The Voice of One

Trinity + 1

2012-01-24T21:06:00.000-08:00

Ezekiel chapter one records a vision of God’s glory. At first, weare struck by the theatrics of the vision: a windstorm, fire, thunder, wheelscovered with eyes…. Yet, there issomething about this vision of glory we will miss if we go no deeper than thespecial effects (1 Kings 19:11-13). Inthe midst of the fire, Ezekiel sees four living creatures. Each has the face of a man, a lion, a calf,and an eagle. All move as one: “Eachone went straight ahead. Wherever thespirit would go, they would go, without turning as they went” (Ezek. 1:12).

In glory, nothing originates inself, no one moves independently. Allproceed by one Spirit. One creaturedoesn’t fly off on its own while another roars and runs around. Sometimes they all fly, and sometimes theyall roar “Holy, holy, holy,” but whatever they do, they do by one Spirit (Ezek.1:19; Rev. 4:8). This is a reflectionof God’s unity and of the selfless fellowship that defines the Father, the Son,and the Holy Spirit. The unity of Godis not a unity of sameness. The membersof the Godhead are as individual as the creatures. Yet none of them lives to Himself. None moves based on His prerogative or power as God. Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, the Soncan do nothing out from himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing”(John 5:19). In saying this, Jesus wasnot referring to His human dependence on God. He was speaking about the divine nature. In the same vein, He said of the Spirit, “He will not speak onhis own; he will speak only what he hears” (John 16:13). This could not possibly refer to theSpirit’s human dependence on God for the Spirit never became man as did theSon. The glory of God, then, is markedby a fundamental denial of self and preferring of others.

Dependenceon God is not primarily a function of human need. God has none of our needs yet each member of the Godhead operatesinterdependently. It is important forus to see that we have not just been called to eternal neediness. We have been called into glory, to live asmembers of God Himself. Perhaps this iswhy Ezekiel sees four living creatures. By grace, we have been added to the Trinity and to the flow of lifebetween them!

Adullam

2011-12-10T12:05:00.001-08:00

“And everyone who was in distress, and everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was bitter in soul, gathered to [David]. And he became captain over them” (1 Sam. 22:2).

“Come to me, all who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest….” (Matt. 11:28).

The kingdom of Jesus has its origins in rejection, in being ostracized and marginalized. Jesus was buried in a cave “outside the camp”—without religious acceptance or social standing—just as David was driven to the cave at Adullam, dogged by rumors of treason and disgrace. Adullam means, “rest” or “refuge.” We come to Jesus burdened by stress, debt, or disillusionment; we are disenfranchised; we lack status or privilege; we are not the world’s best or brightest; we may be looked down on or treated dismissively (1 Cor. 1:26-28). But we come, and we find a place with Jesus. He doesn’t throw us out of consider us second class. He accepts us, gives us refuge from whatever past we have left, and forms us into a society. We no longer need to be burdened by our bad rep, our most embarrassing moment, our poor business sense, or the crushing failures that have made us give up on the world. Jesus loves us. His love gives us rest from all these things.

Jesus is one of us. He is the original reject (1 Peter 2:4, 5). He is not ashamed to call us brothers (Heb. 2:11). He becomes captain over us. He claims us as His own. A captain and his soldiers are a unit. They have a common life and identity. We have a common life and identity with Jesus, from which He doesn’t shrink but embraces without reservation or secret misgivings.

“…and whoever comes to me I will never drive away” (John 6:37).

Who's in Charge Here?

2011-11-29T20:22:00.000-08:00

“As long as the son of Jesse lives on this earth, neither you nor your kingdom will be established. Now send and bring him to me, for he must die!” (1 Sam. 20:31)

Who will be in charge? Who will rule? This is the question put to us by this verse. This exchange happens between Saul and Jonathon, Saul’s son and presumptive heir to the throne. They both understand that kingship is at stake yet have responded in entirely different ways: Saul sought David’s life while Jonathon loved David as himself (1 Sam. 18:1).

Galatians 5:17 says, “For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the spirit, and the spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict….” We can see this conflict embodied in Saul and David: Saul illustrates the sinful nature, that which rejects God’s word and refuses to yield control even when shown that God has anointed and given rule to another. David shows us to whom God has given that rule—Christ, the Son of David. Saul and David co-existed for a time, David fighting on Saul’s behalf and gaining victories for him. The enmity was latent, unknown to either, until it became a question of who would be king. Then conflict came exploding into the open, Saul flying into sudden, murderous rages. Our flesh, too, may co-exist with Christ peaceably enough, as long as Jesus is a benefit and helps us overcome those things we are willing to let Him conquer. But should Jesus make any gesture toward actually ruling us, we unravel and plunge into ugly reactions as we storm to hold onto what was never ours.
It is a fearful thing to read about Saul and to see Saul within. How can such an intractable, God-hating enemy as self ever be unseated? There is hope in Saul’s very words to Jonathon: “As long as the son of Jesse lives on this earth, neither you nor your kingdom will be established.” Saul thought he was pronouncing a death sentence on David but it was actually on himself and the rule of self symbolized by him. For Hebrews says, “Because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. Therefore, he is able to save completely those who come to God through him….” (Heb. 7:24, 25). As long as Jesus lives—and He lives forever—neither self nor its rule can be established. Even if it appears Jesus has been run out of town—as when Saul hunted David—He will eventually bring us under His government through the power of His indestructible life (Heb. 7:16).

An Oldie But a Goodie

2011-11-06T22:13:00.000-08:00

I decided to repost this:

Household Jesus

Ephesians chapter one confronts us with One who existed before creation, who encompasses every spiritual blessing, in whom God consummated all times, places, and realms. When considering such a cosmic Christ, it is tempting to wonder how relevant He is to our daily lives. But the real question is: How relevant are we to God? That Christ is the beginning and end must deeply affect us. God will never be relevant to us until we realize that there is no relevance outside of Him.

As Paul shares, he seems to run out of breath. No words in any language can encompass the One He has seen by revelation. Is our own vision of Christ so breathtaking? Or are we more interested in a small Jesus that mostly helps us live our own lives but doesn’t take us captive to His vision and purpose? The Old Testament speaks of “household gods,” idols set up in a small shrine in the home. If one wished to rearrange the furniture or move to another house, the gods could be picked up and placed where one wished. They were at the disposal of the family who owned them, and their purpose was to ensure the health and prosperity of the household. This is probably the sort of Jesus many want and have—a Jesus that stays in His place, that we can take wherever we wish, whose purpose centers on us, on our plans and desires. Whatever can be said about this household Jesus, we cannot say it is the Jesus of the New Testament. For the Jesus of the New Testament—the One who is before all things, in whom all things hold together—says, “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. Where is the house you will build for me?” (Col. 1:17; Isaiah 66:1, 2). Anyone who has encountered Christ as He is understands they will occupy a place in His house, that He is free to pick them up and take them wherever He wishes, that their life exists for His purpose and desires.

Full of Glory

2011-10-28T20:25:00.000-07:00

Below is an excerpt from a booklet about Ezekiel that I'm almost done with.

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The popular view of heaven as partutopia, part family reunion, is not entirely unbiblical. But it tends to make personal wishfulfillment the focus of salvation instead of Christ. In fact, we could go so far as to say that for some, Christ islittle more than the means by which their wishes will be fulfilled in theafterlife. Heaven is also presented asa reward for good behavior, a place where we are finally free fromsuffering. In the world to come, wewill be freed from all forms of suffering caused by the effects of sin in thisfallen world (Rev. 21:4). But we willnot be freed from glory, from the self-sacrificing, other-centered fellowshipthat is the divine nature. Participating in the divine nature IS salvation (2 Peter 1:4). If we haven’t had self-motivation eradicatedbut have only behaved until our desires are finally gratified inheaven, from what have we been saved? By contrast, God has much more in mind than simply rewarding us. He wants all things to be full of glory, tobe permeated by that selfless inter-relating—“For the earth will be filled withthe knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea” (Habakkuk2:14).

What do we mean when we talk of all things being fullof glory? Let’s put it this way:imagine a world where every last thing is Christ: every river, every stone,every blade of grass. This is somethinglike what Ezekiel’s third vision shows us. Christ is the temple, the altar, and the offering. He is the priestpresenting the offering, He is the sacrificial flesh eaten by those whominister. He is the land and eachinheritance marked out. He is the 12tribes and the nation of Israel. HisSpirit is the river that makes everything live as it flows past trees of allkinds, which trees He is. “Christ isall, and is in all” (Col. 3:11). Thereis nothing in what Ezekiel sees that is not Christ. And this is where God has placed us. This is the One into whom we have been baptized (1 Cor. 1:30,12:13). Despite the conditions throughwhich we sojourn, despite the lack of Christ we see around us and in us everyday, God would have us know that our reality, the place where we live and moveand have our being, is precisely this place where there is nothing but Christ,where Christ is the elemental composition of everything, where He is thelength, the height, the breadth, and the depth (Eph. 3:18).

Excerpt from "Micah: Who Is Like Yah?"

2011-10-09T15:00:00.000-07:00

I just finished a booklet about Micah & posted the link on the right. Below is an excerpt.

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Thename Micah means, “Who is like Yah?” Micah’s prophecy shows how God’s grace abounds in Christ and utterly swallowsup sin, death, and Satan. Yah is shortfor Yahweh, the name of God meaning, “I Am” (Exodus 3:14). Jesus is the living image and fulfillment ofthis name of God, in all its significance—“I am [the Messiah],” “I am the breadof life,” “I am the light of the world,” “I am the good shepherd,” “I am theresurrection and the life,” “I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” “I amthe true vine,” “I am a king,” “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and thelast, the beginning and the end.”[1] In these and similar statements, Jesus showsthat He brings this name of God to completion in endless ways. In view of God’s great salvation throughChrist, we can only answer that there is no one like Yah—no one as majestic inholiness, as awesome in glory, or working such wonders as the death andresurrection of Jesus (Ex. 15:11).

[1] John4:25-26, 6:35, 8:12, 10:11, 11:25, 14:6, 15:1, 18:37; Rev. 22:13.

The Sufficiency of Our Passover Lamb

2011-09-19T20:23:00.000-07:00

The following is an excerpt from a booklet I'm working on entitled, "Ezekiel: The Glory of the Lord."

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Ezekiel received his final vision of glory on the 10^thday of the first month (Ezek. 40:1). This was a significant day because it was the day faithful Israeliteswould select a lamb for Passover (Ex. 12:2, 3). For four days they would feed and care for the lamb, thensacrifice it, apply its blood to their houses, and eat its roasted flesh withbitter herbs (Ex. 12:6-8).

As we have said, the Lord calledEzekiel to minister to the captives in Babylon. By giving Ezekiel this third vision at the beginning of Passover,the Lord wasn’t promising a new exodus from Babylon. Instead, He was pledging that the first exodus from Egypt wassufficient. Their deliverance, theirsetting apart as a peculiar nation, their covenantal joining to Him—none of ithad changed in God’s mind. The PassoverLamb was still the only salvation Israel would ever need, as complete andefficacious as the day they left Egypt. Because of the lamb, and not Israel’s faithfulness, they would berestored to the temple, the city, and the land from which they wereexiled.

Forus, the death of our Passover Lamb, Jesus, is the only deliverance we will everneed (1 Cor. 5:7, 8). His death joinedus to God through a new covenant in His blood. If we find that we have wandered from God, if we find ourselves in somesort of captivity because we have followed the self-preferring of the fallennature, we don’t need a new deliverance. We need only remember that the deliverance wrought through the cross isas effective and sufficient today as it ever was. Because of Christ, none of God’s thoughts toward us havechanged. His love is constant. “Let usthen approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercyand find grace to help us in our time of need” (Heb. 5:16).

Excerpt from "Haggai: Feast"

2011-08-05T22:43:00.000-07:00

This blog now has links to booklets I have written. The following is an excerpt from "Haggai: Feast," which is part of a collection called "The Spirit of Prophecy."

Go Up!

The Lord’s aim in sending Haggai was not merely to criticize His people but to lead them in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake (Psalm 23:3). To that end, He instructed them: “Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build the house, so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored” (Hag. 1:8). To end the famine of self-interest, the people needed to put the honor of the Lord and of His house first.

