Genesis 3:7-11
“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?’”
First The Bad News…Then The Good News
People instinctively recoil and squirm at any thought or mention of their personal and corporate Sin. Seldom does anyone dare mention it in public forums, social gatherings or synagogues and church buildings. So its not likely to be thought of in our own homes either. To even intimate that people are not as ‘good’ or ‘decent’ as they would like everyone to think they are, arouses storms of self-righteous accusatory anger and, at times, violent retribution. In addition, technology and myriads of other distracting influences make it easy for us to lose ourselves in sensory and occupational ‘overload’ to make sure we never have a chance to think, or connect with God, or even come close to ‘looking under our own hoods’ to see what is really going on within us.
But just as we can’t make the laws of physics disappear by getting angry or being too busy or enacting laws to ban them in hopes of making them go away, so is it impossible to do that to the Creator of those laws…the living God. He won’t go away just because people resent Him and think He’s ‘intruding’ in their ‘personal business’ and infringing on their ‘rights’ and ‘freedoms’ and ‘fun’. No matter what we do or think, we can’t make Him disappear. Sooner or later we will all be forced to face and deal with His eternal Reality, Authority and Truth. He has revealed that because He is perfect by nature, His standards of righteousness are perfect and His impending, ultimate Judgment will surely come and will be based on His perfect righteous nature. So our personal wishes, opinions, demands or good intentions or objections to the contrary, will receive no consideration.
This presents a huge problem for us because by nature and actual performance, we are all, to say the least, highly imperfect. If our personal performances are judged by the perfect standards of God’s perfect nature, we stand no chance of passing! We may refuse to think about that or become enraged if the issue is mentioned in our presence; nevertheless, the day is coming when we will all be forced to give an account before God’s Tribunal of perfect righteous Justice, for everything we have done with our minds, wills, imaginations, choices actions, reactions and interactions. Our spirits, souls and bodies will be judged according to how we reacted and responded to God’s living and written Word and Holy Spirit. And when that time comes, our anger and demands and denials and attempts to change the subject, will not matter.
Time to Deliver the Mail
This is why God’s Chosen People and the prophets, and even the Lord and His apostles and disciples were repeatedly rejected, attacked and even killed in the past. And today it’s the same. Modern day disciples get into trouble as soon as they try to deliver God’s ‘mail’ to their world. But…what if the God of the Bible is real? What if it’s true that every human heart is full of Sin-corruption, and that this God will hold us all to account? Then what will we do? Where will we be able to hide? And who or what will be able to save us from our imperfect selves? If God’s warnings are true, then even our own hearts and track records will testify against us! So what hope or chance will we have of saving ourselves?
So, NOW is the time to deliver the mail and for people to read and ponder it. It is much, much better to be prepared for the inevitable than to be caught unprepared and found naked and to be utterly defenseless.
Just consider how fleeting and temporal this world and those in it really are. We’re like people on the Titanic, frenziedly trying to have a good time and gain as many temporary pleasures and advantages as possible. And we get angry if anyone mentions the ice berg or the hole it tore in the ship that is allowing tons of water to enter below the water line. We hope against hope that if we stay busy and distract ourselves enough, or perhaps even become hyper-religious, that all of that unpleasantness will somehow go away and leave us alone.
But will it? Is that how Reality works? No you cannot wish Truth away or make the Reality of your mortality disappear by distracting yourself from it. So NOW is always the time to take a careful look at your Reality and at your true self in the midst of it—the self that the all-penetrating eye of God gazes upon all the time! Can’t we see how fragile we are? Can’t we see that we’re as vulnerable to the winds of change as a puff of smoke? How long can we last before our inevitable end comes? How can we really control anything? Behind what do we think we’ll be able to hide from the perfect Eternal Gaze that already knows every speck of truth about us?
We’ve been like swimmers frantically trying to conceal our beach balls of Truth beneath the water’s surface. We won’t allow anyone to see what we’re trying so hard to conceal. For years, I didn’t dare allow my ‘beach ball’ to be seen. I tried desperately to hide it while appearing calm, cool, okay and collected on the surface. I tried hard to control what others would think of me, never letting on about what was really going on under the surface. I wouldn’t even admit the Truth about myself…to myself!
