Another Coffee Break - By Regner Capener

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Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Another Coffee Break:
Going Beyond, Part 2

November 14, 2014

Today we continue with the theme we began last week.  It is critical for all of us as believers, if we are to be a part of that called-out company we know as the Bride of Christ, then going on beyond the fundamental foundations of Jesus Christ is an absolute necessity.  What God is doing, and what He has in store for those who will allow the foundations to be fully laid in their lives, is beyond anything natural, carnal eyes can see, natural carnal ears can hear, and the reasoning, thinking mind can possibly imagine!

We started here last week, and I repeat: Isaiah prophesied of this day and time like this:

(Isaiah 60:1-3, NASB) “Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you.  For behold, darkness will cover the earth and deep darkness the peoples; But the LORD will rise upon you and His glory will appear upon you. Nations will come to your light, And kings to the brightness of your rising."

We paused last week in our narrative of what took place with Jesus on the Cross and His final words on the Cross, "It is Finished!"  We noted that sin was canceled, death was finished and a new birth was taking place -- the birth of a company of people who would no longer be under the Law of Moses, but redeemed from the curse of the Law and free to once again enter into an intimate love relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus, however, made it clear that this new birth was NOT of water — not in the normal sense — nor of blood, even though His blood was shed in the process.  A supernatural transformation — a regeneration — was taking place.  This new birth was taking place in that realm which has authority and power over the flesh and the soul: the spirit.  A dimensional change was occurring.

Hence, Jesus said to Nicodemus, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.“

Because death only affects our flesh, because death has power over unredeemed flesh, a new kind of birth had to take place — one that had never before occurred in history.
Now you’re beginning to get the picture.  Jesus’ most earnest desire is that we promulgate, that we announce to the world the fact that He kept our appointment with death.  We no longer have to suffer death, disease, sickness, infirmity, poverty, etc.  But there’s more.

It is important that we not only show the world our deliverance from death: we must also demonstrate to Satan, to principalities, to rulers of this world’s darkness, that we’ve been set free from the curse of death, that we’ve been freed from Satan’s dominion, that we’ve been restored the authority, the power and the dominion originally given to Adam in the Garden of Eden.

Water baptism — as we have already noted in previous discussions (and will cover again in this series — does just that.  This ordinance — this statute — has enormous spiritual significance.  This isn’t for the world’s sake, even though it is part of an outward show, a demonstration of a spiritual regeneration that has taken place.

This is a “Hands Off!” declaration to Satan.  This is the posting of a legal decree which clearly states we are no longer members of that class of human beings subject to the Law of Sin and Death.

The old being which was subject to death and had the “knowledge virus” in our genes has been put to death. The appointment with death has been kept.  The person who then comes up out of the water is raised from the dead by the Spirit of God.  This newly-born individual is born again — both of water AND of the Spirit!  Once again we have Paul’s description to the Romans: all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death.  Yessir!  The appointment with death has been kept.

And again Paul says, as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.  The “new us” is no longer subject to the Law of Sin and Death.

Romans 8:2:  For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.  The “new us” is free from death, sickness, disease, infirmity, weakness, poverty, need, etc.  Now we’re free to demonstrate Jesus!

Jesus death on the Cross freed us from the “dead works of the Law.”  The Cross established a line of demarcation between the past and the future.  The Cross means that we can move forward into our destinies in the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Cross means that we no longer have to repeat the rituals of repentance and asking for forgiveness of all of our sins.  When Jesus’ was pierced through by the Centurion, blood and water came out of His side.  According to the archaeological expedition conducted back in the late 1980’s by Ron Wyatt, when he found the Ark of the Covenant, there were traces of blood on the Mercy Seat that had dripped down through the crack in the earth above where the base of the Cross had been dropped into a hole.  Jesus’ blood was the ONCE AND FOR ALL SACRIFICE!

Our sins, our iniquities, our faults and failures were paid for, ONCE AND FOR ALL TIME!  So once we are in Christ, We’ve been set free from the continual need for repentance from dead works.  We CAN go on to the perfecting and completing that Jesus Christ has for us!

