24.03.2006
Introduction
On the Friday morning of 17th March we began with a meditation of Hebrews 10:5 -7, 5 Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me;6 in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure.7 Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.’” (Hebrews 10:5- 7)
[(This is based on the Greek O.T. translation of Psalm 40:6-8 6 Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but my ears you have prepared for me; burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not require. 7 Then I said, “Here I am, I have come— it is written about me in the scroll. 8 I desire (delight) to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart.”)]
The important subject for prayer Jesus delight in doing the will of the Father. He claimed John 8:28 -29,38 [I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me. ]29 The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him.” 38 I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence, …”
Jesus always did what was pleasing to the Father. We can only have the Father’s presence when we are pleasing the Father. The key to this presence seems to lie in honouring the pattern he has set for our relationships.
A Pattern for All Things
According to Hebrews 10:5, Jesus recognises that the Father has “prepared” a body (life) for him. This is something that has been pre-arranged and it is his delight to “step into it” to do the Father’s will.
This principle of pre –arrangement was understood by the psalmist, Psalm 139:13,14 13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I (lit: “soul”) know that full well.
Because the Spirit has revealed to the psalmist the intricate inner arrangement of his body he delights in the work of God.
This principle of prearrangement encompasses all the works of God. In
Ephesians 4:11 -12,16) we read how Jesus 11 …gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, 12 to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up… 16 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.
Just as the Father prepared a physical body for Jesus, so Jesus prepares his body the church according to a pre- arranged pattern. When the saints are complete in their arrangement, then the whole body is drawn together in love and all delight in the Father’s will.
God has always been working to a pattern.
The Pattern in the Beginning
- The Pattern for the Human Race
His original pattern for humanity included the distribution of the nations and the populating of the earth in increasing diversity [(including races and people groups)] as people were fruitful and multiplied across the face of the earth (Gen 1:28).
Acts 17:26 26 From one he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.
[Deuteronomy 32:8 8 When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided all mankind, he set up boundaries for the peoples according to the number of the sons o f Israel. (or “sons of God”)]
Differences between cultures and languages etc. do not contradict the plan of God. However, complementarity and unity in diversity are not possible without a revelation of God’s pleasing will to which all may conform.
- The Pattern is Christ
The key to understanding God’s pattern is that it is based on the headship of Christ. Ephesians 1:9,10 9 And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, 10 to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment—to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.
In Jesus we see the unity of all things which is the purpose of the gospel. The gospel revealed something new through resolving the conflict between Jew and Gentile (Eph 2:11- 17). God’s pleasing will is to create a house of prayer for all nations under one head, even Christ. There is an arrangement existing in the Friday prayer time of different races and cultures coming together.
If this pattern were to spread across the Church in Perth it would begin to image the restoration of the unity of all things in Christ (Acts 3:21; Eph 1:10). There is a disturbing trend towards a the mono-culture in the Church today. i.e. the image of success and professionalism imbibed from dominant post-modern western materialism.
The key to unity in diversity lies in respecting headship. In dealing with disorder in the congregation in Corinth, Paul writes,
1 Corinthians 11:2,3 I praise you for remembering me in everything and for holding to the teachings, just as I passed them on to you. 3 Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman/wife is man/husband, and the head of Christ is God.
Arguably, “head” here means “origin” of a relational pattern, because this is what Paul teaches a little later, 1 Corinthians 11:11 11 In the Lord, however, woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. 12 for as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things are from God.
- The pattern in the Garden
The head of Christ is God and the head of every human being is Christ. Adam had no role in the arrangement of the garden. Even in the garden, Jesus was the origin and head over Adam.
Adam’s origin and arrangement were not from himself , his unity came from God.
Genesis 2:7 7 the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
In Adam the diverse units of body and soul were put together by God into a unity. In the garden everything submitted to Adam’s will without resistance (universal dominion) in the pleasure and pattern of the Father.
Eve’s origin was from Adam,
Genesis 2:23 21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.”
Adam had to part with something in order to receive Eve, it was only after Adam lost his rib that he had a sense of completeness. God miraculously turned a rib into a person, a part into a whole. Then Adam fully delighted (Eden= delight) in the will of the Father because now the pre- arranged interconnection between God, himself and Eve was in place. There was no confusion between identity and equality in Eden –Eve did not have to be identical to
Adam to be equal to him.
