Introduction

The visible circumstances of our times seem to harmonise with the pessimistic outlook of the psalmist, “if the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” ” (Ps 11:3). Whatever godly foundation laid by past generations in Australian society has been largely demolished, and there is little evidence that mainstream Christianity has any ability to reverse this.

In my lifetime, the affluent Western church has embraced numerous strategies to take us to our destiny: the “baptism of the Spirit”, spiritual gifts, faith, prayer counselling, identificational repentance, tithing, spiritual warfare, signs and wonders, unity between pastors, house churches, seeker-sensitivity, dynamic worship, the fivefold ministry and so on. Then there were the must read books that were going to change our lives, in recent times the Prayer of Jabez, The Purpose Driven Life and The Shack. None of these approaches have come anywhere near fulfilling Paul’s exhortation to the church to “attain…to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes” (Eph 4:13-15). Current estimates suggest that only 20% of believers[1] will reach the destiny God has for them before they die[2].

Most contemporary ministers of the Word deal with symptoms, but the living and abiding Word of God (1 Pet 1:23) deals with issues that are at the core of human being[3]. The foundational fallen issue that permeates human culture is shame[4]. Women are ashamed by their appearance, men by the amount of hair on their heads[5], people spend billions on fashion items, including new technology, to escape that feeling of being left out. Our society’s conspicuous consumption, its problem with gluttony, drug use, alcohol, and sexual addiction is driven by the awareness, “something is wrong with me”.

The spirituality of the average Christian is little different, fads and fancies flow through the church at the same rate as secular culture. There are churches where people feel ashamed if they can’t speak in tongues, or they are unmarried, or they are not healthy, wealthy and in a fully functional family. Countless students in my classes prefaced inquiries with, “I know this is a silly question to ask…” At least they had the courage to move through their fear of being publicly shamed, whereas the vast mass of believers move with the herd, maintain the status quo and follow after more extroverted personalities.

Paul points us to Christ as the solution to this catastrophe, “According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. 11 For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” (1 Cor 3:10-11). Paul’s unpopular gospel redefined human identity and abolished all pervasive shame by imparting the righteousness of Christ. Jesus came to lay an entirely new foundation in how people think about their lives, and he led me into this topic by drawing my attention to the pivotal ministry of the prophet Elijah[6].

A Foundation of Shame

The dramatic appearance[7] and message of the prophet is well known, “Now Elijah the Tishbite…said to (king) Ahab, “As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.”” (1 Ki 17:1)[8]. The reason for the prophesied drought in the natural order is found in the spiritual order.

Immediately before Elijah’s appearance we read (1 Ki 16:31-34), “….Ahab …took for his wife Jezebel …and went and served Baal and worshiped him …. (he) did more to provoke the Lord…to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him.” Ahab’s alliance with Jezebel and the revival of Baal worship was a Satanic attempt, to reCanaanise Israel.[9] But something even more terrible appears in the text, “In (Ahab’s) his days Hiel of Bethel built Jericho. He laid its foundation at the cost of Abiram his firstborn, and set up its gates at the cost of his youngest son Segub, according to the word of the Lord, which he spoke by Joshua the son of Nun.” (1 Ki 16:31-34) The depth of the depravity of God’s people is signified by the rebuilding of Jericho on a foundation that inflames the anger of God[10].

Centuries before, as a sign of God’s judgement on Canaan, Joshua had prophesied in the Spirit[11] at the entry point into the Promised Land [12]. ““Cursed before the Lord be the man who rises up and rebuilds this city, Jericho. “At the cost of his firstborn shall he lay its foundation, and at the cost of his youngest son shall he set up its gates.”” (Josh 6:26). In the sacred war of God, everything based on false gods was to be utterly destroyed.

When Hiel decided to rebuild Jericho in violation of the Word of the LORD the curse of God fell upon him. It appears the divine wrath handed him over to a blindness[13] whereby he slaughtered his oldest and youngest sons as a sacrifice to the gods and cemented their bodies into the foundations of the city walls as an act of appeasement[14]. As an idol worshipper Hiel was just another man who, lacking the presence of God’s favour[15], “needed” to make a name for himself[16], no matter what the cost. His surviving children, and their descendants following them, grew up in a climate of fearful shame, for this father, and all those like him, necessarily imparted a sense of his own loss of the glory of God[17].

