First the Bad News, then the Good News
“Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings. They heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. Then the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, ‘Where are you?’ He said, ‘I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.’ And He said, ‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?’” (Gen. 3:7-11)
A Sinner? Who, Me?
People instinctively recoil and wiggle away from any thought or mention of our personal and corporate Sin. Seldom is it mentioned in polite social circles. Even the intimation that we might not be as ‘good’ or ‘decent’ as we like to think we are, stirs up self-righteous anger and denial within us. But the Truth is: God is not what we choose to ‘think’ or ‘wish’ Him to be. HE IS WHO HE ACTUALLY IS! He has revealed Himself to us in unmistakable terms. And then… once we know Him as He is… we can know ourselves as we really are!
“I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; but now my eye sees You; therefore I retract, and I repent, sitting on dust and ashes.” (Job 42:5-6 NASB. emphasis added.)
We can’t make the Reality and Truth of something like the laws of physics go away. It doesn’t matter a bit if we disagree or get angry at them. Nor can we pass our own homemade substitute laws and try to ‘legislate’ God out of existence! He and Creation, as He made it to be, prevails anyway! God’s Eternal Reality and Objective Truth, won’t go away! Even if we find Him to be inconvenient, embarrassing, and opposed to our fondest wishes, desires and burning passions, His Truth and Reality remain! So, sooner or later, we’re forced to come to grips with the objective, eternal, changeless ‘Facts of Life’! (See Jeremiah 17:5-10 for example.) God has clearly revealed and warned that His impending Ultimate Judgment will measure all of His Creation, including angels and humans, according to what the immutable Standards of His righteous nature require!
So our innate Humanistic tendencies, imperatives, and knee-jerk hunches will do us no good. Nor will our personal wishes, opinions and good intentions have any bearing on what He will do… when He makes His Final Decision concerning our eternal destiny. We must all meet His Standards on His terms! He won’t accommodate Himself to ours. So nothing we might try to offer to God in an effort to pay our way past His Judgment, can save us! Only God can satisfy His own Standards. And that is where Yeshua, (Jesus) God’s Living Word made flesh, comes into the picture! He, and what He has already done, must be our Salvation! And apart from Him… we will be forever lost!
Coming to grips with the True Gospel of Salvation is a huge problem because we are, by nature (and by the actual misdeeds and omissions that reveal our nature) highly flawed and hopelessly Self-adoring. Yes, we love to see ourselves as highly-capable, radically independent agents! And we feel a need to come across to the world, as, inherently righteous, innocent, and noble! Thus, even when we commit egregiously evil, brutal acts against each other, we can’t face or accept the blame we have coming.
So we blame society, or our upbringing, or lack of education, or some other external circumstance. Those are the reasons for why we did what we did! So it’s always something or someone else’s fault. But we can’t admit that we are prone to wickedness and evil in our heart of hearts. That’s why so many of us refuse to think about these matters and become enraged when they are mentioned! But, like it or not, we will all give an account before the Divine Tribunal for everything we were and did in this life, with our minds, wills, imaginations, choices, and bodies. And when that reckoning comes, there will be no escape. We won’t be able to avoid, deny, laugh or shrug off the Reality of God. No one will get away with a thing!
Instead, we’ll enter the awesomeness of whatever our eternal destiny will be, as soon as God pronounces His final Judgment over us! In light of this, it’s easy to see why God’s Chosen People and prophets, and His living Word and His apostles and disciples, always get into so much trouble! They’re commissioned to deliver God’s ‘mail’ to this world! So those who want nothing to do with God, become enraged and lash out, and even seek to try to kill His messengers! Nevertheless…
“And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment, so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him.” (Hebrews 9:27-28 Emphasis added.)
God’s Word tells us that each human heart is full of deceit, guilt, and corruption! So who or what can save us from ourselves? Our own hearts and track records will be forced to the surface and they will testify against us before God’s Perfect Knowledge and Tribunal of Eternal Justice! At that time, no one will be able to avoid the issue. Eternal Truth will expose us all… as soon as death finally overtakes us! So NOW is always the time for God’s mail to be delivered. And NOW is the time for each of us to have the guts to face facts, and look carefully at how temporal and passing this world, and we who inhabit it, really are. Take a good honest look at your true self — the self that the all-penetrating eye of God gazes upon all the time. Look under your own ‘hood’! See how fragile and mortal you are. You’re like a puff of smoke! How much longer can you last? Where can you go? Behind what will you hide? Who can escape the perfect Eternal Gaze that knows every speck of truth about us?
The Beach Ball of Truth…the Shame Issue
We’re conditioned to be like swimmers that frantically try to conceal our beach balls of Truth! We try to keep them submerged and suppressed beneath the water’s surface. You won’t dare let anyone see yours. And for years, I wouldn’t dare let anyone see mine. I tried desperately to appear calm, cool, okay, and collected on the surface, never giving a hint as to what was really going on in the depths beneath.
“But the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders. These are the things which defile the man; but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile the man.” (Matthew 15:18-20)
Shame makes us unwilling to openly admit what we really are. So we struggle fiercely to try to twist the Truth and create what we hope is a convincing front behind which we strive to remain hidden. We do whatever we can think of to make sure nobody sees the soulish, selfish, predatory ‘beast in the basement’ that lurks in our heart of hearts — the real Truth… the self-adoring ‘living death’ corruption that lurks deep within and continually oozes out, contaminating everything we touch! And until God’s Word and Spirit pierce us with the Truth, we’ll refuse to admit what is truly working from within us, and where we really are and how desperately we need God’s Mercy.
Parallel Worlds and Kingdoms
There are ‘parallel worlds’ in the spiritual realm, The Kingdom of Light and the Kingdom of Darkness. And within ourselves, there is the outward life we strive to project to the world around us, for effect. And then there is our personal, private life, the one we try to conceal and reserve strictly to ourselves. We try to hide much of it even from our parents, spouses, and families. And worse still, there is that part of ourselves we even desperately try to conceal from ourselves! But although we resort to such tactics, we can never conceal even a speck of what we really are from our Creator!
So let’s consider what is really in us: Each of us, in our heart of hearts, is undeniably selfish, self-centered, rebellious, manipulative, predatory, controlling and very destructive. We say we love others, and that we love ourselves, yet we can’t stop being destructive, even of ourselves! We indulge in addictions, vices, and immorality that can even destroy us, as well as our families! And we compete against, and victimize, our neighbors, and our environment out of pure laziness and selfishness. We live in ways that tear at the very fabric of our own societies! Yes, and in twisted narcissistic ways, we obsess over our own personal interests and self-enhancement, while remaining blind and deaf and uncaring about those of the ones who live around us.
So, when push comes to shove and the chips are down on the table… we prefer ourselves and our own interests over those of everything and everyone else, even people we love the most! In our heart of hearts… we can’t stop sabotaging and destroying ourselves, and those who depend on us the most!
“For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, acts of adultery, other immoral sexual acts, thefts, false testimonies, and slanderous statements. These are the things that defile the person…” (Matthew 15:19-20a NASB.)
