Harmony with God (circa 2016) | Ep. 111

What would it look like if every area of your life was in perfect harmony, like a beautifully orchestrated piece of music? Join us as we journey through the Bible, from the creation story in Genesis to the tale of Solomon, as we uncover the deep spiritual significance of harmony and examine what happens when it's disrupted. We delve into the idea of the body as an instrument, with each part playing a crucial role in creating a harmonious whole, and the implications of this for the body of Christ, the Church.

We uncover the concept of sin, framing it as missing the mark, or out of tune with God's harmony, and highlight how this disharmony manifests in our lives as shame, fear, and guilt. We bring to light the powerful message of the consequences of disobedience to God's commands using the real-life examples of Solomon and the Israelites, showing clearly how misalignment with God's direction leads to discord and ultimately destruction.

Yet, our exploration doesn't end in despair. We also illuminate the path back to harmony through repentance and steadfastness to God's word. We uncover the true essence of repentance - a change in thoughts and behaviors, and a striving to be in agreement with God's word, His way, and His will. Hopefully, you will leave encouraged to seek harmony with the Lord in your own life to bring about righteousness, peace, and joy. 

Transcript

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 0:03

The vision received was that of blood cells traveling throughout the body, supplying the much needed oxygen and other nutrients to the differing members of the body to fulfill their purpose. Once the blood cells are spent, they must return back to the heart to be refilled before being sent out again and fulfill their purpose. Good afternoon everyone. You know that every time I come up here, I feel blessed and honored to be able to come before you and to share something that the Lord has given me that I would have no problems with sharing with you. However, I need to ask a relative of mine to do me a favor. It's going to be short, it's not going to be taxing, but I need my oldest daughter to come up here on the piano for just a brief moment. I need your help with the theme of today. I didn't tell her this, but I know I'm going to get all the faces and stuff. She plays the piano and I'm going to need you to do something. Very briefly, she didn't play today because she's not feeling up for it, but I'm not going to have her play. I just need her to do something. Could you do me a favor and please play me a harmonious chord? That's a harmonious chord.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 1:43

How many keys made up that chord? How many keys? What were they? C, e and G. C, e and G. So those keys go together and they make this harmonious sound, but they're played together. Can you play me a disharmonious chord Like just no, no, it just got to be not harmony. Wait, wait, wait, just do that one more time. Okay, try to be more specific with the keys that you're playing, because I'm going to ask you about those keys. I can't do it. Oh, no, I need one. We're going to have to find a disharmonious chord. I'm putting a lot of pressure on it. You want to play a disharmonious chord? Oh, she always got one. Okay, now, what were those keys? B-flat, b, f, b-fat, b and F. Okay, let me play it out. All right, can you take B? B was part of that chord. Right, those three keys. Can you take B and make it harmonious? Ah, what chords were those? What keys were those? B, e-flat, g-flat, b, e-flat and G-flat. Thank you, I appreciate that.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 3:03

Okay, so we found out that harmony is a very important part of the harmony. It's having the right keys played with the right other pairs of keys in the right moment. That brings about a sense of harmony. And yet you can take another three keys, like the second one that she did, and it's just. It's not. There's not a harmony to it. But you can take one of those keys and pair it with another two keys and you'll find harmony. So it's not that the key is wrong. It's that the key is either being played at the wrong moment or it's being played together with the wrong other set of keys. That makes it disharmonious.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 3:51

So can you tell what my theme might be today? Harmony, harmony, harmony in the body. Yeah, that could be one of them. Yeah, harmony, harmonious when we're talking about in the body. There's going to be peace in the body when the different members of that one body come together in the right moment, in the right time, paired together with the right purpose. It's harmony. That is just one piano with 88 different keys, but you take a certain selection of keys. Playing them together, you get the harmonious sound that brings peace and joy to others. So it's this word harmony.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 4:37

That's kind of the theme for today, and it's a combination of musical notes in a chord. A chord is a combination of keys. Key is just one key, but you play them together. You then get a chord. When we're talking about the body, we're talking about having the parts or the pieces or the members walking together in agreement, walking together in the same purpose. When you're walking together with other members of the body in the same purpose, there is harmony. Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to walk together. There's a scripture that says how can two walk together lest they be what? In agreement. When you have a harmonious keys playing together, they're in agreement. When you don't have keys that are in agreement, you get disharmony.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 5:29