We too must “go up” and fellowship with God. “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God…. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3:1, 3). If Christians want to find the fullness of life Jesus promised, we must put aside our “houses,” our wills, our purposes, and come to the feast above—the communion table of Christ. As we sit with Him, He will transform our captive thinking by renewing our minds, and we will no longer conform to the pattern of this world (Rom. 12:2). Instead, we will give ourselves up because we are eating, and drinking, and internalizing the Person who gave Himself for the life of the world (John 6:51-53).

As the Lord gives Himself in us, we participate in His ministry to His bride: “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish” (Eph. 5:25-27). We do not go up for ourselves, for our own spiritual development. We go up so that we can give ourselves up to build the Lord’s house. Many of us who are dissatisfied with our own lives also complain that the church isn’t meeting our needs. Instead of viewing the body as those whom we are called to build up through personal sacrifice, we view it as one more vendor of personal satisfaction. We bring all our self-centered, captivity thinking with us then blame the church when our expectations aren’t met. But if we are not giving ourselves to make the church a vibrant, living body where Christ is pleased and honored, who will? Shall we blame church leadership for our mediocre church experience? Is it the job of leadership to supply a product that meets the demands of a congregation of consumers? No, if church is not what we think it should be, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Paul certainly didn’t view church as a place to get: “When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church” (1 Cor. 14:26). This is the fulfillment of Haggai’s prophecy: a gathering of people who have all gone up and have brought back materials with which to build the Lord’s house. Only in such a house as this—where life is truly flowing from the head and between the members—will the Lord take pleasure and be honored.

That He Might Fill All Things

2011-07-21T23:02:00.000-07:00

My life, like the lives of many other people, is full of activities, interests, responsibilities. Sometimes I worry that this reflects a lack of interest in God and that perhaps my heart is set on the things of this world moreso than on Him. As I entertained this concern recently, God brought Ephesians 4:10 to mind: “He who descended is he who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.” As the Lord spoke this verse to my heart, I could see Him filling everything in my life. Reality under the old covenant (before Christ dealt with sin) was one where God only filled the temple in Jerusalem. He remained behind the veil while we lived our lives outside of it. But reality under the new covenant is that Christ fills all things with His resurrection life.

Despite the divine fact of Christ’s resurrection, we often continue to live our lives according to an old covenant mentality. My anxiety over the various activities and interests in my life is a classic example of this contradiction. Subconsciously, I continue to think that I’m “with God” when doing specifically religious activities like praying, going to a church service, or performing ministry. But when occupied with non-religious activities, I classify that as “not with God” time. In my own mental universe, I have neatly divided sacred and secular. I have relegated God to my own, self-styled temple complete with a veil which divides when I am with Him and when I am not. But this veil is only in my mind, and is the veil of unbelief that persists in the absence of God’s revelation (2 Cor. 3:15-18). For in Christ, the veil is taken away (2 Cor. 3:14).

Does this mean that sin and selfishness don’t exist and we can throw caution to the wind? Not at all. As we pursue various opportunities and interests each day, what separates a life filled by Christ and a life too full for Christ? Quite simply, it is the cross that does this. Before Jesus ascended and filled all things, He descended into the grave. The filling of all things by Christ’s resurrection life depended on the taking of old things to the grave. We too must descend into Christ’s grave by the revelation of the Spirit (Rom. 6:3-5). Our experience must be infused with the reality of the cross by the action of the Spirit. Otherwise, personal passions and desires will fill everything we do. But Galatians 5:24 says, “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires.” If, by revelation, the Spirit has brought us to Christ’s cross, and if we have descended with Him, then for us all things will be filled with the Risen One instead of with us.

The Better Thing: Jesus

2011-06-01T20:31:00.000-07:00

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light”

(Matt. 11:28-30).

Who is Jesus inviting into His rest in these verses? Perhaps we first think of non-believers, burdened by sin, needing the rest that can only come from knowing Jesus. This is certainly true. But Jesus is especially addressing disciples in this verse, for no one can know Him or find rest unless they first take His yoke. It is the church, the yokefellow of Christ, that most needs to take these words to heart.

We have accepted a great self-deception in the church: we have made salvation the finish line instead of the starting line. Based on this faulty premise, we neatly divide humanity into two groups: those who know the Lord (us) and those who don’t (the world). While this is partly true, it isn’t the whole picture. As followers of Jesus, we are called disciples. The word disciple means, “learner.” We need to know the Lord just as much as non-believers. Now that we have taken Jesus’s yoke, we are learning Him. Now that we are born again, we are growing into a mature man (Eph. 4:13). The evidence that we are knowing Him and are maturing in Him is that we are entering into His rest (Heb. 4:3, 10).

But have we really laid down our wearisome burdens? Or have we just exchanged them for others? Perhaps some lay down the burden of sin only to take up the burden of religious behavior. Perhaps the pressure to achieve is merely redirected toward ministry rather than left on the cross. Maybe we give up the responsibility of pleasing man only to take on the responsibility of pleasing God. And instead of “keeping up with the Jones-es” maybe we drive ourselves to keep up with whatever church has a book on the bestseller list (Eph. 4:14). Jesus said of the Pharisees, “They tie up heavy loads and put them on men’s shoulders” (Matt. 23:4). Likewise, there are those who greet us with a handshake and a ball and chain when we gather on Sunday. If we have merely given Christian packaging to worldly burdens then we aren’t accepting Jesus’s yoke or learning Him at all.

Jesus has a simple message for His body, the church: “Lay down the burdens of human religion. Lay down the burdens of Christian culture. Know Me, and rest in Me!” Psalm 46 says it this way: “Cease striving, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations.” To know Him requires that we trade Christianity for Christ, that we give up our harried serving to sit at His feet (Luke 10:41, 42). Only one thing is needed, and that is Jesus Himself (Luke 10:42; Mark 10:21). If we choose “the better thing,” it will not be taken away (Luke 10:42).

A Single Stone

2011-05-16T10:23:00.000-07:00

David used only one stone to defeat Goliath and the entire Philistine army (1 Sam. 17:49, 50). One stone set right the many blasphemies Goliath shouted at God’s people day after day (1 Sam. 17:16, 23). One stone redeemed the disobedience of every Israelite soldier who did nothing to resist Goliath. One stone was all God needed to save His people.

Likewise, Paul says that the act of one man—Jesus—brought grace to many. One act of self-giving atoned for generations of selfishness and sin—past, present, and future. One righteous life laid down swallowed up centuries of death and brought resurrection life to myriads of people. One act of obedience compensated for countless acts of disobedience committed by billions of people every day in every age (Rom. 5:15-21).

Considering the awesome, far-reaching, unending power of Jesus’s death and resurrection, can we not trust Him with our own failings, whether committed years or minutes ago? Can we not face that which is fallen, that which is satanic, and echo David’s words to Goliath: “I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, who died and rose again, whom you have defied. THIS DAY, the Lord will hand you over to me, and I’ll strike you down by the power of His cross (1 Sam. 17:45, 46).

Seeing for Ourselves

2011-03-22T21:58:00.000-07:00

My wife and I moved from Texas to Washington in March of 2000. Just before moving, we went to our Wednesday night prayer meeting. Someone was sharing about how Mary Magdalene saw the risen Christ and was sent to tell the disciples about the One she had seen (John 20:17, 18). As I listened, the Lord said to me, “I have called you to be this type of messenger.” Like Mary, the Lord has sent me to tell disciples about the One I have seen. Mind you, I haven’t seen Jesus physically. But we are not to know Him that way any longer (2 Cor. 5:16). It is with the eyes of our hearts we are to see Jesus, and this is really the only way to see Him (Eph. 1:17, 18). The gospels show that even people who saw the Lord physically didn’t know Him. They only knew Him when revelation happened in their hearts (Matt. 16:15-17; Luke 24:15, 16, 30, 31).

Over the years, my understanding of this calling has grown. Not long after moving to Washington, I returned to the passages about Jesus sending Mary to the disciples. As I read Luke’s account (in which several women accompany Mary), one part stood out to me: “But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense” (Luke 24:11; Mark 16:9-14). I was caught off guard that the disciples didn’t believe the message brought by Mary and the others. At that point, I understood that, sent by Jesus or not, I shouldn’t expect everyone to believe me or to receive what I said. Even as I write, I am reminded that women didn’t enjoy the social standing that men did at that time and were not taken seriously in important matters. My own experience has shown that some people won’t respect me or listen to me because of my personality, my level of education, the way I dress, and 1,000 other things that lower my status in their minds. I have even been snubbed by ministers because I am not in “full-time” ministry, a fact that makes me less valid in their eyes. But God is not impressed by the markers of prestige that we think give us the right to judge. So instead of first appearing to people who might be respected Jesus appeared to a group of women whom He knew would be dismissed.

While the disciples didn’t believe Mary, some, like Peter and John, at least went to see for themselves if what she said was true. As we know, they found Jesus’s tomb empty and eventually saw Him themselves. This is my greatest hope when I share the Lord. I can’t expect anyone to listen to me or believe me but if I can make someone curious enough to look for Jesus themselves, and if they see Him by revelation, then that is better than being listened to or respected. Listening to me won’t help a single person. What each of us most needs is to see Jesus ourselves. How can we do this? Paul says if we set our hearts on Christ, God will remove the veil blinding our hearts, and we will see Jesus in the scriptures. As we know Jesus in this way, the Holy Spirit will transform us into His likeness (2 Cor. 3:14-18; Luke 24:45, 46). To the degree that we have been transformed in this way, the life of Jesus manifests in us, and we can see Jesus in each other as well (2 Cor. 4:10, 11).

Seeing Jesus and being transformed into His likeness is my first calling, even above preaching Him to others. After all, if He isn’t seen in me, there is no message to preach, and there is quite enough of that going on amongst Christians already. Instead, I believe the Lord has called me—and every one of us—to be a message and not merely preach one.

Rejecting the King of Kings

2010-12-30T20:02:00.000-08:00

“But when they said, ‘Give us a king to lead us,’ this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the LORD. And the LORD told him: ‘Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king’” (1 Sam. 8:6, 7).

“‘Shall I crucify your king?” Pilate asked. ‘We have no king but Caesar,’ the chief priests answered. Finally Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified” (John 19:15, 16).

Israel asked for a king and was told the king they chose would take and take and take (1 Sam. 8:10-18). Contrasting this with the Lamb of God—who gave until His body was broken and His blood spilled—gives us a sense of what Israel lost when they rejected God as their king. They traded a God who loved them for a king who loved himself at their expense. Why would anyone do this? It is quite simple. We must submit to a king. Despite the bankruptcy and enslavement that comes with the king we choose, we prefer him because we prefer to submit to a reign which authorizes us to love ourselves first. If we submit to God and accept His rule, we must give as we have been given to, we must love as He has loved us (John 15:12). “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). To choose another king is really to choose self as king.

The self-king always calls for the extinction of the God-king. Those who traded Christ for Caesar screamed for Jesus’s crucifixion (John 19:6, 15). Saul sought David’s life unrelentingly (1 Sam. 19:1). Self is a dictator, par excellence. It can admit no competitor, no rival. Saul allowed David to rise in prominence and to excel as long as he was a benefit and made Saul look good. But the moment his reign was threatened, his murderousness manifested (1 Sam. 18:8-11).

Whether we follow the self-king or the God-king, our path will lead to the cross. But which king we serve will determine if we are those shouting, “Crucify him!” or those who are silent before their accusers.

Masquerade

2010-07-18T20:02:00.000-07:00

Human religion is God’s greatest enemy and Satan’s greatest instrument in his assault on God & God’s people. Human religion is not just non-Christian faiths or certain Christian denominations. It is found in varying degrees in every Christian church just as Christ is. More pointedly, human religion is found in every person’s heart (Matt. 15:18, 19). It is the sinful nature’s attempt to be spiritual.

Regardless of where it presents itself, human religion puts itself in God’s place. Consequently, it cannot tolerate when God or His true representatives show themselves. The exposure of its charade, its counterfeiting, and its hypocrisy cannot be countenanced or it will lose all the control, self-worship, and parasitic preservation secured by its ruse. So called “clergy” are certainly to blame as perpetrators of the power structure of human religion, the façade which keeps people from entering the kingdom because it poses as the gate (Matt. 23:13). But human religion can’t exist without a laity which can be appealed to by leaders who justify the rule of self, the religion of the stomach, and enmity with the cross of Christ (Php. 3:18, 19). To these and to all Jesus says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it” (Luke 9:23, 24).

We cannot serve Christ and human religion. We must choose. While Christ and human religion coexist (not only in churches but in ourselves) they will be drawn inexorably into conflict, and we will be on one side or the other—laying our lives down in Christ’s image or thinking we offer service to God even as we attack those who are His flesh and blood (1 John 3:11-16; John 16:2).