Continuing on with the theme of leaving behind the foundational principles of Christ, one of the foundational principles of the teachings (Dr. Wm. Gesenius refers to this as “the Divine Expression”) of the Lord Jesus Christ, we move on to the subject of faith towards God.

Before we get into too much depth, let me lay some foundations (pun intended) with a series of Scriptures.  Jesus made it abundantly clear that it is critical for us to have God’s faith if we are to truly see the dimension of the Spirit God expects us to walk in.
Perhaps one of the most quoted statements that Jesus made concerning faith appears in Mark 11:

“Possess and hold continuously to God’s faith.  Surely, and very firmly, I declare to you, that whoever shall speak to and command this specific mountain [or obstacle raising itself up] before you to raise up, remove and be thrown into the sea, and shall not hesitate, draw back or attempt to discriminate [between what is thought to be acceptable and that which is not] in his heart, and shall believe (implicitly trusting God and giving full credit to) that his declarations shall come to pass, he shall have and receive exactly what he declares.”  (Mark 11:22-23, RAC Translation & Amplification)

Writing to the Hebrews, Paul says, NOW the just shall live by faith, but if man shall draw back my soul shall have no pleasure in him.”   (Hebrews 10:38 KJV)

Let me amplify and somewhat extrapolate from a previous verse in something Paul writes to the Romans to put it like this: “For therein [the Gospel of Christ which is the power of God unto salvation to them that believe] is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, The just shall live by faith.”  (Romans 1:16-17, KJV)

Paul, of course, is quoting from the prophet, Habakkuk, who is directed by the Lord to “make the vision plain upon tables, that he may run (or pursue after the vision) that readeth it” because “his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him: but the just shall live by faith.”

Habakkuk is describing the need for the vision being plainly written because Israel (for the most part) was not walking uprightly.  The Word of the Lord to Israel was that if they were going to be counted among the “just” or righteous in God’s sight, they absolutely had to shift from walking according to the Law to walking by faith.
Faith was not a part of Israel’s daily life.  The Law of Moses was not something that Israel followed by faith.  It was a dictum, a mandate to be obeyed whether they liked it, understood it, believed in its efficacy or not.

Throughout Israel’s life, however, there were the few who saw beyond the Law to the heart of the Lord God.  They saw a spiritual principle that transcended the Law.
Abraham, who was literally the father of Israel, had a relationship with God when there was no written or prescribed Law.  One of Abraham’s contemporaries was the Mesopotamian king, Hammurabi, who set forth a series of practical laws for human behavior.  The archaeological  artifact known as “The Stele of Hammurabi” detailed many laws in writing — some of which paralleled the statutes that Moses set forth for   Israel to follow.

Because of “Code of Hammurabi” was fairly well known throughout the entire Mediterranean region, Abraham and his contemporaries were no doubt familiar with all or parts of it, but there was nothing in that code which incorporated any kind of relationship with God as the foundation for  observance.

Everything that Abraham did in his responses to the Lord flew in the face of natural human understanding.  There was no rational thought to Abraham’s behavior.  Here’s how the apostle Paul describes Abraham’s behavior — both in writing to the Hebrews, and to the Romans:

Hebrews 11:8-10, 17-19, KJV:  “By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went.  By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise:  For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.

“By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son,  Of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called: Accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure.”

Romans 4:14-18, KJV:  “For if they which are of the law be heirs, faith is made void, and the promise made of none effect: Because the law worketh wrath: for where no law is, there is no transgression.  Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed; not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham; who is the father of us all,

“(As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations,) before him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were. Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations, according to that which was spoken, So shall thy seed be.”

Paul makes it abundantly clear that it is impossible to live by the Law and live by Faith at the same time.  One either lives by the Law, and is subject to all of the consequences of the Law for even the least infraction, or one can live by the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ, and be totally delivered from the consequences of any infractions of the Law.

