Things Revealed

I'll not be talking with you much more like this because the chief of this godless world is about to attack. But don't worry — he has nothing on me, no claim on me. But so the world might know how thoroughly I love the Father, I am carrying out my Father's instructions right down to the last detail.

John 14: 30-31 (The Message)

The last detail was no small point. It was the point of everything, the turning point for all mankind. It was selfless obedience to the Father. It was sacrificial love on the cross. And it was mercy beyond comprehension. Jesus subjected himself to unfathomable brutality. To separation so great he cried out "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" And to restraint beyond measure when he chose not to stop it all and call down the legions of angels at his disposal. But as Jesus himself put it, had he chosen another path or been led astray, “how…would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?"

Jesus fulfilled the Scriptures exactly as written. The punishment that brought us peace was upon him and by his sacrifice we were set free and restored. He gave his life for us. Nobody took it. No one could—not the Romans, not the Pharisees, not even Satan. And no one could lead him astray. There was nothing—no thought, no sin, no doubt—no leverage or claim that anyone had on him, nothing that could be used to manipulate him or prevent him from fulfilling his destiny, right down to the last detail. Jesus chose death on the cross that we might have eternal life, and in doing so freed us from the grip of guilt and sin.

There is no greater freedom in heaven or on the earth. Because of Jesus, neither the enemy nor anyone else has a claim on us. We are his. We are forgiven and spiritually debt free—born again with a clean slate. And his victory for our lives was sealed with these final words: “It is finished.” Nothing the father of lies can say will ever change that fact, no matter what the accusation, no matter what’s in our past, no matter how he tries to mislead us. His claims on our souls, on our minds and on our hearts are null and void. Our debt is paid. We are free. Period.

Still, Paul understood that the choice was ours when he said, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”

Jesus wanted there to be no doubt about it. He put it this way: “if the Son sets you free, you will be absolutely free.”

Are you walking in God’s absolute freedom?

Or are you enslaved again by believing a lie of Biblical proportions?

Your choice.

That's the responsibility that comes with absolute freedom.

Then Joshua son of Nun secretly sent two spies from Shittim. "Go, look over the land," he said, "especially Jericho."

Joshua 2:1

Sound familiar? It was for Joshua. He had been there before. Last time, he was one of the men sent into the land by Moses. This time, he was the one doing the sending. This time, he was leader of all Israel.

We first hear about Joshua in Exodus when Moses told him, “Choose some of our men and go out to fight the Amalekites. Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hands." It’s a battle that clearly shows how God moves in the spirit and in the natural all at once. Moses, Aaron and Hur stood on the top of the hill while Joshua led the physical battle against the Amelikites. “As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amelikites were winning.” It goes on to say that Aaron and Hur held up Moses’ hands till sunset, until Joshua overcame the Amelikites with the sword.

As the leaders of Israel warred in the spirit with uplifted arms, Joshua led on the battlefield to defeat the Amelikites here on earth. It was one of many lessons Joshua learned about spiritual warfare and the unstoppable power of God.

When Moses went up the Mountain of God to receive the Ten Commandments, it was Joshua alone who accompanied him (at least part of the way). When Moses met with God in the Tent of Meeting and then returned to the camp, his face radiant with God's glory, Joshua “did not leave the tent.” Instead, he basked in the afterglow of His presence, trusting that he too would be changed by just being where God had been.

It was by his zeal for God and his faithfulness that Joshua became the spiritual leader the Lord chose to complete the work Moses had begun. Joshua had been transformed by his encounters with God: He had witnessed God’s miraculous deliverance from Egypt; experienced God’s victory over the Amelikites; and saw something others didn’t see when he was one of the twelve sent to explore the promised land: he saw the inheritance of his people and the invisible hand of God at work.

That’s often the way it is. Some people have eyes to see, some don’t. Some people see first, others follow. Some people never see, or worse, see and pretend they didn’t. The battle over spiritual truth—what God has actually said and revealed to us—has been raging since Adam and Eve set foot in the Garden. Jesus tells us, "he who is not with me is against me," and the Apostle Paul reminds us that this battle is not against flesh and blood, “but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

To be prepared for this struggle, we need to be able to see into the heavenly realms—to see by the spirit.

God puts people in our lives to teach us how to apprehend such things and how to grasp spiritual truths. We don’t automatically get it by being born again. But as we grow in the Word, as we desire to know God more, we begin to get revelation and we begin to see that which is unseen.