Matthew 15:18-20a
“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…”
Shame makes us unwilling to admit what we really are. So we try to twist Truth and create illusions that we hope will be convincing fronts behind which to hide. We do whatever we can …to keep the ‘beach ball’ submerged…hiding the soulish, selfish, predatory ‘beasts’ that lurk in the basements of our hearts. We call that, ‘my right to privacy’. And it isn’t until God’s Word and Spirit pierce us, that we finally give up and let go and admit where we really are and how desperately we need God’s mercy.
So most often, it’s not objective freedom, liberty and privacy we want to protect. It’s the gnawing sense of toxic shame we feel that keeps driving us underground. We pose and posture and project images of being ‘okay’ and ‘doing well’ from behind our crafted façades. We plaster over the selfishness, rebellion, and dark, lustful, predatory corruptions lurking just below the surface. Occasionally, the tremendous force from the decades-long buildup we’ve been suppressing erupts forcefully. Then the beach ball of Truth slips out of our grasp and pops up to the surface and into the light of day. Then…when we’re caught ‘red-handed’…we do our best to minimize the effect by saying – “I made a mistake.”
But the Living God doesn’t call those things ‘mistakes’. He calls it Sin. Sin keeps rearing its ugly head and manifesting itself through destructive acts of commission or omission that we can’t stop from oozing out of us.
Jeremiah 17:5-10
“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.”
If we observe the dog-eat-dog world we live in carefully, and assess the insatiably greedy, self-adoring system by which it runs, we’ll have to admit that it resembles an insane asylum. The incredibly self-adoring, self-destructive trend setters are called ‘the beautiful people’. And the power brokers call themselves ‘statesmen’ and, ‘public servants’, while they manipulate and exploit the public for their own hidden agendas and self-serving purposes. So-called leaders in every field, including educators, scientists and social pundits take God’s Reality and twist it beyond recognition in their ‘search for Truth’. The rich and powerful suck up wealth and exceptional privileges and luxuriate in the plenty that they amass and monopolize for themselves at the expense of their less fortunate and less crafty, starving neighbors. In this world, nothing is sacred, except for our egos, agendas, pleasures, preeminent self-interest and public image.
True reverence and fear of God are ridiculed and mocked while division, selfishness and violence reign supreme. Material gain, pleasure and power over others are idolized; predatory lust is flaunted, Good is abhorred and banned as evil, and Evil is legislated, promoted and marketed as ultimate good. The fallen world is entrapped in the coils of The Serpent. So regardless of race, color, nationality, religious creed, century, country or culture, we 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 rampant and this fallen world truly is controlled and manipulated by The Serpent. But the day is coming when the Word of God and His Truth will have to expose and judge and mete out God’s Justice in response to all of this.
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 get even by rejecting Him and making up ‘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 ourselves as we really are either. So we reject the awesome Salvation He has provided for us; we deny and turn our backs on Him, thinking that our denial systems will justify us and set us free from guilt, shame, condemnation, responsibility and accountability. We make up our own self-serving truth and reality in which we come across as righteous, worthy and free to do as we please. This is so normal and acceptable in the world system that humans have become truly ‘shameless’. To us, evil things are ‘good’ and good things are ‘evil’. We take God out of the picture and become humanists, thinking and acting as if man is the measure of all things, and that each of us has the right to decide for ourselves what is true, false, good and 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 and recoil and strike at anyone that intimates that they are guilty of Sin! They refuse to consider anything that would disturb and expose their false sense of self-righteousness. The 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 social, economic, educational and political circles of this world, the Truth of God is rejected. It is rejected as much in organized religions as it is amid the squalor of slums, saloons, reality talk shows and drug dens. No one is allowed to dare to point out that every single one of us is – ‘as guilty as Sin’.
And I for one can really relate to that. I did that for a great part of my adult life. I did it until the Lord, in His great mercy, opened my tightly clenched eyes to something I had been blind to, since birth. And it is that revelation that I am compelled to share with others, now, while I still have time to do it.
1 Corinthians 9:16
“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.”