“[F]or Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness” (2 Cor. 11:14, 15).

One final consideration: The first murder was religiously motivated. Cain offered God the best fruit his talents and effort could produce. God rejected his offering but accepted Abel’s—an animal from his flock. John tells us Cain murdered Abel because “his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous” (1 John 3:12). The counterfeiter couldn’t tolerate the existence of the authentic. Cain and Abel demonstrate one of the basic differences between human religion and Christ. Cain’s “gospel” is that of human religion: work hard for God and give Him your best. Abel had nothing of himself to offer. Instead, he offered another life from his flock, which God accepted. Cain says it’s about being good enough. Abel says someone else must die for us. Human religion heaps burdens on men which it won’t lift a finger to carry itself (Matt. 23:4). Christ, who lays down His life for us, says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28).

Prescribed for His Dwelling

2010-05-14T23:07:00.000-07:00

1 Sam. 2:29—“Why do you scorn my sacrifice and offering that I prescribed for my dwelling? Why do you honor your sons more than me by fattening yourselves on the choice parts of every offering…?”

“Why do you scorn my sacrifice and offering…by fattening yourselves…?”

The house of Eli scorned and dishonored God’s sacrifice because they fattened themselves. They violated Christ, in type. “This is how we know what love is—Jesus Christ laid down his life for us” (1 John 3:16). John shows us that the reality of love (and God IS love, so this is the very person of God) is demonstrated and known in Christ’s sacrifice. This is the very essence of God, to which John adds, “And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers as well.” Instead of fattening ourselves, serving ourselves, and pursuing our own interests, instead of scorning the person of God in Christ’s sacrifice, God would have us love, lay down our lives for our brothers, and honor the offering of the Son. After all, the Lord also describes it as, “the sacrifice and offering prescribed for my dwelling,” showing that we—the church and temple—are the place where Christ, God’s offering, resides and remains. What a violation it is, then, if self is preferred among us when God intends us to be the very house of His sacrificial love. This was the sin of which Eli’s house was guilty: they were to be the temple of the Lamb but enshrined personal gratification. “For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things” (Php. 3:18, 19). We are of the house of Eli to the extent we are motivated by our appetite for earthly things. These can be sinful things, but in Philippians, Paul is referring to those who took pride in their religious piety. The house of Eli, too, were priests who did not merely gratify themselves, but used their spiritual positions to that end (1 Sam. 2:12-17).

God has designated His church as the dwelling of Jesus—His sacrifice and offering. This is what we are, this is our calling, the reason that we have been set apart as a unique people. Not long after the above words were spoken to Eli, the ark of the covenant was captured, and God’s glory departed from Israel (1 Sam. 4:21). We too will live apart from God’s glory if we scorn His sacrifice: “Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory” (Rom. 8:17). To think that we have any purpose other than suffering with Him and sharing in His glory is self-pleasing deception and opportunism. Lord, let the glory and sacrifice of your Son shine through us!

He Has Done It!

2010-04-05T20:55:00.000-07:00

Hebrews 11 is known as the faith chapter or “The Hall of Faith” and is a list of deeds done by Old Testament saints. Many of us privately define faith as the effort required to remain convinced of what is essentially unreal. However, this is not faith, nor is it spiritual; it is an attempt to manufacture feelings of certainty. Such “faith” does not build the house of God, it only builds a house of cards, something threatened by every wind of emotion or circumstance.

What, then, is faith? The translation of Hebrews 11:1 in my Greek dictionary is, “Now faith is the realization or reality of things hoped for, the proof of things not seen.” This means faith is the same “stuff” as the unseen things for which we are hoping. When we believe, we get a piece of reality, not just a whiff of possibility. When we believe, spiritual things are made real, or are realized in us. This is why Hebrews 11 is full of things people did. Unseen things were being realized in them. More to the point, perhaps we could call these acts of faith the making flesh of what is unseen.

What, then, is the unseen reality made flesh in the deeds of the saints? The crucified Christ unlocks the unseen reality manifested in the faith of the saints. By grasping this reality, Abel offered a more excellent sacrifice than Cain because his offering was in the image of Christ’s offering to come. The ark built by Noah prefigured Christ’s death and resurrection (1 Peter 3:20, 21). When Joseph’s bones were taken from Egypt to the promised land, this also foreshadowed the resurrection. Similarly, by faith, Rahab marked her window with the scarlet thread, predicting the saving blood of Christ. This isn’t to say that each of these understood, with utter clarity, that the death of a Jew in the first century AD would be their salvation. What can be said is that these saints, by faith, touched something of spiritual reality in Christ and allowed their lives to be shaped by that reality.

We tend to see the scriptures as divided into different subjects or stories. When we read Hebrews 11 from this point of view, we walk away having little sense of what is spiritually real or what it means to live by faith. Our only sense may be of a multiplicity of promises. Why God spoke all these different things to people we don’t know. All we know is that God says different things to different people at different times (this is starting to sound like Hebrews 1:1!), and they believe Him. Yet, the scriptures don’t teach us to see the many promises of God as ends in themselves but as leading to Christ. “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ” (2 Cor. 1:20). God’s goal, then, in every promise, was/is to testify of His Son.

In sum, each act of faith in Hebrews 11 somehow embodies Christ’s death and resurrection. Chapter 12 begins with an image that perfectly encapsulates these things: we are running our own race of faith, joining with a great cloud of onlookers whose eyes are fixed on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, the One crucified in the center of the coliseum of heaven and earth. The cheer of the crowd that urges us on is not “You can do it!” but, “He has done it!”

If Anyone...

2010-03-03T19:14:00.000-08:00

“If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself

and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23).

At times, I am grieved because it seems that, for many believers, this verse means nothing. Many of us are walking along with Jesus but have no idea what we’ve signed up for. More importantly, we have no idea who it is we follow. We’re part of the church because we grew up in it. We’re involved because we’re pursuing our own ambitions in music, ministry, or whatever else interests us. We think being religious is the right thing to do. A thousand motives, a swarm of reasons, yet no inkling that we have been called to deny ourselves and take up our cross daily. We take the name of our Husband but have no intention of following the Lamb wherever He goes (Rev. 14:4). We call Him Master but find His example beneath us (John 13:15-17).

Jesus has only one destination throughout the gospels: the cross. While He marches steadily closer to His end, the disciples get excited that the demons obey them, they try to one-up each other, they criticize those outside their group, they fight amongst themselves, they turn away people who need ministry, they pledge their unwavering devotion to Him. Jesus’s entire focus is on Calvary. The disciples are focused on everything but. To put it another way, they are focused on all that Jesus is bearing to the cross for judgment. Then, when the cross comes, the disciples scatter. The cross reveals that their devotion is to many things besides Him, and in the shadow of its judgment, there is nothing left that binds them to Him.

God help us repent of being engrossed in things that God has judged (1 Cor. 7:31; 1 John 2:15, 16). God help us repent of thinking God will be satisfied with anything less than our whole selves (Mark 10:17-22). God help us see that any gospel which says, “Never! The cross shall never happen to you!” does not have in mind the things of God but the things of men (Matt. 16:21-23). God help us put aside our thoughts and our ways as we see His face set like flint toward the giving up of Himself (Luke 9:51). “[L]et us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb. 12:1, 2).

Nothing Less than Him

2009-12-19T23:42:00.000-08:00

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”

(John 1:1).

Jesus is God’s complete self-expression or Word. The Word is God, just as my word is me and not something other than me. Jesus said it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks (Matt. 12:34). Jesus is the abundance of God’s heart, the One in whom God’s most personal reality is known.

Hebrews 1:1 tells us that the crown of God’s self-revelation is His Son, who is “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being” (Heb. 1:1-3). Jesus Himself told His disciples, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Hebrews show us that the message God has spoken in His Son supercedes prophets and their prophecies, supercedes the message spoken by angels, supercedes the revelation of Moses, supercedes the testimony of the tabernacle, supercedes the law, and the covenant of Mt. Sinai (Heb. 1:1, 2:2-4, 3:3, 9:11, 10:1, 12:18-24). In short, Jesus is the full message of God to us. Every other message that has been or will be is piecemeal and limited. Hebrews warns that we can end up rejecting the Son because of devotion to God’s partial revelation through other avenues. Note that these are not sinful things or false messages, but spiritual things that, while they serve God’s purpose, are nonetheless incomplete. We would do well to heed this warning. In the church today, Jesus is often shouted down by heralds of the miraculous, morality, spiritual warfare, spiritual gifts, the end times, holiness, revival, prosperity, faith, tradition, cultural relevance, and a million other messages. Again, these things aren’t bad or satanic. But in the end, whatever we preach other than Jesus is less than God’s full Word.

John tells us that God’s complete self-expression, His Word, became flesh and dwelled among us (John 1:14). He further says that God’s complete self-expression was heard, seen, and touched by those who knew Him (1 John 1:1). This is mind-boggling. Everything that God wanted us to know about Him walked among us, ate with us, showed us affection, talked with us. That being the case, it still took an act of God to make us see His revelation in the Son (Matt. 16:15-17).

Our birth into spiritual life is accomplished when the Word enters into us. Peter says we were born again by the living and enduring word of God (1 Peter 1:23). John says God’s seed is in us (1 John 3:9). We have received nothing less than God’s complete self-expression. It is this One who indwells us. Nevertheless, this reality remains veiled to us unless the Holy Spirit opens our eyes (2 Cor. 3:16-18). Christ may be in us, but without the Holy Spirit’s ministry we will fail to recognize Him within just as people failed to recognize Jesus of Nazareth as God’s Christ when He walked the earth. In Galatians chapter one, Paul says that God revealed Christ in Him so that he might preach Him. Amen. May we know God’s complete self-expression, His Word, by revelation, so that we might preach nothing less than Him.

The All and In All

2009-10-04T14:28:00.001-07:00

In his third vision, Ezekiel sees all things made new. The old temple—into which was gathered all Israel’s sinfulness—is no more. Instead, there is a new temple, made without hands, purged of all idolatry (Ezek. 40-43). The people of Israel are new, as is their relationship with the Lord: “Son of man, this is the place of my throne and the place for the soles of my feet. This is where I will live among the Israelites forever. The house of Israel will never again defile my holy name…by their prostitution and the lifeless idols of their kings….” (Ezek. 43:7). There is a new priesthood—the sons of Zadok (meaning, “Sons of righteousness”)—free of the unfaithfulness which characterized the priesthood of man (Ezek. 44:10-16). A new inheritance awaits the people of God (45:1-8, 47:13-48:29), and a new city whose name is “THE LORD IS THERE” (Ezek. 45:6, 48:15-22, 48:30-35). Here, all things are new, & all things are of God (2 Cor. 5:17, 18). This is reality in Christ. Through the cross (the destruction of the temple in Ezekiel’s second vision), old things were put away. No vestige of those things remain, just as Ezekiel sees no resemblance between the Israel in his vision & the Israel in captivity. We can remain in captivity through unbelief, or we can accept the overwhelming grace of God—all things have been made new in Jesus. By showing Ezekiel these things, God is hoping to draw his people—including those reading Ezekiel today—out of captivity. For we are captives to the extent we do not abide where all things are made new and are of God.

When we say all things are new, what do we mean? Let’s put it this way: imagine a world where every last thing is Christ: every river, every stone, every blade of grass. This is something like what Ezekiel’s third vision shows us. Christ is the temple and the glory within. He is the altar, He is the offering, He is the priest presenting the offering, He is the sacrificial flesh eaten by those who minister. He is the land and each inheritance marked out. He is the 12 tribes and the nation of Israel. The prince spoken of is the Prince of Peace. His Spirit is the river that makes everything live as it flows past trees of all kinds, which trees He is. “Christ is all, and is in all” (Col. 3:11). There is nothing in what Ezekiel sees that is not Christ. And this is where God has placed us. This is the One into which we have been baptized (1 Cor. 1:30, 12:13). Despite the conditions through which we sojourn, despite the lack of Christ we see around us and in us every day, God would have us know that our reality, the place where we live and move and have our being, is precisely this place where there is nothing but Christ, where Christ is the elemental composition of everything, where He is the length, the height, the breadth, and the depth (Eph. 3:18). “Christ is all, and is in all.”

