By: Gen. D. Green
On Target
Praise God, welcome to another message in which we are continuing in the series of teachings on the Revolutionary Way. Now, one point which we have gone over again and again is that Jesus Christ was, is, and always shall be, the Revolutionary. And despite what men desire to make Jesus into, that they may live their lives the way that they desire, the truth remains that He is The Revolutionary and wherever Jesus comes HE BRINGS CHANGE! Now, revolution is change, it is the overthrow of an existing system, an existing government and the inflow of a new government. Even the kings of Jesus’s day knew the inherent power that would be in Him. The Bible tells us that when Jesus was born, and He was a small baby, they were murdering infants by order of the king. Why? Because the word had been spread abroad that the Messiah was coming, that a new King was coming. And so, because of fear of the King Jesus, fear of the revolutionary change that was going to transpire, the king had given the order to do away with these male babies. So His parents took Him out of the country, took Him elsewhere until this decree had passed over.
The point of it is this, even though it was dealing with two different kingdoms, the kingdom of carnality and the Kingdom of God, it showed that even natural men were fearful of His power, fearful of His domain that would be manifest in the earth. Why is that? Because Satan trembles at the presence of God. We know this is true because it says in the Word, “Submit yourself to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” Now, what is going to cause the devil to flee? It is going to be when you are submitted to God and the presence of God is in you and on you that the devil is going to flee. He hates it. Also the Bible tells us that He, meaning God, inhabits the praises of His people. When you want to fight the devil and he is oppressing you, if you begin to praise God, genuinely, the devil will go away, he will flee again. Because he knows the presence of God is in those praises.
You can be under the torment of the damned and you can begin to praise God, begin to give thanks to God, begin to worship God and the devil will flee.
So we know that the enemy –the devil– is afraid of the Kingdom of God. That is why the devil works overtime to keep Christians carnal, to keep them on a realm of fretting themselves over what shall I wear, what shall I eat, where shall I live. And as we have been studying, in these lessons of the Revolutionary Way, that when Jesus came declaring and preaching the Kingdom of His Father, the Kingdom of God, He laid down principles of operation whereby His disciples could operate. And those of us who are His disciples even now, can operate by the same principles and gain entry into the same Kingdom. And if we continue in those principles we will remain in that Kingdom.
The teachings which the Master gave us in the Revolutionary Way are very vital and very important, yet those are the very things which the devil has caused most Christians to overlook. In this generation, because of the greed and the lust of the flesh, men have done away with just about all of the teachings of Jesus. They have taken a few isolated scriptures referring to prosperity, which mean prosperity in the spiritual dimension, and they have blown them up to mean prosperity for the carnal man. But that is a complete and absolute teaching of lies. We are supposed to die to the carnal man and the carnal nature which is the enemy of God.
Turn to our foundation scripture which is Matthew 6:10. It says, “This is the way that Jesus taught His disciples to pray, Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth (in earth) as it is in heaven.” So we see that Jesus was teaching them the foundational precepts of how to pray. Notice, He didn’t tell them to pray for a new clothing, a new home, a new church, a furtherance of their education in the world system. No, He taught them to pray that the Kingdom of God would come in earth as it is in heaven. We have been learning in these messages that we are the earth. Of course there is a physical, carnal earth, yet we are also the earth, because that is what God the Father used to form us. He took the dust of the earth and He made us into living creatures.
When we pray for that Kingdom to come, we are literally praying for Revolution. We are praying for the invasion of a foreign force into our territory. What I mean by that is we are asking ourselves to be invaded by the power, by the glory, by the Spirit of the Living God. Because in our natural state we are the enemies of God. So when we obey the command of Jesus to pray this particular way, we are actually turning around and becoming a traitor on our carnal man and we are crying out for a higher Kingdom. It would be like if I were in a kingdom that kept me on a very primal level, that kept me greatly reduced, and then one day I got a vision. I looked up at the sky and I saw a beautiful Kingdom that had all of these elegant buildings and the people were a pleasant people. I saw that the people were singing, the people were rejoicing, the people were uplifted. And I was stuck in a kingdom that was dreary and mean and selfish, self-seeking, hateful, envious and jealous. Then something stirred in my heart and I got a vision of this higher Kingdom, and inside of me something began to say, “I wish I lived in that Kingdom”.