Ever since I was a child I heard people that I loved, trusted and respected talking 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. In that capacity 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; my eyes were soulish, intellectual, emotional and carnal, and therefore, ‘worldly’.
1 Corinthians 2:12-14
“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.” (Emphasis added.)
James 4:4
“You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God!”
I came to view any talk about God and His holy righteousness and Sin and repentance as nothing more than religious nonsense. That’s because God’s living Word had not yet pierced, penetrated and impregnated my innermost being with His Truth and Light. To me it was just head knowledge I had learned from going to schools and memorizing the teachings of men and soaking up the culture of the religion and area of the world into which I had happened to be born and raised. That soulish perspective I had learned to indulge in, coupled with my own inherited corruption and emotional and spiritual immaturity, resulted in a personal ‘implosion’. I experienced a burn-out that totally derailed and destroyed my life of religiosity, as I knew it. I snapped all of a sudden and could no longer function in that ‘ivory tower’, inbred, religious world of mine. My coping system shut down and I became paranoid and lost faith in everything. I had to leave the ministry before I was even able to get a good start in it! And I left the church of my fathers and forefathers 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 that even remotely hinted at it in my presence.
It was very convenient and comfortable for me to believe that Christianity was foolishness and that it was dangerous to believe it. I used denial to try to cop out on my responsibility and conceal my true self. On the outside, I ridiculed religion and anything that had to do with ‘the God of the Bible’. I was as locked into radically independent living as I could get, because I kept blinding myself to God’s spiritual Reality for reasons I wasn’t willing to admit to myself, or share with anyone else.
But when God sends His living Word after you, and He says, “Where are you?” it’s a totally different matter. As soon as you get a glimpse of Who He is, then God’s Reality falls all over you like ten tons of bricks. The revelation overwhelms and hits you in the 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 suddenly hits you like a lightning bolt out of eternity and blasts through your innermost being!
Now I understand why all mention of God’s ‘Good News’ used to make me burn out, quit, and later, nod off to sleep. I know why I felt fed up and would self-righteously tear into anyone that dared knock on my door to ‘get me saved’. It was because in all of those years of classes, services, sermons, retreats, fellowship and book reading, I had never personally grasped or felt the devastating impact of what the bad news that God has revealed to the world, was really 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 so neither was His awesome, heart-gripping warning real – the warning He gave to the very first human:
Genesis 2:16-17
“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!’” (Emphasis added.)
I never fully understood how Adam’s disobedience to God’s Word could have actually killed us. I knew we all die sooner or later, but in the meantime, those of us walking around seemed to be as alive as could be in my estimation. I couldn’t equate the arrogance and selfishness and lack of integrity I kept concealing and my self-righteous airs of superiority over others as being symptoms of my ‘living Death’. I simply hadn’t fathomed the meaning of the words, ‘die’ and ‘death’ in the sense that God meant them.
Only later did I see that rebellion and disobedience to God’s living Word is certain Death. God’s Word is our Creator and Lord. Therefore, He is our ‘Head’. So when the Serpent succeeded in getting our first parents to rebel and disobey, he ‘decapitated’ us all, spiritually speaking, from our only true Source of Life and Truth and Reality and Guidance! Before I saw this, I didn’t have to face what living and acting apart from God’s Word really meant. But it is ‘living death’ and death breeds corruption and anything that flows out of someone that is dead, is also equally dead and corrupt. And therefore, it is unacceptable to God who is the Source of Life. All of that was packed into that original warning God gave to Adam.
If we don’t grasp the significance of this, ‘bad news’, we fail to grasp the meaning of…the Good News. We won’t grasp the meaning of the word ‘repent’ unless we’re deeply broken, exposed and devastated by The Truth – that we are decapitated and existing as ‘the living dead’. In the past, because the Truth hadn’t hit home, I had not yet been slammed to the ground like a hammer-struck bull. Truth hadn’t forced me to fall on my face before the Living God, blinded by the flash of His Blazing Holiness and Truth. I didn’t know what it was to have my mouth shut and silenced or to feel compelled to fall prostrate before Almighty God in total, helpless bankruptcy and wordless worship.
