Passover: The Path to Eternal Freedom (I)
Who feels different already? Who feels happy when a new year rolls around? We say always, ‘what a difference a year makes’? And we are so happy, as many people revel, while others pray. If the Lord had not put us on an earth that spins, we would not have had the years or the seasons. The years and the seasons are to allow us to mark our time and events; perhaps, mark our progress.
The days and years are set in motion to help us count. But most importantly, just like as with the night, when we go to sleep and we forget the day, no matter how difficult the day was, when we wake up, we feel refreshed. When we come to this point in our circle, the end of the year, it is time for us to take stock and allow ourselves to move in a new direction, hopefully in a better direction.
Our discussion this time is very complex, but we will try and make it simple so that everybody will understand it.
Now we are looking into what is called the ‘Passover’ or the process of becoming ‘Divine’. The Passover process helps us mark our progress from year to year, and as each year turns and passes away, we are slowly becoming more Divine, if we are heading in the right direction. Divine meaning becoming more and more like God. Amen.
The Passover process is difficult to grasp, but let’s take the simplest part of it. The simplest part is: the understanding that we are passing over from being in bondage—living as humans with burdens, to being without the body—living as divine spirits, which is freedom. So the Passover is from bondage to freedom, from flesh to spirit. So the Passover becomes a happy, very happy thing, if successful.
When we become liberated, we become freed from that which holds us in bondage. We are going to take the lesson from the Sacred scriptures, but it will take us time to get there. We need to set the background so that everybody will follow and understand.
It is truth that this world is a bondage to the human being, but this Truth is the most difficult for mankind to accept. It is the whole truth, and nothing but the Truth. We don’t have to explain the truth of the bondage. It turns out that all things of this world that the human being is attracted to, becomes something that hold the human being in bondage.
If you have money, your money becomes your bondage. If you have a child your child becomes your bondage. If you get a job, your job becomes your bondage. If you marry a wife, your wife becomes your bondage. If you go to sleep, the sleep becomes your bondage. You wake up; waking up also becomes your bondage. Therefore, everything that the human animal touches in one-way or another becomes bondage for the human being.
So the passing over is that process that allows us to wean ourselves from our bondages. To wean us from, or release us from the burden of being human, the burden of living in a human body, and to slowly become divine spirit. Passing over from bondage of the human life to our birthright, that of being spirits or the children of the Supreme Spirit.
We thank the Almighty God, Our Father, Who loved us so much, and did not will that we should perish in bondage. He came down and took on the form of our bondage, the flesh, and through the process of His Earthly Life and Passover, showed us how to free ourselves from bondage, and to how to become again the children of God. Amen.
The Bible says, “In Christ Jesus Salvation is complete.” What is meant is, that if one follows Jesus’ Life as an example, if one follows Jesus’ Life step by step, if one does exactly what the Lord has done, one too, would become free from the bondage of the flesh life. Amen.
So brothers and sisters, we are going to look at the life and process of Our Lord Jesus Christ; especially, His last two days on this earth, as He transformed His human flesh. We will see also the process of His Passover, from being Jesus, the Son of Man, through the crucifixion ordeal and death on the cross, till He became fully the Christ, the Son of the Living God, Our Savior forever. Amen.
And we too, by the Grace that God has given to us through His Word, are to go through this process ourselves. That was the reason Jesus taught us, ‘carry your cross and follow me.’ If we are obedient to His Pattern, then we must climb our crosses individually, and surrender to His Will there, and Passover to Spirit.
In this process, we see betrayal; Jesus Christ suffered betrayal. Therefore you as a follower of Christ, carrying your cross following Christ, you will experience betrayal too.
There was treachery against Jesus Christ. The group gathered together and planned how to kill him. When you are a follower of Christ, part of your process also is that there will people whose duty will be planning how to kill you. Be assured that the pattern of salvation that Jesus Christ brought is not one where you sit on your chair, and clasp your hands, and read from a songbook, and say, ‘I am saved’.
Jesus said no, get up, carry your cross and follow me; meaning, everything Jesus experienced in becoming the Christ, the Son of God, we too must experience to become Sons of God.
So we see the events unfold; Christ had the disciples’ interest at heart, but the disciples did not have Jesus’ best interest in their hearts. You will see also people who will be around you in this process, and you will see also that those people will not have your best interest at heart. It will happen! They will complain. They will make a lot noise; it’s all part of the process.
Jesus had all kinds of characters as disciples. There were those who knew more than Jesus, like Peter, who knew how to get to heaven on his own. But the same person denied Him when the time of trial came. If we put our confidence in man, as we go through our process of Passover, we will find that all men will flee from us.