It was Joshua and Caleb who brought back the good report after they explored the land. They knew God showed it to them, not to scare them, but to excite them about this new beginning and the victory that he was about to hand them. The other ten, however, saw only inevitable defeat, and shared their view with all Israel. In spite of what they had seen when they were delivered from Egypt, their understanding of God had not been affected. They still only saw with natural eyes. They did not understand divine power. They did not comprehend the promises of God and that he would overcome all obstacles to fulfill them. And they refused to see with spiritual eyes, a choice for which they paid dearly. Only Joshua and Caleb were spared.

Forty years after trekking through the desert for the sins of his people, Joshua was right back where Moses had been when he sent the twelve to spy out the land. The moment was very familiar to him. But his experience with God and with Moses had taught Joshua to think like a man of God and to lead accordingly.

Forty years earlier, at God’s direction, Moses had sent twelve into the land. There was no need for a jury of twelve this time, because the verdict was still the same: the promised land is Israel’s. So only two were sent in to spy out the land. Two who were zealous for God—two a lot like Caleb and Joshua himself—who had spiritual eyes to see and reported back with total confidence, "The Lord has surely given the whole land into our hands; all the people are melting in fear because of us."

Joshua did something else because of what he had learned through Moses: he sent the two “secretly” into the land. Why? Because after Moses sent out the twelve, he received their report in the presence of assembly. When all Israel heard how the ten were melting in fear, their faith evaporated and they rebelled against Moses and Aaron and what God was doing. Joshua had learned the hard way that not all men have the same level of faith or the same understanding of spiritual matters. This time, there would be no such rebellion. The two would report back to Joshua first so he could consider their words before sharing them with the assembly.

Joshua learned from his experience and from the men of God that had been placed in his life. He learned how to lead while being led by the spirit. By running after God, Joshua learned to walk in the spirit.

So must we, for we are also a spiritual people.

There are people all around us still waiting to be led into the promised land. The Holy Spirit is showing them to us. Many have been wandering the desert for a very long time. It’s time to lead them out of the wilderness. It’s time for us to be as "strong and courageous" as Joshua and to step out in faith. God will lead us and give us the words and the authority necessary to accomplish the challenge before us.

He always has.

And He always will.

However, as it is written: ‘No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him’—but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.

1 Corinthians 2:9-10

How awesome is this revelation: Our great and mysterious God whose ways are higher than our ways, whose thoughts are higher than our thoughts, whose power is without end and whose love is unequaled, has revealed to us what he has prepared for those who love him.

Right before the quoted text, the Apostle Paul says he is speaking “of God’s secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began.” And Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.”

It's hard to fully grasp the meaning of all this, but let's settle on this: Now we know.

We know at least this much: God has made a way for us to enter back into relationship with him. We know that he has never stopped loving us and that our sins are forgiven just for the asking. We know he wants to make himself personally known to us. We know he wants to dwell in us by his Holy Spirit. We know Jesus is the Messiah who was “pierced for our transgressions” and that “the punishment that brought us peace was upon him.” We know he gave his life for us. We know that there is a heaven we can enter and a hell from which we can be saved. We know we can be born again. We know we can receive eternal life. And we know that Jesus came to fulfill the law and the prophets, revealing by his life, death and resurrection that the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New are one and the same.

We know this too: That God has a plan for those who love him. He has given us supernatural gifts, wisdom from heaven, an ability to understand spiritual things with a spiritual mind and a glimpse into things to come. He has set Jesus as an anchor for our souls in a world of constant change and increasing dissipation, and he enables us to stand firm in the midst of the storm.

No small matters, these things God has revealed. But they require something profound and simple from us: that we keep our eyes on spiritual truths, that we hear what God is saying and that we think about such things with the mind of Christ. Otherwise, what God has revealed to us won’t matter. For we run the same risk of falling that those in ancient times ran. Ezekiel said it this way:

Son of man, you are living among a rebellious people. They have eyes to see but do not see and ears to hear but do not hear, for they are a rebellious people.

That’s why the writer of Hebrews exhorts us to “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.” It’s the one certain way to stay focused on the things revealed, rather than on the things concealed. The world focuses on the latter, insisting there is no truth while rebelling against all that is good, holy and righteous. But for those of us who fix our eyes on Jesus, we know God’s truth. Despite all the confusion, distortions and hostility around us, we can see it and hear it and know it because he has made it known by his Spirit.