And so that's kind of the theme for today, and I'm just using music to help us understand that when we began our history, we began it in the Garden of Eden. And in the Garden of Eden it says in Genesis, chapter one, verse 31, through chapter two, that God saw everything that he had made and, behold, it was very good. And the evening, in the morning, were the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made, and he rested, on the seventh day, from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because that in it he had rested from all of his work which God had created and made.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 6:22

You guys know about the, the, the account of creation, and it spanned over a seven day period and in the end God looked at it all and he said it was very good and he rested. There was nothing else for him to do, to, to, to fill in any lack. It was very good. There was no sickness, there was no disease, there was no infirmities, there was no sadness, there was no death, there was no decay, none of these things existed when God originally made it. It was completely harmonious what he did. And there was also one other thing that there wasn't. It says in Genesis, chapter two, 25, that both the man and the wife, the man and his wife, were both naked and were not ashamed. There was no shame.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 7:25

Now the theme is harmony, but in creation something happened that created disharmony, discord, and the definition of discord is the lack of agreement. It is the lack of harmony between persons, between things, between ideas, and discord brings about quarreling, it brings about conflict among persons, among factions. Strife is a word that's used many times in the scriptures and in music. It is a combination of musical sounds that strikes the ear harshly. It's like what was that. That doesn't sound right. You need to fix something. And what happened in creation is by one man's sin, all of creation was affected. By one man's sin, all of creation was infected with something that caused what was not there to begin with: sickness, decay, death. And when that sin affected all of creation, it created a resounding sound of discord, a sound of disharmony.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 8:38

And the more and more time has passed, the more and more the disharmony has become evident. And we're almost about 6,000 years from that day of creation. We're almost about 6,000 years from the day when man fell and we can see how this day it is very evident, the discord and the disharmony that exists in the earth. We can read Genesis 3: 6 and 7. When man fell, it says when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was pleasant to the eyes and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat and the eyes of them both were opened and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons. And in verse 10, adam said and he said I heard thy voice in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 9:57

Now, shame came into existence when man fell. Fear came into existence when man fell and now shame has become the norm, because whenever you have done something wrong, you feel shame. Whenever you have failed at something, you have a sense of shame. I missed the mark and sin, translated, means you missed the mark. Now, in this symphony that we call life, there is something in particular that causes disharmony as chords, and that's called the works of the flesh.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 10:45

The works of the flesh brings about disharmony in your life. It brings about disharmony in those that are very near to you, and when you walk in the works of the flesh, it results in, it leads to depression. It leads to an individual feeling I have a lack, I want of something, there's something missing, there's some sense of I'm not complete. It leads to dissatisfaction, which, which is where we're at. It leads to guilt. It leads to you being being walking in this life without a clear conscience because you have this sense of guilt. You have this sense of I've missed the mark. Our sin, run rampant without any restrictions leads to death.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 11:46

When we find ourselves, however, in tune with the Spirit of the living God, then we are walking in agreement with him. The works of the flesh, if we walk in those, create disharmony, create discord. That means we are not walking together in agreement with God because he is not in the works of the flesh. They are contrary to his ways, they are contrary to his Word and his Will. But when we find ourselves walking in the Spirit of the living God, we find ourselves walking in his Word, we find ourselves walking in his Will, because He is never in disagreement with his Word. He is never in disagreement with his Will. When we allow the Spirit of the Lord to lead us, we march to a different melody. We march to a different rhythm. There's a symphony, there's an orchestration, if you will, and he is the master conductor of this orchestration. He has ordained it. He is the master conductor. But anything that doesn't fall in line, anything that doesn't fall in agreement with Him, with what script He has written, we see disharmony, we see discord. When he says thou shalt not steal, there is discord. When someone has stolen, when someone has committed theft, there is a problem. When He says thou shalt worship no other gods before me, when we begin to worship our own idols of our own making. There, then, is discord in our walk with him, if there even be a walk with him at that time. When we walk in the spirit of God, though, we it's almost like we have.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 13:48