What is actually happening is in my mind, I am beginning to become a traitor to this base and lowly, vile and corrupted way that I have been living. I know there are some of you who are listening to this broadcast, and you have been living in a base and low and vile existence. And there is something that is stirring, something that desires a higher place, that desires to come out of that low place and to come into the better Kingdom. You can enter into that Kingdom very simply by repenting of your sins and asking Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Saviour, and at the same time, pray this prayer found in Matthew 6:10 to God, the Father: “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done.” God will bring the Revolutionary power, the Revolutionary force, He will bring the change into you and you will not only be born again of incorruptible seed, but you will be a participant in the Revolutionary Way.
Now, there are many Christians who are not in the Revolutionary Way. For while they profess that they are Christians, they are not living the life and they are not following the Revolutionary. What does the Bible say? It says they are mockers and scoffers, walking after their own lusts. You do not have to be someone with a dirty mouth, foul speech, and a hateful attitude to be a mocker and a scoffer. You can be a mocker and a scoffer by refusing to walk the Revolutionary Way, by refusing to obey the commands of Jesus. He said, “If you love me, keep my commandments.” Does that mean that you go back to the Old Testament and look up the commandments and say, like the rich young ruler, “I have kept every one of those”. No, he did not keep every one of Jesus’s commandments. What was Jesus’s initial commandment? It was that we are to pray for this Kingdom to come, and for the will of God the Father to be done in us. That means that the will of God the Father is going to make every one of us into a Revolutionary. As true disciples we are going to be following the Captain of our Salvation, we are going to be following the first Revolutionary that was given unto us. We are going to be maintaining ourselves in that way. We are not going to be going after our own lusts, our own ambitions, our own desires.
And, if we won’t obey that first command to pray that way, then we are mockers and scoffers and we are walking after our own lusts. Because when we are truly submitted to God, we are going to obey the commands of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the commands of God the Father. He said, if you love me, keep my commandments. What is the first commandment that He is giving to the disciples, “This is the way you are supposed to pray. Pray this way, pray this way.” You say, “Well I don’t know if I want the Kingdom of God”, then you are not in the Revolutionary Way and you are a mocker and a scoffer. You don’t have to be a sex addict or a drug addict to be walking after your own lusts, you could be an ambition addict. You could be a career addict, you could be an education addict. You could be addicted to achievement, to recognition. There are a lot of things that you are addicted to, that you give your love to, that you give your life to, that you give your strength to, which according to carnal understanding are not sin. But in the light of God they are sins.
I had a job one time and God told me the job was “another lover” in my life. In the light of God I loved those things, I loved the physical, natural security that I had achieved by coming under that covering. Therefore, I was throwing off the covering of my Master Husband, Jesus, and I was taking to myself this other covering which constituted adultery in God’s eyes. We may as well tell the truth, that many who are professing to be Christians are full scale adulterers and adulteresses on God. As we were teaching the last time, how the whore in Proverbs says, “Come on!” while the good man is away. So the invitation that she gives is, “Let’s commit sin and say it is no sin while the one who provides for me is out of the way. Let’s do it while the one who has given me this beautiful home, and these elegant clothes, and everything that I fare so sumptuously upon, is away. While he is away let us do our act of sin. But we won’t call it sin, we will say it was a ‘learning experience’, or a ‘development’. We can say all manner of hypocritical, lying, half truths, in order to cover up our own iniquity.
When we will not follow the Revolutionary, we are mockers and scoffers, walking after our own lusts. That is the truth, whether we like it or lump it, it is the truth! And if we are going to follow Jesus, then we are going to have to accept the penetration of that sword, letting it divide asunder and show us where we are and where we are not.
