Living in the Invisibles (Part 3) – Living in the Spirit vs the Law: The Corporate Life of Faith

Now, we have to move this corporately to the church in St. Cloud, don’t we? And say that the assembly that gathers in St. Cloud has decided that its standard for being found right in God’s eyes is to “faith” Him and we shall put our hope and belief in that we as a church will be found right with God and we will have His life to live by for all eternity. That is a corporate commitment.

Now, sometimes you all are going to get down on your faces together when something like this comes, seal it with a pledge of the Holy Spirit, hold one another, and say, “This is our stand.” If there are no other people in the world who do, we’re gambling. Righteousness comes by faith in God. Not believing God exists, but by faith in God. By “faithing” His Son. That is what we are as a people. If someone asks you, say we’re gamblers. It’s true. We look pretty sloppy. Oh yes, we even touch, we even touch one another, and sometimes we hug each other, and we fail a lot, and we’re gambling that life resides not in standards but in God having justified us by having “faithed” Him.

Lord, we put our faith in you here and put our hope in you. For we are afraid of our own standard. Boy, are we afraid of our own standard, Lord. And we’re afraid of Moses’ standard. We’re really afraid of Moses’ standard. And Lord, we’re afraid of other men’s standards. And quite frankly, Lord, we’re afraid of your standard. We cannot possibly live up to anything that has to do with You. Therefore, Father, we join Abraham who welcomed us, and we say to You, our hope is that You will find us righteous. No man, but God alone, will find us right with God by having believed. That’s the only hope we’ve got. Amen

Audience: Lord, since you have so chosen to look upon us, find us righteous and not require concern for the standard of us, and let us take that leap with our brothers and sisters in our standards over them because of it. But receive us by faith. Amen. And we are justified in You.

Lord, we take that stand here today, too. By the way, Lord, this takes away the fear. And that allows us to love You uninhibited. Amen.

So, let’s learn a lesson right here. I only responded the way I felt. Sometimes take these things, stop, and turn them into prayer. That way, they will not ever teach you. If you turn them into a prayer to the Lord, you will not have any teaching lessons here. And to those of you who someday hear this recording and you’re going to say, “Boy, this is great.” No, it is not great. It is death to you who dared to teach. This is life only in the church of Jesus Christ, in an experiential community of the body of Christ, among a group of people who can stop and thank Him, worship Him, and adore Him for these things, who don’t put it in their frontal lobes but in their spirits. Let there not be many who teach. You know why I’m talking to the people on the tape? Because teaching is so easy to do. You can be an atheist and teach these things. But brother to lay hold of them is another matter.

Where are we? Verse 12. However, the law is not a faith. Standards have nothing to do with faith. Do you understand that? That, when you have raised a standard, you have absolutely liquidated and assassinated faith, and you put everything on human effort. I want you to chew on that a minute, saints, because this gets over into the Christian life a great deal. He who practices these standards shall live by them, and you shall die in the process of living by them, my friend.

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law. The law is a curse. To be found right in the eyes of God is…I think it’s a cursed tribe. For it is written, cursed is anyone who hangs on a tree. So, if you practice the law, you’re cursed. And if you find that the law is a curse. Now, why would he now insert this thing? Does anybody know? Why would He now bring up a tree? Jesus Christ took the law. And they knew that. The Galatians knew that Jesus Christ took the law and hung it on a tree, and the tree was cursed.

(Continued in Part 4)