The Legacy of Jacob - Moriel Ministries

example, which have right motives, and in
some way are even doing right things, but it
is according to their ideas and not God’s. So
they will sign an agreement with the Israeli
government and say they will not evangelize
Russian Jews, they will not give them New
Testaments, they are just going to bring them
to Israel. (They did that and got into a big fight
with Jews for Jesus and others.) One boat had
ten Jews on it; another had none, so they began
carrying tourists. Although they received
millions in contributions to do this, God did
not bless it because it was man’s idea. These
are good people who loved the Lord and had
good intentions, but why did God not bless it
They were people trying to do things in the
strength of their own ideas. Sooner or later it
is going to be tested with fire (1 Co. 3:13), and
only the things God has ordained will survive
that fire. Many of the things we do in our lives
as believers we do with the right motives, and
maybe even to a degree God will use it, but
He is not going to bless it and prosper it, nor
will He reward us for it.
It talks about these materials which will be
burned up. Somehow the fall of man and the
Gospel of Jesus are parenthetical. God foreknows
what happens, but we are not born to
be born-again; we are born to go to heaven to
be God’s children—His friends. We are His
creation to love Him, to serve Him, to worship
Him, to share in His blessings. The Fall
is somehow parenthetical. The premise of the
Gospel is to restore, in a sense, the things lost
because of the Fall.
The gold of that land is good; the bdellium
and the onyx stone are there.
(Genesis 2:12)
This is before the Fall—gold and precious
stones.
In 1 Corinthians 3:12 we have silver. Jesus
was betrayed for silver; Joseph was betrayed
for silver; “For iron I will give you silver” (Is.
60:17). Silver always represents the price of
salvation in some way. In the typology of the
Temple, the further one went from the Holy
of Holies, the value of the minerals proportionately
decreased. Silver was in the middle.
It began with bronze, then silver, but in the
Holy of Holies it was gold. The closer one approached
God, the more valuable the minerals.
They did not have platinum in those days
(they probably did not know about it—metallurgy
did not even know how to produce it) so
gold was the most precious thing they knew
about in the times of the Bible.
Look at what happens after salvation.
The foundation stones of the city wall
were adorned with every kind of precious
stone. The first foundation stone
was jasper; the second, sapphire; the
third, chalcedony; the fourth, emerald;
the fifth, sardonyx; the sixth, sardius; the
seventh, chrysolite; the eighth, beryl; the
ninth, topaz; the tenth, chrysoprase; the
eleventh, jacinth; the twelfth, amethyst.
And the twelve gates were twelve pearls;
each one of the gates was a single pearl.
And the street of the city was pure gold,
like transparent glass. (Revelation
21:19-21)
The streets of the city are pure gold.
Before the Fall we have precious stones in
settings of gold; after the redemption process
is complete we have precious stones in settings
of gold. There is no silver, as silver is of
temporal value. Silver will oxidize, gold will
not. But silver is at least of some temporal
value; the wood and straw are of no value.
In the High Priest’s garments there was the
breastplate like righteousness and the shoulder
pads with precious stones corresponding
to the tribes of Israel, which in turn correspond
to those precious stones in Revelation. The
High Priest had to carry the burden of Israel
on his heart and shoulders. He could not take
the ephod off. When we pray for somebody
we intercede for them—we carry the burden
on our heart and shoulders. We do not take it
off. The High Priest, we are told in Hebrews,
is the Lord Jesus who carries the burden for
Israel on His heart and shoulders—He does
not take it off. But those are precious stones
in a setting of gold.
Peter says the same thing: “Your faith refined
by fire” (1 Pe. 1:7).
How are diamonds formed Pressure and
fire. How is God going to make you and me
something that is a precious stone in a setting
of gold—godly Pressure and fire.
Who wants pressure Who wants fire Not
me! But once we get that beautiful diamond,
we are sure glad we went through it. When
we get to heaven we are not going to regret
a single trial that God was in because we are
going to be a precious stone in a setting of
gold; the other stuff will be burned up. Unsaved
people, of course, do not even figure
into the equation.
The fruit of the Spirit in Galatians is God’s
nature, and in the Greek it gives the idea that
the fruit is first of all love. The fruit of the
Spirit is first love—all the other fruits proceed
from the love. We usually say the fruit of the
Spirit is joy, peace, patience, kindness and
all that other stuff (Gal. 5:22-23), but no, the
fruit is love; the other things are a result of the
love, perfecting the love of Christ in us.
Not the Sin, but the Sinner
The way God gets rid of sin is first by getting
rid of the sinner. God does not take away
your anger problem, or my anger problem, or
your resentment problem, or my resentment
problem, He takes away you; He takes away
me. The Lord Jesus never said while on the
cross, “I am dying for your sins,” full stop. He
said, “I am dying for your sins so you better
get up here with Me.” That is the way it is.
God does not get rid of the sin; He gets rid of
the sinner.
The problem is that the natural man is a
sinner. The devil does not have to get us to
lose our temper, or to lust after someone other
than our wife or husband, or to get us to do
whatever—all he has to do is to get us into
Feature Article – Continued
the natural man or the natural woman, then
we are going to sin anyway. The rest is easy.
Once he gets us to do that, we are a pushover.
God has to get rid of the natural man.
I have seen this. When Christians get into
serving God in the natural man like Jacob did,
what happens They actually sin and lie. I can
show you actual letters proving that leaders of
major Christian denominations in this country
have lied about things they can be sued in
court for. The natural man is, naturally, fallen.
The devil is not out to get us to sin—that
is not his target because we are going to sin
anyway. He is going to get us to walk in the
flesh instead of the Spirit, and the first way he
will try to do that is to get us to be a Christian
in our own sense.
In the New Testament we have somebody
very much like Jacob, and his name is Peter.
When that guy came for Jesus, Peter pulled
out his sword and chopped his ear off! Peter
pulled out his sword: “Where is He Let me
at him!”—just like Jacob. But when the real
test came “Before the cock crows twice, you
will deny me thrice” (Mk. 14:29-31).
It is a sure bet that a crisis God is going to
allow is a crisis in which we face it as the natural
man or the natural woman and we are going
to fail miserably. Not until what God did
in the life of Peter do we see Peter standing up
in boldness at the day of Pentecost. Not long
before that, just a few weeks earlier, it was,
“I do not know the man” and following at a
distance. But at Pentecost with the Holy Spirit,
there he was, not afraid of those crowds.
Something happened. It was the same person,
the same natural ability, but the natural ability
had gone to the cross. Jacob is like that.
Natural Ability & God’s Calling
It is a good thing to be a teacher; it is a good
thing to be a medical doctor. There are countries
which will never allow in missionaries
but will allow in teachers or medical doctors.
That is how to get the Gospel into certain
countries. It is good to be a musician, but it
is one thing to be a good musician who plays
“Christian music”—it is another thing to lead
worship under the anointing of the Holy Spirit.
It is one thing to be a good medical doctor,
but it is another thing to be anointed by the
Holy Spirit as a medical missionary. The natural
man and the natural woman have to go
to the cross—not just the sinner, not just the
drug dealer, not just the fornicator, the whole
person has to go to the cross, and then God in
the power of the resurrection can use their human
ability, their vocation, their background.
Jacob had all these things. He was a
shrewd, slick person. He was so shrewd and
so slick that it kept backfiring on him, which
is just what the Jews are like. Jewish people
somehow know that they have been forced to
be clever and shrewd; that is why they keep
winding up in pogroms and inquisitions—it
backfires on them, and it will backfire on us.
When we rely on the natural person and think,
“I’m a good businessman” or whatever abili-
March 2012 • Moriel Quarterly