15. Let Them Eat Cake, Part I

We are a bunch of rich, entitled kids.  We don’t realize it; and we don’t act like it.  But we should.

I’ve been hearing a bunch lately about how your spiritual authority comes from obedience to this and that rule.  “You have to walk a higher level of obedience to increase your authority in the spirit,” is the quote, and usually the background context is something about “purity”.  Have you heard anyone preach or write, “If you want to increase your measure of authority…”?  I have stories and examples but I kinda doubt you need them ‘cause I imagine those words aren't new to you.

One example could be helpful:  I’ve been approached by worship teams that would like me to join them, but they all have this nearly-identical contract to sign, where you promise you won’t be in an unmarried relationship or have casual sex.  They confidently claim, “The powerful way the Lord moves through us is because of our commitment to holiness!”  The contracts don’t ask or care about, “Have you lied?”  “Have you manipulated anyone?”  You know, the stuff that the Holy Ghost actually cares about when he tells us “there are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him,” in Proverbs 6:16.  (two of those seven are about lying, for the record)

In my experience, these people are always talking about what you might call “physical, tangible sins” surrounding sexuality and substances – because they are fleshly men focused on things of the flesh. These ones Romans 8:5 warns against, “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.”  Lying doesn’t even cross their radar.  I have my thoughts on this… for another time.

Problem is, this idea of “greater obedience equals greater authority,” is not a Biblical correlation.  In fact, the opposite is the truth, so we’re here to address that.

This is NOT a message authorizing disobedience, “that grace may abound”.  Obedience is critical for other important things, which we will discuss: protection, wisdom, love… Just not spiritual authority.

As a baseline, let’s remember articles 6 & 7:  The Lord created the heavens and the earth from the liquid substance called “the earth”, where there was darkness and turmoil, full of defeated, rebellious, fallen angels.  The Lord creates our planet from a portion of the earth; principalities lay claim to areas of the land and sea; then the Lord puts men there and gives them the only thing on his list: dominion over everything, which includes the fallen ones.  Dominion is signified to heaven and earth by anointing, illustrated by the prophetic action of anointing a king and a head priest with oil to declare their dominion and authority.  The Christ is the executor of this dominion, with his name meaning “anointed” – anointed for the purpose of exercising dominion – which Jesus demonstrates in technicolor.  I hope this is broken-record stuff to you at this point in our discussion; but if not, I encourage you to return to the articles that detail these points, because it’s foundational to what I’m saying today.

So I believe we can agree, the anointing of the Christ has been released to us as inheritors through the resurrection of Jesus the Son of God, which made us become born again as brothers with him.  Like Adam, Moses and Elijah, we are “in Christ,” and “Christ in you,” not, “in Jesus,” and “Jesus in you.”  Reminding us that Jesus taught in Matthew 23:10, “Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ.”  Jesus the Son speaks of the Christ in the third person in many places.  And since Christ = Anointing = Dominion, and from the beginning men were always supposed to govern all things with dominion, do you believe that your dominion was restored to you through the resurrection?  And how much “authority” comes with that dominion?

Even before our brotherhood with Jesus was established by his generous, glorious obedience to the Father, the Son of Man established our authority.  In Luke 9:1 “he called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons.”  In Luke 10:19 he told the seventy-two who returned with joy from healing, raising the dead, and casting out demons, “Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you.”

Explain to me, when he says, “over all the power,” which fraction of authority he gave them.   Explain to me which parts of the law they had to conform to in order to receive and exercise that authority.  Explain to me which part of this authority we didn’t inherit when he released the Christ to every man through the resurrection, which 1Peter 1:3 explains.

Sounds almost too simple, right?  We have 100% authority to exercise over 100% of nature and supernature, right at the unboxing.  If you have 100% of something, how can you “increase your measure” of it?

But the psychology of man, through long-taught lies of our enemy, cripples us from acting on this authority.  When we convince ourselves that our birthright – dominion to overpower all the princes of darkness – depends on our progress towards “holiness” and “perfection”, we feed an expectation of success or failure based on our feelings… of how we measure up to law.

Because of this, we have ended up with tons of belief and no faith.  (uhhh, wut?)  Those two words are not synonyms.  Lemme explain.