Down to this day men perform a form of child sacrifice, building companies, businesses, careers and ministries to try to gain some sense of inner worth. Some years ago a prominent Christian academic was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society, an elite college of distinguished scientists. After receiving this honour in London he came out of the building and publicly wept on the pavement before God, acknowledging the cost to his marriage and family. The same inner emptiness which drove this man to prove himself intellectually drives many leaders to burnout and other sin. A former pastor of several large Baptist churches has recently appeared in the Perth courts charged with multiple incidences of rape, this married man’s core problem is not lust or even idolatry[18], but an attempt to fill the emptiness that shame brings.

Disaster awaits anyone, man or woman, who builds on a foundation other than that blessed by God. As a younger and more zealous person I was working as part of a pastoral team and decided that the senior minister was unspiritual. I prepared a sermon which I knew, should I preach it, could easily lead to my dismissal. Minutes before I was due to preach I anxiously asked the Lord for a scripture to confirm what I intended to do, I was led to Acts 26:1, “You have permission to speak for yourself.” In my enthusiasm I went ahead and spoke, was dismissed and split the church in two, because authorisation to speak for oneself is not authorisation to speak for Christ! Thankfully, the older man had the mature wisdom to publicly state that the catastrophic events of that time were a judgement of God upon us all.

Such false foundations are not peculiar to men. I was speaking to a non-Christian couple the other day, when I asked the woman what was the most important thing in her life she replied “my family”. The average mother invests a significance in her children which is nothing less than idolatry[19], for she is trying to find in them a glory to substitute for the lost glory of God.

Prophets are called to expose the ruinous nature of false foundations, and it was the sinfulness of God’s people which moved the Spirit to pour himself out on Elijah to prophesy drought. Throughout the old covenant the failure of rain is pronounced as a covenant curse upon a sinful nation that refuses to turn back to God[20]. The threat that if idolatry continued without repentance the nation itself would be annihilated, as the Canaanites were, climaxes in a divine promise concerning Elijah that is the last word of the Old Testament.

“5 “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. 6 And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.” ” (Mal 4:5-6).

The restoration of hearts through the message of the new Elijah will create an unshakeable foundation free from the divine curse on a sinful, shame-filled and idol ravaged people.

Jesus and the Restoration of Righteousness

According to Jesus, the new Elijah is John the Baptist. ““Elijah does come, and he will restore all things. …13 Then the disciples understood that he was speaking to them of John the Baptist.” (Matt 17:11, 13). The Spirit of God was to set “all things” on an eternal foundation by moving John to prophesy two acts of Jesus[21], the first is, ““Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29).

As the Lamb of God, Jesus will remove the curse on all shame based human effort. To understand what this meant for Jesus we need to examine some of his teaching.

“everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgement; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’[22] will be liable to the hell of fire.” (Matt 5:22). The term Jesus uses for “hell” is Gehenna, a Greek word for the Hebrew, Valley of Hinnom, a ravine to the south of Jerusalem where the sons of several kings of Judah were sacrificed in Old Testament times (2 Ki 16:3; 21:6 cf. 23:10). It became a symbol of the place where God’s final judgement would fall (Jer 7:32; 19:6-7)[23]. Gehenna, “the hell of fire” is a place where cursed things are irretrievably cast[24]. According to this word, those who (like the Judean kings) kill their children and those who in anger ridicule others will alike be condemned to hell.

Jesus’ word addresses final realities, to act judgementally against another human being, whether to physically slay or morally destroy them in thought or word, is to be guilty of the ultimate self-righteousness. It is to set ourselves up as the final judge and cut ourselves off from the foundation of the word of God. Such a person is in God’s eyes the true fool building on the sandy foundation of their own self-esteem their lives will be completely ruined at the time of God’s reckoning[25]. Jesus’ word of condemnation falls on all who pass a superior judgement on others based on their own “right thinking”[26].

All of us, apart from Jesus, repeatedly pass judgements against God, others and ourselves. Self-assured pride with respect to the rightness of our judgements[27] reaps the divine punishment that is experienced by the human soul as shame. Self-generated judgements, values and social norms are the false foundations of human life transmitted by races, cultures, communities, families and traditions that can never reach maturity. Carrying a burden of guilt and shame at their inner core every human person knows that all their self-based moral and spiritual judgements are without eternal foundation and will at the Last Judgement be exposed as empty, false, and eternally shameful. In a lost world no human action can ever reach perfection, for whatever is based on the foundation of fallen flesh inevitably reaps the corruption God decrees[28].