Yet, out of a profound sense of shame and arrogant pride, we won’t allow what we really are to be made known. Nor do we dare examine our own hearts. Instead we ‘anesthetize’ ourselves with self-numbing substances and inane worldly mind-occupying activities and diversions. Thus we lurk in darkness, hiding within fog banks of lies and hiding behind false fronts of altruism and goodness. But while we do that, Almighty God, our changeless, Perfectly Pure and Righteous God, continues to see right through us! And He who is the Perfect Good and Righteous Spirit and All-Authoritative Standard of Eternal Truth, will be our Ultimate Judge, whether we like it or not! Our earthly ‘life’ runs parallel to God’s Kingdom of Truth.
But what we like to call ‘my life’ is most often a false front structure that we present to whoever and whatever is around us. We all do it. We live behind the cosmetically enhanced, counterfeit ‘self-life’ that we diligently construct and try to dress up, primp, deodorize, glamorize, idealize, cover with medals and finery. We use that to exalt ourselves. We flaunt our accomplishments and hide our vices and deficiencies from public view. Most of us are addicted to hiding behind such phony, controlling, manipulative devices. In other words, we identify ourselves by what we like to think we are, instead of owning up to what we really are! We self-righteously label our concealments as, ‘my right to privacy.’
But most often, it’s not objective freedom and liberty we want to protect. It’s the subjective sense of toxic shame we chronically feel that drives us to hide the Truth. We pose and posture and strive to project an image of being ‘okay’ from behind our crafted façades. We plaster over the rebellion, and dark, lustful, predatory corruptions always lurking just below the surface. Occasionally, the tremendous force from the decades-long emotional energy-buildup of these trapped forces erupts forcefully, or seeps inevitably into our physical lives, relationships, and issues, despite our best efforts to suppress and conceal them. And when we can no longer contain the enormous buildup of the ’emotional voltage’ pressure our shame-based behaviors cause, we ‘lose our grip on things’, and our beach ball of Truth slips out from our grasp and pops up into the light of day. Then, we’re caught ‘red-handed’, and we scramble and scuffle to do our best to minimize the effects by saying – “I made a mistake.”
But that’s not what the Living God calls it. He abides in Reality, so to Him it’s not an aberration or mistake – it’s Sin! That is what is really at work within our fallen, mortally wounded flesh. That is what rears its ugly head and manifests itself as destructive acts of commission or omission that we cannot stop ourselves from committing.
“I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. For I joyfully agree with the law of God in the inner person, but I see a different law in the parts of my body waging war against the law of my mind, and making me a prisoner of the law of sin, the law which is in my body’s parts. Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?” (Romans 7:21-24 NASB.)
“Thus says the LORD, ‘Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind and makes flesh his strength, and whose heart turns away from the LORD. For he will be like a bush in the desert and will not see when prosperity comes, but will live in stony wastes in the wilderness, a land of salt without inhabitant. Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD and whose trust is the LORD. For he will be like a tree planted by the water, that extends its roots by a stream and will not fear when the heat comes; but its leaves will be green, and it will not be anxious in a year of drought nor cease to yield fruit.
“The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it? I, the LORD, search the heart; I test the mind, even to give to each man according to his ways, according to the results of his deeds.” (Jeremiah 17:5-10)
“Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wants to come after Me, HE MUST DENY HIMSELF, TAKE UP HIS CROSS, AND FOLLOW ME. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what good will it do a person if he gains the whole world, but forfeits his soul? Or what will a person give in exchange for his soul?For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and will then repay every person according to his deeds.” (Matthew 16:24-27 NASB. Emphasis added.)
The Sin-Corrupted ‘Normal’ We Have All Inherited
The world we live in, and the system that runs it, if we look at them honestly, resemble an insane asylum… in which the inmates are running the entire institution! Our ‘pop culture’ trendsetters and ‘powers that be’, pawn themselves off as, ‘public servants’, while they manipulate the levers of power and influence at the expense of the ignorant and distracted masses for their own self-serving purposes. So-called leaders in every field, educators, scientists, politicians, business tycoons, and the so-called upholders of our justice systems, if they are paid off sufficiently, will take God’s Truth and Reality and twist them beyond recognition. The rich and powerful ‘influencers’ of ‘pop culture’ go berserk, sucking up wealth and exceptional privileges and luxuriate in the things they reserve for themselves, at the expense of their less fortunate and less crafty starving neighbors.
In this world, nothing is sacred, except for our own egos, agendas, pleasures, preeminent self-interest and public images. True reverence and the holy fear of God are ridiculed and mocked. Division, selfishness and violence reign supreme; material gain and power over others are idolized. Predatory lust is flaunted as ‘good’ and ‘normal’. Good is abhorred and banned as evil, while evil is legislated, promoted and marketed as the ultimate good.
This fallen world is entrapped in the coils of the demonic Serpent that God reveals to us in the very first book of the Bible, Genesis. So, regardless of race, color, nationality, creed, century, country or culture, we fallen, `Sin-corrupted humans are the epitome of hypocrisy, predatory selfishness, venal self-seeking, self-destructiveness and contemptible double-dealing. These are undeniable, historically-proven and recorded facts! Rejection of God’s Word is what runs this fallen world. And, sooner or later, the Word of God and His Truth will expose and judge and deal with all of our Creator’s enemies.
`”You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wants to be a friend of the world (system) makes himself an enemy of God!” (James 4:4 NASB)
The Deadly Snake Bite of Sin
Through Adam, who generated the human race with his wife Eve, the satanic Serpent managed to inject his Sin-venom into us all. So as long as we remain deaf and resistant to God’s Word, Sin maintains a stranglehold on our individual and collective throats. The world has decided that Sin is ‘normal’ and ‘human’ and, therefore, unavoidable. We blame God for making us ‘this way’, and try to take His place by rejecting His Word and making up alternate ‘gods’ and ‘truths’ of our own. God reveals Reality and Truth, but because we do not accept Him as He really is, we can’t accept His Creation as He originally made it to be. Nor are we willing to accept the fact that our own Sin is what has disfigured and mortally wounded us.
So it follows that we will also refuse to accept ourselves, or each other, as we really are. We deny and turn our backs on God and refuse to even consider that originally, He intended to make us in His own image and likeness. But our Sin destroyed that. And now, we insist on twisting God’s Absolute Truth and assuming we have the right to make it become something that is relative. We twist it into whatever shape we wish in order to suit our whims. And we assume, simply by rejecting and bypassing His Word, that we can justify and set ourselves free from any guilt, shame, and condemnation. Thus we make up our own ‘truth’ and ‘reality’ so we can come across as noble, righteous, worthy, and free to do as we please.
This is so normal and acceptable in this world that humans have become truly ‘shameless’. We’ve made our rebellion against our Creator into a false religion. We call it, ‘Humanism’. So now, evil can be made to appear as ‘good’ and good things are passed off as ‘evil’. We postulate that ‘Man is the measure of all things’, and each of us has the right to decide for himself, what is true, false, real, unreal, and good or evil. Since the world has made peace with God-less radical independence, people are sometimes willing to admit that they ‘made a mistake’…but they hiss, recoil and strike… should anyone make any mention of Sin! They refuse to consider anything that would disturb and expose their false sense of worth and righteousness.