Begin in Matthew 21:19-21.  Jesus has just left Bethany and found that fig tree with no fruit on it, and spoke to it saying, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” And the fig tree withered at once.  The disciples “marveled”, and he explains, “Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ it will happen. And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.”  Again in Luke 17:6, he says, “If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”  Again in Matthew 17:20 he explains, “For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.”  In Mark 4:31 he tells us that “a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth.”

Now, how many times have you heard the mountain thing taught as a figurative lesson, where the mountain is some kind of problem in your life “and you can get through any problem with faith in the Lord”?  Except… he said this right after he literally killed a fig tree with his words.  The disciples marvel because this is the last thing they expected to see.  He says, “Dudes, if you even had the tiniest amount of faith that can possibly exist in you, you would expect the earth to be ready and willing to obey your words, and killing a tree is peanuts compared to what’s physically possible.”  This is a lesson in something literal (as well as symbolic).  We rob the truth of its power when we write it off as a figure of speech.  Jesus wasn’t physically demonstrating a figure of speech, was he?  That dusty old principality named Unbelief is who convinced us it was just a figurative lesson.

So let’s be honest: I haven’t told any trees to uproot and plant themselves in the sea and seen it happen.  Have you?  But if I had even a miniscule grain of actual faith, this would be the evidence.  Or Jesus is a liar.  I currently believe things of the spirit – tons of them – but I don’t often demonstrate that substance and evidence (something that can be physically detected by the senses) of the unseen interaction called “faith”.  It’s okay.  I’m not bummed.  Together we’re currently on the journey that leads from belief, through hope, to faith.  The disciples were on that journey, too, when Jesus was showing and teaching them the way.  Let’s just sell all that we have, give it to the poor, and follow him.

To help us separate the word belief from faith, let’s define the word “faith” closer to what Jesus is describing as, “the interaction between our belief and the spirit; something that unites the spirit and the creation through our intervention.”  It’s like, you believe something so certainly that you fully expect to be able to change something tangible, or change something in the spirit, and then you command that thing.  (like move some demon out and Holy Spirit in)  The faith is the catalyst for change, while the belief is more like the idea that you’re aligning yourself with.  This lines up a bit better with Jesus’ definition as explained while he’s killing trees.

Now, here’s a tragic truth of our first birth experience, which is underscored by Jesus teaching, “if you have faith and do not doubt.”  We do all have faith in some things, but it’s misplaced on the creation, also called “vanity”.

For example, you have tons of faith in gravity.  Every time you jump up, you expect to be pulled back down to the earth.  Every time you wake up, you expect to need to use your muscles to push yourself out of bed.  We measure gravitational pull and call it a “law of nature,” because we have no doubt that it will always be, always work, never change.  We can go murder ten people and not doubt that gravity will continue to hold us to the planet.

Or “laws of thermodynamics”: We have faith in fire, to heat a pan and cook us some eggs.  There’s never one single time that I turn on the stove and see the fire light, put a pan over it and throw some butter & eggs in and think, “Maybe these eggs won’t cook today.  I threw that old lady the finger yesterday… so the eggs might not cook.”  No, I have a complete and total expectation that I’ll be eating hot cooked eggs 100% of the time.  I can go murder ten people and never doubt that fire plus eggs equals delicious omelette.

Our faith in natural laws is unquestioning.  We have learned through our first birth – the experience of life in natural bodies – to expect certain things to always happen.  We don’t think that any behavior on our part can make them stop working.  Unfortunately, we haven’t yet learned to trust the laws of supernature in the same way.  No behavior on our part can make them stop working, either.

Again I repeat a previous article where we read in Luke 10:17, the disciples were at first surprised and excited that demons submit to their instructions, and then by Matthew 17:19 they’re surprised when a demon doesn’t come out.  Their expectation and trust in their authority is growing.

Following their example, our belief will start to become faith through experience and the help of The Helper.  It is “the expectation that we have all authority” that makes or breaks “trees uprooting and planting themselves in the sea”.  I murdered zero people and I’m not so sure about telling trees where to relocate.  I haven’t heard of anyone doing that, nor have I any precedent to expect it.  But I do have a hope…

On top of all this, I have a thought that says, “Well, if I really have no faith, how come there are plenty of times when I’ve prayed for someone to be healed and they were, or been given words of knowledge and prophecies, or spoken in tongues, or prayed for some miraculous outcome to a situation, and it happened?  Those are examples of my faith.”  But Jesus, again, distinguishes between belief and faith when he says in Mark 16:17, “And these signs shall accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay heir hands on the sick, and they will recover.”