Thankfully there is another judgement, the judgement of the righteousness of God revealed in Christ[29]. The good news is that Jesus has dealt with the curse and its shame. In Galatians Paul proclaims. “13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”— 14 so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.” (Gal 3:13-14). According to Paul’s theological reasoning, those freed from the curse will necessarily be filled with the Spirit. They will receive the second act that John the Baptist prophesied of Christ, “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” (Luke 3:16). If it is that simple, why aren’t most Christians filled with the Spirit and going on to mature destiny God has for them[30]?

In the same chapter where Paul proclaims liberation from the curse[31] he also explains how believers fall back into what seems to be a state of shame,

“O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. 2 Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? 3 Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” (Gal 3:1-3). Despite having been powerfully baptised in the Spirit of God these Christians had exchanged the foundation of Christ for legalistic self-effort[32]. In their straining and striving to be spiritual they thought that they could perfect the work of God!

Paul unhesitatingly calls these born-again believers “fools” because their lives flatly contradicted the gospel that saved both him and them[33], “For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. 20 I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. 21 I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness (justification) were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose (i.e. no end goal).” (Gal 2:19-21) The apostle knows that deliverance from the seemingly interminable cycle of self-judgement, pride and shame can only come through the righteousness of Christ. This brings us to the cross.

If the divine curse falls upon the judgements of fallen human flesh, redemption comes through God’s judgement on the common humanity Christ shared with us[34]. The crucified and resurrected humanity of Christ is the foundation where everything becomes new[35].

The mystery of how the curse is taken away is found in the penetrating cry from the cross, “And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”” (Mark 15:34)[36]. To understand this question from hell we must penetrate[37] into Jesus’ own consciousness[38].

If I honestly ask the question, “Why has my father/my mother/ my teacher/ my pastor/ my leader (or any authority figure) abandoned me?” I can always find a reason[39], for I always ask the question “why am I feeling alone/misunderstood/abandoned”, by others, or by God, with a sense that I am not relationally perfect. Every fallen human asks the ultimate questions of life and its meaning in the presence of seemingly ineradicable shame, guilt and imperfection. No less an authority than Madonna says, “all of my will has always been to conquer some horrible feeling of inadequacy…My drive in life is from this horrible fear of being mediocre…even though I’ve become Somebody, I still have to prove I’m Somebody. My struggle has never ended and it probably never will.”

This is where Jesus is different from us all. Jesus asks his question about abandonment and aloneness without any consciousness of guilt and shame.[40]. He has NO sense of relational failure. The way in which Jesus asks his agonised question from the cross is completely incomprehensible to us sinners, who either blame God, ourselves or others for our dilemma. In Christ’s case, there is no FOUNDATION within his relationship with the Father for his experience of God-abandonment[41].

Jesus is taking into himself on the cross the foundational curse on everyone from Adam on, the curse that has fallen on the builder of every city, culture, community, family, tradition, ministry or church that has depended on any other righteousness than the sole righteousness of God[42]. The knowledge that everything in this world is imperfect, immature and unfinished fills the consciousness of Christ with a cloud of shame.

All his life Jesus had been filled with the deepest possible desire to accomplish the Father’s purpose, “I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how I am constrained until it is accomplished!” (Luke 12:50). Now, on the cross, immersed in our sin, it seems nothing can be accomplished. Separated from the Father Jesus can have no experience of worth[43]; this is his participation in our sense of shame.[44]

Nevertheless, no matter how much our accursed state saturates the humanity of Christ, God’s good purpose is being perfected (Rom 8:28) in him, for even in his bewilderment Jesus is free from the fatal condition that plagues all guilty persons[45] – Jesus cannot feel God is punishing him, he will not believe he is the object of the wrath of God.

This is the text the Lord has given me to explain his experience on the cross, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.” (1 John 4:18). The utter agony of the crucifixion is that Jesus must be stripped of a sense of God’s perfecting love[46].

When Jesus cries out from the cross,““Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?”” (Mark 15:34), his question in Aramaic is one of purpose rather than cause[47]. He is crying out, “For what goal (future) have you forsaken me?” “Where is this all going?” It is because Jesus takes into himself on the cross all the emptiness of our guilty shame (2 Cor 5:21)[48], that he unaware that the great eternal goal of God to perfect (his) humanity is being fully achieved. In this total barrenness of experienced meaning Jesus is carrying away the curse-filled punishment that all humanity deserves for all time.