I Hate Earth Day

2009-06-07T20:05:00.000-07:00

The Lord has been exposing in me a fear of being seen as ignorant, out of touch, uneducated, backward, and the like. An underlying motivation in my presentation of Christ has been to show that Christianity is none of the negative stereotypes imposed on it. More importantly, I want to make sure people don’t think I fit those stereotypes. At bottom, my defense of Christianity is merely self-love. And really, we talk in this day and age as if stereotypes are always completely false when in reality there is often truth to them.

While bridge building is a legitimate calling within the church, so is being misunderstood, maligned, and rejected. Many in the church are perplexed by the world’s reaction to us and assume something must be wrong with the church or our presentation of the gospel. Many of us are busy polling our neighbors, finding out what offends or confuses, and trying to find the “holy grail” of cultural relevance that will end all dissonance with non-Christians. Others make it their mission to engage public debate, relate Christian faith to the latest scientific theories, and rub elbows with intellectuals of all stripes. Nevertheless, the world’s basic attitude toward Christianity is negative and many of us remain surprised by this.

But we shouldn’t be surprised. The scriptures say we should expect the world to hate us (John 15:18-25). We are told we shouldn’t expect the world to listen to us (1 John 4:5, 6). We are told to expect rejection (1 Peter 4:12; 2 Tim. 3:12). Despite all these admonitions, we wring our hands and wonder why all don’t speak well of us (Luke 6:26).

This isn’t to say the church is perfect. Historically, we have been guilty of social injustice, hypocrisy, child molestation, consumerism, and countless other things that betray the very heart of God. For our real failures we should take responsibility and show contrition as is fitting in Christ. But we often go way beyond this and lapse into co-dependently gauging the rightness of our course by the reactions of others. If people are flooding in and not leaving offended, we must be presenting the “real” Jesus. If people react negatively or with hostility, we assume something must be wrong with us and we anxiously set about to find how we’ve dropped the ball.

But we must consider this: Large crowds followed Jesus when He was handing out free food, healing people, preaching encouraging sermons, etc. But when He got to the heart of His teaching about the cross and communing in His broken flesh, everyone left but the twelve (John 6:66). We need to remember that “he had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him” (Isaiah 53:2). In the end, the crowds we draw through our pleasanter ministries will be the same crowds calling for our crucifixion (Matt. 27:22). I am by no means suggesting we be bull-headed, insensitive, ignorant clods for Jesus. But we can never forget we are not of the world or that our place is ultimately with Jesus (John 17:14). “Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore” (Heb. 13:13).

I Belong to My Lover

2009-03-28T16:37:00.000-07:00

“I belong to my lover, and his desire is for me” (Song of Songs 7:10).

Song of Songs is, on one level, about marriage & marital intimacy. But Paul tells us in Ephesians 5:31, 32 that marriage is about much more than simply marriage. It is a shadow of Christ & the church. Taking our cues from Paul, Song of Songs is about the intimate relationship to which we have been called in Christ.

I belong…

We know from verses such as 1 Peter 1:19 that we belong to God because he bought us with the precious blood of Jesus. But this is a merely legal ownership. Song of Songs speaks of an ownership based on mutual desire, a covenant in which both partners willingly forsake all others to belong to one another. Exodus 21:2-6 gives laws about Hebrew slaves and brings out the difference between these two types of ownership. By law, Hebrew slaves had to be released after serving 7 years. “But,” the law says, “if the servant declares, ‘I love my master…and do not want to go free’…he will be his servant for life” (Ex. 21:5,6). One slave serves his master then takes his freedom. Another gives up his freedom & himself out of love for his master. Many came to Jesus to be fed, healed, or delivered, then went their way. Ten lepers were healed but only one worshiped the Lord. Crowds thronged after Jesus but only 12 gave themselves to Him (Mark 10:28).
Another poor, but functional analogy would be buying a cat. Once we pay the price, the cat is released from her pet store cage & comes to our home. She belongs to us, but whether any affection or closeness develops is another matter. Likewise, we may be purchased, we may belong to Jesus, we may enjoy being fed by Him and reap the benefits of being in His household, but intimacy with Him is another matter. It is this belonging of intimacy that Song of Songs presents.

I belong to my lover…

I belong to my Lover—not to one who expects me to please him; not to the 10 commandments; not to ministries; not to a denomination. I belong to my Lover. I belong to Him who is so taken with me that He says, “You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride; you have stolen my heart with one glance from your eyes” (SOS 4:9). He is the King of kings. All authority in heaven and on earth rests with Him (Matt. 28:18). But I know Him in His chambers, where His kingly garb is gone, where His scepter is laid aside, where His commands are the kisses of His mouth (SOS 1:2).

I belong to my lover, and His desire is for me.

His desire is not for me to do something or be something. His desire is for me, period. Before His eyes, I am uncovered and laid bare, but He says, “All beautiful you are, my darling; there is no flaw in you” (Heb. 4:13; SOS 4:7). His response to my nakedness is desire. There is no shame, no reproach. His arms enfold and cover me. His banner over me is love (SOS 2:4, 6).
We need to hear the viewpoint of our Lover: “Like a lily among thorns is my darling among the maidens,” “your voice is sweet, and your face is lovely,” “Sixty queens there may be…but my dove, my perfect one, is unique” (SOS 2:2, 2:14, 6:8-9). Sometimes we may secretly feel that God merely tolerates us, that He is obligated to put up with us because of the blood of Jesus. We may acknowledge He loves us yet feel that we can’t be very appealing to Him. Song of Songs shows us that there is no such mixture in God’s thoughts toward us. His desire is for us. He wants us. He is head over heels in love, without reservation, without cold feet. Only by knowing the totality of His love for us will we be changed and love Him unreservedly in return (1 John 4:19).

The Crucified Yet Living Temple

2009-03-05T20:23:00.000-08:00

Ezekiel’s temple shows us the nature of eternal life and of being the body of Christ. The temple bears the mark of the cross, a cross formed by the outer and inner gates which lead to the altar at the temple’s center. Living water flows from the Holy of Holies, where the glory of God dwells. We who are the temple and body of Christ have been crucified with Christ and bear the marks of the Lord Jesus (Gal. 2:20, 6:17). It is by the marks of the cross that Jesus is identified. Jesus’s disciples knew Him by these marks after His resurrection, and we who are raised with Him are now the body that carries this identifying characteristic. It is the mark of the cross, applied by the work of the Spirit in our lives, that shows we belong to Christ, not our confession of Christianity or our attendance at church. We have been raised with Him by the glory of the Father, and rivers of living water flow from our innermost being (Rom. 6:4; John 7:38, 39).
This is eternal life: being crucified and raised with Christ, being the temple in which the death and life of Jesus are revealed (2 Cor. 4:10, 11). Ezekiel’s temple also shows us that because death works in us, life works in others—the river flowing from the temple flows into the Dead Sea, and wherever it flows things live (Ezek. 47:8, 9; 2 Cor. 4:12).
The reality of Ezekiel’s temple must affect us deeply. It must be more than a mere teaching or idea, it must be more than theology. Jesus is not our collection of religious practices, beliefs, morality, and worldview. He is a life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45). He doesn’t want us to obey Him merely. He wants us to be His dwelling place. He doesn’t want servants who are unaware of His business but friends who share His business of laying down His life for His friends (John 15:12-15). Unless we understand and are about His business, there will be no life flowing from us into the sea of dead people around us. We cannot substitute evangelistic programs or missions campaigns for life. The difference is preaching the word versus people being able to see, hear, and touch the Word in us (1 John 1:1). The Holy Spirit must open our eyes to these things, and He must transform us according to the vision of Christ Ezekiel presents. As we are increasingly apprehended by the truth, there is no response but to cast our independent lives away in order to take our place in the temple which is crucified yet lives.

A Dragon in Lamb's Clothing

2009-01-28T19:05:00.000-08:00

The Pharisees…. What was eating those guys? Rewind to the period between the Old and New Testaments—Alexander the Great brings many nations, including Israel, under Greek rule. His vision was to make all peoples culturally Greek. He was so successful that Greek culture persisted even after the rise of the Roman empire. In the time of Jesus, Greek was still the common language, and the New Testament itself was penned in Greek.
The Pharisees trace their roots to this period when the Greeks were pressing their cultural offensive. In Jerusalem, a handful of God’s people violently resisted Greek forces after one of their generals ordered that a pig be sacrificed in the temple. The Israelites routed Greek control of Jerusalem. In so doing they preserved their religious and ethnic heritage. Out of these military defenders of the faith, a priestly group emerged. These continued to resist Greek culture and to protect the faith of their fathers, though not through military means. This group evolved into the Pharisees, which means “separate.” Their zeal for Hebrew tradition and separateness from gentile cultures made them a social and religious force to be reckoned with.
The downside was that the posture of the Pharisees was defensive. They lost touch with God’s mission to draw all nations, not into Jewish culture, but into His kingdom. Instead of advancing the kingdom of God, the Pharisees were caught up in a culture-war. Ironically, their fight to preserve what was godly brought them into conflict with God, and they murdered His Son.
This fact should give us pause. As western culture becomes increasingly less Christian, many of us are guilty of reducing the mission of Christ to a culture-war. Is the culturally defensive posture we often take helping God? Does God need our help? Does protesting the removal of the 10 Commandments from a courthouse or picketing certain movies advance God’s kingdom? Jesus did not defend Himself against the Pharisees, against Herod, against Pilate. Does He now need us to defend Him?
Paul can teach us much in this regard. We don’t see him getting into cultural squabbles as he shares Christ. In Athens, he referenced Greek poetry and an altar to an unknown god while discussing the resurrection (Acts 17:23, 28). Though fully understanding that Christ was the end of the law, Paul submitted to a Jewish purification rite in the interest of reaching out to Jews (Acts 21:24-26). As he told the Corinthians, “I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some” (1 Cor. 9:22).
One final consideration: Christianity dominated western culture for centuries, from 312 when Constantine made Christianity the state religion to modern times. Even when Christianity enjoyed the cultural ascendancy many are fighting for, western culture was not the kingdom of God. Instead, culturally-dominant Christianity was more like the beast in John’s vision: it looked like a lamb but spoke like a dragon (Rev. 13:11). Human culture is human culture, however much we may dress it up in Christianity. Scripture and history show us that a dragon in lamb’s clothing is the best we will come up with if we resort to culture wars. The alternative is to follow the true Lamb wherever He goes (Rev. 14:4).

LIP SERVICE

2008-09-21T20:07:00.000-07:00

“…by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities” (Isaiah 53:11).

Knowledge is not mentally or even spiritually apprehending truth. Knowledge is not related to a conceptual realm. Knowledge is what we do. Knowledge includes the apprehending and understanding of truth, but this is incomplete. Knowledge is only fully realized when we act. In Christianity we are to know God. What is knowing God? Knowledge is what we do, and God is love, so knowing God is love acted out. “Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God” (1 John 4:7). Love is the test of knowledge. As Paul says, “If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge…but have not love, I am nothing” (1 Cor. 13:2).As the above scripture from Isaiah says, Jesus justified many by His knowledge. What knowledge is being referred to, and how did it justify us? It is clear. His knowledge is the end of that same sentence: “…he shall bear their iniquities.” It is this love that Jesus invoked and obeyed unto death. That was His knowledge: an act of suffering, an act of bearing undeserved heartbreak and punishment, an act of emptying Himself. He knew something or, rather, someone—His Father. But what He did made the difference and showed He truly knew. Who did what his father asked in the parable? Not the one who agreed with his mouth but the one who agreed with his life (Matt. 21:28-31).

The Only Truth I Know

2008-07-13T14:42:00.000-07:00

“I stand alone without beliefs. The only truth I know is you.”
—Paul Simon, “Kathy’s Song”

Paul Simon wrote the above lyric for a woman. “Kathy’s Song” is a love song par excellance. Yet every time I hear this line from the song, I cannot help but think of the Lord. Over the years I have believed many things—about faith, about spiritual authority, about the role of spiritual warfare, about church government, about prayer, and many other things. Some of these things have been helpful, some unhelpful, but at this point, the only truth I know is Jesus Himself. He is my first truth, and He is my last.
This is not to say that I reject all beliefs, doctrines, theologies. They are all, in a certain sense, lights in a dark place. But like stars at sunrise, they have faded as the day has dawned and the Morning Star has risen in my heart (2 Peter 1:19; Rev. 22:16). Teachings come and teachings go. Some outlast their usefulness, some are outgrown. But “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb. 13:8).