The fallen world considers the idea of calling people to repent of their sins to be very bad form indeed. In the genteel, sophisticated, and wretchedly phony elitist social, economic, educational and political circles of this world, God is blatantly rejected, even in many organized religions. And He’s also rejected, of course, in the squalor of slums, saloons, brothels, alternate lifestyle gathering places and on reality talk shows, penal institutions, and drug dens. So no one is allowed to dare to point out that every single one of us is – ‘as guilty as Sin!’
I too have been guilty of that. I did it willingly and eagerly for a great part of my adult life… until the Lord, in His great mercy, forced open my tightly clenched eyes and forced me to see The Truth! And the Truth was devastating and I and my self-serving system were disintegrated and reduced to nothing. And that Truth is what I’m now compelled to share with others now… while there is still time left to do it.
“Jesus *said to him, “I am The Way, and The Truth, and The Life; no one comes to the Father except through Me! If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him!” (John 14:6-7 NASB. Emphasis added.)
“For if I preach the gospel, I have nothing to boast of, for I am under compulsion; for woe is me if I do not preach the gospel.” (1 Corinthians 9:16. Emphasis added.)
Ever since I was a child I heard people I loved, trusted and respected, talk about ‘Jesus,’ and ‘God,’ and ‘going to church,’ and ‘making it to Heaven’ and ‘avoiding Hell.’ I even underwent seminary training for thirteen years and dabbled in theology, philosophy, ‘Biblical Criticism,’ the study of Hebrew and Greek and hermeneutical science, liturgy and ‘ministry.’ I was ordained and became a full-blown member of the clergy. Thus I had religious talk coming out of my ears. But I could only see these things through the worldly eyes of fallen flesh. I did not have spiritual eyes; so I was soulish, intellectual, emotional, carnal, and therefore, by default, I was ‘worldly’.
“Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.” (1 Cor. 2:12-14 Emphasis added.)
Religious Nonsense or, Life-Changing Truth?
I once viewed talk about God and His holy righteousness, and the mention of Sin, and repentance, as ‘guilt trips’ that manipulative religious tyrants liked to impose on their underlings. So, to me, it was nothing but religious nonsense. The living Word of God and His Holy Spirit had not yet pierced, penetrated and impregnated my innermost being with His Truth and Light. So, to me, knowing God consisted only in ‘head knowledge’ that we learn from going to schools, memorizing the teachings of men, and soaking in the culture of this world into which we are all born.
That soulish, “It’s all about me” perspective, coupled with my own inherited corruption and immaturity, resulted in a personal ‘burn out’ that led to a personal ‘implosion’. And it totally derailed and destroyed my (self-managed) life of religious trappings. All of a sudden, something within me snapped… and I underwent a ‘meltdown’ that rendered me unable to function in that inbred ‘ivory tower’, religious world to which I had devoted myself. My coping systems shut down and I became paranoid and lost faith in everything, including myself. So I was forced to admit my inability to do what I had presumed I would be able to do, before I was even able to get a good start in it!
So I left the church of my fathers and forefathers in disgrace and turned my back on God and Jesus as I then soulishly understood them. And for the next fifteen years, I either fervently avoided the mention of anything Christian or tore into anyone who even remotely dared to bring it up in my presence! And I forced myself to believe that Christianity was foolishness and that it was dangerous to believe it. I used denial to try to conceal my true self. I was as locked into radically independent living as I could get because I remained blind to God’s spiritual Reality for reasons I wasn’t willing to admit to myself or share with anyone else. The guilt and condemnation I had inside was consuming me from within, and all I could do to try to stop feeling it was to numb my brain and disconnect it from Truth so I wouldn’t have to endure the inescapable Truth.
God-Defined Reality Invades My ‘Virtual Reality’
But when God sends His living Word and Holy Spirit to come after you, and says, “Where are you?” it’s a totally different matter. Then True Reality falls all over you like a ton of bricks! God overwhelms and pierces into your gut and leaves you writhing in the dust, gasping for air. That’s the difference between soulish head knowledge that men control, and direct Holy Spirit revelation that hits a person like a lightning bolt out of eternity and pierces his or her innermost being to the very core!
Now I understand why all mention of God’s ‘Good News’ used to make me burn out, change the subject, and nod off to sleep. I know why I felt fed up and, at times, self-righteously tear into anyone who dared to knock on my door to ‘get me saved’. It was because, in all of those years of classes, services, sermons, and book reading, I had never personally felt the devastating impact of what the bad news that God has revealed to the world was all about!
I never knew the Living God directly and personally. So, to me, He was not real or present and IN MY FACE! And therefore, neither was this awesome, heart-gripping warning He gave to the first human:
“The LORD God commanded the man, saying, ‘From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die!’” (Genesis 2:16-17, Emphasis added)
Decapitated!
I was never fully aware of the meaning of the words, ‘die’ and ‘death’ in the sense that God means them. Only later did I see that rebellion and disobedience to God’s living Word is sure Death. God’s Word is our Creator and Lord. Therefore, He is our ‘Head’, spiritually speaking. So, when the Serpent succeeded in getting our first parents to rebel and disobey, through them, he ‘decapitated’ us all from God’s Living Creative Word… our only true Source of Life! Their bodies and minds continued to function, but as long as they were severed from intimate union with their Life Source, spiritually speaking, they were ‘dead men walking’! And everything they did or produced, had the stench of death permeating it. And this is true even when we strive to make ourselves and what we’re doing appear to be eminently ‘religious and spiritual’!
Before I saw this, I didn’t have to face what living and acting apart from the Living God, on my own terms, really meant. I didn’t realize that this state of ‘living death’ is what we all inherit from our very conception! So we already have Death at work in us even before we’re ejected from the womb! It may be a slow death, but we’re already dead nevertheless! Death is always at work in us… even when we’re on our most pompous, self-righteous, religious best behavior! The Sin that is in us contaminates whatever we touch and do. But we’re so used to it that we blithely think and talk about it as, ‘My Life’! But anything Death does or is able to produce, is also dead! Death breeds nothing but corruption and is, therefore, incompatible with and at total odds with Almighty God and His Eternal Life-giving nature. So how’s that for ‘being born to lose’?
“But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our wrongdoings, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the boundless riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” (Ephesians 2:4-7 NASB.)
Nothing that Death produces will ever pass the Judgment that flows from God’s Holy, Righteous Life-giving Nature! If we don’t grasp the significance of this ‘bad news’, we fail to grasp the meaning and awesome significance of The Good News of God’s Call to Repentance, Redemption, Salvation, and Full Restoration. Nor can we grasp the meaning of the word ‘repent’ unless we’ve already been deeply broken, exposed and devastated by The Truth that we really are decapitated and exist as, ‘the living Dead’! In the past, this Truth hadn’t hit home.