The cross is a dynamic event. The final words of Jesus bear a completely different quality than his cry of dereliction; he dies filled with a sense of his own rightness with the Father[49]. “After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now accomplished[50], said (to fulfil the Scripture), “I thirst.” …30 When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is completed,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.” (John 19:28, 30)[51]. Jesus’ final utterances are saturated with the language of accomplishment because he knows his spirit has been perfected in the love of God[52]. In knowing this, He knows that God is totally unashamed to be called his Father[53]. Christ’s conscience declares that in him all “Judgement has been taken away.”[54] This is the gospel.

Years ago I went to Uluru/Ayers Rock, in many ways the spiritual heart of Australia. For millennia aboriginal people walked vast distances to practice ceremonies there, witches frequent the place because they believe it has unusual supernatural power, and many Christian groups have visited there to pray.

Despite both a focussed Satanic onslaught, and my own plans to rest, the Lord led me to pray facing the Rock at night. As I approached the monolith I was very spiritually aware of two things, that I was being observed by demons every step of the way, and that over the decades many well-meaning but deeply confused Christians had uttered prayers there which were curses rather than blessings[55]. I had absolutely no idea what I was to say. When I reached a place where I could clearly see the Rock in the moonlight, the Lord moved me to proclaim over the land, again and again, “Judgement has been taken away.”

An Unshakeable Foundation

Despite the scriptural teaching that we are people who have been made right with God through Christ[56], most Christians have a great problem with shame[57]. It is urgent for the progress of the kingdom of God in our midst that we get to the heart of this matter.

Hebrews says of the patriarchs, “But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.” (Heb 11:16) “For he (Abraham) was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.” (Heb 11:10). As prophetic types of those justified by faith in Christ[58], Abraham, Isaac and Jacob[59], were never treated by God as anything other than free from curse and shame[60], men whom the LORD was proud to name as his people[61]. Unlike the Canaanites amongst whom they lived, they refused to try to build any city, empire, or reputation that was cursed at its foundation. God’s covenant promise was their sole righteousness[62] and they sought a city whose foundations were established by God alone.

Since “all the promises of God find their Yes in (Jesus) him.” (2 Cor 1:20), there is “in Christ” no negative and destructive judgement against us. All we need to do to enter into the life completing work of Jesus death and resurrection is to say “Amen” to God’s good purposes in Christ in every circumstance of life[63]. This means freedom from blaming God, ourselves or others, for anything.

Singing recently with some folk the chorus, “Jesus we enthrone you”, the line “and as we worship build a throne” spoke to me and I became conscious of Christ seated on his throne above us. Then the Lord began to speak to me from Hebrews, “but now he has promised[64], “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.” 27 This phrase, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of things that are shaken—that is, things that have been made—in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. 28 Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken…” (Heb 12:26-28)

Volcanic eruptions, earthquakes (like our magnitude 5 in the Goldfields on Tuesday 20.04.2010), tsunamis and other great catastrophes are shaking people across the globe, but they are also rocked by marital conflict, family breakdown, depression, anxiety, aimlessness, loneliness… the truth is, the very foundations of all human life outside of Christ are always on the edge of destruction. Yet, if only the eyes of our hearts are open to see him,[65] the immovable foundation of Jesus’ heavenly throne, grounded in his death and resurrection, lives in each of us (Eph 3:17). In union with the unshakeable foundation of Christ’s righteousness[66] the mature Christian need never be destabilised by anything[67]. This is the testimony we have to share with those who are perishing.

The Stumbling Block

Most Christians never enter into the fullness of God’s purposes for their lives, they fail to “finish well”, because they fail to understand the mystery of Christ. Jesus was “chosen and precious” to God (1 Pet 2:4)[68], but part of his election was to be the foundation stone rejected and cursed by others[69]. Christ became the new creation’s immoveable foundation through blessing wherever he encountered cursing and bringing accepting love in the place of all rejection[70].

It is only as the disciples of Jesus share obediently in his election by God and rejection by men, participating in the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings (Phil 3:10), do our lives become “steadfast and immoveable in the work of the Lord” (1 Cor 15:58)[71]. Only as we refuse to pass judgement on anyone for anything, do we stay in touch in our spirits with our identity as beloved children of God, as precious and honoured to God as Christ himself[72]. As this mystery is unveiled to us in the midst of cursed and condemned universe[73], we are able to image the shameless certainty of an eternal future built on the righteousness of Christ alone[74].

By faith, we enter into God’s own judgement passed for humanity in the death and resurrection of Christ, this is a judgement that condemns all self-righteousness and declares all those who build their lives on the foundation of Christ alone[75] to be wholly just[76]. This is how the gospel delivers us from self-judgement and the curse that it brings.