You guys have seen a band concert or an orchestra concert. You have your different sections, your different keys, if you will, and each section has to play according to the master conductor, and it sounds full. And it sounds, it's emotion filled, it brings about emotions, and everybody's playing what they should be playing, just like the keys on a piano, just like the members of a body. No section is trying to be louder than the other. No section is having is trying to have the audience hear their instrument higher than another person's instrument the clarinets. The one piece of the clarinet is not fighting with another clarinet who's playing the same thing and trying to be louder. No, they're trying to be at the same tempo, the same melody, the same pitch, the same volume. Everybody's playing with one another because they all serve a common purpose, and that purpose is to play what the master conductor has written.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 15:01

We're not trying to sing our own melody, our own solo act, in the midst of his script. If we did so, there would be dissonance, it would be off, there would be something wrong, because there's a pattern, when, when, when there's something written in music, there's a pattern, there's a, there's a expectation. You might not know what it is, but you'll know when it's not, even though you've never heard it before. He sets a tone, he sets a rhythm, he sets a melody, he sets a pitch and a volume and you can follow it. And as soon as someone plays it off, you're like what was that? I didn't expect that. That's something wrong there. But if, if, you just follow it and everybody's playing their own thing, you like, oh, you get the sense of yeah, that's right, that's right. I've never heard it before, but that sounds right.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 15:55

In our life, in the body of Christ, it is the rebellious vessels in the house that cause friction. It is the rebellious parts of our heart that cause dissonance and conflict and strife. And where there is strife you can smell flesh, and I'm speaking spiritually here. Where there is strife, you can find a proud heart. It says in 1 Corinthians 3, chapter three.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 16:29

Paul is writing to, to the church, he's writing to the people of God and he says you are yet carnal, for where, where? Whereas there is among you envy, there's strife, there's divisions. Are you not carnal and don't you walk as the rest of the men walk? Cause there were problems in the church in Corinth and he noted all of the things that were being reported to him about what was going on in the church. And it's flat out simple where there was strife, where there was envy, where there was conflict, there's carnality, and carnality is antithesis to the spirit of God.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 17:15

You cannot walk in the flesh and fulfill the spirit. They're in contrast to one another. It's like the law of of, of con, of non-contradiction. You can't walk in the flesh and walk in the spirit. It's not possible. So you have two choices On the left, you can walk in the flesh. On the right, you can walk in the spirit. And it's the same choices that were given in the old covenant.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 17:44

Joshua said choose you this day, whom you will serve. There was a chapter on blessings and curses and he was encouraging the people choose, choose, choose you this day. On the left, you will have curses because you do this and you do this and you do this and you do not obey. If you obey me, if you obey my word, then blessings that that you can't just hold onto, you can't contain. You will be overwhelmed with the blessing if you will follow along with my word. James 3: 16 said not this young man, but the apostle James said where envy and strife is, wherever you see that there is confusion and there is every evil work. When the members of the body function in a manner that is in accordance with their purpose, you have harmony. When the members of the body do not act in a manner according to their purpose, you have disharmony.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 18:53

How many of you have seen those particular individuals with physical disabilities that they have ticks, they start jerking and jerking. Have you ever heard that they are having a conversation and all of a sudden they go hey, now I got a game. They start cursing out of nowhere. How many of you have ever run into that? Because I am in school and I have seen it lots. They are just having a conversation or they are not even having a conversation. They are just sitting there and all of a sudden they turn and they start screaming and they start cursing just blasphemy cursing and then they stop as if nothing happened, almost as if they did not even know it. And they do not. You ask them. They do not even know that they have these ticks, these mannerisms. They are spastic. Some people are just spastic and they just walk with a little hitch and you are like what is wrong with you?

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 19:48

We just saw a video on someone that had Parkinson's disease and he had this cane and he could not talk and he was hirking and jerking and all of his other stuff there. And that is because the body is not working in harmony with each other the nerves, the muscles, all the fibers. There is discord in that body. How many of you have ever seen someone or a couple dancing the waltz? You know how it goes one, two, three, one, two, three. What would you imagine if the woman was going one, two, three, one, two, three and then the man was doing it in all of this stuff, probably hitting her in the head, in the face, because he is doing this hip hop motion. I do not even know what that is. I see all the kids do it in school as if they are about to hit somebody. It is always like I am bad and stuff. Maybe you see a Michael Jackson and he is grabbing his belt cord and doing this thing there. You know all that stuff, while she is doing one, two, three, one.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 20:47