But the moment it did hit… I was slammed to the ground like a hammer-struck bull! Truth forced me to fall on my face before the Living God! The flash of His Blazing Holiness blinded me… but at the same time, it exposed me to Real Truth for the very first time! It shut my mouth and reduced me to silence. And I felt compelled to fall prostrate before Almighty God in total, helpless bankruptcy and wordless worship. The utter corruption of my heart was exposed by the flaming brilliance of His Truth and blinding, devastating Righteousness that was hopelessly beyond my frantic attempts to bypass and surpass it by relying on my own non-existent ‘strength’! How in the world can God’s Good News get through to a man and really expose what is in his heart, if the BAD NEWS has never first penetrated his innards and popped all of his delusional bubbles? And how could you leap, dance and twirl in the streets in joy, gratitude, and relief, if you’ve never seen what a narrow escape you’ve had from the unspeakable DOOM that awaits the unredeemed at the moment of their demise?
Flying Blind
The reality is, that if you don’t get the point, you’ll continue to fly blind, like a pilot in a terrible storm that has no instruments, and worse still, no eyes! If we never realize that the ‘Headless’ Sin-adoring system of this world is the Gateway to a Hell of eternal separation from our Creator… then the glorious News of God’s Redemption will fall flat and leave us untouched. We’ll shrug our shoulders and ask, “What’s so bad about this world? And, since I’m such a good person, why would I need a redeemer? Why would you think I’d be interested in anything like that?“ In that blind state, we can’t imagine why anyone would give God and His Word or the Bible a second thought. All we know or care about are the horizontal things that pertain to our self-serving existence in this fallen world. In our decapitated state, we can’t imagine that there could be anything vertical and spiritual and Heavenly that is actually more real than anything we can see, touch, smell, hear and taste here on Earth!
And as long as what we feel and have continues to seem ‘good’, ‘normal’ and ‘totally satisfactory’ in our sight, we remain blind to our danger and our abysmal neediness and the Glorious Reality of the ‘Secrets’ of The Kingdom of Heaven.
“Now when the attendant of the man of God had risen early and gone out, behold, an army with horses and chariots was circling the city. And his servant said to him, ‘Alas, my master! What shall we do?’ So he answered, ‘Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.’ Then Elisha prayed and said, ‘O LORD, I pray, open his eyes that he may see. And the LORD opened the servant’s eyes and he saw; and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.” (2 Kings 6:15-17)
“And the disciples came and said to Him, ‘“Why do You speak to them in parables?’” Jesus answered them, ‘To you, it has been granted to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, but to them, it has not been granted. For whoever has, to him more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him.
Therefore I speak to them in parables; because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. In their case, the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled, which says, ‘”You will keep on hearing, but will not understand; you will keep on seeing, but will not perceive; FOR THE HEART OF THIS PEOPLE HAS BECOME DULL, WITH THEIR EARS THEY SCARCELY HEAR, AND THEY HAVE CLOSED THEIR EYES, OTHERWISE THEY WOULD SEE WITH THEIR EYES, HEAR WITH THEIR EARS, AND UNDERSTAND WITH THEIR HEART AND RETURN, AND I WOULD HEAL THEM!’ ‘
But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear. For truly I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.’” (Matthew 13:10-17 Emphasis added.)
Fallen flesh assumes that this world is everything and its false gods are all that matter. It thinks that what pertains to this worldly, decapitated life is all we need to know. It assumes that it doesn’t get any better than what we can see, hear and feel or imagine with our natural physical senses and comprehend with the Sin-corrupted faculties of our fallen souls. So the viewpoint of the ‘living dead’ people in this man-adoring world and its dog-eat-dog system becomes our sole point of reference. We judge, assess and evaluate everything under the sun according to our personal self-serving worldly standards. We are actually convinced that our inherited state of living death is ‘life’! And we assume that dying to that living death state so we can draw Eternal Life from our Creator would actually be Death!
So, how’s that for being all turned around and disoriented? Nevertheless… that, in truth, is where most of us are and why we’re so habitually self-satisfied, ‘blind’, and ‘Head-less’! Even Isaiah, one of God’s prophets, needed more revelation from God. He had already received some understanding from the Holy Spirit and was called to be a prophet. But God gave more revelation that completely blew him away and left him devastated. He saw the Truth concerning God’s Holiness and Majesty – at a depth he had never before imagined possible. We’ll look at what happened to him later.
But first, let me share what the Lord taught me in the midst of one of my most foolish and embarrassing blunders. He used this unforgettable experience to ‘download’ some vitally needed insight and understanding. I had already surrendered to my risen Lord and had come under His Authority by that time. But like Isaiah, I needed a much deeper revelation. I was already ‘back in ministry’, trying to serve God. I had already reconciled with Him, but on this day He revealed much more of His Truth and did it in a very graphically physical and gut-wrenching way. He taught me something that no theology study or logic or discussion or organized religious ritual could have ever given. I share it with you in the hope that it may help someone else. Even if it only opens one heart and if only one person can get this message and transform, and bow before the Reality, Dominion, Pre-eminence, Lordship and Eternal Glory of the risen Lord, Jesus Christ… it will be worth it! So, here is my true story:
The Cooler
I was in Central Iowa at the end of a ministry business trip. My friends, Kenny and Lynn had invited me to their home for dinner. They treated me to a wonderful meal and made me feel like an honored guest. After our meal, as I was preparing to leave, Kenny pulled out a large insulated cooler from a closet, the kind you use for picnic lunches. Then he went to his meat freezer and proceeded to pack the cooler full of neat packages of freshly butchered cuts of meat that he had just brought back from his father’s farm. “Here,” he said. “Take this with you. It’s as fresh as it gets.” Then he took the cooler out to my car and put it in the trunk. I thanked him and his wife profusely, got behind the wheel, and headed for the interstate highway and the two and a half hour drive home.
By the time I got home, I was drowsy and it was getting late; but I was anxious to see my wife and son. So I parked the car, took my bags out of the back seat, and hurried into the house to spend a little time with my family before bedtime. The car I traveled in was a staff car; so I only used it for business trips. When I didn’t have to be on the road, I used our family car for personal transportation. So the staff car sat in the driveway, unused and unnoticed, for three weeks. Then one evening, I went out to the staff car to look for something in the glove box. And the faint, redolent odor that hit me when I opened the door instantly reminded me of that long-forgotten cooler. It was still in the trunk where I had left it—and now it was full of—God only knew what.
I can’t convey the electrical surge of emotional voltage that went through me at that moment. It was dread, horror and shame along with the disgusting prospect and inevitability of having to open that trunk to face the gruesome Reality within it. I remember that my instant, knee-jerk reaction was a strong desire to keep it quiet and not let my wife, or anyone else on planet Earth, know that I had done such a stupid and wasteful thing. It reminded me of the guilty reaction murderers must feel when they try to hide the bodies of their victims and all incriminating evidence… to avoid responsibility… and punishment. So, I opened the trunk. There it was… the cooler… sealed tight, just the way my friend had left it… three weeks— twenty-one days, and over five hundred hot, unrefrigerated, summer hours ago. I couldn’t see anything yet, but I could most certainly smell it!