“The crucified and yet living Christ is the concrete summing up of the Christian message and the Christian faith. He is Himself the wholly concrete truth of Christianity.”
—Hans Kung, On Being a Christian

The Man of Bloodshed and of Peace

2008-05-04T21:59:00.000-07:00

Scripture describes David as a man of bloodshed and says, “The LORD gave David victory everywhere he went” (1 Chron. 18:6; 22:8). David indeed subdued all of Israel’s enemies during his reign so that Solomon inherited a kingdom at peace (1 Chron. 22:18). As a warrior, then, David spilled a lot of blood. But the Bible calls him a man of bloodshed for another reason. David foreshadowed Christ who shed His own blood to deliver us from every enemy which oppressed us that we may dwell in His peaceful kingdom.

By dying, Christ destroyed the devil, crucified the sinful nature with its desires, freed us from sin, crucified the world, and tasted death for everyone (Heb. 2:14; Gal. 5:24; Rom. 6:6, 7; Gal. 6:14; Heb. 2:9). As believers, we all face these enemies, but it is not for us to struggle against them in order to defeat them. Jesus has already done this. Victory comes as we believe in the triumph of the cross. As we believe, the Holy Spirit will cause us to experience Christ’s death within. His death working within will liberate us from the oppression of our spiritual enemies.

While the Lord gave David victory everywhere he went, he was never at peace. The sword never departed from David’s kingdom (2 Sam. 12:10). Only under Solomon was Israel at peace. Solomon, in fact, means “peaceful” (1 Chron. 22:9).

Solomon is the risen Christ in type—King of kings, Son of God, builder of God’s temple (1 Chron. 17:11-14; 22:10; 2 Chron. 9:22, 23). Just as Solomon rested in the victory gained through David’s bloodshed, so the risen Christ rests and reigns by the victory of the cross. God destroyed Satan by the cross, but only through the resurrection did God put Satan under Jesus’s feet (Eph. 1:20-22). The old man was crucified with Christ, but the New Man came forth in the resurrection (Eph. 2:6, 21, 22). Jesus died to sin once for all, but it is only by the resurrection that He lives to God (Rom. 6:7, 10). The world was crucified through the cross of Christ, but the new creation came through His resurrection (Gal. 6:14; 2 Cor. 5:17). The ultimate sign of the rest of Solomon was the building of the temple, a work not possible for David, the man of bloodshed (1 Kings 5:3-5). Likewise, God’s temple in the Spirit could not be built by Christ in His death because the temple we are came forth in His resurrection (John 2:19; Eph. 2:21, 22).

As we know Christ in His death, then, we will meet our enemies face to face and fight them with our faith in the cross (1 Tim. 6:12). But as the Holy Spirit makes Christ’s resurrection real in our experience, we will know the rest of every enemy being under our feet, we will share in the reign of the prince of peace, we will live to God in newness, we will be built together.

The historical administrations of David and Solomon, then, show us two administrations of Christ—His death and resurrection. God’s eternal work was accomplished by both administrations. Consequently, we can see that His work in us will only be accomplished as we are subject to the Holy Spirit’s administration of death and resurrection within. We can expect to experience these two administrations, not once, but throughout our lives. The ascendancy of one or the other is completely under the Holy Spirit’s discretion and control. He will give us victory over particular sins, fleshly thinking, or demonic oppression by bringing us to a new apprehension of Christ’s death. We will then experience rest from, and authority over whatever opposed us as we walk in the newness of Christ’s resurrection. Looking at Bible maps, we can see that the amount of territory under Israel’s control was greatly expanded under the administrations of David and Solomon. This shows us that God’s kingdom control of us will expand as we are ruled by Christ, the Man of bloodshed and of peace.

Lord of the Dead and of the Living

2008-03-19T21:12:00.000-07:00

Death and resurrection cannot be separated. This may appear so obvious that saying it seems like a platitude. But what I observe quite often, in the words of others and in my own thoughts, is a dividing of these into two separate categories. Now, it is often necessary and profitable to separate them for the purpose of teaching, to gain the clarity that only comes when a thing is considered in its own right. But it is disastrous to separate these two in actual belief and in the living walk of the believer. Perhaps we have grown too accustomed to thinking of death and resurrection as different subjects. Perhaps it is tidier to deal in false dichotomies than to face the fullness of Christ. We can say with certainty that there are theologies in the church that are based on neglecting or marginalizing either death or resurrection. Protestants avoid crucifixes. Prosperity teachers make great use of 3 John 2 but can’t preach on Philippians 4:12. Christian ascetics love to fast but don’t show up to the wedding feast. In the first few centuries, the church had to vigorously stave off attempts to deny Christ’s divinity or His humanity. I wonder: is diminishing the reality of Christ’s death or Christ’s resurrection any less serious?

In truth, death and resurrection are not subjects at all, but a Person who died and was raised from the dead—Jesus the Lord. We cannot understand them except in Him, and we cannot have fellowship with Him while we minimize one or the other. He is the Life—“which we have looked at and our hands have touched”—that suffered and died on the cross (1 John 1:1). He is the Lamb who reigns yet was slain (Rev. 5:6). The Risen One invites us to touch His wounds (John 20:27). The Seed falls into the ground and dies so that a harvest will come forth (John 12:24). We eat the broken body and poured out blood of Jesus and enter into life through that communion. What a lie we become involved with when we dissect the Christ and subject His death and resurrection to our preferences.

Hebrews 11 is a passage known to many of us as the faith chapter, or, “The Hall of Faith.” Toward the end of this chapter, the author gives a rapid-fire list of things accomplished by faith. As one reads this list, two very distinct groups of saints emerge. Verses 11:33-35 talk of people who conquered, who walked in victory, who lived prosperously, who saw their dead raised to life again. The next three verses are quite different and deal with those who were mocked, tortured, killed, and went about destitute. Yet verse 39 says, “These were all commended for their faith….”

How could living by faith lead to such disparate experiences among God’s people? To make sense of this, we need to remember not just that these saints had faith, but whom their faith was in—the one who would die and rise again. Perhaps they didn’t believe in Jesus explicitly, but they did believe in Him in types and shadows: Abel’s shed blood, Abram receiving Isaac back from the dead, Joseph being raised to the right hand of Pharaoh, the Passover lamb. Clearly, the power of Christ’s resurrection is manifest through the faith of those in verses 11:33-35, while His suffering and death are revealed in the faith of those in verses 11:36-38. If, then, we live by faith in Jesus, we will know Him in the power of His resurrection, the fellowship of His sufferings, and in His death (Php. 3:10).

Unfortunately, we tend to equate faith in Jesus with certain outward circumstances, and we judge others whose situations are different from our own. Some of us think we’re not living by faith unless we are enduring some personal crisis. We might look at a wealthy, successful person and assume there is no way for them to trust the Lord. Conversely, many make the mistake that faith always conquers and never endures. In this mindset, we may think people lack faith if they experience a season of loss, if they don’t get every job promotion they pray for, or if God doesn’t heal them physically. But both of these positions are symptomatic of a Christianity in which death and resurrection are divorced from the person of Christ and are reduced to subjects or historical events.

Ultimately, eternal life is not believing the right things but believing in Him who died and rose again. It is following the Lamb wherever He goes, whether into the tomb or out of it (Rev. 14:4). It is sharing in His anointing and in His anointing for burial (Acts 10:38; Mark 14:3-9). “If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living. You, then, why do you judge your brother?” (Rom. 14:8-10). I pray the Holy Spirit will lead us into all truth through the testimony of Jesus (John 15:26, 16:13).

God with Us

2007-12-22T12:48:00.000-08:00

During a census driven by greed, in a town to which His parents had no choice about going, after a journey made laborious by labor pains, in an anonymous stable, in a trough nosed by beasts, Jesus was born. When necessities infringe on us, when unfair circumstances direct our paths instead of signs from God, when hardship and strain attend us instead of angels, it is tempting to think God is not with us. Yet, it is precisely in situations such as these that we find Immanuel, “God with us” (Matt. 1:23). We may hear testimonies from those blessed by heavenly signs (such as the wise men), or by the company of angels (such as the shepherds), but these should not be occasions for bitterness or grumbling against the Lord. For, like Mary, we have carried the Son of God within. We have freedom in Him even when we have no choice (2 Tim. 2:9). The presence of New Life gives us rest even when the world won’t give us a room for the night. He is the one to whom all signs lead, of whom all angels sing. We are of the same family as the King of Kings (Heb. 2:11). In tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, or nakedness, God is with us; “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:35-39).

True Christianity

2007-10-06T07:23:00.000-07:00

True Christianity…where can it be found? This is a question that concerns every believer, for everyone wants to experience Christ in the most authentic way possible. Among Christians, there are many recipes for authentic Christianity, and each person’s choice of church or denomination probably reflects their convictions about what ingredients are essential to faith in Christ. Some hold that true Christianity is the most traditional, while others follow the current move of God. Some say true Christianity is found where the miracles are happening, while others say it is where they are not happening. Some put stock in rituals, some do not. Some say we should meet in church buildings, some in houses. There are proponents of contemporary, pop-style worship, and proponents of choral worship. Prosperity is preached by some, poverty by others. Variations of belief and practice are manifold. These days, true Christianity may come dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, or wearing a suit and tie.

In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul prayed “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith” (Eph. 3:17). True Christianity, according to Paul, is found in the heart, where Christ dwells through faith, not in the outward appearances faith may take. When questioned about differences between Himself and John the Baptist, Jesus replied, “Wisdom is proved right by all her children” (Luke 7:25). In other words, being a child of God is not a matter of religious practice. Likewise, when discussing differences between Samaritan and Jewish worship, Jesus said, “[A] time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks” (John 4:23). Again, true worship of God is not a matter of “how” or “where” but Whom.

In light of these things, perhaps the question needs to be framed in another way all together. Does God want us all to conform to one “true Christianity,” or is He more concerned that our Christianity be true, regardless of what persuasion it is? Whatever convictions each of us have about tradition, miracles, rituals, worship, doctrine, and a thousand other things, it is possible to pursue our convictions with hearts full of faith, and to live our lives before God in spirit and truth.

The recipe, then, for true Christianity is, “And whatever you do, whether in word or in deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Col. 3:17). We cannot say the kingdom of God is here or there, in one outward expression of faith or another, “because the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:20, 21). If we live by faith, Christ will dwell in our hearts, and where He is, true Christianity is.

Asking the Hard Questions

2007-06-19T20:50:00.000-07:00

Disappointment with the church is something I regularly hear expressed by non-Christians and Christians alike. This is to be expected from non-Christians, and from Christians too, although it is hard to find out that we think so much like the world. Often, though Christians and non-Christians come from different perspectives, their conclusion is the same: somehow, the church was not what it claimed to be. Somehow, the church let them down, and they don’t want to be a part of it.
I do not deny that the church, being comprised of flawed individuals, has tectonic faults. The wealth of prophecy in the Bible not only confirms this but shows that the church’s biggest critic has always been God. However insightful we are when it comes to the church’s shortcomings, it has all been said before. The difference is that God doesn’t have the luxury of leaving. He made vows, vows in His own blood, to love and to cherish those He has called.
Ephesians 5:25 says, “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word.” This is what the church needs. Unless the Lord continues to love her and give Himself up for her, she will never be what she is called to be. And how does the Head carry on this ministry to His body? How does my head care for my body? Through its members. Church, then, is a context in which the Lord can love His bride and give Himself up for her through individual members. “From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work” (Eph. 4:16).
Unfortunately, many Christians do not view injury as an opportunity to love and give themselves up for the church in the image of Jesus. Instead of suffering wrong, instead of letting death work in us that life may work in others, we come feeling entitled to a good experience and are offended if things don’t turn out (1 Cor. 6:7, 8; 2 Cor. 4:12). But are we above our Master who was crucified by His own people? Have we not understood Stephen’s speech in Acts 7? Jesus’s death crowned a history of God’s people persecuting their own—Joseph sold into slavery by his brothers, Moses rejected by those he was sent to deliver, and many others that Stephen doesn’t mention. If we took these things to heart, the things we suffer would not only make more sense but would have value (1 Peter 4:12).
Let’s take responsibility. It is our illusions of the church, and not the church itself, that have actually failed us. Perhaps…but this level of honesty is hard to come by. As victims, we are granted immunity from the hard questions, especially when it comes to asking the hard questions of ourselves. After all, we were injured, how could any fault lie with us? But we must ask ourselves the hard questions, and move from only receiving God’s love to being His love poured out for others.

“And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves
but for him who died for them and was raised again” (2 Corinthians 5:15).