Genesis 1:26 26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
Just as the plurality of the Godhead (“Let us ..) was essential to creating humanity in the divine image, so the plurality within humanity (Let them”) was essential for mankind to fulfil God’s plan. [Ecclesiastes 4:12 2 Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.]
[ 5. The Pattern in the Church - a subject may be taken up at another time.]
The Attack on the Pattern
God spoke directly to the man before the creation of his wife Genesis 2:17 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.” Apparently, he passed the word on to Eve.
Satan’s strategy was to speak to the woman. “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You (plural) shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” 2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3 but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’”
Not only does the serpent successfully bypass Adam as the origin of the word to Eve, but she actually misquotes the divine command. At this point, Adam could have corrected her because as her “husband”, he was “with her” (Gen 3:6). His foolish and undisciplined silence broke God’s pattern.
According to Genesis 1:28, Adam and Eve had dominion “over every living creature that moves on the ground.” This included the serpent. They did not understand that together they had dominion. Only as they depended on one another in mutual submission could they rule the serpent as God commanded.
As created in the image of the trinitarian God they had equality of authority in their union. [(The Father and the Son have equal authority, and the Father only has authority in the submission of the Son etc..)] The authority is in the unity of their diversity. This is the pattern. If this was true for Adam and Eve it is true for race, culture, and so on.
When the snake goes on to say, Genesis 3:4 4 “You will not surely die,” Eve eats before Adam and the pattern of divine unity is more deeply broken. Adam failed to respect the Father’s will regarding the prohibition of eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. He passively permitted Eve to act independently of his and God’s authority. Adam and Eve could only act as individuals against the will of God. They broke the arrangement with God by making a new arrangement with Satan and so became separated individuals instead of a unit.
Satan prised them apart on the basis of tempting them to overlook their differences. Accordingly to a principle laid down by Paul, Eve should have referred to her husband.
1 Corinthians 14:35 35 If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.
In speaking only to Eve the devil tempts her to act as though she can see the whole vision, as though she sees something beyond which Adam sees (otherwise he would be the actor). He passively lets her act as though she has the whole arrangement.
Behind the success of the Satanic temptation lies “the principle of illicit subordination”. Eve submits to the snake and Adam submits to Eve. Satan convinced Eve that “he can see the whole thing” on behalf of her and all she needs to do is to follow his vision. Similarly today, people are told to submit to a strong leader’s vision, and if they do not they are accused of being unsubmissive. But the fullness of the vision of God is not in the Father alone, but in the relationships between all 3 Persons of the trinity. Similarly, revelation in the church is found in the whole Body.
[Paul warns about being led astray by Satan in the mind. 2 Corinthians 11:1-4 I hope you will put up with a little of my foolishness; but you are already doing that. 2 I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him. 3 But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. 4 For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough. Eve’s emotions and desires were clear but not her mind - she was beguiled by her clouded mind and submitted to temptation.]
The horror of Adam’s sin in allowing sin to enter the world becomes clear when we consider the force of the original prohibition spoken to him. According to Hebrews 1:3 3 The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. Even in Eden, Jesus was the Word which was holding Adam and Eve together. If they had hidden God’s word in their hearts they would not have sinned against him [(Psalm 119:9-11 9 How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word. 10 I seek you with all my heart; do not let me stray from your commands. 11 I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.). Cf. Proverbs 4:20-22 20 My son, pay attention to what I say; listen closely to my words. 21 Do not let them out of your sight, keep them within your heart; 22 for they are life to those who find them and health to a man’s whole body.] However they paid attention to another word, and the word of Satan always brings about a fracturing.
Whatever came into Adam’s mind at creation was put there originally by God’s design. God put the Word in his heart so that he would not sin. It is sometimes objected that when God warned Adam about death neither he nor God had ever experienced it. This is untrue, on two grounds.
Firstly, God had experienced relational/spiritual death in the angelic world. Paul links the human state of death in sin with obedience to Satan. Ephesians 2:1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. [Jesus teaches that the eternal fire was prepared for the devil and his angels Matthew 25:41.]