Then, you will come to the point where the accusers will be looking for witnesses against you. Say, ‘who heard him say’? The accusations will come. They will start to dig and dig and dig and dig until they find something they can wrap around your neck.
But the process, the Passover which Our Lord Jesus Christ has given us, we pray that we have the strength to go through all the steps of this difficult process, and to win victoriously.
After the abuse from your friends and relatives and disciples, you will be taken to the Governor to be tried. Though the Governor may know the truth, he will still want to ask you, ‘what is truth’? Be sure not to say a word. They will not let you go. The intent is to kill you.
Are you going to put your faith in the System? Do you think the System will defend you? The System, the World, is operating the process of bondage, the process of the flesh, the process of hell, or incessant desire, and nothing else! You are here to learn and know this Truth, so that you are prepared. Be prepared for the cross if you are for Christ, they will come for you. So, when they come for you, you will be ready.
Remember, it’s called Passover. The process of passing over from being an ordinary death-bound human to becoming a Divine being that lives eternally. They will make a mockery of you. If you want to become divine, they will strip you naked. They will punish you. They will torture you. All these things will happen in one form or the other, depending upon what bondage is holding you, and depending upon what process you are going through, to free yourself. But we give glory to God, that in this journey, Jesus Christ has prepared us and taught us and shown us by His Life and Passover, what we need to do.
This Song, ‘Give Me The Strength To Love Thy Will’ was composed in agony of the Way. We are going to look at the words of this song for what it will present to us as we continue to learn about this Passover process. We want to have in mind as we continue to learn about the process of our own Passover, following the Pattern of Our Own Lord’s Passover. The Song:
GIVE ME THE STRENGTH TO LOVE THY WILL
Give me the strength to love thy will,
Through every twist and turn and of life
To will only, what thou wilt Lord,
So let you be the God.
Thy Will be done, … Thy Will be done.
Submissive Lord, to Thy Command,
Thy Will be done.
Give me the strength to love Thy will,
And know that, thou alone art God.
To know always Thy Will is done,
So rest in peace with Thee.
Remove my love and affection Lord
From selfish wants and selfish thoughts
So may I take whatever comes?
And know it is thy will.
(Please acknowledge Christ School for Living If You Use this song)
It’s says, ‘Give me the strength to love thy will. The Lord Jesus Christ had to learn how to love the Will of His Father. What? The Lord Jesus Christ had to learn to love the will of His Father? Yes. It was not easy for Him, and it’s not going to be easy for us to learn to love the Will of Christ. We need in our prayer to say: Lord, ‘give me the strength to love thy Will’. Three times, in that tempestuous night, the Lord said, “Father, if it is possible,” let this cup pass from me?
Haven’t we entered into difficulties where we said, “Father, if it is possible, let this thing pass from me? Right? Does it pass? No. So why do you cry, whine, complain, and run away? It will not pass.
When you face the terminal walls of your life and the wall is really there, and there is no way the wall is going to move, right? And you must pass through that wall, how much prayer will move the wall? How much fasting will move the wall? How much crying will move the wall? The only way to overcome that wall is to say, ‘Father, Thy Will Be Done.’ Amen.
What do you say? “Father, thy will be done.” “Father, thy will be done.” If it is thy will that I stick by this wall, now Lord, that is thy will. If you want to go somewhere and an impassable wall is on your way, you need a Passover. Passover does not mean earthly success. It does not mean earthly victory. It does not mean you will not lose. Passover says, “Father, thy will be done.” Not my will Father, but “Thy Will Be Done.” Amen.
So let’s look into the song. It says, give me the strength to love thy will through every twist and turn of life. Friends, life twists and turns. But only those who are homeward bound; only those who are Christ focused, are the ones who will stick with God through all the twists and turns of life. ‘To will only what thou wilt Lord, so let you be God.’ See, we are passing over from being the god of our own lives, and if we allow Christ to win in this battle for us, then He will be God for Real. Amen.
There were two thieves by Christ on their respective crosses. Your companions will be thieves too. The thieves were both wagging their heads, and talking trash about Jesus. But they said, if you’re God, do something; move the wall. See, Satan will always want you to do something; turn the stone into bread so you can prove that you have power. Satan says, ‘Jump from the roof of the house, so we can prove that angels exist to catch us.’ Run away, do something; don’t wait for God.
If we’re passing over from being ordinary humans filled with problems, to becoming divine beings that have no problems, we must allow the process of God, the Passover, to take place in our lives. We must allow the will of God to be done in our lives. Amen.
A note of caution: while the Will of God is being done, we’re not going to murmur or complain, because the path of suffering is the way we must go through; that is the way, as Jesus said, “I Am The Way, The Truth, and The Life.” So say, ‘Give me the strength to love thy will and know that thou alone art God.’ Amen.