Household Jesus

2007-06-02T19:26:00.000-07:00

As Paul shares, he seems to run out of breath. No words in any language can encompass the One He has seen by revelation. Is our own vision of Christ so breathtaking? Or are we more interested in a small Jesus that mostly helps us live our own lives but doesn’t take us captive to His vision and purpose? The Old Testament speaks of “household gods,” idols set up in a small shrine in the home. If one wished to rearrange the furniture or move to another house, the gods could be picked up and placed where one wished. They were at the disposal of the family who owned them, and their purpose was to ensure the health and prosperity of the household. This is probably the sort of Jesus many want and have—a Jesus that stays in His place, that we can take wherever we wish, whose purpose centers on us and our desires. Whatever can be said about this household Jesus, we cannot say it is the Jesus of the New Testament. For the Jesus of the New Testament—the One who is before all things, in whom all things hold together—says, “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. Where is the house you will build for me?” (Col. 1:17; Isaiah 66:1, 2). Anyone who has encountered Christ as He is understands they will occupy a place in His house, that He is free to pick them up and take them wherever He wishes, that their life exists for His purpose and desires.

Old Acquaintance Be Forgot

2007-01-04T20:16:00.000-08:00

Imagine a new year’s celebration like this—

At midnight, there are no champagne corks popping, no noisemakers buzzing, no streamers or confetti flying. The neon orange ball does not descend in New York, no games are played, no half empty dishes of nuts or Chex-mix litter the tables. By and by, voices are heard all around. But instead of cat-calls and cheers, loud wailing clutches the air (Ex. 12:30).

The first Jewish new year was something like this. Exodus 12 begins with God telling Moses, “This month shall be for you the beginning of months” (Ex. 12:2). Following this, the Lord describes Passover: “Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month they shall take every man a lamb according to their father’s houses, a lamb for a household” (Ex. 12:3). The lamb, of course, was to be sacrificed, it’s blood put on the doorframe of each house, so that God would pass over the house and spare those inside (Ex. 12:6, 7, 12, 13).

The beginning of the Hebrew year, then, was not determined by cycles of the sun or moon, by sowing and reaping, or by any other thing in nature. It began with the lamb who was slain (Rev. 5:6). At the stroke of midnight, the old had gone, the new had come (Ex. 12:29).

And yet the lamb was much more than the beginning of the year. Through the death of the lamb, God brought a new nation into existence, a people called to be His unique possession out of all peoples (Ex. 19:5, 6). Their history no longer belonged to or began with Egypt where they were slaves. Their beginning was the death of the lamb, by which they were brought out from among the Egyptians who said, “We are all dead men” (Ex. 12:33).

But the nation birthed through the Passover was not comprised of only Hebrews. Scripture describes it as “a mixed multitude” of Hebrews and non-Hebrews (Ex. 12:38). They were not a people because of common ethnicity but because they had believed God’s word and sought refuge in the blood of the lamb (Rev. 7:9, 10).

The Hebrew word for “beginning” is more literally rendered “head.” It can refer to a person’s physical head or to the ruler of a group. Exodus 12:2 could read, “This month shall be for you the head….” The people whom God passed over had a new ruler. They no longer suffered under the tyranny and oppression of Egypt’s Pharaoh. They were now under the headship of God and of the lamb, whose death purchased their freedom (Rev. 5:9).

We too have a Lamb according to our Father’s house—Jesus Christ (John 1:29). Paul says, “He is the beginning, the First-born from the dead, that in everything he might be pre-eminent” (Col. 1:18). When Christ was raised from the dead, we were all raised with Him and became “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9). We no longer find our history or beginning in this world. The Lamb of God has given us a new beginning in Him.

What was brought forth through the cross, what we now are, is of God (1 John 4:4). We are neither Jew nor Greek, nor are we defined by any other worldly designation. We are one New Man in Christ, sons of God because we have believed the truth, the gospel of our salvation (Gal. 3:28; Eph. 1:13, 2:14, 15).

Ephesians tells us that “the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its savior” (Eph. 5:23). Our Head nourishes and cherishes us as His wife—bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh (Eph. 5:29; Gen. 2:23). He does not lord over us to our hurt, or demand more and more of us like Pharaoh and his slave drivers (Eccl. 8:9; Ex. 5:9). For “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish” (Eph. 5:25-27).

As this new year begins, I pray the Lord will deepen our experience of His Son. Newness of life is not only for those recently saved. We are to continually know Christ in the power of His resurrection, in His suffering, and in His death (Php. 3:10). Christ, our Passover lamb has been sacrificed and says to His beloved people, “I am making everything new!” (1 Cor. 5:7; Rev. 21:5).

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”
(2 Cor. 5:17).

Under Siege

2006-11-19T20:50:00.000-08:00

Under Siege

When God’s people were being particularly stubborn and self-reliant, the Lord would allow a foreign army to lay siege to important cities (2 Kings 25:1-3). By cutting off supplies and preventing traffic from moving in or out, the enemy hoped to bend the city to its will. By allowing the city’s resources to be cut off, God hoped the city’s people would turn to Him for what they needed. However, it was often a long time before either of these things happened. To find relief from famine, many resorted to cannibalism (2 Kings 6:25, 29).
There are times when the Spirit of the Lord must lay siege to us as well. How He does this varies: He may permit the enemy to be a thorn in our flesh; extra responsibilities may be thrust on us, depleting time for taking care of ourselves; God may even limit the time we can spend with Him. Whatever the case, God sees the self-reliance of our sinful nature and desires to free us from it. The flesh is a stubborn enemy. It will resort to spiritual cannibalism and feed on itself before it depends on God. But we will not turn or rely on Him as long as the sinful nature is allowed the resources it needs to thrive. Only under siege will we realize the famine that self is and turn to the One who promises, “Whoever believes in me will never hunger” (John 6:35).

Reflections on Colossians 3

2006-11-13T12:28:00.000-08:00

Our life is hidden with Christ. We are no longer seen. What is mortal is swallowed up of life. We no longer live but Christ lives (Gal. 2:20).

Not only is our life hidden with Christ, but the life spoken of here is zoe, divine life, the life Christ is. "Your life" is not you. The life that is ours is of another kind. Genesis chapter one tells us that every creature comes forth from its own kind. Christ is the kind from which we come forth, from whom our life is. Our life is not bios, the physical life, or psuche, the self-life. Our life—who we now are—is the life that we have since we have been raised with Christ. It is the life above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God (Col. 3:1).

We are told not to set our minds on things on the earth (Col. 3:2). That is not where our life comes from. That is not where our life is. The life that related to the old creation, that was the old creation, died. Our new life—our divine life—is in another place, above, raised, in God. In Him we live, and move, and have our being (Acts 17).

We are told to deaden our members that are on the earth. We are from above, not from the earth. It was through our members we related to this creation, this fallen world, through our members we carried on the intercourse of sin. But no more. "For you died." Because one died for all, all died (2 Cor. 5). The members, the medium of our sinful intercourse with the earth, were cut off. Like broken roots, they are powerless to draw the earth into us, powerless to hold us down in it. We are free, free in Christ and above. We no longer have members that drink sin from the earth. We ARE members of Christ: one body drawing one life from the one God.

"For you died." What blessed rest there is for a dead man. Nothing is required of him. "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on. 'Yes,' says the Spirit, 'They will rest from their labors, for their deeds will follow them.'" (Rev. 14:13). At a man's funeral, his employer will not slide up the casket and say, "Bill, I'll still need those reports on Monday." Neither will his wife, clutching a tissue to her nose, tearfully ask if he remembered to take out the garbage. In the same way, God won't come to a dead man and say, "Thou shalt," or "Thou shalt not…." The dead man is no more able to honor his father and mother than he is able to commit murder or adultery. He has no capacity for good or evil. Instead, our labors belong to Christ. If something divine is accomplished through us, Christ is the source. If we sin or fall short, that too is Christ's: "He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness" (1 Peter 2:24).

"For you died." Ecclesiastes expounds what it means to be dead with Christ:

For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward and even the memory of them is forgotten. Their love, their hate, and their jealousy have long since vanished; never again will they have a part in anything that happens under the sun. […] Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom (Eccl. 9:5, 6, 10).

Unlike the living, who anxiously anticipate death, the dead in Christ are no longer enslaved by the fear of death (Heb. 2:15). The dead know nothing except Jesus Christ and Him crucified (1 Cor. 2:2). They have no further reward. Whatever was gain to them they now consider loss for the sake of Christ (Php. 3:7). The dead in Christ are new creations. Old things have passed away. The memory of what they were is forgotten, and we no longer know them according to the flesh (2 Cor. 5:16, 17). Those who are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its passions—love, hate, jealousy—and desires (Gal. 5:24). They have no part in anything that happens under the sun because the world is crucified to them and they to the world (Gal. 6:14). In the world, activities are pursued with might, striving, ambition. But the dead in Christ rest. Christ's energy works powerfully in them (Col. 1:29). Christ is living in them and is doing His work (John 14:10). Dead men do not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through them (Rom. 15:18). In Christ, there is no working, planning, knowledge, or wisdom. Christ has been made for us wisdom, righteousness, holiness, and redemption (1 Cor. 1:30).

When Paul says, "Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature," he assumes that "you died," and also, "you died with Christ" (Col. 2:20; 3:3, 5). We cannot put to death unless we are already dead. Paul is not giving a command with the expectation that we fulfill it. He is asking us to believe in what Christ has already fulfilled. He is commanding us, as we live day to day in the world, to remain above, where we are already dead in Christ, hidden in Christ, raised in Christ, to remain where old things—immorality, evil desires, covetousness, and the other things he lists—have passed away and all things have become new (2 Cor. 5:17). Romans 8:13 is a good companion scripture: "[F]or if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live." As we remain in Christ, the Spirit is released to realize the death of Christ in our bodies.

We have this affection for ourselves, for our old life. We do not want it to really die. We want to help it, to change it, to rehabilitate it, and we want God to share our sympathy with self. This is as when Abram prayed that God would bless Ishmael, the fruit of his flesh. Or, like Samuel, we continue to pity and to pray for Saul in us when God is altogether done with him: "How long will you mourn for Saul, since I have rejected him as king?" (1 Sam). When the people of Israel were past reform, God told Jeremiah, "So do not pray for this people nor offer any plea or petition for them; do not plead with me, for I will not listen to you" (Jer. 7:16). God's plan is not to rehabilitate the old self. He crucified it and is finished with it. He wants us to leave it, to set our hearts and minds on things above, where Christ is seated, where our life is now hidden. Rather than wrestle with the old, we can just walk away from it. God wishes this to be simple for us, but our affection for self makes it a struggle. We mourn and pray for ourselves. We cry and beg God to covenant with our flesh. And yet if we saw how many of our tears flow from self-love we would cry less and believe more. God does not answer prayers for the old self. Christ is our new self, and He is ours without struggle, without tears. God would not have us try to change the old self (which is like a leopard changing its own spots)(Jer. 13:23). He would merely have us change clothes: "[Y]ou have taken off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self," which is Christ (Col. 3:9, 10).

"For you died…." These three little words are a mountain to our faith. They are hard to believe because we live with ourselves every day. We can't be rid of ourselves, of our petty reactions, our selfish desires, our vanity, and all the myriad of other ways we are a plague unto ourselves. Sin just keeps popping up. But we are dead: "For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—because anyone who has died has been freed from sin" (Rom. 6:6, 7). Adam, the root and source of sin, was destroyed at the cross. We are free
Sometimes a corpse will move reflexively. Or, if a dead person's chest is compressed, residual air in the lungs will be forced out, vibrating the vocal cords, and causing a moan. But such occurrences do not mean a person has come back to life. "You died," and all the reflexive jerking of Adam won't change that.

"You died," as in, "You shall not murder," "You shall not steal," "You shall keep the Sabbath." The one whom the commandments addressed ("You") is no more. And where there is no one to command, there is no further use for the commandment.