The witness of the Spirit of the crucified and risen Christ is the assurance that the cause of all shame has been removed and that all things will ultimately be restored. We know that the struggles we endure in every sphere of life, family, work, church etc. are no impediment to the completing grace of God. Whatever we may experience (2 Cor 4:16) we can live in the complete assurance that every element of this universe will be made perfect in love[77].

Conclusion

Freedom from the futility of building on a foundation that cannot remain breeds not passivity[78] but creates a tremendous prophetic and eschatological tension[79]. The tension between the reality of the Father’s perfecting love completed in Christ and the radically immaturity that surrounds us impels us to be unconditionally available to the purposes of establishment of God’s righteous kingdom upon the earth[80].

In his parables of the kingdom of God, Jesus spoke of seed that miraculously multiplied[81] beyond human understanding[82] , this symbolises fruitfulness freed from the restrictions of the curse that self-righteousness brings. Such fruitfulness is what Christ calls us to enter into today. Yet, one thing remains, to embrace the wisdom of the way of the cross.

This wisdom teaches that the Lord has specifically appointed for each of you opportunities of ostracism, ridicule, seeming stupidity and being called ‘You fool!’ things that I can gladly say have happened to me all my life. I have been slandered by my family of origin, secular workmates, Christians who have hated me, others who believed they were loving me by sensible counsel, even those who claimed to be prophesying truth to me but were actually trying to save from the cross.

In the wisdom of God, not only despite but through my many follies, his righteousness has never failed me and he has unveiled deeper depths of the “unfathomable riches of Christ” (Eph 3:8) again and again. The way is clear the choice is plain, “choose this day whom you will serve” (Josh 24:15). The prophetic promise is ours for the asking, “your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in.” (Isa 58:12), if only we choose the way of the cross.

Epilogue

This teaching was originally titled “Elijah and the Drought of Sons”, and was designed to parallel the physical drought in the prophet’s time with the spiritual drought of our time. The direction taken in the paper obviously became much broader. An instruction along the lines first intended would expound some of the concepts below.

1. Key texts are Malachi 4:5-6, “5 “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. 6 And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.” ”, this is applied to the ministry of John the Baptist in Luke 1:17.

2. In the original order of creation, the parent-child relationship was to participate in and reflect the Father-Son relationship. This was to be an essential part of the image of God (Gen 1:26ff.).

3. The relational distance between human parents and children owes its origin to the creation of a distance between man and God through the sin of Eden. When Adam and Eve disobeyed the Word of God, they disassociated themselves from God as their Father. All vertical relationships subsequently fractured.

4. The fundamental impediment to relational intimacy is shame (Gen 2:25 compared with Gen 3:7ff.).

5. Restoration of relationships within the human family must involve the removal of shame.

6. The work of the death and resurrection of Christ (some dimensions of which are discussed in the above paper), means that the humanity of Christ has been perfectly united with the glory of God (John 17:5). Glory being the opposite of shame, full reconciliation at the parent-child level is available in Christ (Col 1:20).

7. This means the ongoing end-time ministry of Elijah (incorporated in all Christian prophecy) is essentially a ministry of fathering that removes shame.

8. Since this is not happening amongst us on a broad scale, there must be a basic misunderstanding of how the abolition of shame takes place.

9. Whereas John the Baptist correctly prophesied that Jesus would, “baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” (Luke 3:16), he apparently, by his later question of Christ, “‘Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?’” (Matt 11:3), failed to understand that the fire of judgement would not be immediately poured out by Jesus on the enemies of God, but would be taken by him on the cross. John and many Christian ministries today, seem to have been confused about the divine judgement at a fundamental level.

10. God is a “consuming fire” (Heb 12:29), but this fire is directed only for one purpose, the destruction of sin, not the destruction of persons!

11. Spiritual fathers whose vocation it is to remove shame, whether as counsellors, leaders, friends, pastors or any other ministry, must be firmly persuaded in their own consciences that the “punishment” of God upon his children, which always causes suffering, is a manifestation of love and not wrath (Heb 12:5-11). Where this is doubted, the Elijah ministry cannot be carried forward with authority.

12. Since the result of truly discerned divine discipline is an intensification of the awareness of sonship (Rom 8:14-17; Heb 12:5-10), the present “drought of sons” will only be broken by a restoration of mature fathering amongst the people of God.