Jubilee! by J. Preston Eby INHERITANCE LOST (4)

Jubilee!         

by J. Preston Eby

INHERITANCE LOST   (4)

Nothing in the whole world is more obvious than the fact that the inheritance man once knew in God has been lost. In that dim and distant long ago God set man over all the works of His hands. He appointed man the supreme ruler of the infinite vastness of infinity and the heir of all realms and realities. When sin came, all that changed and man instead of a ruler became a slave, eking out his subsistence by the sweat of his face. He came into bondage to sin, sorrow, satan and death, and, believe me, satan is a hard taskmaster. Man lost his relationship with God, and life became at times unbearable. The mystery that the natural mind can never fathom is the fact that it was by divine planning that circumstances were so arranged that man forfeited and relinquished his title deed to the inheritance given him, and he became a servant of sin, to obey the lusts thereof. "Know not, that to whom you yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants you are to whom you obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?" (Rom. 6:16).

How pitiful that the myriads of things which appeal to the flesh can become so important that men will serve them to the satisfaction of the flesh, and immediately place themselves in the servant position, while that thing becomes their master. To whomever, or whatever we yield ourselves as servants to obey, his servants we are. The application of this can take many forms and cover many items, but the principle of it is constant. "In time past you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience" (Eph. 2:2). Servants of corruption, servants of the negative realm, having lost the inheritance given to man, and rather than being "lord" over the creation, man became the slave of it. Man has throughout these ages of travail borne but a faint semblance of the glory that once was his. Think of a rancher who owns a large ranch and then becomes disabled so that though he still owns the ranch he is unable in and of himself to manage it or to evict squatters or kill rattlesnakes. The rancher didn't lose ownership, but did lose his ability to manage his ranch. The enemies came in and overpowered him until he became a helpless prisoner in his own domain. Such is the pitiable state of man in relation to his magnificent inheritance!

When the blessed Son of God hung upon the cross God in infinite tenderness wrapped the land in darkness in the hour of His supreme suffering. About those three hours we know little, save the words that escaped the lips of the Sufferer Himself. There came a moment when the voice was heard amid the darkness, and it said, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" The men about the cross were quite familiar with the words. They were not strange words. They were quoted from the Psalter, from the Worship-book of the Hebrew people. They had often chanted the Psalm in solemn monotone and recited it in many an hour of heart anguish. But there are values in it far deeper and more profound than the Psalmist knew when he wrote the song. When he wrote it, it was the expression of sorrow such as he was then passing through. But it has become for evermore full of meaning to us, because Christ uttered these words upon the cross. There is great value in recognizing the fact that it was a human cry, and that Jesus quoted it. And the value is all the greater if we remember that all that follows in that twenty-second Psalm is an exposition of what it is to be God-forsaken. The Psalmist was not looking at the old rugged cross on the craggy crest, he had no vision of it; he was, I am deeply persuaded, writing of his own heart's agony; and here this One, this King upon the cross, stretched back through the centuries and took hold of the most awful wail of agony that ever escaped the human heart, and quoted it as His own experience. He was our humanity, born of a virgin; throughout the whole of His public ministry He had spoken in human terms, and yet with unequivocal divine authority.

"My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me!" It was first of all the cry of a soul at the uttermost of sin, having lost the vision of God. It was the cry of a soul at the uttermost of sorrow, conscious of its lack of God. All sorrow is lack. All grief is the consciousness of lack. When the soul becomes conscious of the lack of God, that is the uttermost sorrow. Moreover, it was the soul in the presence of mystery, in the presence of silence, with no voice, with no answer. In that moment Jesus expressed in human speech the fact that the pains and the penalties of the human sin were His. That is the heart of it, and the center of it, and the soul of it, and the mystery of it!

I must assure you, beloved friend, that the anguish endured by Jesus on the cross has been experienced by every son and daughter of Adam's race. We have already suffered it. We have known the terror of being away from the Father's presence. Jesus was only then, in His identification with man's plight, beginning to experience what mankind has experienced for six long milleniums! An absolute forsaking of the Father! And loss, total and unspeakable loss. It was God that lowered man, making him a little lower than the angels, or lacking from Elohim , as the Hebrew expresses it. Most Christians say that Jesus suffered so we wouldn't have to - but the doleful truth is that we've already been partakers of His suffering , for His suffering was naught but our suffering which He took upon Him. There was one difference - we did not have the ability to return! But God so loved us that He gave His beloved Son into the same death so that He could bring us into glory. Since the day I came into this world I have had to suffer the death of a carnal realm of thinking, live in a world that I knew nothing about, with no understanding of spiritual things, no knowledge of from whence I came, no comprehension of where I was going, shapened in iniquity, enslaved to the passions of the flesh, owned and controlled by the law of sin and death, until Jesus came and awakened me and whispered into my quickened spirit that I am on my way back home! Away back at the beginning God gave a promise of restoration, of victory over sin and death. "Her seed shall bruise your head," God told the serpent. And in Romans 16:20 Paul reiterates the promise: "And the God of peace shall bruise satan under your feet shortly." Man shall surely return to his possession. All that was lost shall be restored.

Let me give you now a scripture that shows the hand of God in this and the extensive scope of both the departure from, and the returning unto, God. I quote from Psalm 90:1-3. "Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever You had formed the earth or the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, You art God. You turn man to destruction; and then say, return, you children of men." You could never read this word "return" here if you had not first read that man had been "turned" away to destruction. In this passage the word "destruction" has this meaning in the original: a complete collapse, crumbling man to a contrite condition.