I remembered what the white clean interior of the cooler had looked like three weeks ago when Kenny placed the nice neat white paper wrapped packages of meat into it. In their frozen, rock-hard firmness, the packages had filled the cavity all the way to the top, leaving just enough room for the lid to close properly. But now, I was about to see what the inside of the cooler looked like after my enormous blunder. With great trepidation – like the inescapable fear that many will feel on the Day of Judgment, I opened the lid. What met my eyes, and every other physical sense I had, was the most appalling, disgusting, sickening abomination I have ever experienced.
The cooler’s inner cavity was nearly half empty! In place of the nice white, frozen packages, there sat several gallons of pure liquid putrescence that looked, like muddy water, in which floated lumps of brown, soggy pulp. That was what was left of those nice, white paper wrappers that had covered the frozen meat. And the whole inside surface of the cooler down to the ‘water line’ was no longer white. Now I saw the difference between Death that is ‘as fresh as it gets’, and Death that has been around for a while. The cooler’s inner surface was discolored, deeply etched with a disgusting greenish-gray patina of death-corruption. And, of course, the inner surface of the cooler, and the bones at the bottom were covered with swarms of… maggots of Death!
I remember almost passing out with the horror, nausea, and disgust that welled up in me. How could that wonderful meat that I had been so anxious to savor and eat, have contained within itself the horrible abomination that was spread out before me? My mind and brain shut down in a state of total overwhelm. I could not even think of what to do next. It was all I could do to control the involuntary gag reflex and retching of my stomach caused by the unbearable stench. I closed the lid of the cooler and walked away for a few minutes, just to settle my stomach and get some fresh air and compose myself and clear my head.
After a few minutes, I was finally able to think and come up with a plan of action. I put on two pairs of disposable rubber gloves. Then, holding my breath as much as possible, I fished the paper and the bones out of the bottom of the cooler in record time and deposited the mess in a plastic bag and sealed it tight. Then I got three other plastic bags. I put the original bag inside of another and sealed it. Then I put that bag inside of another, sealed it and that bag inside of another and sealed it. I had to get rid of that filth and seal it away from the rest of the universe! There was nothing else that could be done with this pure essence of Death.
Then I took the cooler to the toilet in our basement. As carefully as possible, I emptied the liquid putrescence that had oozed out of the putrefied flesh, into the toilet and flushed it several times. Then I took the cooler outside to our back patio. I poured disinfectant into it and filled it to the top with water. And I left it out there to soak. The next morning, I emptied the cooler and left it outside so that the direct rays of the sun could hit it all day. But I never came close to restoring the cooler to what it had once been. So I ended up throwing it away and buying a new one to replace it.
Death and its effect
But let’s go back to those awful initial moments and the immediate cleanup job I had to face. In the process of emptying and flushing the fetid contents of the cooler down the toilet, several drops fell onto the concrete floor of my basement. It wasn’t very much – only a few drops. But it might as well have been fifty gallons because as soon as those few drops hit the concrete floor, the entire basement was filled with the same overpowering stench that was in the cooler! Death and its corruption were in every drop, in the most concentrated strength imaginable. The stench diffused instantly throughout every molecule of air around me. It invaded and defiled every cubic foot of air in that basement! I spent the next two hours frantically, desperately, cleaning, disinfecting, scrubbing, ventilating – doing everything I could think of – to deodorize wherever and whatever that liquid death and its traces had touched. And as I worked and scrubbed and held my breath, the Lord began to speak to my heart. I will try to put what He said at that time, about that corruption… into human words:
Death… as God Sees It
“You are looking at Sin and what it did to My beloved humans the moment Adam and Eve mistrusted Me and rejected My Word. My Word was their Life. But they pulled away from their Life Source! And the moment they did that, they ‘decapitated’ themselves, and their human nature died, just like a living flower dies as soon as you cut its stem from the roots and place it in a vase for display. Degeneration and corruption—exactly like this—took over every molecule of human nature and the rest of earthly Creation as soon as Sin entered Adam’s heart. And that became the lethal legacy and birthright he passed on to all of his unborn descendants.
“And you were dead in your offenses and sins, in which you previously walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all previously lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were, by nature, children of wrath, just as the rest.“ (Ephesians 2:1-3 Emphasis added.)
“The human spirits of Adam and the woman, had once known and been bonded to, My Living Word! But now… their disobedience severed them completely from Us! So spiritually speaking, they died. And the DNA and genetic coding of their bodies also became mortal and their souls—mind, will, desires and emotions—mutated and degenerated into the mental equivalent of this exact same physical corruption that you see in this cooler. What you see and smell before you now, permeated their humanity on every level. And this happened the very moment that they pulled away from My Word and took matters into their own hands. So they died… and began to be… THIS! “Because they rejected My Word and fell under the domination of the Serpent, they were mortally wounded, spiritually, mentally, emotionally, physically and genetically.
“I am Life. To pull away from Me is Death. As soon as Sin touches anything, this is what it becomes—Death! Look at it. Smell it! Touch it if you dare! This is what is in every human heart, despite what the soulish world says about how great and wonderful Man is! This is NOT the Humanity I created or intended! Human rebellion and sin created this living death! And this is what is passed from one generation to another through your acts of procreation: “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned—for until the Law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.” (Romans 5:12-14 Emphasis added.)
Life vs. Death
“Little son, if you were to prepare a meal for someone you love, would you use any of this? No! You wouldn’t even allow a speck of it to touch your loved one’s food! So can you see why I will never use anything that comes from this filth for My purposes? Sin is Death! And Death is an abomination to Me! How could I ever use anything so corrupt? Can you see how incompatible this is with My Divine, Holy, Pure Nature? I cannot abide or permit it to remain in existence!
“And yet, people born into your fallen world know nothing else but this Sin! To them, this is normal. They call it ‘good.’ Because they don’t know Me, they have no Heavenly Truth by which to compare this. In their delusion, they pray to Me and ask Me to bless and help them ‘improve’ their living dead corrupt state! They ask me to ‘use’, or to ‘come into’ what they insist on calling ‘MY ‘life’… because they remain chronically blind and deaf!
“Satan has deceived them to that extent! So … they do not know what they are doing! “If you expect Me to accept and bless this abomination and somehow make use of it, you have no idea what you’re asking! Can you see it? Even your own fallen, corrupt flesh recoils with horror as you experience the Death and Corruption that is before you! But what you see in this cooler is what permeates ALL fallen human flesh! So can you agree that the only thing to do with it is to dispose of it? Do you see why I have to supply you with brand new Resurrection bodies, and an entirely new Heaven and Earth to replace what fallen angels and deceived humans have contaminated by their Sin? That is what I must do in order to truly and effectively ‘save’ and restore you to My original blueprint specifications! And this is why My beloved Son said to His disciples:
“The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed and be raised up on the third day.” And He was saying to them all, ‘If anyone wishes to come after Me, HE MUST DENY HIMSELF, and TAKE UP HIS CROSS DAILY, and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save ‘his life’ will lose it, but whoever loses ‘his life’ FOR MY SAKE, he is the one who will save it!” (Luke 9:22-24 Emphasis added.)
“Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews; this man came to Jesus at night and said to Him, “Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.” Jesus responded and said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless someone is born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God!”
Nicodemus *said to Him, “How can a person be born when he is old? He cannot enter his mother’s womb a second time and be born, can he?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which has been born of the flesh is flesh, and that which has been born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it is coming from and where it is going; so is everyone who has been born of the Spirit.” (John 3:1-8 NASB. Emphasis added.)
“But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up. Since all these (Death-ridden) things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat? But according to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells!“ (2 Peter 3:10-13 Amplification and emphasis added.)
The Cost of Sin and its Corruption
“I commissioned My Beloved Son to take the filth of all Sin upon Himself and represent it and atone for in the Eternal Covenant! It is for this that He became the Lamb slain since before the foundation of the world! Only His perfect human obedience even to crucifixion and death was able to atone for and redeem My Creation. My Son had to be the Scapegoat, the Garbage Man, for all the rest of you! Although He remained ever holy and innocent, I heaped all of My wrath against Sin and the curse of Death and Corruption that Man had coming, upon Him! And yet, His creatures executed Him even as He was taking all that was coming to them upon Himself. He atoned for it all, to set the rest of you free and give you His perfect Righteousness in exchange.
Now can you see why He was sweating blood in the Garden of Olives? The powers of Darkness were doing everything they possibly could to get Him to give up and save Himself instead of fulfilling the commission I gave Him to serve as your Covenant Representative. But He persevered and went all the way and finished it! So now you see what my precious people mean to Me – that for their sake I would put Myself and My own Beloved Son through such agony? Can you see why My Son told Nicodemus that unless he was ‘born again’ he would not be able to enter the Kingdom of Heaven?
“You must all stop putting faith in what you are and what you produce. You must exchange all of that for My Son and the perfect, finished work that He has already produced in your name through His perfectly obedient human life! Forsake trusting in yourself and your own futile efforts to improve yourself! Trust and rest instead in My Holy Spirit, which My New Covenant will impart into your spirit when I regenerate it! Draw from the Perfect Works of Redemption and Restoration that My Son has already completed in your name. And then you will be free to enter and enjoy with Me, GOD’S PERFECT ETERNAL SABBATH REST! All of your corruption was crucified with and buried into the death of My Son. It’s total removal followed by what only I can give you in exchange is the only remedy open to you!
“My Eternal Covenant immerses you in My Son’s Atoning Death and burial. And that immerses you into the perfect Purity, Holiness, Perfection and Eternal Life of His Resurrection. Now can you see it? “Imagine what it was like to have to send My Son into the middle of all the filth and corruption of the entire human race! He had to live in it for over thirty years! Every second He was there, He had to endure and identify with it and be surrounded by it. He had to see, touch, smell, abide in, love and pay for it, as your Covenant Representative. Yet, not once did He Himself become a part of it. And He endured that ordeal gladly. Not once did He despise any of His human brothers who were afflicted with this.
“He loves you all with an eternal Love. You are His ‘neighbors’ and He loves His neighbors as He loves Himself, because He embodies Me and My Love for My people. “Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name as they observed His signs which He was doing.
“But Jesus, on His part, was not entrusting Himself to them, because He knew all people, and because He did not need anyone to testify about mankind, for He Himself knew what was in mankind.” (John 2:23-25 NASB. Emphasis added.)
“Because of My Love for each of you – My living Word went gladly, willingly, eagerly, to save you and vindicate My Name and cleanse, purify and redeem My Creation. So repent of being satisfied with this state of living death! My Son paid the ultimate price to deliver you from it! Yet, although He came to abide in your midst, because of how damaged, blinded and twisted humanity became after the fall, no one could understand Him or what He was doing. People are so blind and deaf that they have no idea that this corruption is what they had become! They’ve not seen anything other than this filth, so they assume this is what I created!
Deception Exposed
“Satan is rightly named Beelzebub – the Lord of the flies. His deceived victims are like flies that thrive and exult in their Sin. It is this filth and corruption that humans love; they eagerly, greedily cluster around and seek it out. That is where they live. They feed on it, make their so-called ‘living’, from it and spawn their offspring in it, breeding future generations of fallen, sinful people that will also be born to it. And they will spend eternity in it – unless they stop rejecting My Son and turn to Him so He can save and regenerate them into new creations and return them pure and clean, to My arms, as my perfect image and likeness.
“When My Son came, no one realized that the Living God was actually there with them, in pure, Sin-less incorruptible human flesh, rescuing, redeeming, protecting and saving them from their inherent death and corruption. Their Sin-corrupted hearts resented, belittled and scorned Him. Even those closest to Him accused Him of being out of His mind. So-called religious leaders accused Him of being demonic. What a travesty, what unspeakable hypocrisy! The very purveyors of this filth attacked, betrayed, tortured and murdered My Beloved Son even as He was saving them from My wrath against it. But that’s what this Death does to human minds and faculties.
“Men truly do not know what they are doing! This mob of fallen flesh killed its Creator and spurned the one sent to redeem them! And what was in them is what is in you, and in all the others! It’s in your natural, instinctive thoughts, reactions, urges, judgments, choices, motives, and initiatives. And I had to deliver My Son into the hands of such as these. I heaped all of their shame, infamy, punishment, and death that this corruption merited for them—upon Him. And He took it and willingly paid for every bit of it even as they were torturing and killing Him! He shed His precious Life-Blood to the very last drop. That is how much your Creator and Redeemer values you. And this is how much each one of you means to Me!
Blood Covenant Redemption!
“The agony heaped upon My Son was part of my Plan of Redemption. It was what all fallen humanity has coming to itself! But He has absorbed it all and paid your ransom in full, by suffering all of its consequences in Himself! That is how much the Living God loves His blind, selfish, treacherous, ungrateful people. This is how much I can be trusted! By this, I prove that Satan is a liar. He says I cannot be trusted.
“But now you know that you can trust Me with airtight faith, because I am the infinitely Airtight, Living God who honors and fulfills His Covenants to Perfection! “Because of your acceptance of and faith in My Son, He can cleanse and set you free from this unspeakable death and corruption. I brought you into My Eternal Covenant with Him and through Him. Now you can become one with Me, at last! I give you My Spirit that He may serve as My eternal Guarantee: that after your fallen corrupt body finally gasps its last, I will give you a new eternal, spiritual body, and every eternal covenant promise I made, will be perfectly and completely fulfilled in you!
“But until then… I command you to identify with My Son! He is the Full Armor I have provided for you! Put Him on! Identify yourself with Him so that you can finally LIVE! Because of Yeshua (Jesus), you can be completely free, healed and restored! And because of His Authority and Righteousness, you are now guiltless, pure, free, righteous and beautiful in My sight! My beloved Son is the only Way, Truth, and Life by which I will ever accept you! No one comes to Me but by Him!”