Truth never changes. But our grasp of truth can if we don’t remain vigilant and steadfast. So be encouraged and encourage others. Not only do we know the truth, but we have chosen the way and the truth and the life—we have chosen Jesus. And he confirms his truth every time we look, every time we listen and every time we think about how he has transformed our lives.

Such good news should not remain our little secret. We're called to share it with everyone who has an ear to hear!

Truth is nowhere to be found, and whoever shuns evil becomes a prey. The LORD looked and was displeased that there was no justice.

Isaiah 59:15

Although Isaiah was talking about ancient Israel, what he said could apply to America today. In fact, it could apply to most western nations. Jesus said “I am the way and the truth and the life,” but his place in our culture has been challenged for the past 50 years, and public references to him are the exception rather than the rule. Our culture's twisted view seems to be that if Jesus is the way, he's the wrong way. Oddly, one of the remaining places where limited references to God are acceptable is the courtroom. Witnesses still must swear to tell the truth while laying hands on the Bible. Yet if a potential witness was asked if he really believed what the Bible said—if he believed in angels and demons, heaven and hell, gifts of the spirit, in healing and speaking in tongues—his credibility would be in shambles before he uttered a single word under oath.

Because in these days, Truth is no where to be found.

In Moses' time, the Lord moved in profound sea-parting and earth-shaking ways. There were plagues. There were signs and wonders. There was a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. God’s fingerprints were everywhere and it didn’t require great discernment or wisdom to see what he was doing. Yet even in those miraculous times, the people of Israel grumbled and complained and fell into sin as soon as Moses took a little too long to return from the Mountain of God. The Lord saw the gold calf they had created while Moses was receiving the Ten Commandments and told him, your people have become “corrupt.”

Becoming corrupt about the things of God is man’s natural tendency. In science, it’s called “entropy”—the process of degradation or trending toward disorder. In man, it’s called sin. And the environment in which sin flourishes is one where man and the culture in which he lives forget about God.

So God told Moses to teach the Israelites about God’s laws and decrees and to “be careful to obey” them. But it was more than a warning. It was an exhortation to remember:

These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

Deuteronomy 6: 1-12

Moses finished by admonishing God’s people to “be careful that you do not forget the Lord.” But in spite of the warning, they forgot anyway. Again and again, bringing God’s wrath and discipline upon them, causing them to be dragged into captivity and to live, to this very day, in constant struggle in the land God gave them, rather than in the peace he promised (a promise which will yet be fulfilled).

Are we living in peace? Are we remembering Jesus and being careful not to forget the Lord? Is our culture honoring him in any way? or are we squirming uncomfortably to avoid any quote, parable or reference to him out of fear of offending or being politically incorrect? Think about it: we live in times fraught with danger on every front: Nuclear weapons are being developed by outlaw nations. Pornography, always just a click away, is one of the biggest businesses on the planet, supported by the slave trade of women and children. Terrorism is a global problem that strikes locally and randomly. The world economy teeters on the brink of collapse. There’s supposed global warming, cooling relations with Russia and the disaster du jour on the front page of any newspaper you see. And we are busy trying to forget God, and worse ,trying to prohibit references to him in public and by people in government.

The Apostle Peter knew how important it was to remember God. He called on believers to “participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption of the world” or they would become "ineffective and unproductive" in their knowledge of God. In fact, he says such people are nearsighted and blind, “having forgotten" that they have been cleansed from their past sins and having forgotten that "His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness." 2 Peter 1:3

He then says “I will always remind you of these things” and that “it’s right to refresh your memory” and that “I will make every effort to see that after my departure you will always be able to remember these things.” Not satisfied that his point had been made, Peter begins chapter 3 of 2 Peter by saying this: “Dear friends, this is now my second letter to you. I have written both of them as a reminder to stimulate you to wholesome thinking.” Why? Because the world is constantly reminding and overstimulating us about the pleasures of corrupt thinking and living, enticing us to go the way of the world and embrace sin wholeheartedly. Peter, however, wants us to be on our guard so that we “may not be carried away by the error of lawless men and fall from [our] secure position.” 2 Peter 3:17

We live in a time of lawlessness, of false teachings without end, of moral relativism and the embracing of all sorts of sin under the rationalization of tolerance, and in a time when man’s systems and creations are being shaken to their foundations. The people of Israel did not remember God less than 40 days after he parted the Red Sea and delivered them from Egypt. How in this world of more subtle moves of God can we remember him?

By making our “calling and election sure.”