And according to Mark these are literally the last words Jesus spoke while occupying a physical body on earth.  So… other gospels aside, probably a lesson worth paying attention to.  Apparently another law of supernature exists that says “signs will accompany belief”.  Believe the gospel, proclaim the gospel, use his name, and the signs will testify to the truth of what you’re saying.  Like, a law that makes a way for the Father to verify the truth.  Recall that Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as “the Spirit of Truth” and “the Helper”.  He is very much at work in both of those capacities in these situations.

Think of how sunk the world would be if we all needed to be at “tell a tree to swim” level for anything supernatural to happen…  Good thing he made another way!  Might as well believe in Buddha if you don’t want any supernatural proof to confirm what’s being taught.

So according to Jesus’ own explanation, belief might be considered like an agreement with heaven’s truth.  This alignment opens a path for the Spirit of Truth to perform signs that testify to the fact that it is true.  Also according to his words, faith is more like acting as a commander over heavenly and earthly things, where just the tiniest amount of “understanding your position and its potential” will cause all things to obey your words.  And faith is clearly the better portion…

To encourage us, there’s this great gateway drug to developing faith, called “the centurion.”  We love that story in Matthew 8:9, where the centurion has a paralyzed servant at home and tells Jesus, “I get it. You don’t even have to be there, your command from anywhere on the planet is enough.”  And look at his actual language, he’s talking about how authority works.

“For I, too, am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”  When Jesus heard this, he marveled and said to those who followed him, “Truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith.”

First of all, it’s not that easy to get God to marvel at something.  That requires surprise.  Surprise requires no foreknowledge of a thing.  Not bad, centurion, God didn’t see that one coming.

Second of all, look who Jesus addresses when he marvels: “those who followed him.”  We’re talking about the disciples who ditched home and family to follow him around, hoping to learn about heaven.  How would that feel?  Imagine them thinking, “Geez, I’m following Rabbi for a year now and I don’t have what this rando has.  I’ve even been busting my ass to obey all the laws of Moses plus everything Rabbi’s been teaching, and this guy is a Roman gentile who never once set foot in synagogue!”

Third of all, Jesus equates faith to expectation, like we’ve been saying.  “I speak and it’s as good as done, and I expect nothing less.”  The centurion is telling Jesus, “I have an equivalent belief in your authority, and I expect that anything you say to this afflicting spirit or disease is as good as done.”  Jesus says, “Learn from this, students: this is what I label ‘faith’.”

Fourthly, which part of the centurion’s personal obedience to some credo makes the subordinates “come” and “do this”?  He doesn’t need to say, “I’ve been going to synagogue like every day so I can tell my soldiers ‘come’ and ‘do this’.”  The dude’s a Roman and maybe prays to his little carved idols of Jupiter and Mars.  Doesn’t affect his job or the authority of the government of Rome that he represents one iota.

Take a look at any U.S. president and tell me you think they have this spotless morality that allows them to make executive orders that everyone obeys.

Please pray for this to sink in:  The centurion is keenly aware that his authority is really the authority of the Roman government and military might behind him.  Likewise, we represent our Father’s kingdom, so things must obey our words because of his authority – Not because of who we are, or what we do, but because of who he is.  It’s a lot easier to “and does not doubt” when the person you’re not doubting is the Lord God Almighty rather than yourself!

Seriously; your life is not your own, you were bought with a price; do you think any of the authority we’re talking about is your own?  One who teaches, “If you want more power & authority…” should be saying, “If you want more confidence in his power & authority.”

So I propose that, if Jesus testifies that this centurion’s understanding is the best example of faith he’s seen – even among those who have followed him and seen a bazillion healings and miracles to date – and done plenty of miracles themselves – then let’s use that as our door to a mustard seed.

Believe that the Christ has all authority over all things.

Remember who the body of Christ is these days.

Then remember that Jesus also gave all authority to his brothers.  Then remember who his brothers are.

Remember what our birthright is.

Then start expecting everything to obey that authority without question like a centurion.

Then we join that tongue of ours to that expectation of ours.  Turn belief into substance.

Continue to Part II >> where you get your pawn to the far side of the board.