This means that the snake had the second death inside him. The serpent was a living being but a dead person (an individual). Satan knew about origin and pattern and had fallen away from it. Being dead to God he only had the power to impart a word of death.
The second reason God was able to impart a real fear of death to Adam was the eternal plan that centred on Christ. The plan for the cross precedes the creation of the world.
1 Peter 1:19,20 redeemed …19 …with the precious blood of Christ…20 He was chosen before the creation of the world, Revelation 13:8 8… the book of life belonging to the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world.
The Father was powerfully able to communicate the horror of death to his created son Adam (Luke 3:38) because of the real presence to him of the death of his eternal Son, Jesus.
This fear was both holy and unpleasant – through temptation it came to seem out of place in the garden of Delight.
According to the word of Satan, if Eve and Adam were fully like God they would never have to fear the displeasure of entering into death. But, Proverbs 1:7 7 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline. In his warning not to eat of the tree God had imparted a fear of himself that was adequate to give them a wisdom not to sin. Temptation becomes sin when one loses sight of a previous word from God. Jesus never sinned when tempted because he quoted, “God says” (Matt 4:4, 6, 7, 10). Adam and Eve did not do this. If they had looked to God while they were being tempted, they would have received a fresh word from Him.
Our earthly origin is in Adam, and he has not communicated to us a holy fear of God but an unholy fear of death. Humans constantly attempt to block out of their minds their fear of death by seeking unlimited pleasures. The Satanic untruth, “You will not die” has led to consumerism on a grand scale.
We have departed from God’s order. We want to believe man’s word rather than God’s Word and find ourselves submitting to the word of man out of a fear of man rather than submitting to the Word of God out of a fear of God.
Fallenness Destroys the Pattern
God’s pattern was always to draw all diverse things together into a perfect unity through his Word, Christ. Everything was designed to be held together in his pleasure as Father. Sin destroys the pattern and robs humans of this fatherly pleasure because it is essentially self-ishness.
The psalmist prays, Psalm 119:36 36 Turn my heart toward your statutes and not toward selfish gain. James warns, 14 But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. 15 This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. 16 For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. (3:14-16). Wherever there is selfish ambition equality is lost, union is destroyed and disorder reigns.
Adam and Eve had full access to the Father’s pleasure because the power of the cross was in the Word God had spoken to them. But they had selfish ambition. When they rejected the Word they lost the Father’s pleasure in his Son.
Eve was covetous for the wisdom of the snake, she believed that to know good and evil like God does would mean inherent/essential deathlessness. [n.b. the cross shows that God is not “essentially” deathless] Adam and Eve shared the vision that they would no longer need to depend on God not to die, they would be able to live in their ‘selves’ forever.
Tragically,living in self means living apart from God and losing God’s pleasure. If you lose the pure spiritual pleasure of God you must seek the unspiritual pleasures of worldly things –this always leads to idolatry. And the idolater is under the sentence of death. [Ephesians 5:5 5 For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a man is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.]
The consequences of departing from God’s order are terrible. Paul says, 6 but she who lives for pleasure is dead even while she lives. (1 Tim 5:6). When Eve began to live for pleasure the first pleasure she lost was her relationship with her husband – they were no longer one in the unconditional pleasure of the Father, they experenced the separating power of shame. Shame and guilt always breed fear.
We have departed from God’s order. We want to believe man’s word rather than God’s Word and find ourselves submitting to the word of man out of a fear of man rather than submitting to the Word of God out of a fear of God. The fear of man images the tyranny of physical death.
Jesus warned his hearers. Matthew 10:28 28 Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. [Luke 12:4,5 4 “I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. 5 But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him. ]
Here, body and soul stand for the whole person as created by God.
The unity of body and soul was God’s pleasure, the separation of body and soul in death is God’s judgement. [He is the originator of this state of affairs, not man.]
All states of human weakness convey something of the final fate of lost human beings. When you are sick, your soul tries to move your body through your will, but you experience powerlessness over your own life. Inwardly you become aware that as a person you are divided and mortal. (The pattern of wholeness has been broken.) This impotence of will conveys to the guilty conscience a sense of judgment and death.