It does not look right, does it? It is incomplete, this harmony in this court, because one is dancing in one rhythm or melody or will and the other is dancing to his own will. It is a different frequency, they are not on the same page. It does not fit, it is not in harmony with each other. So let us read 1 Corinthians 12, verse 14 through 21.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 21:15

For the body is not one member. This piano is not one key, it is 88 different keys. And the body has a head and a shoulder and an elbow and a hands, and ligaments and joints and sinews and muscle fibers and organs and legs and knees and kneecaps, and all of these different things make up the body. And if the foot is going to say, well, I am not the hand, then I am not of the body. Or is it therefore not of the body just because he says that? And if the ear shall say, because I am not the eye, I am not of the body, is it therefore not of the body? It does not really matter what the different member says. They are a part of the body. They can think whatever they want, but they're a part of the body. So when that hand starts doing something and while everything else is dormant, and then this hand just keeps doing that, it's still a part of the body. There's something wrong with it, though. It's not communicating correctly with the other parts of the body, because it's doing something on its own.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 22:26

If the whole body were an eye? He's using the body metaphor to help us understand the body of Christ. He says that the whole body were an eye, how would it hear? Everybody can't be the eye, for whatever reason. They think highly of the eye. Everybody wants to be the eye. Well, everybody can't be the eye. You wouldn't have the hand, you wouldn't have the fingers, you wouldn't have the toes, you wouldn't have the feet. How would you walk if everybody was the eye? You'd see everything and be able to do nothing. You couldn't say anything, you couldn't smell anything, you couldn't hear anything, you couldn't walk anywhere, but you'd see everything. You'd be the silent observer.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 23:05

In the comics that was called the Watcher. They just watched, they recorded and they watched and they did nothing. But now have God set members, every one of them, in the body as it hath pleased him. Did you notice who did that? It was God. God hath set all of you in different places of the body to fulfill a different purpose. All of us have been created with a purpose and it's up to us to find out what that purpose is. You read the word enough, you will find it out quite easily. God, you have to be willing to find out or you're going to be that herky, jerky, spastic piece of the body that's doing its own thing. And I can tell you that the Lord would rather cut off that piece of the body and go to heaven than to have that body there and go to hell. So we must find our purpose, we must find a place in the body. But now are there many members? Verse 20, the body has many members, yet it's still one body.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 24:20

The, I cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee. Nor, again, the head to the feet, I have no need of you. Every piece, every member of the body is interdependent. They dependent upon each other. Yes, my mouth may do the talking, but I need a brain in order to do the talking. And between the brain and the mouth, I need those nerves to be able to communicate those things that I want to be said or done. I need the feet to be able to get somewhere. I need the hands to be able to grab things.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 24:51

There's purpose in everybody in the body, but you must find that purpose and fulfill that purpose. Because I could, if I tried and practiced really hard, use my feet to grab a wine glass and drink wine. But does that look right? Is that the best way to drink wine out of a glass or any drink? I'm just making stuff up here. You can do things with different parts of your body, but it's not fulfilling its purpose. I mean, sometimes I might use a butter knife to screwdriver something right, but it's probably better if I use a screwdriver, because then I might hear about hey, what's wrong with this knife? I'm trying to do butter and it's all warm. You know we could, but it's not the best.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 25:39

Now sometimes in the body of Christ, we hear how about? People want the title before their name. They're trying to make their own sound. They're trying to be out and different and set apart from the rest of the body. You have young children, young men and women that are running to go do great things for the Lord, yet they haven't even been sent, they haven't been equipped. You have particular genders holding positions that they were not made to hold and it's causing more and more division, disorder, disharmony in the body. But yet in 1st Corinthians, 12, 25, it says that there should be no what in the body. There should be no schism in the body. But where there's schism is where you see disharmony and discord. It's where you see members that are functioning out of order, out of place, and in verse 27 says now, ye are the body of Christ and members in the particular.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 26:38

