Introduction

In our initial study I focussed on the vision of God as “The Father of every Blessing”. It is the presence of the blessing of God that claims the whole of life and integrates it into a single act of devotion. This is exactly what it means to live for the kingdom of God. In both the wider culture and the church, Australians have somehow lost the expectation that God will bless them, not in the superficial or outward sense of purely material benefits, but intimately and inwardly. I suspect that our spirituality as a nation has never permitted us to seek the blessings of God’s kingdom in an unashamed way.

Since all such blessing comes from the Word of God, we are suffering from a crisis over the Word. The Lord wants us to hear him speaking in the Spirit, not only new things, but even more importantly, in a new TONE. This new tone will effectively convey the essential nature of his Fatherhood as one of blessing, and never of cursing. Only this can release faith to trust the Lord for all the signs of the kingdom and obey him in radical discipleship.

Adam was the first person called to such faith and obedience. He was called to be (in an expression that I actually believe the Lord gave me powerfully in relation to the crossing of the Jordan) a “future man”, a seer and a prophet. He was called to see beyond Eden into a kingdom that would fill the whole earth with the glory of God and in which he would share the reign of God forever. This is the true and eternal inheritance of all the sons of God.

Tragically, Adam failed his vocation because he fell prey to the Tempter. To understand why this happened is in some ways an insoluble mystery, yet the Spirit can share with us insights that will free us from grip of the spiritual powers that blind us to “what God has prepared for those who love him”—” (1 Cor 2:9). The first place to begin is not to focus on Adam but on Satan. I am making this emphasis not out of a preoccupation with the demonic (generally I am quite reticent to talk of these things) but because of certain experiences I had in the Middle East concerning the strategic role of evil forces over nations. It is often easier to see things more clearly when you are outside your own culture’s sphere of influence.

The Tempter

Whilst Genesis introduces the serpent in the temptation story as a “beast of the field” (Gen 3:1), other parts of scripture identify the tempter with the devil[1]. The early chapters of Job describe Satan’s appearance in the divine assembly (Job 1:6; 2:1), the heavenly gathering from the midst of which God issues decrees concerning his plan for creation. As one of the angelic “sons of God” present at creation (Gen 6:2, 4; Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7; Pss 29:1; 89:6), Satan was an insider into the unfolding human. The outstanding emotion – shared between God and the heavenly powers at the birth of humanity was joy; “the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy” (Job 38:7)[2]. The blessing of a new birth (spiritual or physical) that echoes throughout the world to this day, finds its origin in this creative event[3]- God was the proud and joy – filled Father of his first created son, Adam.

Jesus explained that Satan also is a father who has children. In his parable of the weeds among the wheat, Christ said, “The field is the world, and the good seed is the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one” (Matt 13:38)[4]. The devil understands that to be a father is to bring forth after one’s own likeness, to be a fallen father means that he multiplies lies, deception and deprivation. His children are “by nature children of wrath” (Eph 2:3), stripped, like him, of the divine glory and honour.

In our last study I explained that God had called Adam to be a future man with a vision for a “kingdom prepared … from the foundation of the world” (Matt 25:33). In a very same parable however we find these terrible words, “‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.’” (Matt 25:41). Satan must have known this was true prior to his entry into Eden. From the beginning of his sin the devil knew that his destiny was not blessing but cursing, and he knew that all who followed him in rejecting the blessing of the Father would be deprived of the intimacy of God’s approval forever.

Adam should have understood these things as well. When God commanded him, ““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 TONE and pathos in the LORD’s words must have conveyed that the LORD already knew by personal experience what it was like to have a created son pass outside the sphere of his fatherly blessing. God’s grief in putting forth death as a punishment must have been as clear as his later words in Genesis, “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.” (6:5-6). Deep in God’s innermost being, in his heart, the source of a child’s sense of belonging, there was the most cutting form of anguish[5]. People talk about a “God shaped gap” in the heart of man, but far more tellingly there is a “man shaped gap in the heart of God”.

The most cutting form of agony for a father/mother is not the physical death of a son or daughter, but to be disowned by their own progeny. Not long ago I met a man who said to me, “I lost my son for 3 years, I didn’t know where he was dead or alive.” This man’s grief was tangible. In the Middle East, ancient and modern, to be disowned is the most shameful and dishonouring thing that could ever happen to a parent. The story of the parable of prodigal son is the story of a child who in asking for their inheritance effectively says, “Dad, I wish you were dead”. Jesus’ story transcends the human experience of shame and honour, it is a story is about the divine compassionate and pained heart of a Father longing to be able to bless the son of his love with his own personal presence.