It’s Never About Us
So that’s what the Lord unpacked for me on that fateful day. From then on, I have never seen the Christian faith and lifestyle as being about us, or what we do, or how we do it. We can do nothing ‘for God’. What had to be done was DONE. But God Himself had to do it! And He must now be free to live within us to be and do what only He can be and do to satisfy His Perfect Standards in our name! And that’s why our Salvation and Righteousness is so Perfect! God is all of that to us and for us! So I never see having to accept God’s Gospel, or to be crucified with my Lord, as being a loss or an inconvenience. It’s not an imposition, nor is it anything to resent or complain about. It is not about God, violating my ‘rights’ or ruining my ‘fun’! It’s about Him being my Wisdom, Holiness, Righteousness, and Redemption leading to our eventual Resurrection!
The Gospel gives no cause for resentment. For us it is Salvation and Full Restoration! It is Life instead of Death and Light rather than Darkness and Joy instead of Agonizing Devastation! Once the cooler experience opened my eyes and I saw our true state before God, and how utterly horrible the bad news of Sin that hit us really is, I was appalled at the residue of Sin that lurks within my flesh. Never again can I dare to put my faith and trust in anything that originates in and from my flesh, or that of anyone else!
And now I can better understand God’s glorious Good News, and why He is always so Jesus-centered in all that He says and does on our behalf. The Self-adoring world judges itself according to its false scale of 1 to 10. But that standard of judgment is utterly unreal! The Truth is that all men are born dead… into the state of Sin and into a nature that desires to trespass against God (Ephesians 2). So, in terms of God’s Righteousness, we are all stuck at the zero point because God’s Word shows us that we are all born trapped in that total bankruptcy!
And we must realize that our Creator sees right through all the layers of our false cosmetic false fronts, disguises, and religious self-improvement scams. How could any of that ‘living death’ that I saw in that cooler ‘improve’ or ‘save’ itself? How could one part of it save any other part of it? What good would it have done to ‘refreeze’ it or ‘dress it up’ with a lot of gold medals, perfumes, and spices? Freezing or deodorizing something that is dead will never change or bring it back to life!
So, regardless of how much time and money we spend clothing, washing, perfuming, teaching, gratifying and showing off our fallen flesh, even after we’re saved, the Sin that still abides within that flesh keeps trying to take over again in our intellect, will, emotions, motives, choices, reactions, plans, desires, urges and natural affections. Regardless of how much we spend ‘educating’ and decorating ourselves with academic degrees, scientific awards, artistic honors, black belts or soulish, religious pomp and empty fluff, it’s still flesh.
Now… I ask you to read Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 13, 2 Corinthians 4 and 2 Peter 3:10-18 with all of this in mind. Texts like these help us see what God’s indwelling risen Word is able to do, and must do to us, in us, and through us. They show us why we remain willing to die daily to our old radical independence, and acknowledge our wonderful Messiah, by the Power of His Holy Spirit, to be our New and Eternal Life 100% of the time!
Learning from Isaiah
So let’s go back to Isaiah. He had been chosen by God to serve as one of His prophets in Israel. But before he would be ready to embark on that exalted career, God first had to allow him to have a brief glimpse into the Reality of His Infinite Majesty, Overwhelming Goodness, and Indescribable Glory before he could qualify to fulfill the task that had been assigned to him. So it was when Uzziah’s reign came to an end, that Isaiah’s eyes were opened. And he received that awesome vision of God as He is… and then… when he saw the inexpressible Glory and Goodness that is in God, Isaiah couldn’t help but get in touch with what was in him, and in all the rest of us, by comparison.
He was absolutely and totally undone, devastated, and reduced to the zero point on this world’s false scale of 1 to 10! Uzziah had been a fairly passable king at the beginning. But toward the end of his reign, he decided to take upon himself the added functions of the temple priesthood. He ventured into the holy place in the temple that was reserved only for the priests appointed to minister there to the Lord. Uzziah dared to take it upon himself to burn incense to the Lord, despite the legitimate protests of the chief priests. And despite the fact that he was king, Uzziah was still a Sin-corrupted descendant of fallen Adam. He had corrupt, mortal, human nature –‘flesh’ as the Bible calls it. And in the sight of God, that flesh was ‘Head-less’ and hopelessly corrupt and dead. It contained that same death-corruption described in my ‘cooler’ story. God had made provision for the priests to be consecrated, anointed and insulated by Covenant blood, from the wrath of God against their sinful flesh.
Thus they were able to approach God’s Presence and minister to Him in His temple, in Covenant safety. Uzziah was anointed to be Israel’s king, but not appointed to serve God as a priest. His flesh was not insulated and protected against the judgment of God’s Perfect Nature, to perform priestly functions. So when he dared to approach God’s holy Presence in that decapitated state, the incompatibility between God’s Perfect Nature and his sinful, death-ridden nature became apparent. The non-insulated Sin-nature that was in him was suddenly exposed by the intensity of the ‘blast furnace’ of God’s Holy Presence and Truth.
As the Light of Truth hit what was inside of him, that inner death corruption in Uzziah’s heart began to manifest itself externally in the form of physical leprosy. Then the decaying process that was always underway within his flesh, began to manifest itself upon his body’s exterior. (See Uzziah’s story in 2 Chronicles 26). Now the king of Israel suddenly became an object of horror to himself and to his subjects. The rot and corruption that were in his fallen nature became visible. And the other, fallen, corrupt people around him, once they saw on him the ghastly living death corruption that comes from Sin, immediately agreed with God’s Judgment upon it.
And of course everyone strove to separate themselves from Uzziah. They cut him off from the community. They isolated the leprosy death that was in him, lest it spread to anyone else. Little did they know that what they abhorred about what was on Uzziah’s outside… was exactly what permeated them all… on the inside! So even though he was king, Uzziah lived apart, like all the other lepers, with covered face and mouth and limbs. And yes, he was viewed by everyone else as an object of disgust, horror, and shame. But that was because the others had not yet been affected by the visible manifestations of that death as it lurked within each one of them! Although they couldn’t see it in themselves, they too were all full-fledged spiritual ‘lepers’…every bit as corrupt and ‘unclean’ as Uzziah. But because the leprosy of their Sin was not yet externally as obvious on their skin as Uzziah’s was, they assumed a self-righteous air of superiority and looked down on him and ostracized him, never suspecting that what they saw before them, was the very thing that lurked within them all, even though it was not yet outwardly apparent.
At that moment, the Lord revealed Himself and His Holiness and Glory to Isaiah in such a way and at such depth, that he was devastated and overwhelmed and changed forever. In seeing God, high and lifted up, he saw The Lamb, as if slain. He saw what our infinitely perfect, beautiful, loving God was forced to put Himself through in order to redeem and save all of us from the Sin that was in all fallen flesh. God revealed His incomprehensible Majesty, Purity, Holiness and Self-sacrificing Love to Isaiah… through His living Word. And later, Isaiah revealed to us in greater detail, more of what He had seen:
“Behold, My servant will prosper, He will be high and lifted up and greatly exalted. Just as many were astonished at you, My people, so His appearance was marred more than any man and His form more than the sons of men. Thus He will sprinkle many nations; kings will shut their mouths on account of Him; for what had not been told them they will see, and what they had not heard they will understand. Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of parched ground; He has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon Him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him. He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried; yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging, we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.” (Isaiah 52:13-15; 53:1-6)
When Isaiah saw what God’s perfect faithfulness and mercy on behalf of His beloved humans forced Him to put Himself through in order to satisfy His Perfect Standards of Righteousness, Truth, and Justice on their behalf, he saw himself for what he really was by comparison. The exposure left nothing to Isaiah’s imagination. What He saw of God enabled Isaiah to see what was in himself – the same thing I saw in that fetid cooler! He saw the death that was in his own heart, and everyone else’s. He realized as never before, that what was in him had forced God to put Himself through unspeakable agony.