There's so many times that we in our lives do not seek the Lord on certain things and we begin to go do things having not been sent, having not been told that that's what we're supposed to do. We don't search the scriptures beforehand, we don't let the scriptures dictate to us what we are to do, what we're allowed to do, what we shouldn't do, what we are to be, how we're to be. We choose what we want to do first and then we go do it, and then we just hope that God is blessing our endeavors. But then later on, we take a look at the scriptures and we take them out of context in order to justify our wrong decisions that we made, instead of looking at our past in the light of the scripture and saying, oh, I was wrong. Because we won't humble ourselves. I mean, hey, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, we're all sinners. What we need to come to terms with is we're going to repent.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 27:45

Repentance means acknowledge the truth, and the truth is when I look back on my life oh, I messed up there. I messed up there. Oh, I really messed up there. Look, I'm still suffering from that one. And you can go on down the list. But you have to come to the point where you acknowledge that I was wrong and you know what, at that point, that I did that thing wrong. I knew what was right and I did it anyway and I deserve whatever the penalty and the consequences.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 28:13

All the other times well, not all the other times, but a lot of other times it was just ignorance. I didn't know any better. But that point, oh yeah, I did know, but I wanted to do it my way. And you know what? I had all of these people surrounding me telling me that's not a good idea. They counsel me to do something else and I refused. I didn't want to listen to the counsel of the Lord because I didn't. I didn't, I didn't want to admit at the time that, yeah, that was the Lord. He, he was talking to me. And so we go about and we start suffering and we wonder why? Why am I going through it? Why am I going through that? And it's all because of our own decisions, against all the counsel of the Lord, against the scriptures that I knew, and so now I'm here suffering. Now there's some examples that I want to go over in the scriptures of the members of the body that were in and out of order.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 29:12

How many of you know Joseph's life? He was the 11th son of Jacob. Oh, I got two raised in their hands and they're there and they're in the same family. That was good. All right, we got Joseph. Joseph was the 11th son of Amen, isaac Jacob. There we go. Jacob who became Israel.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 29:33

Okay, so he was 11th son and he was just having dreams. He was just happy, go lucky, and we know what happened with his brothers and and and Did Joseph, in particular of himself, do anything wrong? Was he the one that was in disharmony or discord? Who was in disharmony and discord there? Hmm, got multiple answers there. I heard fathers and brothers. Who is it the brothers? Okay, I say, initially was the father. The father caused all the problems in that house Because he treated Joseph better than everybody else. He gave him preferential treatment, he got the coat of many colors. I mean, he was just, he was with the silver spoon in his mouth, everything for Joseph, everything for Joseph. And so that caused what the discord of the father caused strife in his own house. And then we know about that life and how it all ended up. But God was able to use it for good right, and that's that's the one saving grace that we do have that, even though we may walk in some disharmony in certain areas and segments of our life, God is able to turn that all around to work for our good if we love him and If we are called according to His purpose. Now the

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 31:00

At one time they had prophets that was kind of their, their spiritual leaders, and they had Judges. God will raise up a judge. But what happened after the judges? What did the Israelites want, king? Did God want that? No, they did not want that. And so now there disharmon, because now the people of God wanted something different than what God had Wanted. God wanted to deal with them directly. God had wanted a theocracy, what we call a theocracy today, where he is king and you just do as I say, and I might speak to you through the prophet, I might speak to you through the judge, but basically it's through the, it's through me, I'm the king. Now you want a king what, like the kings of those nations around you?

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 31:45

And so he ended up doing that. He gave into their request and he said unto them in first Samuel, 8: 5 through 7 Behold our old and my sons walk not in thy ways. Now make us a king to judges, like all the nations. They're telling Samuel this Samuel was the last judge. And but the thing displeased Samuel when they said give us a king to judges. And Samuel prayed unto the Lord and the Lord said into Samuel, harken unto the voice of the people in all that they say into thee, for they have not rejected the, they have rejected me. That I should not reign over them. See, that's a perfect example of God's Mouthpiece coming to the people to give them the direction, and they don't want to listen and God doesn't see it as, oh, you rejected him. No, they rejected me. So that created discord, that created disharmony. Yes, he gave in to their request, even though he knew that they were wrong.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 32:40

But what happened with the kings? The kings was allowed to tax them, take their land, take their, take their sons for the army. And you saw the lineage, because it got worse. You know, first it was Saul that turned out pretty bad, then it was David and that was good for some some time, and then Solomon came. And then, after Solomon, it was a break in the kingdom, two kingdoms now In Solomon's reign. First Kings 3: 9 through 14 In Solomon's reign.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 33:14