Friends, we all need to learn as Jesus The Son of Man learned, that the Father Alone is God. We are going to learn that Jesus is Our Father and that He is in control of our circumstances, and that He is in control of our process. Amen.
And especially, more especially, if we have committed to this process of transformation, and want to follow Jesus to the True Life, we must go through the Passover. Amen.
Now, we want to talk about the Passovers that are in our lives, the Passovers we encounter everyday, and all the tools and techniques, which the Lord has given to us by which we shall overcome. One of those tools is that we place our confidence, our trust, in the Lord, and know that He knows what He is doing. He has been through it before. We must allow His will to be done in our lives.
This way, to know always that His will is done, so we must rest in peace with God. See, the human is very active. We are very active in our minds, in our imaginations, and we always imagine this and we build this structure and we calculate this and we calculate that. Those imaginations are bondages of our lives because we are painting pictures.
We say, okay, this is what we want to be like, and when circumstances of life prevent us from being in that picture, which is only a picture in our mind, we become depressed.
We can paint a picture of whatever we want in our minds, thinking that once we get the things dreamed of, that our lives would be whole and complete. But invariably, when the obstacles inherent in our plans come along preventing us from realizing and enjoying the images we have painted for ourselves, we become desolate. As human beings (not human doings) there are many things we have to get rid of; so, we must pray that God by Himself will slowly put us through His Passover.
The Passover is the most beautiful thing that Christ has given to us. It is the hope that starting as mere humans, by the grace of God, and living in obedience according to his will and his direction, that if we endure our circumstances, our temptations, and pass our tests remaining faithful in Christ Jesus, that one day we ourselves like Jesus Christ, will become Divine. The Lord said, ‘where I Am, there shall my servants be also.’
He prayed, “Father Glorify Thou me with the glory I had with thee before the foundation of the world. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me. Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world (John 17: 22-24).”
If we want to become the children of God, it is foolish not to expect difficult circumstances in this material world. Amen.
If we are becoming the children of God, it is foolish to expect that everything will be rosy all the time. For the children of God, especially the ones following Christ, many tests will come their way and these tests will prove their confidence in God. It will also show whether they have confidence in the world, or in man, or in their jobs. These test situations will come; we must be ready for them, for they are part of the way.
The song continues, ‘so whatever may happen Lord, whatever, I know thy will is for my good.’ We have already talked about this, Father ‘if this cup may not pass from me, let thy will be done.’ Amen. We need to learn that Christ’s Will is different from our will. Christ’s hope is different from our hope. Christ’s movement is different from our movement. We enjoy the earth too much. We enjoy the things of the body too much. We want the comforts of this earth. And yet we claim that we want to go to God.
If you remember the children of Israel, The Lord took them out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. After many years of wandering in the wilderness, some of them wanted to go back so that they can get a taste of cucumbers! They missed the cucumbers. They missed carrots. They missed sipping some drink by the Nile in Egypt. But yet, they were crying that they were in bondage. And as the process of their Passover from bondage to freedom in God’s Land, in the heartland through the cozy Sinai Desert, the way to the house of God, they were murmuring.
First, there was no meat. Next, there was no water. All these, and then some others organized themselves and said, let us go back to Egypt, at least over there we have cucumber to eat. What is your cucumber? What is your water? What’s is your flesh? What is that thing that you desire so much from Egypt, this earth? What are you looking for from this world? What will keep you in bondage? What will give you lasting eternal happiness?
Brethren, those things that make you complain about the way; complain about the process, those things that hold you down; pray so God removes those things of the world which you lust after; so those things of your bondage do not take you away from the process of becoming Divine.
“To know that not could happen, Lord, without your blessed hand in it.” This is another difficult passage for us on this journey. Those of us who wake up and pray; those of us who do the little best we can, trying to follow Christ; we are the ones that are most surprised when something untoward happens to us. When something unexpected happens, either to us, or to the people we ‘love’, or to the circumstances of our lives, we find it very difficult, because we say why me God, but I’m praying! God, why did you allow this to come to me? Then you may be thinking oh its just because I did not pray enough last week. Oh you know what? It’s because I didn’t say ten Hail Mary’s last week.
We begin to look in ourselves to find out why the circumstances of our lives become difficult. We begin to look in our lives to find out why do we have to go through this way? When the world chooses its own over us, it looks like our world has fallen apart.
But when the Lord was at the Passover in the process, the world chose a murderer instead of a Savior. We always think that our things will go smoothly because “we serve the Almighty God.” We were told that tests of various kinds would come to us. Amen. And that the more successful we are in following Christ’s Way, the more difficult our tests will become in this world. We are tested daily; there is no one in Christ that is not tested daily.
