Mandurah 28.06.2009
Introduction
The time is coming soon when the “presence of God” will be experienced in a powerful and pervasive way that will not be tied to special buildings, special people or special gifts (a liturgical/sacramental/charismatic view). An “unambiguous awareness of indwelling love” will break upon our nation when the major obstacle at present holding this back is dealt with. “Think of the most shameful thing that ever happened to you.” Shame is a deeply inward experience and it is the presence of shame that is blocking the undeniable experience of the love of God that comes through the indwelling of his Word.
God the Word
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.” (John 1:1-3). The love of God (1 John 4:8) exists as the Word of God and all things were created by the love of the Word. There is no other way for creatures to exist than to surrounded (Acts 17:23, 28) by the eternal power and divine nature (Rom 1:20) of God’s expressive Word. To understand why we are not impacted by this omnipresent love we need to go back to the beginning.
Creation for Presence
In creating humans in his own image and likeness (Gen 1:26-28) God desired us to be as intimate (= inwardness) with him as he is with himself. Everything Adam and Eve touched, saw and tasted conveyed to them deep inside the delight of the Creator Word (Prov 8:30-31).
One Word however seemed to be an exception to their joy, “of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”” (Gen 2:17). The tree of knowledge was good, attractive and pleasing to the eyes (Gen 2:9), it alone was special because of the specific Word concerning it, “you shall surely die”. Every trial of faith comes down to one thing, will we accept or reject God’s Word.
Fallen from the Word
The serpent’s word, ““You will not surely die” (Gen 3:4), is directly antagonistic to the Word of God. The claim is that obedience to the word of his mouth has the power to immortalise humanity. He claims to be able to grant to Adam and Eve eternal life as a right apart from obedience to the Word God has spoken.
The fundamental sin of humanity, the essence of all idolatry, is to exchange the glory of the God for our own image (Rom 1:23). We have substituted the wonder of our own humanity for the Word of God; but only the Word of God is by nature immortal. By elevating the significance of ourselves to the level of the Word of God, we treat ourselves with infinite seriousness, we have a God complex. We have foolishly substituted the weakness of the created for the power of the Creator.
This is why our lives are filled with so much frustration, anxiety, restlessness, stress, burn out, spiritual depression etc. If we simply let God be God for us a huge weight would fall off our shoulders –as parents, wives, husbands, workers, Christians. So strong is our desire to have “God-like” glory without God that we are totally blind to spiritual reality (Rom 1:21). Satan’s presence in Eden was so pathetic that he had to camouflage himself as one of God’s creatures; he was so naked of glory he had to clothe himself in a body that had been created by the Word of God. He is a parasite who has no life in himself (cf. John 5:26). God is a true Father whose Word is truth (John 17:17). Satan is a false father (John 8:44) who has no creative life giving Word [no Son of his love (Luke 3:22; 9:35; Eph 1:6)]. Satan’s parasitic nature shows that he is truly dead and you cannot resurrect yourself by any amount of self-talk, you can only bring others down with you.
Adam and Eve fell by taking a lying dead word into their hearts, taking on the nature of the devil (Eph 2:1-3) they no longer had God’s Word living in them and they lost all hope of glory (Col 1:27). The absence of the indwelling glory of God was experienced as shame. When they looked at each other they knew that that their flesh was perishing they felt utterly naked of value and had to cover themselves with whatever they could find. Shame exposes the satanic lie that you can reject the Word of God and live. Every experience of shame is a prelude to eternal damnation. Human beings will do anything to stave off the thought of eternal death.
People everywhere seek to cover over the shame of the loss of the glory of the indwelling Word – hence the fashion industry, pride about houses, cars, families, titles, jobs, nationhood achievements, spirituality etc.
The presence of the God of glory (Acts 7:2) has become utterly traumatic to humans who know that they have “fallen short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23), “And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.” (Gen 3:8). In themselves the fallen feel the sure sentence of death, just as God has spoken. [(Ps 104:29-30 cf. Gen 2:7)].
Living without the Word
“I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.” (1 Cor 15:50). Living as “flesh and blood” exposes the human conscience to the fear of death that brings lifelong slavery to Satan, sin and idolatry (Heb 2:14-15). As long as human beings are in the decaying flesh apart from the indwelling Word they know that they deserve to die and they have no sure hope (Rom 1:32). This reveals itself in as simple a thing as being too embarrassed to ask someone their age. E.g. JY’s birthday last week.
Jesus explains salvation solely in terms of the Word, “Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples” (8:31). When they tried to argue with him he said, “you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you.” (John 8:37). The ONLY difference between true and false disciples (salvation and damnation) is the indwelling Word. The true Word is not defined by adherence to orthodox doctrine (James 2:19) nor by ecstatic emotional experiences or miraculous works. The true Word whom we believe in from the heart (Rom 10:9) is Jesus and there can be no confusion about his identity.
The Incarnation of the Word
The introduction to John’s Gospel climaxes in “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:1-3, 14).
