“When Israel saw that the king did not hearken to them, the people answered the king, What portion have we in David? We have no inheritance in the son of Jesse” (1 Ki. 12:16). What a tragedy it is when our commitment to follow the Lord Jesus Christ is only as deep as the extent to which He will listen to our requests or desires. This type of relationship is not the one Scripture teaches should characterize His own, nor is it the example He Himself left us to follow: “Father, if Thou art willing, remove this cup from Me; nevertheless, not My will, but Thine be done” (Lk. 22:42).
The “Jesus” I’ve seen proclaimed in Christendom is not the Lord Jesus Christ I came to know in a Nassau prison in September of 1984. This other “Jesus” is very similar to the perversion of God’s true Christ whom the multitude of John 6 created in their unbelieving hearts (vv. 26, 36). “Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves…but I said to you that you have seen Me and do not believe.”
Then as now, the search is on for God without repentance, for God without the cross, for God without cost, for God without the necessity to face and acknowledge personal accountability nor the consequence of sin and past life-style. And finally, much like the prodigal, there are many who wanted the inheritance but not the father, fwho want God without the Lordship of Jesus the Messiah.
I’ve heard much of miracles, healings, tongues, mighty deliverances from prison, and great “spiritual” experiences with God. Yet there is rarely a mention of sin and nothing of the infinitely transcending holiness of our just God whose Word declares that He will not be mocked, “for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”
I rarely hear of God’s true and ongoing miracle that He would send His Son to die for humans like me and then raise Him to live for me, with a promise never to leave me nor forsake me. So that in all my circumstances, no matter how bad my feelings or appearances might be, I can know assuredly that He directs and controls every detail every day for my ultimate good (Rom. 5:6-11). And a wonderful truth of this miracle is that we don’t need the so-called testimonies of individuals who draw so much attention to self through their claims and boastings, because this true miracle is continually at work in the life of every believer. Remember, God is as much at work in, and brings as much glory and blessing from, the Christian delivered from martyrdom at the stake as from the one killed for his faith at the stake!
This other “Jesus” then, is the delight of the flesh. It remains its own master and can survive in its enmity Godward, while enjoying “miraculous” deliverances from all possible suffering or consequences of sin. It claims a euphoric state of “joy” by means of fleshly and emotional encounters with God’s Holy Spirit without manifesting the true work of the Spirit in transformed lives bearing the likeness of God’s Holy Son.
How applicable to this counterfeit are the words of Jude, “Beloved, being very eager to write to you of our common salvation, I found it necessary to write, appealing to you to contend for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. For admission has been secretly gained by some who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly persons who pervert the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.”
But how unlike the “Jesus” of the flesh is the God of our Lord Jesus Christ. He focuses primarily on our “inner man” and not on the outer man that perishes (Eph. 1:3-14; 3:14-16). How beautiful is the Spirit’s work in the inner man: “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, because we look not at the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Cor. 4:16-18). How lovely the way Paul trusted Him in circumstances so unpleasing to the flesh but deemed necessary by the Master to develop his inner man.
Let us, then, recognize Him as Deity, obey Him and honor Him as Lord by surrendering our cares, needs, and lives to His perfect will. As beloved children of God, we confidently ask of our Father who always does what’s best for us (Jer. 29:11). But in our extremely limited knowledge and vision, we honor Him as faithful, omnipotent, and omniscient Lord when we add, “Not my will, but Thine be done.” Anything less insults His fatherly love and care for His children and presumptuously distorts the proper God-creature relationship. “As you do not know how the Spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything” (Eccl. 11:5).
Counterfeit prayer tells Him how and what to do in the name of “believing” prayer when it is actually willful, defiant, and faithless prayer. The true prayer of faith leaves it with God and believes His choice cannot be bettered. Because I know if I ask for what’s best for me (His will), then no matter how humanly impossible it might be, He’ll do it or give it (1 Jn. 5:14-15).
Certainly many times it is trying and painful to follow the genuine and only Lord Jesus Christ. I believe John 6:66-69 shows that Peter, like some of us, considered alternatives. But his answer reveals that there really is none: “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life; and we believe, and have come to know, that Thou art the Holy One of God.” I find a trace of the same thought when John Baptist sent from horrible circumstances to inquire if the real Lord Jesus Christ would allow him such suffering. To his inquiry, the Lord said, “And blessed is he who takes no offense at me (or, at the way I choose to do things)” (Mt. 11:6).
When Israel rejected the king in 1 Kings 12, they in effect shunned his lordship and of necessity chose an alternative. Their alternative eventually took them into horrible depths of apostasy (1 Kings 12:20, 25-30) as they rejected their “inheritance in the son of Jesse.” In other words, this attitude of rebellion made them rejecters of Jesse’s greater Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us take heed lest the quality of our trust in God’s true King take us to an alternative which has no inheritance in the Son of Jesse.
Remember: “This God–His way is perfect; the promise of the Lord proves true; He is a shield for all those who take refuge in Him. For who is God, but the Lord? And who is a rock, except our God?” (2 Sam. 22:31-32). So let us make Him our confidence always.