Must be wizards week!

For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. (NKJV) Hebrews 4:12

But someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. (NKJV) James 2:18

The firmament was a veil to hide God’s throne from Man until he was ready to see God face to face. Of course, we see types of this throughout the Bible, Job, Jacob and Moses being notable examples. But no man had seen God until after Christ ascended and was presented as Facebread.

Your face is a veil of flesh that hides your brain, the source of your intentions. Your head is a microcosm of the Tabernacle at one level, and your entire body at another. You are a Garden and a Land.

Deceivers mask their true intentions with facial expressions and body language. Good spies can even pass a lie detector test. Between their true intentions and the flesh that is supposed to be communicating it, there is a deliberate disconnect. As in the Garden, it is the mind of a beast speaking with the eyes and mouth of a man.

Made in God’s image, our words create or destroy. Christians understand this. Christian writings are a testimony to this. Christian publishing is crucial. The cultures that grew up around Israel and grow up around the church are cultures of words and books, crosswords and blogs. But in God’s economy, in the way He has made things, mere words are not enough. Words are swords. They are made to cut something, even when they are intended to build up and edify.

Politicians can stand and speak about HopeTM and ChangeTM, but, as Doug Wilson says, smooth words create hard hearts, both in church and outside of it. [1]

But God’s words never return to Him empty. Why is this?

It is the difference between incantation and incarnation. Muslim calls to prayer are very often not read “live” but broadcast recordings. Yet these recorded words do change reality. People obey. Creation. They obey because there is also a sword. Bodies move to mosques. Division. The word becomes incarnate. Hearts are cut because if they are not, flesh will be.

Christianity is the same, but entirely opposite. As mentioned in some recent posts, it is God’s messenger who is the cut one. The sword-Word passes through him first. He is displayed as a living sacrifice on the Altar. It is not coercion. It is a bridal invitation. This is where theonomy over-reaches its God-given intent. God’s Law is for God’s people. We can fill the world with books, but if we are not a people “cut” we might as well be an army of teleprompters. The veil has to be opened.

The religion of Mohammed is power religion. It is the religion of Jannes and Jambres. It is the religion of Saruman. It moves flesh by coercion. Anyone with experience in Satanism will tell you their life becomes filled and controlled by fear. Flesh must be moved, but Saruman hides in his prayer tower, with his words and his books. Pharaoh will feed divine meals to his gods, and then flays the Hebrews. Caesar will cut goats’ gizzards, and then torch Christians. This is power religion. The faces of these gods are permanently hidden. It is the manipulating faith of Cain, and many of us Christians are guilty of this hiding and manipulating and coercing, at home, in church, in business, in politics. I certainly am. Power religion, like Saruman, like Satan, doesn’t get out much. Too risky. Easier to pull strings, name-drop, work the room. The veil stays closed.

Dominion religion is the fearless offering of our bodies as living sacrifices. Jesus offers Himself to us, and then we offer ourselves to the world. When any tribe or city starts killing God’s people, it is almost a sure omen that conversions will follow. The Words of the martyrs (witnesses) never return void. They are carried on a firmament of flesh whose division ends the emptiness of the world and its words.

Books and words are crucial, but they are no good hidden away. God needs them written on flesh as well as stone. “Spells and smells” can be wonderful in worship, but those words and clouds must leave the building as the Warrior Bride. We must be preaching, singing and chanting the Scriptures. [2] If the worship stays indoors, our faith is only “sentimental,” as Oswald Chambers would put it. Sentiment must lead to action. It’s crucial that we get our worship right, but it doesn’t bring the powers crashing down unless the singing soldiers are marching into a (possibly) bloody battle. Then God does His magic.

Now when they began to sing and to praise, the LORD set ambushes against the people of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir, who had come against Judah; and they were defeated. For the people of Ammon and Moab stood up against the inhabitants of Mount Seir to utterly kill and destroy them. And when they had made an end of the inhabitants of Seir, they helped to destroy one another. (2 Chronicles 20:22-23)

Yet the originating words are crucial. Good works without the accompanying truth also fall flat. Instead of returned mail, they are an envelope that is addressed and stamped but empty. Ahasuerus always sends out his fastest horses with a bill that can’t be repealed. Notice that the first section of Zechariah begins with warhorses doing a recce and ends with warhorses charging out of the Temple. It begins with the church in the (literally) “deep” and ends with a new message, a spring of hope rushing down from the mountain of God as four rivers. [3]

The Word becomes incarnate in us. We are called to worship. We are cut to the heart. We leave with an invitation but also an ultimatum. Unbelievers hearts will be cut because if they are not, their flesh will be. AD70 is testimony to that.

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[1] Smooth Words, Hard Hearts.
[2] See Liturgy as Prophecy.
[3] This is the background for the New Covenant blessings and curses, ie. the gospel, being presented as four horsemen in Revelation.

Building the Iron Saint

Every plunge brings a tougher skin and a softer heart.

Jesus calls us deeper, so Satan manufactures false depths. There are the deep things of God and the deep things of Satan (Revelation 2:24). Doug Wilson points out that the deep things of God are depths of holiness, not depths of mystical knowledge:

“…the Holy Spirit does indeed search the deep things of God, but He does not do it the way carnal minds think it should be done. The deep things of God are depths of holiness. In the submarine service, we used to have a term for the limit past which a submarine cannot go—that depth was called “crush depth.” And when it comes to God’s holiness, since there is no surface, no empty place above that holiness, every depth is crush depth. And the only way to avoid destruction is to be found in Jesus Christ.

Only the Spirit can sound the depths of Christ, and only Christ can protect us in the Spirit. One of the things He protects us from is the sin of being too clever for our own good, being too clever by half. The Spirit works in us as He did the early Christians, creating in them gladness and simplicity of heart.”