The name of today’s message is: ABANDONING TO REVOLUTION. When we abandon, we leave everything else behind. We leave that which we would have considered to be important. We leave that as less important and we choose to go in the new way. When Jesus came teaching and preaching, He was not afraid to fellowship the sinners. Now, ‘fellowship’ in the sense of Jesus’s walk was not the same as what is construed as fellowship today. Fellowship today means a bunch of goons wallowing in sin, giving themselves over to the lust of the flesh in many forms, yielding to sensuality, carnality, and they call that fellowship. But when we are referring to Jesus not being ashamed to fellowship the sinners, because it says He was a friend of publicans and sinners, what that means is that Jesus extended Himself to them because He understood their need to be redeemed. It does not mean that He partook of their sinfulness, or that He partook of their sinful activities. It simply means that He extended the love that He was unto them, that they could come into the way that He was and be transformed.
We are meant, when we come into Jesus, to be transformed. We are not meant to continue in sin. We are not meant to remain in the former lifestyle, but we are meant to get going, abandon ourselves and follow the Revolutionary. Just pick up, pack up, and follow. Jesus gave us the example when He called the disciples. When He called the disciples He offered them no insurance program, He offered them no benefits, He offered them no funeral plan, no pension plan, no health insurance, no vacation, no sick leave. He just said, “Come follow me”. They didn’t know how they would eat, they didn’t know how they would sleep, they didn’t know what they would wear, He just said, “Come follow me”. And that is exactly the same call that Jesus gives out today and everyday when He says “Come follow me”. If you review these teachings that we have had in the Revolutionary Way, you will see that He dismantled the power of all the fears that are inherent in the carnal man. And He made reference again and again, back to His Father as the source, as the provision, of all the physical and emotional needs of man. God is well able to supply. God the Father is well able to provide.
He also taught us, as we learned the last time, that the Shepherd of Revolution is the True Way and every other thing is false. So, when we choose to follow any other way, any other command other than His, we are mockers and scoffers, walking after our own lusts, not remaining in the way. If we remain in the way, we will be as He was, hated for the truth, despised of men, an offscouring and a scourge to those who are religious. Jesus came a friend of sinners, preaching Revolution against Religion. And the sinners were drawn to Jesus. Why were they drawn to Jesus? Because He was the redeemer, because He was the God of love, the God of mercy, and He was able to forgive them. But the religious despised Him because His revolution meant change. It meant the overthrow of their domain of power. They did not want to be overthrown therefore they hated Him.
Now beginning in Luke 7:36, we are going to see the play between the religious and the sinner with Jesus in between. We are going to see who extended themselves to abandoning to Revolution, and who despised the change. “One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to dine with him, and He went into the Pharisee’s house and reclined at table. And behold a woman of the town, who was an especially wicked sinner, when she learned that He was reclining at table in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment (perfumed oil). And standing behind Him at His feet weeping, she began to wet His feet with her tears, and she wiped them with the hair of her head: and kissed His feet affectionately, and anointed them with the ointment (perfumed oil).”
Now let’s look at what she did here. Some of the translations are more passionate in their description than others, but basically she ran and put herself at His feet. For one thing, she couldn’t have wet His feet with her tears had she remained in a standing position. So we see when she felt the impact of the power, that she was so impassioned she knelt at His feet, because He was love. She felt the power of that love, and she could not hold herself back from bowing down to the same. Then she poured out, in abandoning to the Revolution that He was, in abandoning to the Revolutionary, she poured out her tears, she poured out herself, she poured out the devotion, the adoration, that she had within herself for Him. She recognized Him for who He was and she abandoned herself to worship Him. If we are going to follow the Revolutionary, then we are going to abandon ourselves to worship Him. We are not going to sit afar off as the Pharisee did and contend with Christ, but we are going to come down at His feet and worship Him. We are going to come down at His feet and love Him, and we are going to see that everything that we have which we considered precious is worthy to be poured out on those feet, is worthy to be poured out before Him. You see, that ointment was very expensive, it was a costly item, and it was probably the only bottle or the only container of that ointment that she had. But yet she took that and used it on His feet. You may say, “What a waste, why didn’t she put it on His head, why didn’t she put it on His face, why didn’t she rub it on His hands and His arms?”
