things to support it, to carry it on." If you did none of those; if you were never heard of in the press; if you never had a report; if you never had any names; if there was nothing at all that came out in a public way for people to take account of, what is the verdict of organized Christianity? "Nothing is being done. You are doing nothing. It is a-hole-in-a-corner sort of thing." Is that true? What must we say about that? There was a striking absence of all that in the beginning, and a marvelous manifestation of power, of progress, of effectiveness, so that nothing could stand in the way. We must only conclude, we are driven to this extremity, that the Lord can do His own work. Evidently the risen Lord is able to carry on His own work; the Holy Ghost knows how to manage things. What a surprising discovery! Forgive my irony. I say, this is that upon which Hebrews 12:26-28 is fixed. “I will shake the earth and the heavens”; that which can be shaken will be shaken; that which cannot be shaken will remain; and what is that? It is what God has done. “Whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever.” What God does is done in a spiritual way; it is spiritual, it is heavenly, it is eternal.

That may leave you perhaps in a vague, perplexed position, not knowing where you are, but I have no doubt about the truth of the message. If you do not feel you can accept it; if you disagree; if you revolt; if you feel it cuts clean across all your training, all your acceptance; if you feel that it runs counter to all that you know, all I ask of you is honesty with God. I ask you to come and ask Him to open to you the meaning of the letter to the Hebrews, why it was written, what its significance is, why God has preserved it, what its application is now. Have honest dealings with the Lord. Please do not go away hot in spirit, antagonistic; do not lay this at the door of any man. At least give God a chance.... May the Lord give us His own interpretation, give us honesty of heart, and show us His meaning in having brought us to this consideration.

Don't say that the things which God has made clean are impure. (Acts 10:15 GW)

"Who was I that I could withstand God?" Now what we have here is that, over against the sovereignty of the Spirit, was the fixed tradition of Peter in the one case, and the same in the case of those at Jerusalem who "contended with him" for doing what he did. On a later occasion Peter fell into the same old traditional snare and Paul had to contend with him very strongly about it. The point is that the Lord was making for spiritual increase, but an obstacle encountered was this unpreparedness to leave room for the sovereignty of the Spirit. If a child or servant of God in his or her secret walk and history with God is led to move in a way that is not according to the recognized and established system, but new and different, and seemingly in violation of all the accepted and fixed conventions or associations, there is all too often a repetition of what took place in Jerusalem; a suspicion, a contention, and an opposition.

Now, dear friends, look here: we have got to take ourselves honestly in hand over this or we may be found to be "withstanding God" and "limiting the Holy One." Read the Gospels and the Acts again, and ask the question as you proceed, "How can this, and that, and that be interpreted or construed as doing violence to an accepted and long established Divine order?" You will not get far before you are in the company of those who opposed Christ at every step, and of the Judaizers who pursued Paul across the world with the one object of making his ministry impossible. They were very jealous and zealous for the divinely established order – as they believed it to be. Do you not recognize that every movement of God down the ages has been in conflict with something that men believed to be the Divine order, and those concerned have been regarded as doing the Devil's work? It was so with Christ, and it was so with the apostles. It has been so again and again when God has moved to enlarge His people by ignoring their fixed framework of custom. It is so easy to use thoughtless and misapplied slogans, or apply fragments of Scripture wrongly (such as, "By their fruits ye shall know them". Very often such damaging dagger-thrusts are only because of a failure to give the Lord room and right to take some of His children by a way that is new, unusual, or very strange.... So we see that for all enlargement and increase we must leave room for God to do new things, strange things, things that we cannot understand for the moment. We only put ourselves outside of His intention to enlarge spiritually if we bind Him to our own fixed judgments.

I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ. (Philippians 3:8 NIV)

Man has constructed his own interpretations of Christianity and of truth, brought in his own systems and has confused things so much that you really do not know, unless you have clear discernment such as Nehemiah had, what is of God and what is not of God. There are multitudes of good, honest, sincere Christian people who really are in the most awful fog as to what is of God and what is not of God religiously. Man's religious systems have brought about that confusion and multitudes of honest people believe with all their heart that the thing that they are in is of God, and it is just possible for them to get such an awakening to see the whole thing was man-made and not of God at all; "...much rubbish." Paul was one of those. Reflect upon his past life, privileges, and inheritances which he at one time believed were so utterly and absolutely of God for him, and that he really was in God's will. He came to a time when he said: "The things which were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ... for whom I suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but refuse, that I may gain Christ"; and yet he was so devoted to all that as a traditional religious system in which he at one time was living as out from God, which had now become merely an outward thing of forms and external laws. He believed, nevertheless, that it was all of God until the light shone, until he saw that in comparison with the fullness of Christ it was refuse. It is a strong word that he uses; the word he uses is "stuff to be flung to the dogs." Saul of Tarsus throwing his Judaism to the dogs! He did it when he saw Christ. You can never come out of the rubbish until you see Christ.