In Eden everything submitted to Adam’s will, in hell, nothing responds to human will. You cannot take yourself out of the situation. Hell is willing forever without any result that brings pleasure to the soul.
The Cross
God has never taken any pleasure in death, whether of humans, or of animal sacrifices. Ezekiel 18:32 32 For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign Lord. Repent and live!
Hebrews 10:5 -6, 5 Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me; 6 in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure.
What God does however take pleasure in is a will set to obey him, 7 Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.’” (Hebrews 10:7)
Jesus enters into a tremendous struggle of will in the Garden of Gethsemane, 36 And he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” Mark 14:36
It was Jesus’ willingness to die that pleased the Father – not His death e.g. in sleep. The whole power of the sacrifice of Jesus is in His will – His will was sacrificed. He left us an example of the surrender of our body, souls and spirits to do the will of God.
Jesus is the one person whose sinlessness meant he did not in himself need to be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell Matthew 10:28. In creating Adam as our point of origin it was was never the prearrangement of the Father that there should be death. But the plan or prearrangement of the Father for Jesus is essentially dissimilar from all other human lives. In eternity, as the Word in the presence of the Father, he knew from the beginning (John 1:1)from his point of origin, that he must die. There never was a time when Jesus didn’t know about the cross. This was a great pressure on his life, Luke 12:50 50 But I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is completed!
In Gethsemane Jesus is struggling to submit His human will to God’s will, this submission shall separate him from the Father because it means bearing the sin of the world. [In this place there cannot be conscious agreement with the will of the Father.] To be in the will of the Father is Jesus’ pleasure, but the will of the Father means that Jesus on the cross cannot know that He is in the will of the Father. He cannot know the union of wills. Because equality of authority only exists in union, and in sin there is no union, no Father’s pleasure, here on the cross Jesus cannot know he is one with the Father.This is his point of dereliction Mark 15:34 34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”—which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
The anguish of the cross is the absence of the experience of the authority of the Father - not knowing that the Father’s will is being done on earth as it is in heaven. This is for Jesus to be absolutely cut off from the point of origin – in Greek, his “arche” = rule, origin. Here, Jesus is being cut off from the fountainhead of all order, pattern, arrangement and unity and left in confusion, darkness; in “an-arche” – anarchy.
The Resurrection
If the cross is the anguished absence of enjoying the pleasure of God’s will bringing diversity into unity, then the resurrection is the final perfection of this pre- arrangement for humanity.
This resurrection involves a perfect knitting together of the will of the Father, Son and Spirit. The Author of the resurrection is the Father, Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father Romans 6:4, Jesus himself, 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days… the temple he had spoken of was his body John 2:19-20 and the Holy Spirit 1 Peter 3:1818 Christ …was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit,There is the perfect union of the divine and human will which was always (the trinitarian) God’s plan in the beginning. In Jesus, that plan has overcome the dividedness of all things.
Application
God is a God of order and not confusion (1 Cor 14:33), whereas sin seeks to confuse. At the core of such confusion always lies selfish ambition. The Word of God that brings unity does not have its origin in man but in the will of God.
The King James Version for Proverbs 29:18 said, “where there is no vision the people perish”, and this has been made the catch cry for being exhorted to follow the vision of an earthly men in leadership. What Proverbs 29:18 actually means is 18 Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint; [but blessed is he who keeps the law.] When God stops speaking the people run amok. This is what is happening in much of the church today. If God is not speaking people will always come up with a vision.
Aaron had no word from God whilst waiting for Moses to return from up the mountain and the people followed his vision of the golden calf. The words which Hitler uttered perfectly represented the humiliated heart of the German nation. (There collective unconsciousness.)
According to Paul however, he followed the vision of the heavenly man, Acts 26:19 19 “So then, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven. There is only one head, Jesus, who holds together in himself all the diversity in the church and the universe (Eph 1:10;4:16).
This is what we are missing as a church in this city – after years of prayer, conferences, summits and networking, it seems like (even though there is less conflict) the supernatural union of equality in diversity that releases divine authority eludes us as much as ever.
Hebrews 12:1,2 Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let 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. 2 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.