Save That Which Was Lost

6/15/02

Mike Wood

When you loose the knowledge of God is, you loose the knowledge of who you are. Sin is hamartia and that includes loss of identity, missing the mark. The true identity of who you are in Christ is lost. We used to read that verse only through evangelistic eyes and think of lost souls instead of other things that were lost. Jesus regained them all for us.

Kyrugma –‘mark’ –identity, signature

The wages of sin is death but the free gift of God is eternal life. The sin of mistaken identity causes you to sin and to live in a sinful way, your sinful nature needs to be redeemed. Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost.

Luke 19:10  For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.

Jesus said, ‘I won’t leave you as an orphan.’ He was speaking to the human condition. Any of you that is suffering under the stigma of illegitimacy, hear this, there is a solution: the whole human race has that stigma, either in spiritual or natural inferiority. We are all under an orphan spirit. There is no human without a father but an orphan is someone who never knew their father: a mistaken identity, or sin-consciousness.

Sin consciousness is not a buddhist word but it was in the Scriptures first. It means co-knowledge. You know it in your soul and your spirit. Jesus carried within himself the stigma of being illegitimate. You can only lift that illegitimacy by the knowledge of your real father. The Holy Spirit will bring to your knowledge who the real Father is and who you really are. He taught you when you existed in your pre-existence. You have forgotten it. Your mind has to learn it.

2 Peter 1:2 Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord,

Epignowsko: true knowledge means to recognize and realize something you once knew…I cannot recognize you if I never met you. I get a witness inside of something I already knew. When you hear in the spirit what you once knew before you recognize it.

Jesus Christ came to seek and save that which was lost. When you receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit your life becomes as dedicated as Jesus’ life was, you become as dedicated as He was to seek and save all that was lost by the Adamic condition or sinful condition in this world. He will not leave you as an orphan. Christ in you is the hope of glory.

You cannot understand it with your head but the real you on the inside, your spirit, will understand it. We have gone past the place of just knowing Christ after the flesh. You can start studying all the Jewish traditions to get to know him, you can feel healing power, and you can have hope of a return of Christ, but Christ in you is your only hope.

Colossians 1:26,27 Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints: 27 To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory: 

You will have to go beyond all the things you have known of Christ beyond the realm of in-part knowledge and in-part revelation. You have to go beyond the tree of the knowledge of good and evil to the tree of life. God placed a curse of death and separation on both good knowledge and evil knowledge. That curse is a curse of double-mindedness. Whenever the Adam in us eats off the tree of opposites there is double-mindedness.

You never hear an altar call to pray to get rid off the knowledge of good and good intentions.

Do as Mary did. Just receive this word and keep it in your heart. When they called Jesus Good He said, ‘No one is good, only the Father.’ Jesus did not come to reveal good. There are plenty of good people. Jesus came to reveal God, not good!

Good without God is a big zero: ‘O’.

The mission of Jesus was to seek out and to save that which was lost. He was searching to recover things. That becomes our mission. We have to seek out our salvation and to save or realize and recognize that which you have lost. It is a wonderful process and an extraordinary journey. As you grow past kindergarten, dependency and in-dependency, to maturity and inter-dependency. None of us have it all together; only together we have it all.

He who began a good work in you will complete it until the day of the Lord. Until the day Christ takes shape in you. The Second Coming is a terrible translation. It should be Appearance. There was an appearance of Christ before he came to the earth. He was the rock that followed them in the desert. When Jesus appeared as a single body it was not his first appearance. ( Fourth man in the fire, in the lions den, appearing to many men and women of God.)

Hebrews 9:27 And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:

Kresis - judgment, damnation, accusation, condemnation.

Krivsi -  1) a separating, sundering, separation 1a) a trial, contest 2)            selection 3) judgment 3a) opinion or decision given concerning anything 3a1) esp. concerning justice and injustice, right or wrong 3b) sentence of condemnation, damnatory judgment, condemnation and punishment 4) the college of judges (a tribunal of seven men in the several cities of Palestine; as distinguished from the Sanhedrin, which had its seat at Jerusalem) 5) right, justice

It is appointed for men to die once…when was that? When you first ate off the tree of knowledge of good and evil… like Adam. After that comes the crisis. This rules out the possibility of re-incarnation. Do you believe in déjà vu? Did you ask me that before?

Do you understand judgement from God’s point of view? ‘Criteria’ is our English derivative of the word ‘crisis’. The judgement of God is about criteria. The judge gives a judgement against the wrong criteria and then brings correction to replace it with the right criteria. You are the judge or else you will be judged.

It was appointed to men to be ‘lost’ and then through the genius of God you can learn to make the right choices to be restored to God. You can go through all the strife you like and it won’t do you any good until you make the right judgement. It is called repentance. A lot of people never want to recognize that they ever do anything wrong. You have to recognize who you are in Christ. If you are still in duality you cannot correct the error. You may get the right criteria during a church service but when you go home you slip back into your mistaken identity. Then you are marctus, dominicus, cactus!