We need to know who we are. We need to constantly remember that we have been empowered by God. Chosen by him. We need to know we are God’s heirs. That we are his children. Individually called. That we have repented and have been redeemed. That we are transformed, renewed, born again, spirit filled, and are overcomers who are able to take a stand for God. That we are different than the world, aliens, pilgrims and sojourners whose home is in heaven and who have received the promise of salvation and eternal life. That we are Ambassadors of Christ, salt and light in a land of darkness, a land corrupted by the ruler of the kingdom of the air. And we need to remember it by being in the word, by talking about God with our children, by talking about him when we sit at home and when we walk along the road, when we lie down and when we get up. By encouraging and reminding ourselves and by encouraging and reminding each other daily about who God is and what he has done.

If we don’t remember daily, moment by moment, making our election sure and being effective and productive in our knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, we are destined to fall. There’s a tidal wave of temptation, sin, fear and false teaching trying to sweep us up in its destructive power, and resisting its force is exhausting and futile, unless we stand in the power of our God. We cannot do that unless we remember what Jesus Christ has done in us and the power he has made available to us by the Spirit of truth. Paul exhorted us this way:

Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.

Ephesians 6:12-18

Only those who truly know God know that he hears their prayers. Only those dwell in God's word can remember daily that he is with them. Only believers who are armed (in the spirit) and dangerous (wielding the sword of the spirit) can withstand the pounding surf of dissipation that wants to drown us in sin. And only those who constantly remember what Jesus has done, can do and is doing, will stand firm. There just is no other way to persevere.

Because “If you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at all.”

On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple area and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts.

And as he taught them, he said, "Is it not written: "'My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations'? But you have made it 'a den of robbers.'"

The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching.

Mark 11:15-18

The whole crowd was amazed at Jesus’ teaching because it shattered their understanding. In a moment, what they had known and seen and done was revealed as wrong. Maybe even ridiculous. Until Jesus shook their reality with his display of righteous anger, the crowd had accepted the practices that he found so offensive. They had been brought up in a system and culture that had been captured by the world for so long, they weren’t even aware of the great divide between the Kingdom of God and the way of the world. Worse, for them, the two had become virtually one and the same.

Things are not much different today.

There is nothing inherently wrong with trade and business. Commerce makes the world go round, whether in cyberspace or Samaria. But there are things that are holy and things that are not, and the Lord has ordained that the holy things not be treated with irreverence or contempt.

Look at Belshazzar, the Babylonian King. He held a great banquet for all his friends and decided to break out the good China. Only the good China was the gold and silver goblets that Nebuchadnezzar had taken from the temple in Jerusalem. It was while they drank from the sacred cups and celebrated their good fortune that “fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall.” Daniel was called to explain these things and told the King that by praising gold and silver instead of the God of all things, he set himself up against the Lord of heaven. By treating as common that which was holy, Belshazzar sealed his fate. Daniel then translated the writing on the wall and told the king that he had been weighed in the balance, had been found wanting and that his days were now numbered. Severely numbered, as it turned out. He was slain that night.

Most of us are confident that we would never set ourselves up against the Lord of heaven. At least not knowingly. But something very similar happens all the time. The market place that’s out there has a way of creeping into the temple, into the church and into our own understanding of scripture and of what is or is not acceptable. In our culture, almost everything is acceptable. In fact, tolerance is the god of our times and one of the reasons Christians are so reviled. By taking a biblical stand on almost any issue, we are seen as intolerant and closed minded—heretics of the new world order.

Yet that same tolerance for just about anything infects our own thinking. We’ve all seen how easy (and seemingly reasonable) it is to use proven marketing strategies to grow churches, sell books and worship music, evangelize and advertise. But it's like a Trojan horse. Once we accept the world's way of doing business and apply it to Kingdom matters, lots of other ideas, paradigms and philosophies enter in and become just as acceptable. Just as tolerable. As a result, growth and influence often trump love and intimacy. In the end, believers and unbelievers can become a kind of funhouse mirror image of each other, the one worshipping tolerance but having none for people of faith, the other worshipping the God of love but having none for the lost or even for each other.

Like those who ran the temple of old, we rob the lost of opportunities to hear the gospel when we judge them unreceptive or beyond hope; and when we withhold love out of frustration with their stand against what we value, we rob them of the power of the gospel. If we don’t guard our hearts, we can end up like Belshazzar, setting ourselves up against the Lord’s call to the lost and celebrating our works instead of his worthiness. Or we can end up like the money changers in the temple, exchanging God’s currency for man’s. Love for power. Godliness for worldliness. Then, as now, it’s the righteous anger of the Lord that shows us how much we have unknowingly embraced the world’s way of doing things.