He says give therefore thy servant an understanding heart to judge thy people, that I may discern Between good and bad. See, Solomon had a heart to serve the Lord and when he was asked what do you want? What do you want, god said what do you want? He says I want an Understanding heart to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and bad. For who was able to judge this Thy so great a people? And you know what that pleased the Lord. It wasn't selfish, it was in line with what God would have wanted for him. It pleased him.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 33:48

It says, and the speech pleased the Lord, that Solomon had asked this thing. And God said unto him because thou has asked this thing and has not asked for Thy self-long life. There wasn't. It wasn't to to bless himself. He wanted in order that he would be able to judge God's people right and righteously, because you've not asked riches for thyself, which would have been selfish as well, nor has asked life of thine enemies, which would have been selfish as well. But I've asked for thy self understanding to discern judgment. Behold, I have done according to thy words, lo. I have given thee a wise and understanding heart, so that there was none like thee before thee. Neither shall there be any Arise like unto thee. And I have also given unto thee which thou has not asked I'm gonna give you riches, I'm gonna give you honor, along with the wisdom that you asked for, so that there should not be any Among the kings like unto thee all thy days. And If thou will what walk in my ways To keep my statutes and my commandments, as Thy father, david, did walk, then I will lengthen thy days. You see, that's the harmony that God is requiring of us. First, don't be selfish. Ask for what you need in order to fulfill my word, my kingdom to my people. And that's what Solomon did. And then he got more on top of that. But he required of him to walk in his ways because that would continue having harmony between him and the Lord, peace between him and the Lord. And that worked for a while.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 35:33

Anybody know how long Solomon reigned? How many years? As long as Saul, as long as David? 40. 40. Yeah, 40 years. And in those years he had peace. He didn't have to battle, he didn't have to fight, he didn't have to wage war. That was all David before him. But Solomon had peace. But Solomon also had an issue.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 36:05

It says King Solomon loved strange women and, together with the daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, the Ammonites, the Edomites, the Zedonians and the Hittites of the nations concerning which the Lord set unto the children of Israel, ye shall not go into them, neither shall they come into you, for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods. You know what Solomon did? He clave unto these in love. He did exactly what the Lord said not to do creating discord, creating that disharmony. He had 300 wives, 700 concubines, literally, spiritually, they tore him apart and when Solomon died they tore up his kingdom in two.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 37:01

It says here that in verse five of first Kings 11, solomon went after Astorith, the goddess of the Zedonians, and after Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites. And Solomon did evil in the sight of the Lord, and one not fully after the Lord, as David, his father, did. So he what Broke covenant and began to walk in what I started with in the beginning the works of the flesh, the things that are contrary to his word, his will. And the Lord then said unto him as a result, for as much as this is done of thee and thou has not kept my covenant and my statutes, which I have commanded thee, I will surely rend the kingdom from thee and will give it to thy servant. Not withstanding, in thy days, I will not do it for David, thy father's sake, but I will rend it out of the hand of thy son. How be it? I will not render away all the kingdom, but it will give one tribe to thy son, for David, my servant's sake, and for Jerusalem's sake, which I have chosen.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 38:11

Why did he do that? Because he had to to fulfill his word. It didn't matter about everybody else. He was going to do whatever it took and he was going to make sure that the consequences were paid. But I'm still going to fulfill my word and I'm going to work around the punishment and the discipline that I have to administer, but this is what happens in the body of Christ when members of the body are driven away and cut off by the lust of their own heart. It says in James one: 14 through 15, that every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed, and when that lust is conceived, it bring it forth sin, and sin, when it is finished, bring it forth death.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 39:03

We can also talk about the period of the judges, because the enemy was not driven out entirely and extinguished from the face of the earth. Do you remember that Joshua went into the promised land? They were told take them all out Children, fathers, mothers, all of them. Take out their cattle, take out everything, because it's all corrupt. And what did they end up doing? Every once in a while, they'd let this person live. They make a treaty over here with this person, and those people in the end, were the same people that began to overtake them and put them in captivity because they did not obey the voice of the Lord.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 39:41