When the tempter came Adam and Eve were certainly not in the dark about the ultimate issues of existence, and the choice that was about to be laid before them had already been illuminated by the Word God had spoken. This was a choice between two identities, two ways, two consciousnesses and two final destinies. It was a choice to be one of two kinds of son, a son who submits or a son who rebels. This is our choice as well.

Lead us not into Temptation

The deceiver’s words to Eve, ““You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”” (Gen 3:4) come across as particularly appealing. The offer of deathlessness is the availability of a sphere of life in which there is nothing but joy, and the promise of becoming ““like God, knowing good and evil.””, seemed to offer supreme self-mastery over any realm of evil that might disrupt Eve’s personal blessedness[6].

The serpent’s appearance in Eden as one who calls God a liar but yet lives gave his words supreme plausibility. He seems to offer a wisdom we can possess for ourselves and that is above God’s[7]. Here was an apparent opportunity to outgrow their need for God. They were correct to sense that Satan’s power and knowledge were vastly superior to their own, and that as flesh and blood they lacked the strength to overcome him. To experience the devil’s deception as ultimately irresistible was part of God’s wise plan for them. But they did not have to surrender to such a temptation; they could have been delivered from evil if they had humbly submitted themselves to God. In fact, in the economy of God’s kingdom, the hour of testing was a divine opportunity, a kairos moment, a threshold of growth, a transition point to cross into anew sphere of promise. This was their time to find in themselves a new centre of fidelity to God’s Word that would have consolidated their identity as eternal sons of God and exalted them into incorruptible blessedness far beyond the reach of evil.

The great test in Eden was as simple as loving the good that God loves and hating the evil that he hates. If Adam and Eve had done this they would have been immediately glorified and entered into the fullness of the divine blessing that would have empowered them to go forth and fill the world with the rule of the kingdom of God[8]. Instead, they despised what God loves and loved what God despised- they considered that the most important thing in life was to bless themselves, to indulge in self-improvement and elevate their self-esteem. In a partnership of mutual rebellion they chose to honour one another rather than God seeking the glory that comes from the only God (John 5:44). They sought to create their own image rather than multiplying the image that had been graciously imparted to them[9]. Tragically, instead of elevation they fell into a deprivation, a blessed state was replaced by a cursed condition.

Shame

The first fruit of sin is shame, and in more refined biblical language, shame is a sense of lost glory (Rom 3:23). To put this in very intimate terms, the person who feels shame feels that they are no longer honoured by their father. When Adam and Eve discovered their error, they felt like many people who regrettably say, e.g. about a marriage, friendships or health, “I did not know what a blessing I had until I lost it.” In sin, human beings lack all inner testimony to the approval of God; they have no witness in them that he delights over them[10]. Since we have counted him as dead, the Father can no longer identify us as his created sons by the testimony of his indwelling Word and Spirit. This creates an identity crisis[11] at the very core of human being. Empty on the inside humans resorts to the veneration of all sorts of idols to dull their embarrassment at not knowing who they are.

In the Middle East the solutions to this confusion are profoundly religious ones, Islam Judaism and Christianity present themselves as inherited cultural patterns of morality and behaviour by which to make sense of the whole of life[12]. Australians are not free of this feeling of inner emptiness, but we do not generally turn to religion to give us a sense of belonging. Our prevailing cultural solution is to turn ourselves into consumers. With our hearts full of idols we cannot see beyond our own state of deprivation, we “cannot see the kingdom of God.” (John 3:3).

In Egypt the Lord started to speak to me about one devastating result of this idolatry. I was puzzling over the ability of some people we met to blatantly lie or to ask for money without any sense of wrong doing.[13] Guilt simply seemed absent from their experience, even when their deceptions were directly exposed. Australians may not so much be habitual liars, but, from our Prime Minister down there seems to be no sense of guilt about sex outside marriage, let alone about things like abortion, alcohol consumption and personal greed. As it says in scripture, “The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of human hands. 16 They have mouths, but do not speak; they have eyes, but do not see;17 they have ears, but do not hear, nor is there any breath in their mouths. 18 Those who make them become like them, so do all who trust in them!” (Ps 35:15-18; 115:4-8). You become like the object you worship. Your conscience conforms always to the ultimate object of devotion. If you worship Jesus, you will become increasingly sensitive to the things of the Spirit of God. If you worship Allah or money or sex and power, your conscience will become as deaf and blind to the truth of God as these things are (1 Tim 4:2).

The problem is far worse than what I have so far presented it to be. If Adam and Eve could not resist the presence of Satan in the splendour of Eden apart from calling on the God revealed in his Word, the nations of the world are deceived to this day by evil spiritual forces against which they are powerless (Eph 2:2; 1 John 5:19; Rev 12:9).