I want to put a different spin on this, the biblical concept of Testing and Maturity, or death and resurrection. The Bible is full of those willing to be refined and those who think they have no need for it; those who willingly put their heads on the stone altar (like Jacob) and those who are willing to slaughter 70 brothers to avoid their own submission (like Abimelech).

“Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him. But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God…”

How does God give us depth? He plunges us into the depths. Joseph was betrayed by his brothers, by his slavemaster’s wife, and by a fellow prisoner. At every step he was plunged deeper into the abyss. Yet, at every step, he obeyed at a deeper level, with a deeper trust in God and a deeper level of holiness. Every plunge increased his crush depth. Finally, deep called unto deep. He was God’s perfected vassal, a metal man, a Tabernacle, like Jesus.

“But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is judged by no one.”

God’s discipline does bring gladness and simplicity of heart. These are deep things of which we are not naturally capable. It also brings greater glory, the glory of an Adam of dust transfigured into non-corroding precious metals. Every plunge brings plunder for God. Every plunge brings a tougher skin and a softer heart.

From Oswald Chambers:

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.

These words mean the breaking of my independence with my own hand and surrendering to the supremacy of the Lord Jesus. No one can do this for me. I must do it myself. God may bring me to the point three hundred and sixty-five times a year, but He cannot put me through it. It means breaking the husk of my individual independence of God, and the emancipation of my personality into oneness with Himself, not for my own ideas, but for absolute loyalty to Jesus. There is no possibility of dispute when once I am there. Very few of us know anything about loyalty to Christ—“For my sake.” It is that which makes the iron saint.

Has that break come? All the rest is pious fraud. The one point to decide is—Will I give up, will I surrender to Jesus Christ, and make no conditions whatever as to how the break comes? I must be broken from my self-realisation, and immediately that point is reached, the reality of the supernatural identification takes place at once, and the witness of the Spirit of God is unmistakable—“I have been crucified with Christ” (RV).

The passion of Christianity is that I deliberately sign away my own rights and become a bond-slave of Jesus Christ. Until I do that, I do not begin to be a saint.

“Immediately, the Spirit drove Him into the wilderness.” —Mark 1:12

NOTE: THIS POST HAS BEEN REMIXED AND INCLUDED IN GOD’S KITCHEN.

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[1] My Utmost For His Highest, March 14th.
[2] The Old Covenant Day of Atonement (covering) could only put the lid on the trash can and spray a fragrant deodorant around (incense). Jesus came to take out (ekballo) the trash.
[3] James B. Jordan, Obama As Fool. There is some talk now about Obama’s foreign policy being “cruciform.” We’ll see how this pans out.

“All that we see on this earth is symbolic reality, and only as our inward heart is purged from sin can we see the symbolism. That is why when a man is in Christ Jesus he is a new creation, and he sees everything in the common world as symbols—unseeable realities.”

“God guides us stage by stage, and the most marvellous stage of His guidance is by symbols. A symbol represents a spiritual truth by means of images or properties of natural things. A symbol is sealed until the right spirit is given for its understanding, and God’s symbols are undetected unless His Spirit is in His child to enable him to understand. What did the cloudy pillar by day or the fiery pillar by night signify to the hordes in the desert? Nothing more than the mystery of ever-varying cloud forms. To the children of God, they meant the manifested guidance of God. How a man interprets God’s symbols reveals what manner of man he is. How often we have to say with the Psalmist, “I was as a beast before Thee,” i.e., without understanding. How often the ass recognises that one of God’s angels is speaking before the so-called prophet on its back detects it.”

“God shifts His symbols and we know not why; but God is ever only good, and the shifting of one symbol means surely that another symbol is to guide us to a nearer grasp of Himself. When God, so to speak, has left a symbol, it becomes transparent, and has no further binding force. How sad it is under the sun to see men worshipping a symbol which has been abandoned by God. We are not to worship reminiscences; this is the characteristic of all other religions. The Bible religion is one of eternal progress, an intense and militant going on. Obedience to the voice of the Spirit within, the Word of God without and the suffering of tribulation all around, enable the child of God to hear God’s voice and recognise His changing symbols.”

From The Discipline of Divine Guidance by Oswald Chambers

http://www.bullartistry.com.au/pdf_bestill/011BeStill.pdf

The Cross of Jesus is the revelation of God’s judgment on sin. Never tolerate the idea of martyrdom about the Cross of Jesus Christ. The Cross was a superb triumph in which the foundations of hell were shaken. There is nothing more certain in Time or Eternity than what Jesus Christ did on the Cross: He switched the whole of the human race back into a right relationship with God. He made Redemption the basis of human life, that is, He made a way for every son of man to get into communion with God.

The Cross did not happen to Jesus: He came on purpose for it. He is “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” The whole meaning of the Incarnation is the Cross. Beware of separating God manifest in the flesh from the Son becoming sin. The Incarnation was for the purpose of Redemption. God became incarnate for the purpose of putting away sin; not for the purpose of self-realisation. The Cross is the centre of Time and of Eternity, the answer to the enigmas of both.

The Cross is not the cross of a man but the Cross of God, and the Cross of God can never be realised in human experience. The Cross is the exhibition of the nature of God, the gateway whereby any individual of the human race can enter into union with God. When we get to the Cross, we do not go through it; we abide in the life to which the cross is the gateway. The centre of salvation is the Cross of Jesus, and the reason it it so easy to obtain salvation is because it cost God so much. The Cross is the point where God and sinful man merge with a crash and the way to life is opened—but the crash is on the heart of God.

–Oswald Chambers