God does not require us to be anything but dead and hidden with Christ in God. How can a dead man be anything? What can he be that will please God? God is not more pleased with some activities than others. He is not more pleased by our religious activities than with others. He doesn't want super-evangelists, prayer warriors, and the like. He wants us to be dead, hidden, raised. If Christ in us does no more than work 9 to 5 and raise 2.5 kids, then we should rest in that and receive God's pleasure in His Son. If He has us disciple many and minister in the church, we should again rest in that and receive God's pleasure in His Son and not in our activities. For how many years did being about His Father's business mean that Jesus did mundane things? He was no less about His Father's business when obeying His parents or learning the trade of carpentry than He was when casting out demons or teaching in the temple courts. In fact, the majority of His life was spent carrying out unspectacular duties related to family and occupation. Only the last few years of His short life were spent in public ministry. In this, God shows us that He is in every part of life, not just the small part we hallow simply because it includes explicitly religious activity. God is pleased by His Son in us, and His Son is in us at all times. Therefore, whatever we do, we should do "in the name of the Lord Jesus" (Col. 3:17). "Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders" (1 Thess. 4:11, 12). Paul's charge doesn't sound very ambitious. It seems to lack all zeal for the kingdom, all vision for reaching the world with the gospel. Just live life in Christ and Him in us? This can't be enough for God. But being an average person full of Jesus is more valuable to God, and will draw more into His kingdom, than 100 super-ministers who think they please God by their zeal.

Where the Wind Comes from and Where It Is Going

2006-03-20T22:58:00.000-08:00

Fire, wind, and earthquake happened because of God’s presence, but God was not in those (1 Kings 19:11, 12). Manifestations or experiential hallmarks of God’s presence are not God. Signs follow those who believe, but signs are not God (Mark 16:17). Jesus healed many people, but healing is not Jesus. Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, but resurrection is not Jesus. Rather, Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life” (11:25). We must never confuse the effects of Jesus’s presence with Jesus Himself. These things may serve as an initial point of contact with Jesus, and it may be that we know Him through certain things for a time, but ultimately, we must go beyond the ways He ministers to us, beyond supernatural manifestations, and beyond every experience to be had, and we must know Him as He is. If we do not, then we will not even really understand any ministries, supernatural manifestations, or experiences of God.

“The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going” (John 3:8). If we do not go beyond the experiential effects of God, then we are those who may hear God and feel His touch when the Spirit blows, but who do not know where He is coming from or where He is going. The center of our being is in ourselves and in this world and we know God as a sort of atmospheric disturbance—He rustles our leaves and moves things around, but as to His real nature and way of thinking we are basically ignorant. God is something we know of and regularly experience, but, like the wind, He is essentially beyond our grasp. This is seen in an exchange between Obadiah and Elijah—“I don’t know where the Spirit of the LORD may carry you when I leave you. If I go and tell Ahab and he doesn’t find you, he will kill me. Yet I your servant have worshiped the LORD since my youth” (1 Kings 18:12). Obadiah indeed served the Lord, but was not knowing Him by the Spirit. Elijah, however, was one who evidently knew God and moved with His Spirit. This is also summed up when Jesus says to His disciples, “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you” (John 15:15).

Jesus said that those born of the Spirit are like the wind. They know where they are coming from and where they are going, just as John’s gospel says of Jesus that He knew He had come from God and was returning to God (John 13:3). Those born of the Spirit, therefore, live and move and have their being in God. Their source is God (live), they proceed and move in God, they return (have their being) in God. Rather than living in the realm of our experience and only knowing God as He periodically moves and rustles things, God wants us to live and move and have our being in Him. In other words, rather than living in the earth and knowing the wind only by its touch and sound as it blows, God wants us to live in that place where the wind is coming from and where it is going.

Unfortunately, it is possible to experience God, to feel His touch, to hear His voice, and to know His presence, but not be of His Spirit. The scriptures are replete with examples of people like this. King Saul, for instance, was someone who prophesied on a regular basis and was seen often in the company of Samuel, a prophet and prominent man of God. Saul was anointed and ministered in his particular function as king. But, he did not keep God’s word, he did not know God, and, despite all his experiences of God, remained a fearful, grasping, murderous man at heart. Those that will say to the Lord, “did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?” are sons of Saul and will receive nothing from Jesus but the sad testimony, “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness” (Matt. 7:21-23). Just before Jesus explained to His disciples that friends know their master’s business, He explained what that business is—“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you” (John 15:12-14). Those in whom Christ’s death and life are working, those who are participating in His cross, are those that are knowing God and who are His friends. They are those who have come from God and are returning to God and who move with the wind of His Spirit.

The Drab Cloak of Love

2006-01-31T15:56:00.000-08:00

My life is forfeit. The only thing God considers valuable is that which is of Himself. God is love. Love is what God values. “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers” (1 Jn. 3:16). This is the only fellowship with Him: daily participating in His death and life. John says that if we love (meaning practical action), our hearts will be at rest before God and He will do whatever we ask (1 Jn. 3:18-23). Self-sacrifice is the condition on God’s absolute favor in prayer, for it is only then that we are in union with Him and with His will; it is only then when we are living for His purpose; it is only then He can give to us all things without restraint. John also says that it is only when we love practically, when we obey God’s command to love, that we are remaining in Him, for, again, such love is God’s very nature (1 Jn. 3:24). It is not those who call Him Lord who remain in love; it is not those who cast out demons or prophesy; it is not those who have all knowledge or give all they have to the poor or die as martyrs (Matt. 7:21-23; 1 Cor. 13:1-3). It is only those who love, whose bodies are given over without reservation to Him that, through them, He might love those around them. About this, we must think very mundanely. It is the drab, moment by moment inconveniences, favors, and requests placed before us by our fellow men that are the very test of love. It is, as John says, simply seeing our brother in his day to day needs (1 Jn. 3:17). How do we respond? Can we prefer ourselves, our own comfort, our own convenience, even in small things, and claim that God lives in us? It is in the drab cloak of the daily and the mundane that God comes to us and asks for food, for clothing, for sanctuary; it is in our very own local prisons and hospitals that God waits to be visited; it is in the drab cloak of what is, to us, so ordinary and habitual, that God lies waiting for our hard hearts to perceive what is right under our noses and needs attention, love, concern (Matt. 25:35, 36). It is in the things that, because of their very ordinariness, offend our arrogant selves, that God waits to exalt those that humble themselves out of conscience toward Him. Help me Jesus. The Bible says you laid down your life. The sense is that you placed yourself, your life, took your hands off of it, lost it, completely gave up control of it, turned your back on it and walked away. To this we are called and must respond. Outside of this there is no fellowship with you, no eternal life. Outside of this we deceive ourselves in powerless, hollow religion. Outside of this there is no value, no purpose, no reality, no truth. I want you to possess me in truth. I want that my body should be given over to you each moment, lost to myself, given to you and others for whatever purpose—great or mundane—that you and circumstance require. Teach me your ways. Test me and know my wicked thoughts and lead me in the way everlasting (Psalm 139:23, 24).

The Blesser and the Breaker

2006-01-23T10:40:00.000-08:00

“There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what are they among so many?” Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” Now there was much grass in the place; so the men sat down, in number about five thousand. Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted (John 6:9-11).

Many times, in ourselves, we feel completely inadequate, especially when there is a monumental task before us. When circumstances seem to unite against us, when what is required of us seems to be waxing larger and larger like a wave gaining strength to crash, when challenges and the like outnumber us 5,000 to one, do not fear—come to Jesus. When we look at ourselves, especially in the face of fears, we may look small, we may look to ourselves as “a lad.” Or, as when the first Israelites spied out the land of Canaan and saw its inhabitants, we may say, “We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them” (Numbers 13:33). We may, in this state, ask of ourselves and our strengths, “What are they when my needs are so great?”

However, we are not to esteem ourselves in this way, as if the resources we possess—whatever 5 loaves and 2 fishes we may have—are what define us. No, the Lord Jesus is near; He is so near, we need only turn, as I’m sure the lad in John only needed to turn and lift his meager offering. In the hands of Jesus, this kid’s lunch fed 5,000.

But there is a catch, a detail in the story that cannot be overlooked. Matthew’s gospel says, “taking the five loaves and the two fish he looked up to heaven, and blessed, and broke and gave the loaves to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds” (Matt. 14:19). If we turn to Jesus, we must understand that what we give to Him, He will bless and break. This is what stumbles us so often as we walk with Him. Where are the promised resources? Where is the abundant life He came to give us? Where is the blessing that being God’s child is supposed to bring? It is there, it is all there, in the place of breaking.

The blessing is in the breaking. The abundance is in the loss. “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the LORD Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it” (Malachi 3:10). The disciples tested the Lord in this and had 12 baskets of leftovers when they had finished feeding the crowds. “Unless a seed is falling into the ground and dying, it is remaining by itself, alone. But if it is dying, it is bringing forth a harvest” (John 12:24). What we are may not look like much, but if we give it to Jesus, and are not offended when He breaks us, then so much blessing—the blessing of His abundant Life—will pour out of us that we will not have room for it. Likewise, we may look like “a bare grain” to ourselves, but if we will be “planted with Him in the likeness of His death,” He will increase in us in a harvest of resurrection—newness of life (1 Cor. 15:37, Rom. 6:5). Like the woman in Mark 14 who broke open a costly jar of ointment and poured it out upon Jesus, the anointing and fragrance of Christ are there in prodigal amounts if we will place ourselves in the hands of Him who is Blesser and Breaker.

II.

Give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, ‘Who is the LORD?’ Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God (Prov. 30:8, 9).

Sometimes, we find ourselves in a season where there is not enough of us to go around. God causes need to multiply around us, and though he continually multiplies us to meet the needs, we grow tired (in our flesh) of living at a place where provision exactly covers need. We begin, at this point, to desire something extra, something for ourselves. One can imagine that, as the disciples (who were hungry themselves) passed out thousands of pieces of bread and fish, that they began to feel wearied, perhaps even slighted by the fact that the loaves blessed by Jesus’s hands perfectly met every need but their own. This was the lesson, among many, that the disciples needed to learn from the loaves and fishes, the lesson of which Jesus asked, “Do you still not understand?” (Matt. 16:9).

What of the bread which Jesus broke, blessed, and distributed? Talk about there not being enough of you to go around. To the disciples—who thought that the bread’s ability to meet need came from itself, from its relative size and volume—it probably appeared to be a parable about not getting spread too thin. But the bread knew that its sufficiency, its proportionate efficacy, came from the breaking and blessing of Christ. The disciples were focused on need. For the bread, only one thing was needful (Luke 10:41, 42). The disciples, caught up in outward appearances and fleshly minded judgments, complained to Jesus that five-thousand could not be fed. But the bread made no such complaints. It did not resist the Lord based on personal estimations of its resources or capacity. It merely laid itself in Jesus’s hands, content to be there as He doled it out and doled it out, as 100 took from it, as 1,000 took from it, as 5,000 took from it and had as much of it as they wanted. The disciples told Jesus it was late and to send the people home. But the bread reserved nothing for itself; it prescribed no limits to the Lord. It waited instead for the word of Him who gave the ocean its boundary, who marked out the abyss, who gave borders to Israel. The disciples were concerned about what they what they had to give and how they would look if they were inadequate. The bread existed only for the Lord’s concern that the people be fed.

Hear, then, you disciples of the Lord, the lesson of the bread: “This bread is my flesh which I will give for the life of the world” (John 6:51). “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work” (John 4:34). Because the bread became food in the hands of the Lord, it did not need food. Because it did not seek to save itself, twelve baskets of it were saved as leftovers. If we will allow ourselves to be the flesh Jesus gives for the life of the world, if we will consent to the affliction of bread, then we will never be hungry, and we will nourish many who are in the wilderness, far from provisions.

Temple of the New Creation

2006-01-16T11:47:00.000-08:00

Introduction

Many parallels exist between the account of creation in Genesis and descriptions of the various temples found throughout the Old Testament. Studying the creation in conjunction with the temples can help us gain a greater vision of Christ and a greater vision for the church.
Solomon’s temple had elements of creation in it. Trees, flowers, and fruit adorned the architecture, and various animals were depicted in the ritual furniture (1 Kings 6:29; 7:18, 25, 29). Certainly, the creation in the temple was not one that had been seen before. It was a new creation, a world within the world.
Much later, Christ would claim that His own body was the true Temple (John 2:19). Paul also taught that if anyone is in this Temple, “he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Cor. 5:17). This is what has eternally been in God’s heart—Christ, the Temple of the New Creation. To introduce Christ as the Temple of the New Creation is the purpose of this booklet. At times Moses’s tabernacle will also be referenced, and it should be understood that the tabernacle and the temple are, in this study, interchangeable concepts. Solomon’s temple was, in many ways, just an expanded, more permanent version of Moses’s tabernacle, and there are places in scripture where the tabernacle is called the temple and vice versa (1 Sam. 3:3; 1 Chron. 9:23).
What will also be seen is that the Temple of the New Creation is the seed of God “which is Christ” (Gal. 3:16). This seed was planted at the cross, and God is causing it to grow. For “the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in the field. Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree” (Matt. 13:32). Each pairing of temple furnishings and days of creation reveals an increase of the seed, a greater knowing of Christ to which the church is called. What we have in the creation story, then, is God “declaring the end from the beginning,” and showing us His entire plan in the first chapter of the Bible (Isaiah 46:10).