The cost of the Word becoming flesh is immeasurable. Paul describes this humiliation he “made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant” (Phil 2:7), “though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor” (2 Cor 8:9), he came “in the likeness of sinful flesh” (Rom 8:3). Jesus took on fallen, mortal, decaying flesh – a human nature that had been stripped of the glory of God. The cost of God becoming human in this way is incalculable. JY visiting Mike Fewson in hospital re kidney stones operation conversation about a pain that is totally disabling, to think of living with this pain in a Third World country is completely unbearable. God in Christ left behind the infinite pleasure of his Father’s presence to live in a world of disease, demonization, political enslavement, cruelty, betrayal and death.
Jesus knew that in his flesh he could do nothing to change the state of humanity, the kingdom, power and glory that came through his life belonged to the indwelling Father, “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works.” (John 14:10 cf. Matt 12:28).
Jesus refused the satanic temptation in the wilderness; he refused to “act like God apart from God’s Word”. In his state humiliation Jesus had no “God-complex”. He always let God the Father be God in and through him. Stress and burn out were impossible for Jesus. This is why he can say, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”” (Matt 11:28-30).
Yet there is throughout the ministry of Jesus a paradoxical dynamic, “I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how great is my distress until it is accomplished!” (Luke 12:50). Jesus is totally governed by the need to suffer on the cross, not because he cannot get the thought of pain out of his mind, but because he knows that in the present limits of the fallen flesh he has taken on he cannot give as God gives. Jesus was straining towards Jerusalem (Luke 9:51) because he knew that as the Word in fallen flesh he must die and be born again from the dead (cf. 1 Pet 1:3). Only in this way could he impart eternal life to those who would believe in him.
The climax of the humiliation of the Word comes at the point of dereliction, ““My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”” (Mark 15:34), the greatest crisis that could ever come upon a human being, “a famine …of hearing the words of the Lord.”(Am 8:11) has come upon Jesus. The word is at a total loss for words of his own, because he is totally without the manifest presence of the Father. In bearing our sin Jesus is cast into the outer darkness, he has heard the terrible and final word, ““‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire” (Matt 25:41), he shares the fate of the wicked, to be completely bereaved of the indwelling Word is hell. For Jesus to experience God in this way is for Jesus to feel in himself he is no longer the Revealer, no longer the visible image of God, no longer the Word. All the glory of his humanity concerning the truth of God is experienced as dead and damned and forsaken. This is how Jesus carried the fallen flesh of our humanity to extinction.
Jesus dies in fallen flesh-and–blood but he is raised from the dead with glorified humanity (Luke 24:29; 1 Cor 15:43). The old flesh dwelling in the realm of sin, Satan is no more, a new creation has arrived in the resurrection of his humanity (2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15).
Living by the Word
If you believe in your heart that God raised Christ from the dead (Rom 10:9) then “the hope of glory” (Col 1:27) lives in you. The resurrection life of Jesus the Word lives in you and no blame, shame, satanic accusation, illness, lies or any supposed failure in life can cause you to fear the wages of sin which is death (Rom 3:23). However, the apostle says, “Christ dwells in our hearts through faith” (Eph 3:17). This is the crunch point; this is why so many believers struggle to hear and speak the Word of God and to know his indwelling presence
Remember the difference between a real Father and a false father, between God and Satan, the true Father has a creative Word who wants to come and live in us and give us glory. A false father has no creative word and what he says strips away glory. Many of us have been hurt by false words from our human fathers and have also had false/condemning spiritual fathers in the church. Whatever negativities men have said to us, in natural or spiritual families, there is only one creative Word we must take into our hearts- Jesus.
Removing the Obstacles
We cannot move the Word of God into our lives but we can remove the obstacles that get in the way of his manifest presence. God’s own identity, what it means for him to be Father and Son, what it means especially to be Our Father in heaven (Matt 6:9) is defined for his own self – consciousness by the cross. The cross is God’s own witness of how much he longs to reveal himself by his Word as OUR Father.
As I was out praying I sensed the Lord saying, in relation to this gathering that he has a cross in heaven for you. We come into the experience of the resurrecting power of the Word in our lives in exactly the same way as Jesus did – by death and deliverance at the hands of our Father (Acts 4:27-28; Phil 3:10). God will kill your pride, your self-sufficiency, your reliance on your own word, again and again and again, and he will not do this in a church centred way, he will do it in a life centred way, through the struggles of the circumstances of ordinary human existence, in birth, death, marriage, family, illness, stress in work, finances, family life, relational conflict, misunderstanding, rejection… The “cross in heaven” means that in his exalted Lordship Christ plans your demise and resurrection (Gal 2:19-20) in infinite detail and precise application to your unique circumstances, every day. To see your life as a process of death and resurrection requires a certain revelation, Paul exhorts the Ephesians, “So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory” (Eph 3:13). Those who lose heart because they do not submit to the wisdom and will of the Word in the way of the cross and resurrection lose a sense of the glory of the indwelling Word. They seem to feel God does not speak to them or speak through them, they live in shame whereas they should be “rejoicing that you have been counted worthy to suffer dishonour for the name of Jesus” (Acts 5:41).