Realizing how worldly we’ve become and just how broke we are in God's economy can elicit two diametrically opposed responses. The chief priests and the teachers of the law had one: they wanted to kill the messenger. Many still want to kill the messenger. The Psalmist has the other; he wants to kill the worldly ways within him:

Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

Psalm 139:23-24

How we respond depends on our hearts since "no one can serve two masters."

Either way, search me is a killer invitation.

The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. 1 Corinthians 15:46

Our biggest problem as believers is that we are human. Certainly, God has blessed us with five senses to fully appreciate his marvelous creation. He has also given us such a wide range of emotions that we feel and experience everything in high-def-surround-sound-dolby-blue-ray-holy-cow-did-you-see-that reality! But being human frequently results in sensory overload, constant exposure to temptation, enormous mood swings and spiritual nearsightedness. And each of us has the same valid excuse: I was born that way!

The Spiritual is new to us. The natural came first. We’ve had so much time to learn what it means to be flesh and blood, to react in our senses and to accept what we see with our natural eyes, that when spiritual transformation does come we are like new-borns, “new creations” who have been “born again.” We recognize that something’s different about us, but we instinctively draw on our prior experience for understanding. Unfortunately, our prior experience is of no real value because it comes from the natural and has not prepared us to grasp or unravel spiritual things.

Look at the twelve spies Moses sent into the land (Numbers 13 and 14) shortly after the Lord miraculously delivered his people from Egypt. God tells Moses to send men to explore the land which he was giving to the people of Israel. They cross the border, see the wonder and riches of the promised land, but still bring back a bad report of powerful cities, giants in the land and a people that Israel could not conquer. What they didn’t see was that God was handing Canaan over to Israel, that he had already shown what he would do on Israel’s behalf and that he would conquer the land through them. Only Caleb and Joshua had spiritual eyes to see because there was something different about them. Something that caused them not to lean on their own understanding but to view things from God’s perspective and embrace it as truth. The rest of the scouting party—men of fear and flesh—paid for their lack of spiritual vision and trust with their very lives. A harsh result that gives us a clear insight into the nature of God’s Kingdom and the risks of continuing to walk, see and respond only in our flesh, like the natural man we all once were.

The Psalmist gives us another perspective (Psalm 73). After observing and complaining about how the wicked prosper, how they seem to be trouble and burden free and how they not only appear to succeed, but arrogantly claim their success is God’s blessing, the psalmist comes to this realization: “When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, I was senseless and ignorant; I was a brute beast before you.”

A brute beast responds to what he sees in the natural with emotions and instincts: Fear. Greed. Envy. Desire. Anger. Hatred. Murder. It is a snapshot of man in all his fleshly glory, the exact opposite of the spiritual man enveloped in all of Christ’s holy glory.

Paul puts it this way: “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17). But since the new—the spiritual—did not come first, no matter how long you’ve been walking with God, you still need to train yourself at being spiritual. At thinking spiritually. At seeing the world from God’s perspective by letting Christ live in you. The world challenges the new creation every day with the same old temptations. Virtually every moment, virtually all the time—from corner newsstands to billboards, from songs to DVDs, from video games to TV commercials and from politics to the stock market—our natural man is enticed to respond like it used to. Like a brute beast, senseless and ignorant to the spiritual realm, and unaware or indifferent to the fact that these worldly snares can trap and injure the spirit within us.

Has your flesh succumbed recently and had a “victory” at the expense of your spirit? Sometimes it happens. In fact, it will happen from time to time for the rest of your life, because the natural came first. Think of it as a flesh wound. It’s personally painful, but it does not disqualify you from God’s service or result in your dishonorable discharge from the battle. Want confirmation? Just look around you. No one is perfect. No one is without sin. If your flesh wound disqualifies you, then no one is qualified to serve God. Not one.

There is a maxim in the legal system that says “ignorance of the law is no excuse.” Like the person in court, we too have no excuse in spiritual matters. We can feign ignorance in a moment of weakness, but God has made us new creations who can find no sanctuary behind closed eyes. The spiritual may not have come first in our lives, but it has come nonetheless! And it has opened our eyes and minds to the Kingdom of God and has given us the power to be a spiritual people—Ambassadors of Christ among the lost.

You are a new creation. Don’t forget it when you fail. God doesn’t. He only forgets your sin. And he knows that as his new creation, you’ll get better at it with practice and perseverance. And with his help.