In the Beginning: The Ark: The Alpha

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1).

The entire creation was first conceived in the beginning, in God’s heart and mind. This beginning corresponds to the most holy place of the temple or tabernacle and to the ark of the covenant. In this chamber, veiled from every human eye, God alone dwells. “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared” in this chamber, for, concealed in its heart, in the ark of the covenant, are the tablets of the law—the word of God. Every detail of the tabernacle, its furnishings, and the arrangement of Israel’s camp first existed in the word of the law, and through this word they were made. Likewise, the Spirit of God put all the plans for the temple in David’s mind, and so it first existed in David’s word to Solomon. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. Through him, all things were made” (John 1:1-3). As the Word of God, Christ is the Alpha, God’s beginning (Rev. 22:13).

Light: The Bronze Altar: The Cross

“And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. God saw that the light was good,
and he separated the light from the darkness” (Gen. 1:3, 4).

On the first day of creation, the word “which for ages past was kept hidden in God,” came forth in a sweeping judgment—God separated between light and darkness and called the light good (Eph. 3:9). Judgment, then, became the foundation of creation and continued to pervade every aspect of it: waters were divided from waters, the sea from the dry land, day from night, heavenly creatures from creatures of the deep, man from the beasts. The first day of creation was a great altar, like the bronze altar that sat just inside the entrance to the tabernacle. Anyone drawing near to God would be immediately confronted by the consuming fire on the altar and the blood spilled at its base (Ex. 40:6). It divided what was inside the tabernacle (light) from what was outside the tabernacle (darkness). Its judgment was also pervasive: the tabernacle and all its furnishings were cleansed by its blood, the Israelites were set apart from all other nations by its blood, incense was lit by its fire (Heb. 9:19-22; Lev. 16:12, 13; Numb. 16:46).
Shortly before dying on the cross, Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24). The cross was God’s complete and final judgment. It separated what is of God from what is not of God (Eph. 5:8). Through the judgment of the cross the Word was planted in the formless, empty world (Gen. 1:2, 3). The cross is the foundation of any work of God. If we would be a part of His works, then we must first come to the altar—“If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake, he will save it” (Luke 9:23).

Sky: The Tabernacle: The Place of Union and Revelation

“And God said, ‘Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water.’ So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. God called the expanse ‘sky’” (Gen. 1:6-8).

Psalm 19:4-6 says, “In the sky he has pitched a tent for the sun, which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his wedding tent, like a champion rejoicing to run his course. It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is hidden from its heat.” These verses suggest a connection between the second day of creation and the tabernacle, the tent structure itself. In looking at the sky and the tabernacle, two things are implied: union and revelation.
Once a year, on the day of atonement, the High Priest entered the most holy place in the temple/tabernacle to sprinkle blood on the ark. Having covered all sin, having removed the separation between God and man, having joined God to His people, we can imagine the High Priest coming forth like a bridegroom from his wedding tent, like a champion rejoicing over the defeat of sin. As he emerges, he parts the bluish veil covering the entrance to the tabernacle, and his face, “shining like the sun in its strength,” is revealed to the people (Ex. 27:16; Rev. 1:16). Behind him, the cloud fills the tabernacle, and God’s glory is also revealed (Ex. 40:34; 1 Kings 8:10, 11).
John’s gospel says, “The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Jesus also said of His body, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days” (John 2:19). It was in the temple of Jesus’s body that sin was forever removed, God was joined to man, and the glory of heaven was seen in earth.

Gathering the Waters: The Laver/Sea: Burial

“And God said, ‘Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.’ And it was so. God called the dry ground ‘land,’ and the gathered waters he called ‘seas’” (Gen. 1:9, 10).

On the 3^rd day of creation, we find everything buried by water. Then God spoke. The waters rolled away, and something totally new appeared—dry land. In the tabernacle, waters were also gathered to one place in the laver (called “the sea” in Solomon’s temple: 1 Kings 7:23-26). Before and after performing sacrifices, the priest washed in these waters.
The laver was made of mirrors of polished bronze, given to Moses by the women of Israel (Exodus 38:8). Perhaps, as he washed away dirt and blood from the sacrifice, the priest could see a reflection. But like the dry land which appeared in the waters of Genesis, what appeared in the laver was something totally new—not the priest’s face, but a face reflected through water and blood.
The 3^rd day, then, is a transition from death to life. On the 3^rd day, Jesus rose again: the filth of sin and the stain of the cross was gathered into the tomb and buried. A new man appeared, “one who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ” (1 John 5:6). “We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life” (Rom. 6:4).

Plants: Table of the Bread of the Presence: Communion

“Then God said, ‘Let the land produce vegetation…’ And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds” (Gen. 1:11, 12).

After the dry land appeared, it brought forth vegetation and life of all kinds (Gen. 1:12,
24). “‘The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed upon the ground…The earth produces of itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear” (Mark 4:26-28). Clearly, this is resurrection. The word of God fell into the ground and died; the life He gave brought forth a harvest of believers. The gold table in the tabernacle—on which sat 12 loaves of bread and a bowl of wine—brings another element to this day of creation. Resurrection is not just harvests and fruitfulness. The further purpose of seed is that it be ground into flour and made into bread; fruit is to be crushed and made into wine. Those whom Christ saves He calls to the communion table, that they “may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death” (Phil. 3:10). Only through the grinding and crushing of the Lord will we know the bread of life in our daily experience. Only at His table can we truly enter into His life: “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day” (John 6:53).

Sun, Moon, Stars: Lampstand: The Light of the World

“And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night…God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness” (Gen. 1:14).

As signs dividing day from night, the sun, moon, and stars bear the judgment of the first day in themselves. Even at night, “the light shines in the darkness” as a witness of God’s great judgment (John 1:5). This was also the purpose of the lampstand in the tabernacle. All day and night it was to shine in the tabernacle; it was never to go out (Ex. 27:20). Daniel wrote, “Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever” (Dan. 12:3). The wise in this verse are those who bear the judgment of the cross in themselves. Because they have died with Him and raised with Him, their hearts shine with “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6). Having endured with Him, they also reign with Him in the same way that the sun, moon, and stars governed the day and the night. And just as stars help ships navigate by their light, these shine in the dark world as they “hold out the word of life,” and lead many who are lost to God (Phil. 2:16).

Living Creatures: Altar of Incense: His Body

“And God said, ‘Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of sky…Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind.’ And it was so” (Gen. 1:20, 24).

The fifth and sixth days involve the making of living creatures. Living creatures are also found in Revelation and in Ezekiel before the throne of God.[1] In each case, there are 4—an eagle, an ox, a lion, and a man—and between them, they represent nearly all types of animals mentioned in Genesis. Ezekiel also mentions that among the living creatures are burning coals, and this suggests the gold altar of incense in the temple (Ezek. 10:2). The incense burned on this altar was made of 4 different spices. The spices were ground up, mixed in equal amounts, and burned (Ex. 30:34-36). Each lost, in that sense, its individual scent, and in the fire of the altar became one new fragrance rising to please the heart of God. Paul says, “For we are to God the fragrance of Christ” (2 Cor. 2:15). In the church, we often speak of individuals having the fragrance of Christ, and this is true in its own way. However, applying this verse individually misses the real significance of incense—that WE are the fragrance of Christ, that as we give up our lives for one another, the love of Christ removes the stench of sin and satisfies God. In this sense, an individual can’t have the fragrance of Christ, but a group of people surrendered to God and to each other can.
These things are true of the living creatures as well. Ezekiel wrote that “wherever the Spirit would go, they would go, without turning as they went” (Ezek. 1:12). In other words, none of the living creatures lived and moved according to what kind of animal it was. The eagle did not fly off on its own for God while the lion roared and ran his own race of faith. Sometimes they all flew, and sometimes they all roared “Holy, holy, holy,” but whatever they did, they did unto the Lord as one (Ezek. 1:19; Rev. 4:8). Christians gathered together, then, do not constitute the body of Christ. We are only living as His body when we move together by one Spirit to express one Person—“not I, but Christ” (Gal. 2:20).

Man/Sabbath: Ark: Omega

“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth” (Gen. 1:26).

“Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them…And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done” (Gen. 2:1-3).

When man was unveiled, God finished all His work of creating, and on the seventh day He rested. Solomon also finished the temple in the seventh year (1 Kings 6:38). The temple, which had only existed in a vision given to David, was built by Solomon “in all its parts.” The heavens and the earth, which had only existed in the beginning, were finished by God’s word “and all the host of them” (Gen. 2:1)
The Temple of the New Creation is being built in heavenly places, without hands. From the quarry of the earth, God is bringing living stones to “Christ Jesus, himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord” (Eph. 2:20, 21). At the appointed time of the Father, this Temple will be unveiled, and “the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21). The Father’s vision will then be manifest in all its parts, in all its hosts. This day is also referred to as the second coming or “the day the Son of Man is revealed” (Luke 17:30).
Before creating man, God could look on every kind of plant and animal and call it good, but there was nothing of His own kind on which He could look and call it god (John 10:34-36). As the image of God, man satisfied the deep purpose in God’s heart, the purpose that first moved Him to speak. For God did not create so that He could have a creation. He created so that His glorious image could fill the universe (Eph. 4:10).
God is 3 persons in One who is love. God’s image—Christ—is “many parts but one body” building itself up in love (1 Cor. 12:20; Eph. 4:16). When this man, this Temple of God’s love, is revealed, He will fill the creation and subdue it (Gen. 1:28). “Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end” (Isaiah 9:7).
The One God has chosen to rule in peace is the Sabbath. Him God has blessed and set apart as the day in which God and man find rest and enjoyment in each other. At the close of each of the first 6 days, Genesis records that “there was evening, and there was morning.” But on the 7^th day, there is no mention of evening or morning because it is a day without end. “It will be a unique day, without daytime or nighttime—a day known to the LORD” (Zech. 14:7). This day also existed in Solomon’s temple. In the temple, peace was made between God and man through sacrifice. Because of this, Solomon prayed, “Now arise, O LORD God, and come to your resting place” (2 Chron. 6:41).
With the ascendancy of this Man to the throne, we return once again to the ark, called the throne of God throughout the Old Testament (1 Sam. 4:4). The Word, once hidden in the ark in the beginning, came forth as the Alpha; He accomplished everything for which God sent Him and returned in a many membered body as God’s Omega, ruler of a “new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3:13). Just as God gave man authority over all beasts, so He has given this Man “authority over the nations,” represented by beasts throughout scripture (Rev. 2:26; 13:1; Dan. 7:17). Just as God was mindful of man and put “all things under his feet,” so He has decreed “that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:10, 11). Most importantly, scripture assures us that this Man will not hand over His kingdom to Satan, as did Adam. Instead, He will hand over “the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority, and power…When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all” (1 Cor. 15:24-28). This is the 7^th day which God has set aside and blessed: “one body…one Spirit…one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Eph. 4:4-6).

Summary

“The kingdom of God…is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air perched in its branches” (Mark 4:30-32).

Before leaving this study, a clearer sense of the progression, the growth of God’s seed is needed. In the beginning, the seed of the Word was veiled in God. Through the judgment of the cross, He was planted in the formless, empty world, and God was joined to man. For 3 days, He lay buried, but then rose as a sprout from the earth and brought forth a harvest of believers. These He calls into communion, that they “may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable to his death” (Phil. 3:10). Remaining in communion with Him changes them into heavenly creatures who “shine like stars in the universe as [they] hold out the word of life” (Phil. 2:15, 16). As Christ continues to increase, however, the prominence of individuals in the church should decrease (John 3:30). Just as stars fade in the light of the rising sun, so individual expressions of Christ should fade as the Son rises among us and is expressed in a corporate manner. Finally, Christ will be revealed in the creation at His coming, and God’s redemption will be extended to all things. This whole process can be understood as the Word becoming flesh. Jesus of Nazareth, was the seed of this vision; Christ, that same seed revealed in many sons, in the church, and in all of creation, is much fruit and a harvest (John 12:24).

[1] Rev. 4:6-8; Ezek. 1:5-14.