Ask the Lord to reveal to you the fullness of Christ and you will find things which have gripped and held you become as mere refuse, stuff to be flung to the dogs. There was much rubbish in the place which once represented a clear line of division between what was of God and what was not of God; confusion, mixture. I shall not attempt to apply that more thoroughly. The Lord will have to show us by revelation what the rubbish is, but there is the simple statement and it contains a truth, and you and I will really have to ask the Lord to show us even in religious matters, where man ends and God begins, or where God ends and man begins, so that we shall be delivered from everything that man has imposed or added upon what is of God, and we shall be able to get right down to foundations, the rubbish being removed: and there is a very great deal of ecclesiastical rubbish about in these days that must go. That is a real difficulty in recovering the full testimony of the Lord Jesus.

Let us go out to Him, outside the camp, and bear the disgrace He bore. (Hebrews 13:13 NLT)

We can organize our movements, lay our plans, and draft our schemes. We can lay it all out according to the New Testament and it can be dead, ineffective.... You see the difference between a traditional system, whether it be Judaism or Christianity, and a living thing coming all the time in a living way out from the Christ Himself by the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit Himself doing it. Well, this is going to cost something. See what it meant for these people. At the end of this letter you come on this: “Wherefore, Christ also... suffered without the camp. Let us therefore go to Him without the camp, bearing His reproach.” The camp was Judaism, and He suffered without the camp because He repudiated Judaism and stood for the realization of all God’s thoughts as in Himself personally. He gathered up everything into His own person, “I am.” It is the Christ who is the full sum and embodiment of all God’s thoughts and ways, and that take s the place of Judaism, and He, therefore, repudiated Judaism and suffered without the camp. "Let us go to Him without the camp."

What is the issue? If you are going to take this line you are going to repudiate organized Christianity, going to repudiate Christendom as a traditional system, going to repudiate that order of things which is made, and going, therefore, to suffer reproach and be outside of the camp suffering His reproach. In other words, we are immediately going to come up against that force of antagonism to stop what has come in through the death and resurrection and exaltation of the Lord Jesus, the heavenly thing. Is it not sad that these people met it through God’s historic people, the people who claimed to have the oracles, to be the elect, to be the favored of the Lord? It is always like that. “A man’s foes shall be those of his own household.” Do not narrow that down to the limits of a family where one is a Christian and all the rest are not. That is not the point at all. It is his own household, the Christian household. You will meet the antagonism to what has come in from heaven as a heavenly thing; you will meet the antagonism amongst those who are the traditional people of God in this dispensation. That is how it will be. That is going to be the cost of a walk in Life with the Lord and not with man, knowing the Lord for yourself.

Wherever two or three are gathered (drawn together as My followers) into My name, there I AM in the midst of them. (Matthew 18:20 AMP)
Jesus, as the Truth, is contrasted with Satan, the liar. But He is also contrasted with all representations, types, symbols, outward forms, etc., which were – and are – not the true, the real. When our Lord spoke of His body as the Temple, deliberately refraining from the fuller explanation because of the fixed prejudice of His hearers, He introduced the great truth of the transition from one dispensation to another, and the complete change in the nature of temple and worship. It was because Stephen saw this and declared it that he was murdered by these very people. Said he: "The Most High dwelleth not in houses made with hands" (Acts 7:48). Paul said the same to the Athenians (Acts 17:24). This does not mean that God never came into representations when they wholly corresponded with His thought. Both the Tabernacle and the Temple were "made with hands" and God came into them in power and glory, but not to commit Himself to the thing. The time came when He forsook both and He was no longer found there. They were only temporary representations and His presence was conditional.
The "true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, not man" (Hebrews 8:2) is "not of this creation." The whole Letter to the Hebrews has to do with this change from the earthly and temporal to the heavenly and spiritual. Hence, He is no longer in "temples made with hands." To come right to the point: the New Testament teaches that the Temple in this dispensation is a Person, and persons incorporated into Him through death, burial and resurrection, and "baptized into one body by one Spirit" (1 Corinthians 12:13). We must also remember that Jesus foretold the passing away of that entire temporal system, with Jerusalem as its center and representation. With His foreknowledge of the passing of the earthly, temporal and material things; places, systems, fixed locations, and outward forms, the Lord Jesus put the whole matter of survival upon Himself as the constituent of a spiritual structure against which the very powe rs of hell would not prevail. Against fixed localizing and systematizing of Himself and His presence He was emphatic, and history is evidence of how right He was. If, according to John 3:16, salvation is a matter of "whosoever," the Lord's presence and true worship, according to Matthew 18:20, is "wheresoever."