Now you understand why it is so critically important that the foundation of faith toward God be so much a part of our character and makeup.  We simply cannot live under the Law and live by faith at the same time.

There is a mandate of faith if we are to “go on beyond,” to the revelation that awaits, being made “partakers of the Holy Ghost” [that word, partakers, comes from the Greek word,  metochos, which means: sharer, associate, partner], eating of the fresh manna of revelation which comes by the rhema, as well as the miraculous realm of power associated with the ‘eternity of the eternities’.

It is utterly impossible to get there without the faith of God operational and functioning in its wholeness in us.  Thus this is a foundation stone in Jesus Christ without which no further building can be constructed in the realm of the Spirit.

Here’s where things get really interesting!  In order for the Faith of God to become a functioning part of our existence, it requires the Grace of God.  Grace and Faith work hand in hand, and neither one operates without the other.

Let’s take a minute to define Grace so that this becomes more clear.  The Greek word translated “grace” throughout the New Testament is the word, charis.  J.H. Thayer, in his Greek-English Lexicon, defines this word like this:

1) The Divine influence of God
2) The merciful kindness by which God strengthens and increases us in faith
3) The proof of God’s Divine Power
4) That which kindles the exercise of Christian virtues

NOTHING in these definitions allows us to conclude that grace is passive in any way!  Grace is a whole lot more than the kindness and mercy of God. It is the empowerment that enables the operation of faith in God, as well as faith towards God.

Let me put it another way.  In writing to the Romans, Paul says the following:

Romans 5:20, KJV:  But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound:

Ever wonder why Paul put it like that?  Grace is the empowerment to deal with sin.  Grace is given to bring us to the gift of faith.  The gift of faith comes when we hear the Word.  Once we hear the Word of faith, truth penetrates our spirit.  When that takes place, grace has done its job.  Grace brings us to the truth.  Faith takes over and grace is no longer needed.

We'll take this up again next week.

Again, if you are in need of healing -- especially if you have some terminal disease or prognosis of a very short time to live from the doctors -- please join our prayer conference calls on either Monday or Wednesday of each week at 7:00 PM Eastern. Once again, the number to call is (805) 399-1000.  Then enter the access code: 124763#.  To get into the queue for prayer, when Randy opens the call up for everyone, hit *6-1 on your keypad. Let us minister to your need for healing!

Blessings on you!

Regner

Regner A. Capener
CAPENER MINISTRIES
RIVER WORSHIP CENTER
Sunnyside, Washington 98944

Our book, A Tale of Two Brides, published by Destiny Image, is available on Amazon.com as an E-book: http://www.amazon.com/Tale-Two-Brides-Relationship-ebook/dp/B00BSV6HZC/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1363139096&sr=8-8&keywords=A+Tale+of+Two+Brides#_

All Coffee Break articles are copyright by Regner A. Capener, but authorization for reprinting, reposting, copying or re-use, in whole or in part, is granted –provided proper attribution and this notice are included intact. Older Coffee Break archives are available at http://www.RegnersMorningCoffee.com. Coffee Break articles are normally published weekly.

If you would like to have these articles arrive each morning in your email, please send a blank email to: Subscribe@AnotherCoffeeBreak.com.To remove yourself from the mailing list, please send a blank email to Unsubscribe@AnotherCoffeeBreak.com.

CAPENER MINISTRIES is a tax-exempt church ministry. Should you desire to participate and covenant with us as partners in this ministry, please contact us at either of the above email or physical addresses, or visit: http://www.RiverWorshipCenter.org.



Another Coffee Break:
Going Beyond, Part 1

November 7, 2014

The Son has risen on a new era.  Strange way to put it, I know, but as the age in which we live comes to a close, society has become so dark and perverted that the previous generation would hardly recognize things.  Yet, we live in the most spectacular time in all of history.  I have said to many throughout the past years that I wouldn't trade living in this era for any other time in history.  We are entering a time when the Glory of the Lord will be revealed in dimensions the body of Christ has never seen, and likely cannot imagine in their wildest fancies.