This is double-consciousness. One is a fraud and a counterfeit. If positive thinking was a reality then you will never be able to confess your sins. You will never come to repentance. You will never get into the new consciousness. Positive thinking is to shut down all your thinking and just to hold onto one thought and denying all your other thoughts. Faith is not positive thinking. Faith is not denial. By confessing what you deny your faith is not activated, e.g. ‘I’m not sick!’

Abraham considered not his body when he was 100 years old but put his trust in God.

Romans 4:19-22 And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sara’s womb: ²⁰ He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; ²¹And being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform. ²²And therefore it was imputed to him for righteousness.

By displacing the error with truth (apostolic reformation), there will come a time in your life where you will come to a provision of God where you will be taught of the Spirit how to live. You will come to the place where you will keep eating from the tree of life continually…keep your conscious mind attached to a higher order of living. Your new identity is based on the real God and the real you. You have to deal with false gods and false images of the real God and false images of the real you. Check out your self-image to see how you see God. If you want to check out your self-image see how you see other people.

Your mistaken identity causes you to sin. Every manner of human condition has to be replaced by the righteousness of faith, not of your own. It does not depend on whether you keep the law or not, but it is a free gift of God. Believing in righteousness but living it is something else.

Jesus came to bear the sins of many. What is your impression of the second  appearing…fire…floods…creeping crawling things…

Christ’s second appearing is to bring salvation to those who are expecting Him. For the first time Christ appeared to you to deal with sin. The second appearing he came to those who are eagerly waiting for him. Jesus Christ shall appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin for those who are eagerly looking for him. Just imagine the different ways in which people are looking for that second appearing. The appearing of the Lord in you life cannot happen while you are sin-conscious. That second appearing will not happen while you try to know Jesus Christ after the flesh or know each other by the flesh. It will only happen when you get past sin-consciousness into Christ consciousness. It has not yet appeared on the outside what we shall be. But we know when He appears we shall appear with Him. Those who have that hope purify themselves.

So much end-time preaching produces fear and no holiness. But when Christ is fully formed in you, you will appear like Him. Those who have this hope will press into sanctification. You are not righteous because you are confessing that you are righteous.

I John 3:7-10 Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous. ⁸He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. ⁹Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.  ¹⁰In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother.

Acts 1:11 ¹¹Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.

Tropos - as, even as, way, means, even as, in like manner as, manner, conversation.

Trovpo - 1) a manner, way, fashion 1a) as, even as, like as, manner of life, character, deportment.

Not like form, but like manner.

He went up into the realm of the spirit and he shall return in the same manner: from the spirit realm into the flesh. He left from the earth realm in a single-member body, but 40 days later he returned in a man-member body on the day of Pentecost: 120 believers.

He is returning without a reference to the mistaken identity: for those who have their heart and mind set on the inside that he will appear.

Now is the day of salvation. Now is the acceptable time. Now is the only time you have. In our human lower consciousness we have a propensity of thinking either in the past or the future. Both those mind-sets are enemies of the ‘Now’. Because I think I am (Descartes). That was the greatest spiritual faux pas. Therefore someone who is brain dead he does not exist, if that is true.

While we are in the fleshly mind-set of opposites (Good and evil) we are drawing our identity from what we do: where you go to school, you parents. Every time you look to the past you miss the spirit of who you really are. Salvation is always just up ahead. They keep shifting the goal posts!

Now is the day of salvation. Now ends that curse and puts you into the eternal present.

Any time in your past where you had a touch from the Lord, you only touched the presence of God in the ‘now’. That is where God lives. Anything you will touch of God in the future will only be in the ‘now’.

So many of our prayers are up ahead…it is going to be… but hope deferred makes the heart sick.

The spirit of God is inviting us to reverence and to honour the ‘now’ – in His divine presence. Many people are in a place of compulsive thinking. There is nothing wrong with dealing with future issues and past issues. Learn to be still and know that God exists in the ‘now’. Many people have not found the ‘off’ button to switch your thought patterns off. Jesus came to seek and save the lost button that we have lost!

If your thinking is wrong your mind is miss-using you! Your mind is not who you are. You need to learn how to be still while your mind is burning rubber. Worry is the counterfeit prayer. If you want to come into the holy of holies you will have to come to the end of the world that you live in, your world of knowledge of good and evil. In me you will have peace, but in the world you will have tribulation, but do not be afraid I have already overcome it. There is a place where you can have peace. It is not in the city you live in. The world he refers to is inside of you. When you come into the end of this world (the god of this world controlling you), you will come to the final battle. This battle with your senses will give your spirit the overhand. Only then you will be able to live in the place where you will know the truth as a person.

Come into that which is: do not try to become the righteousness of God. Start confessing ‘I AM’. Dwelling in the ‘Isness’ of God. Whoever comes to God must first believe that He is. There is a place of being still: contemplating: co-temple…becoming a temple of the Holy Spirit…Jesus Christ in you seeking and save the ‘now’ that has been lost. When you come into the now you will touch God beyond the point you have touched him up till now.