Why did she put it on His feet? She signified that the very precious thing that she held dear was worthy to be put at the Master’s feet, was worthy to be poured out for Him, was worthy to be poured out and given in adoration, in worship, in love. So, what happened when she came into the presence of Jesus? She abandoned herself to the God, to the glory, of Love Revolution, she couldn’t hold herself back. She was pulled, supernaturally, into that place of adoration before Him. Because she was so open she was able to receive the Love that He was, and she responded in love.
Now, the Pharisee was critical and analytical, and he was going to find fault with Jesus. He was going to find something here that was wrong, yet he was the one who invited Jesus. Then it says in verse 39: “Now when the Pharisee who had invited Him saw it, he said to himself, ‘If this Man were a prophet, He would surely know who and what sort of woman this is who is touching Him for she is a notorious sinner–a social outcast, devoted to sin.”’ So what the Pharisee is saying out of his religious pride and out of his conceit and arrogance is: “Why is this Jesus, who claims He is a prophet, why is He allowing this dirty, unclean woman to even touch Him?” Let me ask you, who was the righteous one? The Pharisee in his own eyes is the righteous one, and Jesus is the unrighteous one. The Pharisee, in his religiosity, sees himself as superior in knowledge, because he is mocking. He is saying to himself that if this man were really a prophet he would know what she was. He was mocking. He assumes that he is superior in his intelligence and understanding, and of course, he is far superior in his righteousness, because this Jesus is allowing an unclean woman to pour out love at His feet. So, when the Revolutionary comes we can see the difference in attitude between those who will abandon themselves, between those who will respond to the love that is inherent in Jesus Christ the Lord and pour themselves out in adoration and worship unto Him, and the religious hypocrites who esteem themselves to be righteous.
And the woman who was a sinner, the woman who was an unclean person, an outcast, poured herself out in adoration, in worship, in love, in dedication. She took that which was most precious and poured it out as a sacrifice unto the Lord. And Jesus accepted that sacrifice. But the Pharisee stood afar off, mocking within himself, with contempt for Jesus and for the woman. So you see, religion separates men from God. Religion is the enemy of God, religion is the enemy of Revolution. That is why Jesus continues to declare it everyday, REVOLUTION AGAINST RELIGION! We see what was acceptable in the eyes of the Lord and what was acceptable to God the Father through the personage of His Son was the pouring out of that love, the surrender at His feet, the adoration, the worship.
Going on, starting in verse 40, “And Jesus replying said to him, ‘Simon, I have something to say to you’, And he answered, ‘Teacher say it.”’ (Jesus knew what this man was thinking, because it says he said within himself, therefore, Jesus read his thoughts) Jesus picked up on this man’s mockery and arrogance. He might have called Him teacher but he was not being taught. In other words, he knew the right terminology, but he was not allowing that teaching to take place in his heart, to take place and make him humble himself and get down at the feet of the Lord. Jesus continues on saying, “A certain lender of money at interest had two debtors; one owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they had no means of paying, he freely forgave them both, Now which of them will love him more? Simon answered, The one, I take it, for which he forgave and canceled more. And Jesus said to him, You have decided correctly. Then turning towards the woman, He said to Simon, Do you see this woman? When I came into your house, you gave Me no water for My feet, but she has wet My feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but she from the moment I came in has not ceased (intermittently) to kiss My feet tenderly and caressingly. You did not anoint My head with (cheap, ordinary oil) but she has anointed My feet with (costly, rare) perfumed oil. Therefore I tell you, her sins, many (as they are), are forgiven her, because she has loved much; but he who is forgiven little, loves little. And He said to her, Your sins are forgiven!” (Luke 7: 40-48)
So, in conclusion, how do we abandon to Revolution? We abandon to Revolution by abandoning to the Saviour, to the Master, in love, because HE IS LOVE!