So, we want to take the idea of tests or temptations or trials out of our minds. Why do we take it out of our minds? It is natural; it’s the Way. It will come. Amen. What did we say? It is natural and it will come. It will come. Then when they are questioning you and looking at you, they will say, who are you? They will want you to declare who you are by demonstrating power. You’ve learned’ speak not to your tormentors. You’ve also learned when to speak. You must allow the process; you must allow whatever it is that the Lord is leading you through to come. You must say, ‘Lord thy will be done.’
Friends, the next line is much more difficult. You have become a saint when you can reach there: ‘to love whatever happens.’ That love is not something that happens in three days. That love is not something that happens when your face is against the wall. It is very difficult for somebody to love the wall that is obstructing their progress. It is very difficult for somebody to love that thing which will make their future brighter, unless they have passed it through, unless they saw it coming.
But most of, or all of our trials and difficulties come from the left field; we never see them coming. As we wake up one morning, there they are. Now we have to deal with them. Now we get down on our knees. Now we ask God, ‘Father if it is possible, let this cup pass from us.’ But, nevertheless not what I will but thy will be done.
We must try to know that all things Our Father allows to come to us are good, and that it is for our own good. That is very, very difficult to accept, especially, if we don’t want what He sends. This is our battle. Friends, this is what we face. This is the Passover. This is why we must go through the Passover, to remove our love and affection from the selfish wants and selfish thoughts of the pleasure of the body, and of insatiable acquisition of the things of the world.
Everything that has ever become a temptation to us was nothing other than the things of the world.
The body is the number one thing of this world. The divine does not have the human body, the physical mud body. Because He does not have it, because He has given up this body, because this body has been crucified on the cross, it does no longer exist as a body. The Passover is to allow Christ to lead us from these animal skins that we wear called the human body, through the process of transformation, to His new spirit nature, the Divine.
The process of changing so that the body becomes transformed and becomes that heavenly body is the Passover. If we look and listen to our Brother, St. Paul in the Book of 1st Corinthians Chapter 15; there we see him talking about the result of this Passover.
If we allow Christ to lead us through the Passover then the result becomes very beautiful indeed.
In the Book of 1st Corinthians chapter 15, as we begin to look from verse 33, we hear St. Paul make the distinction between the body that we have now and the body that we shall receive after the Passover. It says, ‘be not deceived evil communications corrupt good manners.’ As you continue in the evil transactions of the physical body, as you continue to live in the fleeting enjoyments of the physical life, it will destroy every opportunity for you to become divine.
Everything of physical enjoyment is addictive in nature; you must always have more and more. The split-second highs soon become debilitating long-term lows.
So, St. Paul continues talking about the bodies. In verse 38, ‘but God gives as it pleases Him and to every seed his own body.’ Friends, we are wearing the natural animal body. We are wearing the body that is subject to disease. We are wearing the body that is subject to death. And everyone that wears this body will one day die. One day we got the body as a seed from our parents. Another day we will deposit it as a seed to the soil from which it came.
St Paul said, ‘all flesh is not the same’. “But there is one kind of flesh for men and another for beasts, and another for divines and another kind for the celestial. There are also those celestial bodies, and the terrestrial bodies; the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrials, those people wearing the ordinary human body is another.”
We are talking about the Passover. We are talking about the process that we have to go through in our lives so that we go from ordinary humans wearing natural animal bodies, to divine beings, Sons of the Living God, wearing the celestial bodies.
So St. Paul says, ‘there is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, another glory of the stars, for one star different from another star in glory, so also is the resurrection of the dead.’ Our body will be sown in weakness but it will be raised in the power of God. This corruptible human body, which is subject to death, must be transformed to that of the celestial incorruptible body from the Almighty God. St Paul said, “This mortal life must put on immortality.”
Friends, we must go from being ordinary people, subject to the whims and the caprices of this world, to become divine spirits, celestial Sons of God impervious to this world and death.
St. Paul concluded this discuss by saying, “So when the corruptible has put on incorruption and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying, death is swallowed up in victory.” We are explaining the process by which this could happen in your life.
St. Paul concluded this discuss by saying, “But the mortal body must put on immortality. The corruptible body must put on incorruption.”
This is the process by which we overcome our number one enemy, death.
Next, we are going to learn from Our Lord who leads us through the Passover, what He expects from us; how He himself passed over the human body which He got from the Holy Mother, St. Mary his earthly mother, and how He transformed that body into the Divine Human Body.
That process is contained in the Bible book of Matthew Chapter 26. (To be continued in part II of this 3-part post).
Peace On Earth
April 2nd, 2024Topic: Uncategorized Tags: None