After turning men to destruction God then says, "Return to me, You children of men." Oh, yes, He turned us to destruction, but planted deep within the subconsciousness of every son of Adam is the secret command to return, which is revealed in that inner desire, yearning, craving, seeking, feeling, compulsion which is never satisfied until man does find himself home in God once more. All the religiousness of men, from the witch doctor in the jungle to the modernist in the pulpit in America, is the manifestation of this feeling after God, if haply they might find Him (Acts 17:26-27). While mankind in general is still lost in the hellish darkness of sin and death, yet there is a firstfruit company whose hearts have been charged by the inward call to return, and with the Shulamite maiden in the Song of Solomon share this blessed experience:"By night on my bed I sought Him whom my soul loves; I sought Him, but I found Him not. I will arise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broadways I will seek Him whom my soul loves: I sought Him but I found Him not. The watchmen that go about the city found me: to whom I said, Saw you Him whom my soul loves. It was but a little that I passed from them, but I found him whom my sould loved: I held Him and I would not let Him go" (S. of S. 3:1-4).

Mankind is yet groping about in the dense darkness of the carnal mind, knowing not that He is standing right there in the shadows, were their eyes opened to see. Yet He has appointed a day - Oh glorious day! - when His light shall shine forth and the plan shall be completed as the apostle said, "For God has allowed us to know the secret of His plan, and it is this: He purposed long ago in His sovereign will that all human history should be consummated in Christ, that everything that exists in Heaven or earth should find its perfection and fulfillment in Him. In Christ we have been given an inheritance, since we were destined for this, by the one who works out all His purposes according to the design of His own will" (Eph. 1:9-11, Phillips).

Praise God, by redemption, we already have something of our inheritance, but at best it is only the earnest - what a day's pay of the laborer is to the year's wage, or the foyer of a mansion to its vast and magnificent rooms. "Now He which established us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, is God; who has also sealed us, and given us the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts" (II Cor. 1:21-23). The word "earnest" is from a Greek word meaning simply a "down payment" or a "pledge" or "token payment" which is paid to guarentee that the balance will be paid. The Amplified Bible renders this verse thus, "He has appropriated and acknowledged us as His, putting His seal upon us and giving us the Holy Spirit in our hearts as the security deposit and guarentee of the fulfillment of His promise." Wuest's translation says that the Holy Spirit is "the token payment guarenteeing the payment in full of our salvation!" Then in Eph. 1:14 we read, "That Spirit is the guarantee of our inheritance, the firstfruit, the pledge and foretaste, the down payment of our heritage - in anticipation of its full redemption and our acquiring complete posession of it, to the praise of His glory"(Amplified Bible). We know not how soon the fullness shall break upon us, but it will come, and not tarry, as our hearts are prepared to receive it, praise His name!

Misunderstanding the nature of our inheritance and the plan by which God shall bring us fully into it has, in the past, led to many ignorant and unscriptural assertions. For instance, speaking of a deceased saint we have said, "He has gone to his reward." Nothing could be farther from the truth! It is not death that qualifies one to receive his inheritance, but the raising of ones whole being up into the sphere of His life. "God ... has begotten us again unto a lively (living) hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible ... reserved in heaven for you." Heaven is not the inheritance. The inheritance is merely "reserved" in heaven (the celestial sphere) for you. And it is not revealed when you go by way of the grave, for it is "ready to be revealed in the last time" (I Pet. 1:5), here and now, praise God! And truly, not only we, but in the beautiful words of J.B. Phillips's translation, "The whole creation is on tiptoe to see the wonderful sight of the sons of God coming into their own"(Rom. 8:19). "Their own" is their lot of inheritance, and this will mean the fullness of our salvation - spirit, soul and body - a company of immortal and incorruptible sons filled with the fullness of His mind, nature, glory and power to bless and restore all creation. Towards this blessed consummation, as yet "reserved," our hope stretches out both hands; meanwhile, it is an inspiration and stimulus for every moment of our life!

Suppose you are sitting in your home some night and the door bell rings. A man is there, and he says, "I'm an attorney with such and such a firm, and we're trying to find a relative of a missing person. Your name is so and so. Did your mother come to this country from Scotland fifty years ago, and did she have a brother who went to Australia?" You say, 'We have a family Bible here. It's all written down. There's my mother. She was born in Edinburgh on such a date. She had a brother and he went to Australia, and we never heard from him since." "Well," says the lawyer, "this is wonderful for this is the last link in the evidence. He went to Australia and had a son there to whom he left his fortune; that son died and left no heir. The lawyers in Australia have traced it back to Scotland; the Scottish people traced it over here, and we have come to you for we believe that you are next of kin." You say, "Yes, undoubtedly." "Well, says the lawyer, "I'm very happy to inform you that you have a very large inheritance." You say, "I can get that new Lincoln I've been dreaming about." He says, "It's a very large inheritance." You say, "Mercedes." "In fact, your uncle had coal mines." You say, "Rolls Royce." The lawyer says, "Now, of course, its in the courts and you can't get anything very soon except the down payment. Your uncle also owned hundreds of thousands of acres of sheep ranches; oil and gold have been discovered there. It's going to be three or four years before you can get it all, but they have a little advance payment that's ready for you now." "Well, what is this little down payment?" "This little down payment is only twenty-eight million dollars." "If that's the down payment, what's the whole thing going to be?"

Not all the certified public accountants in the world could ever add up the glories of the inheritance reserved for us. And none of the religionists can even begin to comprehend what the inheritance really is. It would be impossible for a team of bankers, lawyers, preachers, teachers, evangelists and scholars to get together and tell us what the magnitude of the inheritance is. All any of them can do is tell us a little bit about the interest on the interest. That is about as close as anyone can get to understanding our inheritance, because the down payment is the Holy Spirit of God! This inheritance is nothing short of the fact that we inherit God Himself!

http://www.tentmaker.org/articles/savior-of-the-world/