“HOLY, HOLY, HOLY, is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of His GLORY!” “And the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke. Then I said, ‘Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; FOR MY EYES HAVE SEEN THE KING, THE LORD OF HOSTS!” (Isaiah 6:1-5 Emphasis added.)
The Truth That Sets Us Free
There is no devastation anywhere in this world that can compare to the sudden nuclear blast of this God-revealing Truth. God’s Word comes at us from another World. And when He gives us a glimpse of Who He is…His awesome Holiness exposes our cheap corrupt decapitated, living death reality. We see ourselves as we are… for the very first time. We get in touch with spiritual Reality as it really is, and feel in our guts and the marrow of our bones just how bad the bad news about Sin really is.
The eternal Word of the Living God wields His Sword of Truth and cuts right down the seam that divides His Holy Spirit of Truth, from our Sin-darkened, corrupt soulishness. It cuts us open like a sharp antiseptic surgical scalpel. And we see Reality like we’ve never seen it before, and realize that without Him, the Source of all things real, true and good, we are nothing and can do nothing. He is EVERYTHING to us! Without Him, we cannot even exist!
“So there remains a Sabbath Rest for the people of God. For the one who has entered His Rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His. Therefore let us be diligent to enter that Rest, so that no one will fall, through following the same example of disobedience. For the Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do!”
“Therefore, since we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the Throne of Grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need!” (Hebrews 4:9-16 NASB. Emphasis added.)
“Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted. Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way, you will fulfill the law of Christ. IF ANYONE THINKS HE IS SOMETHING WHEN HE IS NOTHING, HE DECEIVES HIMSELF!” (Galatians 6:1-3)
The above text in Galatians is two-edged. It explicitly says you should not exalt yourself above others. But neither should you exalt others above yourself. We’re all products of the same ‘cooler’! Beloved, in God’s sight, there are no perfect 10’s on this poor fallen planet. We are all at the ‘zero point’ because THIS ENTIRE PLANET IS ‘THE COOLER!’ We are all in the same boat, regardless of family pedigree or color, race, religion, money, degrees, lifestyles, sexual preferences or ‘gold medals’ or ‘credentials!’
Can you now see how foolish it would be for a former ‘sirloin steak’, lying in one corner of that cooler… to look down its nose with judgmental contempt, upon a package of former ‘stew meat’ lying in another part of the cooler? How could it dare to assume that it is ‘better’ more valuable and honorable than any other piece of rotten meat in that cooler? Can you see how ridiculous it would be for any arrogant piece of rotten meat to judge the others around it, and assume that it is somehow ‘special’ or ‘better’ than the others abiding in that universally-disgusting maggot infested container?
“You meet him who rejoices in doing righteousness, who remembers You in Your ways. Behold, You were angry, for we sinned, we continued in them a long time; and shall we be saved? For all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment; and all of us wither like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
There is no one who calls on Your name, who arouses himself to take hold of You; for You have hidden Your face from us and have delivered us into the power of our iniquities. “But now, O LORD, You are our Father, we are the clay, and You our potter; and all of us are the work of Your hand. Do not be angry beyond measure, O LORD, nor remember iniquity forever; behold, look now, all of us are Your people.” (Isaiah 64:5-9 NASB. Emphasis added.)
I’ve shared my story with you to try to graphically depict the essence of the Bad News so that you could see the infinitely Perfect Compassion and eternal Glory behind God’s Good News. Yeshua became the Ultimate Leper and Ultimate Outcast for the sake of all the rest of us. So I hope you can see how deadly serious and terminal the stakes are with which the Gospel of Salvation has to deal.
The Glory of the Good News
God’s perfect nature never changes. He will always hate Sin. But He will always love you. He will never change toward you. He will never despise, forget, forsake or hate you, no matter what you have done or failed to do! He will love us forever. It is not He that condemns people to Hell. It is our own demon-induced choice to reject our Creator and His Living Word that condemns us.
“Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak what is good? For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart. The good man brings out of his good treasure what is good, and the evil man brings out of his evil treasure what is evil. But I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment. For by your words (choices) you will be justified, and by your words, you will be condemned.” (Matthew 12:33-37 Amplification and emphasis added.)
God created you and all the rest of us humans to be His image and likeness. And He is intent and determined to do whatever it will take to finish the task to perfection. He never changes or wavers. He is eternal, infinite Love. And He has always loved you and always will love you and mean you nothing but good. How else would you think that God is going to react to and feel about people that He designed and created and died to make it possible for them to be able to be transformed into His own image and likeness?
We are made by God’s Word, for God’s Word. And so, God’s Love and Affection and Tender Covenant Faithfulness toward us are everlasting (Psalm 136). Our Sin and corruption never diminished or changed the way He regards and feels about us, individually and corporately. We are God’s beloved people. He summons us to become His Blood Covenant Family, His ‘sons’! And that’s why He is so intent on rescuing, and restoring, and re-forging us into the perfect eternal Body that He is reserving for His Perfect Son. Ultimately, we will be like a ravishing, beautiful Bride, ‘without spot or wrinkle’ and totally desirable and pleasing in His sight — if we submit to Him on His terms and receive what only He can give to us. Look at how He describes our ultimate destiny!
“And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, ‘Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.’ “And He who sits on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new.’ And He said, ‘Write, for these words are faithful and true.’
Then He said to me, ‘It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost. He who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be My son. But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.’” (Revelation 21:2-8)
“And He also told this parable to some people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and viewed others with contempt: ‘Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’ I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.’” (Luke 18:9-14 Emphasis added.)
Don’t obsess over your poor fallen condition. Focus on how much you are loved, cherished, provided for and protected by this awesome, indescribably Beautiful and Holy God of ours. Because He loves you to these depths, He has painstakingly revealed Himself and His Love for you so that you would be sure to ‘get it,’ when He reveals in human terms and human words, the story of His great Good News. Trust in Him and His Love for you. Don’t look to any other Source. When the time for your judgment comes, don’t appear naked. Be covered by the infinitely perfect Righteousness of your Redeemer. Make sure God judges you by what is in the Life and ‘Track Record’ of His Son, rather than what belonged to you before you humbled yourself and entered into His perfect redemption.
“‘Behold, I am going to deal at that time with all your oppressors, I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will turn their shame into praise and renown in all the earth. At that time I will bring you in, even at the time when I gather you together; indeed, I will give you renown and praise among all the peoples of the earth, when I restore your fortunes before your eyes,’ says the LORD.” (Zephaniah 3:19-20)