It says in Judges two, one through four, and an angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bokem and said I made you to go up out of Egypt and have brought you unto the land which I swear unto your fathers, and I said I will never break my covenant with you and ye shall make no league with the inhabitants of the land. In other words, you shall make no treaty, no pact with them. Ye shall throw down their altars. But ye have not obeyed my voice. Why have you done this? Wherefore I also said I will not drive them out from before you, but they shall be as thorns in your side and their God shall be a snare unto you. And it came to pass, when the angel of the Lord spake these words unto all the children of Israel, that the people lifted up their voice and wept.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 40:24

And what we have to understand is, when we read these scriptures, that this is a picture of what we do in our own life. When we don't get rid of the things, that God has an issue with. Those things that we don't deal with, he says eradicate them, take them out, throw down the altars, get rid of them all. That is a picture of what we are required to do in our own lives. And when we leave those things in our lives, they end up overtaking us later on. Which is why it's very important that when you start hearing the voice of the Lord and discerning, you don't question when he says get rid of that, get rid of that, get rid of that and disobeyed. And what did it do to his heart? It drove him to love and cleave after other gods, and that same thing will happen to us, which is why it was so important early in my life that I get rid of the comic books and I get rid of the Stephen King books and I get rid of the music and I get rid of the things that I was watching.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 41:28

Get rid of it, get rid of it. If I didn't get rid of it, I would not be where I am today. I needed to get rid of those things and it's a lifelong process because there's some little things that we kind of hide and hold on to thinking that, oh, that's so little that's going to happen to me because of that little thing. And yet it's that very little thing that causes us to stumble time and time and time again. And until we acknowledge the truth, it keeps happening over and over again and we wonder why, but why, but why? And people come and talk to us about those things. They may not even know that they're talking about that thing that God has been trying to deal with in your life. They're just talking about it and you get this little conviction, a little bit of a sensitivity to what they're saying, and then you get mad at them that they said it and they didn't even know what they were talking about. They just you kind of share it. But it's that happens in the people as a corporate, but it happens in you, it happens in the areas of your life. I ndividually, we maintain and hold on to disharmony as elements which lead us to having discord in the symphony that we call life.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 42:49

When we heard the melody of heaven, we began dancing to the rhythm that leads to eternal life and it looked different, it sounded different, everything was different about it, we felt different, we reacted to things differently. We were all together changed when we were born again and we were zealous over the things of the Lord and sometimes for some of us, somewhere along the line, we were tried, we were tested. Maybe we got disappointed because we expected something that the Lord did not want for us, and so we take offense to it. Sometimes we just get tired, because it sometimes is taxing to walk this walk and we begin to hear the echoes and the melody of a song that we used to dance to, something from the old life. And then we try to dance both melodies and it doesn't work.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 43:58

One melody is completely in contrast to the other, like the one, two, three. One, two, three. And let's dance that mosh pit, dance to that grunge music from the Seattle. Y'all don't know about that grunge music from Seattle because that wasn't your time, that the early 90s. You can't do both of those dances. You have this girl walking the waltz and she's in the midst of a mosh pit. You could crush her. She's in the wrong place. And that's what happens to us internally, because we try to dance two things and it doesn't work, and that there's more and more trouble, more and more discord and disharmony.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 44:38

And it is this snare that has been the downfall of many saints, because they would not rid themselves of those things that he commanded them to sacrifice on the altar tear it down. There are things that God has required of us to let go, to tear down, to forsake altogether, drive it out. And we have disregarded his counsel because deep down inside, we believed not that bad. I don't do it as much as I did before. It's better. I mean, last time I used to do that every day and now I do it once a week, once a month. That's better. Right, I'm being very careful. I know I'm playing with fire, but I'm going to be very careful.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 45:35

Some of us think, well, I have no other alternative, I have to do it this way. I know it's wrong, but I don't have another alternative. And you think I don't have a choice and we deceive ourselves. We have not realized that all of these little compromises over time, over a long period of time, cause us in the end to be way off course than what we expected to be. We find ourselves in the wide way of the path of destruction, of death, of misery.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 46:13