Isaiah prophesied of this day and time like this:

(Isaiah 60:1-3, NASB) “Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you.  For behold, darkness will cover the earth and deep darkness the peoples; But the LORD will rise upon you and His glory will appear upon you. Nations will come to your light, And kings to the brightness of your rising."

Nevertheless, for the Glory of the Lord to arise upon us in such a way as to draw kings and nations to see and know and understand what is taking place, we MUST as a body of overcoming people -- a Bridal company fit for the Lord Jesus Christ -- move beyond the foundational truths into a spiritual dimension that awaits every believer who will lay aside every mental reasoning and religious weight that holds them back from total, uncompromised, unreserved responsiveness to the requirements of Holy Spirit.

That said, let's begin this series with a statement that Paul makes in writing to the Jewish Christians at large -- a people who had been steeped their whole lives in traditions and legalism before coming to the knowledge and acceptance of Jesus Christ as their Messiah.  What Paul writes has the same power and application to us as modern-day believers, many of whom have grown up in the traditions of the church world with many doctrines that are man-made.
Hebrews 6:1-3, KJV:  “Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God,  Of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.  And this will we do, if God permit.”

If you don't mind, let’s take a deeper look at what Paul is saying.  Both the original Greek text and the Aramaic text put these statements in a clearer and much more detailed realm of understanding.

Hebrews 6:1-3, RAC Translation & Amplification:  Therefore, and as a consequence, it is critically important that we forsake [what  Jesus has already eradicated from existence] the beginnings and commencement of the [initiating] Word of the Anointed One and His Anointing (Jesus Christ),

Let us move forward energetically to the place of completion and consummation; not laying down [or setting in front of you as a continual requirement] the legalistic requirement to repent, and re-do your thought processes concerning the old, dead works and requirements of the Law [as though it were necessary in order to attain redemption from past sins or iniquities], under the guise that this builds faith in and toward God, the line-upon-line, precept-upon-precept instruction in the purification processes in baptisms, the necessity of laying on of hands (for impartation or conveyance of power), [the foundational truth that Jesus provides] resurrection from the dead and cancelation of the curse of death, and — finally — the understanding and revelation of the judgment and decrees that exist throughout the eternity of the eternities.

And this is what we will be enabled to do conditional upon God’s transfer of authority, granting license and liberty to move past these foundations.

To place Paul’s statements in context, it is important to remember that he was writing to Jewish Christians who had grown up under, and subject to, the Law of Moses.  For them to walk and live and grow up IN CHRIST — never mind having Christ in them — they needed to totally free from the Law and its constraints.  They needed to understand that Jesus was the complete fulfillment of the Law, and that no aspect of the Law could be alive in them, their thinking, or their behavior.

When Paul begins his discourse, he identifies six specific areas of legalistic understanding they have grown up with (and I will label them as they understood them):
(1) Atonement for sins
(2) Trusting God (albeit from a place of fear)
(3) The washing of hands and/or baptism as an act of separation from uncleanness
(4) The laying on of hands (from the perspective of prophetic anointing)
(5) Resurrection of the dead (viewed as an act only after the coming of Messiah, and ONLY for the purpose of being judged by God
(6) Eternal judgment (as being cast off from God)

We are going to try and just deal with the first aspect of this “leaving behind” today: NOT revisiting and reenacting the dead works of the Law.

The Christians of Paul's era were not — and are not — the only people who still live their lives continuing to apply the law (or even modern man-made laws) to themselves as believers.  Religion has become so intertwined into the modern life of Christians that they don’t realize just how much of their lives are operating in a sub-standard mode.
Religion places performance standards and a set of measurements that folks have to live up to that have absolutely nothing to do with our progress in God.  Let me give you a few examples:

1.  Don’t smoke.
2.  Don’t drink wine, beer or hard liquor.
3.  Don’t go to dances.
4.  Don’t frequent the theaters, watch movies — even television is bad for you.
5.  Ladies, make sure you wear long dresses.
6  It is improper for women to wear pants because they will look like men.
7.   No wearing of jewelry.
8.   No fancy hairstyles — women should keep their hair plain.
9.   When you pray, make sure you pray on your knees.
10. You must attend church on Sunday morning, Sunday Evening, and either Tuesday or Wednesday night for Bible Study.