Spirits of the Land

I am not generally someone who likes to focus on the power of evil, but early on in our time in Egypt I sensed that we were being confronted by “spirits of the land”. The presence of Islam in Cairo is unmistakable, there are more than 3,000 mosques in the city, all with multiple loudspeakers and they cannot stop building them (with government money). One afternoon we were in the Cave Church stone amphitheatre on the east side of the city, at the time of the call to prayer – almost instantly the whole space became filled with an almost omnipresent atmosphere proclaiming Allah as the one God with Mohammed his prophet. It seemed to me that Egypt, and Islamic lands in general, are subject to a spirit of deception that rules the minds of the masses of the people. I will speak at length later about Israel, but there we encountered a spirit just as powerful, only there a “spirit of separatism”.

In speaking about these spirits we are talking about principalities and powers in the heavenly places (Eph 3:10; 6:12) that serve Satan “the prince of the power of the air” (Eph 2:2). These are spirits whose great aim is to resist the blessing of the Father and to keep the nations under bondage to vain and useless practices and beliefs (Gal 4:3; Col 2:8, 20; 1 Tim 4:1). In some ways they seem to have a national identity, hence in Daniel 10 (13, 20-21) we encounter the archangel Michael contending with “the prince of the kingdom of Persia” and “the prince of Greece”. Similarly, in Deuteronomy, “When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God” (32:8) i.e. angelic rulers.

Somewhere in the midst of seeking to understand these dynamics of spirits ruling nations I was praying to understand why is that that Australians as a nation struggle to receive the blessing of the Father? I felt that the Lord said to me that the primary stronghold over Australia is a “spirit of deprivation”. Our nation is like a child deprived of relational nourishment in its early years and incapable of reaching mental, emotional and spiritual maturity. In the middle of one night in Cairo I woke up sensing I was caught between two spiritual powers, Egypt’s “spirit of deception” and our own “spirit of deprivation”. These are the powers that distort a nation’s consciousness of God and block an “open heaven”.

The Australian mindset is thoroughly corrupted. We do not have the weather we would like, the politicians we can respect, we do not have the prosperity we long for, the schools, roads and hospitals systems…despite the fact that in all these regards we are already amongst the most favoured people on the planet. Most importantly, in the church we operate with a spiritual consciousness which continually tells us that we do not have all that we need in Christ. We always need another conference, another international speaker, another book, another programme or another spiritual experience. The spirits of the land resist the truth of scripture, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (Eph 1:3)[14].

Daily we are facing spiritual powers deeply embedded in our cultural consciousness that resist the truth of the Father’s blessings in Christ and hold back the manifest identity of the sons of God in the power of the Spirit. The only way forward out of this morass is the coming of the kingdom of God with resurrection power. (This will be the topic of next week’s teaching.)

Facing the Spirits

Every major move of God involves a move of man. Abram crossed over from Ur of the Chaldees to the land of Canaan, Moses transitioned the people out of Egypt across the Red Sea, Joshua took then across the Jordan into the Promised Land[15]. Each step signified a shift of national consciousness that opened up the blessings of the kingdom of heaven. It is possible to see the spirit of deprivation broken in our nation, but only with great deliberation and focus, the sort of intentionality that was in the Son of God when he made his great crossing over.

About 4 a.m. one morning in Amman Jordan, the day we were due to go to the baptismal site of Jesus, I felt I had a question from the Lord that I needed to ask. “What direction was Jesus facing when he was baptised?” The answer is, “He was facing the land, because it was his great passion to confront the spirits of the land and bring in the blessed kingdom of his Father in the powerful presence of the Word and Spirit of God.

Conclusion

At the centre of all of the great churches in the Middle East is a dome on the inside of which is a painting of what is called Christ Pantokrator, Christ who rules the world. Prophetically, Jesus is situated at the peak of the dome of heaven as the ascended reigning Lord positioned over the nations. In all of these images Jesus is supremely active, with Bible in the left hand he is about to speak, or his nail scarred hands are outstretched over the world. This is an icon of the great high priest with limitless authority to impart a blessing to the nations[16], the blessing of Abraham (Gen 12:3), but above all his own blessedness in returning to the Father in heaven (Eph 3:14-15). This prophetic pose of Jesus radiates his desire to fill our lives marriages/families/churches/ and society with his beautiful presence. The awareness of the presence of such beauty is denied people everywhere by the evil power of the spirits of the land – these spirits must be fought, they must be vigorously resisted.

By faith we must move on from focussing on Australia’s dry spiritual climate and believe that in having Jesus the fullness of the blessing of God which is upon him is on us. We must bring to men and women the message that to seek final blessing in this life is to live a lie, but there is a coming time when every curse will be removed from the earth[17]. This is the testimony that brings the presence of the kingdom of heaven with power and subdues the spirits of the land. To bear this testimony is what it means to be a true son of the kingdom (Matt 13:38).