When one man sin, what happened? Death passed to all men Because all of us sinned. In Romans 5:12, it says wherefore, as by one man sin into the world and death by sin, so death passed upon all men for that all of sin. But it also says because of one man's offense, judgment came upon all men. So we read in Romans 5:17 through 19, by one man's offense, death reigned by one much more. They which receive abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ nullified the effects of what that one man did, so we have no excuse. Therefore, as by the offense of one, judgment came upon all to condemnation, even so, by the righteousness of one, the free gift came upon all men into justification of life.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 47:13

For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. That's powerful there, because I'm a sinner and we all are sinners. Everyone has fallen short of the glory of God. But it says here by one man's righteousness, I shall be made righteous. You can be made righteous just because of the obedience of one man. That's good news, that's tremendous news that we should be praising and singing. Just because it was His obedience that's going to make me righteous.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 47:57

Yeah, I'm struggling, but I'm pulling away. I'm drawn closer to you, Lord, and if I don't make it, I know that you will enable me to stand in the day of judgment. In the day of Christ Jesus, you will perfect me and make me what I should have been, what you've called me to be. But in order to be reconciled to God, in order to be made perfect. We must walk in harmony with the Lord, with his Will and with his Word. It can't happen any way.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 48:35

You cannot continue to willfully walk in the flesh and think that God, in the end, is going to save you. How many of you ever considered Hebrews 10: 26? Anybody know what I'm talking about? For if we sin willfully, after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remained no more sacrifice for sins. You cannot willfully walk in the works of the flesh and think that God is going to save and redeem you in the end. I'm sorry, it doesn't work that way. You have to willfully want to walk in righteousness.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 49:16

Yes, you may struggle, yes, you may fall, yes, you may stumble, but you are not willfully doing it. That's the difference. Because when you're born again, you're a new creature. You have a new nature, you have new thoughts. If you allow the word of God to renew your mind, you will have new desires, you will have new lust, and those lusts will be the lust of the righteousness of his kingdom. There's nothing wrong with lusting.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 49:37

After that he says seek ye, first the kingdom of God, and then all the least things shall be added unto you. Seek, desire, lust after, want zealously the things of the kingdom of God. But if you think that you're going to sin willfully, I'm sorry. The sacrifice of the Lord Jesus does not apply to you anymore Because you trample underfoot. What does it say? What does it say? Verse 29, how much sore punishment suppose ye shall he be thought worthy? Who have trodden underfoot the Son of God and have counted the blood covenant where he was sanctified? An unholy thing. That means you just walk all over the blood, the blood that sanctified you, the blood that healed you, the blood that was supposed to save you. You walk all over it willfully, sinning, thinking that, oh, he's going to forgive me. It doesn't work that way.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 50:35

The scriptures are a symphony of the harmony, with elements of disharmony filled throughout all the scriptures, from beginning to end. You see how it started in harmony and you see all of this disharmony all throughout till you get to the end of revelation where he brings about the restitution of all things. But see, He's able to do that, and He's only able to do that and fulfill that in your life if you do not walk sinning willfully, but desirous of getting rid of the works of the flesh from your life. The good thing is that what began in harmony, even though there was all of this disharmony which looks like a lot. But remember, it started in harmony in an internal state and it ends in harmony in an internal state. This is just a small little vapor. This life in between, this life that you have 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 years is but a vapor in the midst of all eternity. Make it count, make the right decisions.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 51:39

The result of disharmony or discord and music is agitation in life, it's guilt, it's sadness, it's shame, it's death without him. But when you listen to harmonious music, it brings about a joy, it brings about an appreciation, and harmony in this life brings about righteousness and peace and joy when that harmony is in line with his word. And so then we can read Romans 8, 28, and then we can apply it to our lives when he says we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose, because we're not going to walk with so, with sinning willfully. We're not going to do that. Only repentance, which is an acknowledgement of the truth that leads to a change in your thoughts and your behaviors, and the steadfastness to the Lord in his word, will make this particular scripture possible in your life. So let's desire, let's seek to walk in harmony with him. How be being agreement with his word, being agreement with his way, being agreement with his will, so that all of these wonderful promises of the Lord can be fulfilled in your life. Amen. Thus is the ministry of our Father's heart through us. Our utmost desire is to be in the Father's heart, to know the Father's heart and express the Father's heart to you.

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 53:21

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