This list could go on and on and on, but you get the idea.  Nowhere in the Word do you find any of these things.  None of these things are a measure of holiness, and none of these things have anything to do with one’s relationship with the Lord — and here’s the caveat: UNLESS Holy Spirit says so personally to them!

I grant you that smoking isn’t good for you, and drinking hard liquor will create long-term physical problems, but these aren’t things that Jesus requires of us in order to come to Him.  I don’t recommend that people smoke cigarettes or chew tobacco, but that isn’t a requirement I can place on anyone!  That’s something that only Holy Spirit can require of you.

Della and I enjoy a glass of wine — and Paul even encouraged Timothy to “drink a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine oft infirmities” — but at the same time, our liberty in having a glass of wine is not license to drink to excess or to over-imbibe; and that rule can be applied to just about everything!

It isn’t the drinking of wine or having a cup of coffee, or a bottle of beer that is the issue: it is the drinking to excess that creates problems in our responsiveness to the Lord.   There is also the instance for some folks who simply cannot have even a single drink of wine or beer or anything alcoholic because of the responses it produces in them.  This is, again, something that ONLY Holy Spirit can require as an act of personal obedience.

When Paul addresses the Hebrew Christians, he is also addressing us as modern-day believers in Christ Jesus.  When he begins drawing the picture of “going on to completeness” he starts with “not laying again, the foundations of repentance from dead works.”  That’s a mouthful!

My amplified translation of the Greek hardly does justice to what Paul is communicating by the Spirit.  First of all, he lays a foundation (pun intended) for our “going on” by saying that the real issue among believers is “religion.”  He is referring to “the works of the Law,” in the same way that John writes under the direction of the Lord to the seven Ekklesias saying, “I know thy works.”

Before I continue, let’s define “repentance from dead works.”

Under the Law of Moses, the Israelites were required to keep not only the ten commandments but a series of some 600-plus laws, statutes, and commandments, not counting a fistful of feast-days.

When Isaiah opens up his prophecies to Israel, the Word of the Lord through him is that God is sick of the sacrifices and burnt offerings, the keeping of the new moon feasts, etc., and that he will hide His face from them and not hear or respond in any way because of the filth they continue in all the while they “keep His commandments.”

In Isaiah 28:13, we are told, “But the Word of the Lord was unto them precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, and there a little; that they might go, and fall backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken.”

What Isaiah was driving at, even some 700 years or so before Paul’s directive to the Hebrews, was that folks had lost sight of the Spirit of the Law.

Paul takes up this same theme and is essentially saying to the body of Christ, “There is nothing left for you to do!  Pleasing the Lord is not in the keeping of laws, statutes and commandments; pleasing the Lord and having fellowship with Him is not in the doing of things, it is in BEING in Him!

Everything that could possibly have been done that had been a part of the past was finished.  Jesus was the finishing of the Law, the Statutes and the Commandments.  He didn’t invalidate them, as the “religionists” of the day would like to believe; He wrapped them into the very agape nature of Father God and fellowship with Him!
That wasn’t doing away with them, but it WAS doing away with the observance of them as laws and commandments.

Unfortunately, the body of Christ has been caught up in the same dilemma today with opposite extremes.  On one hand, you have those who run with it so far to the right that “Grace” covers everything including their continuance in sin and utterly perverse activities.

Within the GBLT agenda, there are those who profess to be born-again (even supposedly Spirit-baptized) Christians who maintain their right to “love whomever they choose” and/or marry someone of the same sex because “God is a God of love, and His Grace covers us.”

On the other side of the pendulum swing are those who preach and teach the necessity of digging into one’s past, their family histories, past generations (in some cases attempting to go back ten generations or more) in order to deal with iniquities (a fancy word which essentially describes a character flaw, or a twist in one’s way of thinking) or “family curses’, or the visiting of the sins of the father upon the children, etc., etc., etc., ad    infinitum.

When Jesus went to the Cross Isaiah, seeing things prophetically some 700 years into the future, wrote, Surely He has suffered and accepted as His own our maladies, our anxieties, our calamities, our disease and sicknesses, and carried our anguish, pain and grief:
“Yet we fabricated and maliciously invented His being stricken violently, beaten, punished, wounded and slaughtered as if by God -- choosing to believe that God browbeat, demeaned and looked down upon Him.
“But He was broken and profaned for our rebellion, our revolt, our apostasy and our [religious] quarrel against God;
“He was crushed, oppressed and smitten, and (emotionally) broken into pieces for our perversity, our evil, our mischief, sins and faults; the breaking and ridiculing of our peace, our welfare, our prosperity, our health and our safety was upon Him;
“And with His bloodied and blue wounds we are cured, mended, repaired and made thoroughly whole.”  (Isaiah 53:4-5, RAC Translation & Amplification)

Understand?

All of that happened BEFORE He went to the Cross!  Do you see anything He didn’t cover?  Then consider what happened on the Cross.

Remember what happened when the centurion pierced Jesus’ side while He was hanging on the Cross?  Water and blood came forth from Him.  Jesus’ last words before He died were, “It is finished!”

And what was finished?  Death.  What was finished?  A new birth was taking place: a bride was being birthed for the Lord Jesus Christ.  But this birth was unlike any in history.  In the realm of the flesh, a birth takes place in the midst of  water and blood.  Babies come forth out of the water or amniotic fluid that keeps them alive while they are still in the womb, and blood accompanies the birthing process.

Jesus, however, made it clear that this new birth was NOT of water — not in the normal sense — nor of blood, even though His blood was shed in the process.  A supernatural transformation — a regeneration — was taking place.  This new birth was taking place in that realm which has authority and power over the flesh and the soul: the spirit.  A dimensional change was occurring.

I need to stop here.  The illustrations I need to make will make today's Coffee Break much too long if I continue, so this is where we will pick it up next week.

Again, if you are in need of healing -- especially if you have some terminal disease or prognosis of a very short time to live from the doctors -- please join our prayer conference calls on either Monday or Wednesday of each week at 7:00 PM Eastern. Once again, the number to call is (805) 399-1000.  Then enter the access code: 124763#.  To get into the queue for prayer, when Randy opens the call up for everyone, hit *6-1 on your keypad. Let us minister to your need for healing!

Blessings on you!

Regner

Regner A. Capener
CAPENER MINISTRIES
RIVER WORSHIP CENTER
Sunnyside, Washington 98944

Our book, A Tale of Two Brides, published by Destiny Image, is available on Amazon.com as an E-book: http://www.amazon.com/Tale-Two-Brides-Relationship-ebook/dp/B00BSV6HZC/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1363139096&sr=8-8&keywords=A+Tale+of+Two+Brides#_

All Coffee Break articles are copyright by Regner A. Capener, but authorization for reprinting, reposting, copying or re-use, in whole or in part, is granted –provided proper attribution and this notice are included intact. Older Coffee Break archives are available at http://www.RegnersMorningCoffee.com. Coffee Break articles are normally published weekly.

If you would like to have these articles arrive each morning in your email, please send a blank email to: Subscribe@AnotherCoffeeBreak.com.To remove yourself from the mailing list, please send a blank email to Unsubscribe@AnotherCoffeeBreak.com.

CAPENER MINISTRIES is a tax-exempt church ministry. Should you desire to participate and covenant with us as partners in this ministry, please contact us at either of the above email or physical addresses, or visit: http://www.RiverWorshipCenter.org.