Instead, I somehow expected God to bow down and serve me! That’s because I had not yet been stripped naked. My utter corruption of heart and hypocritical arrogance hadn’t been exposed by the flaming brilliance of His incomprehensible Truth and BLINDING, DEVASTATING HOLINESS!
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 never first penetrates his innards and pops all of his delusional bubbles? And how can you leap, dance and twirl in the streets for sheer joy, gratitude and relief, if you don’t know what a narrow escape you’ve had from the eternal ‘meat grinder’ that awaits…behind those ultimate, inescapable terminal Realities that our world is speeding toward, called – Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell?
So my point is—if you don’t get the point, you’ll continue to fly blind, like a pilot in a terrible storm, with no instruments…and worse still…no eyes! If you don’t even know that the world and its ‘Head-less’ system that you love and revel in so much is the gateway to the Hell of eternal separation from your one and only Source for whatever is Real, True and Good, then the Redemption Solution that is always right under our noses falls flat and leaves us untouched. We shrug our shoulders and ask, “So what? What’s so bad about this world? And since I’m such a good person, why would I need a redeemer? Why would you ever think that I, of all people, would 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 horizontal things that pertain to our self-serving lives and agendas in this fallen world. In our decapitated state, we can’t imagine that there could be anything vertical and spiritual and Heavenly that is more real than what we can see, touch, smell, hear, feel and manipulate. And as long as what we feel and have seems ‘good’, ‘normal’ and ‘satisfactory’ in our sight, we remain blind to the Realities and 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 Kgs. 6:15-17 Emphasis added.)
Matthew 13:10-17
“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.’”
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, imagine and manipulate by our own wits, and natural faculties and comprehend with the Sin-corrupted senses and abilities of our fallen souls. So the viewpoint of 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, myopic, self-serving worldly standards and highly limited subjective perspectives.
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 reconciled with and surrendered to my risen Lord and had sincerely come under His Authority by that time. But my sincerity didn’t count for much and like Isaiah I needed a much deeper revelation. I was already ‘back in ministry’, trying to serve God. But on this day He revealed much more…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 in the hope that it may help someone else. Even if it only helps one person to ‘get it’, even if only one is set free to repent, surrender and transform, even if only one ushers in the Dominion, Pre-eminence, Lordship and Eternal Glory of the risen Lord, Yeshua the Messiah (Jesus Christ), it will be well 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 Lyn 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, it was getting late and 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 time with my family before bedtime.
The car I traveled in was a staff car. I only used it for business trips. So 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, shame and 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 reminds me of the guilty reaction murderers 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 my friend placed the nice neat white-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 was crawling with swarms of countless maggots!
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 crawling 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 involuntary 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 pair 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—essence of Death but to dispose of every speck of it as thoroughly and effectively and safely as possible. It had to go!
Then I took the cooler to the toilet in our basement. As carefully as possible, I emptied the liquid putrescence that remained in that bulky container, 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. The corruption had utterly ruined it. So I ended up throwing it away and buying a new one to replace it.
But let’s go back to those awful initial moments and the immediate clean up 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 and defiled every molecule of every cubic foot of air in my entire 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. He spoke to me about that corruption and what it meant. I will attempt to put into words what I sensed He was saying to me at that unforgettable time.
*******
“You are looking at Sin and what it did to My beloved humans the moment Adam mistrusted Me and rejected My Word. My Word was His Life. But Adam pulled away from his Life Source! The moment he and the woman did that, they ‘decapitated’ themselves and their human nature died, just like a living flower dies as soon as you cut its stem from its 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.
“The human spirits of Adam and the woman had once known and been bonded to My Word. But now their disobedience severed them from Him. So spiritually, since He was their Source of Life, they died. And their bodies became mortal and their souls—mind, will, desires and emotions—mutated and degenerated into the spiritual, mental and physical equivalent of this exact same physical corruption you see before you. They DIED!
What you see and smell before you now, permeated their humanity on every level and began to have this effect, the moment they pulled away from Me and took matters into their own hands. At that moment, they died and began to be…THIS…instead of the beautiful human temples of My Presence that I had originally created them to be.
“Because they rejected My Word and fell under the destructive 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! Mankind as they are today is not what I created or intended. They are what Rebellion and Sin created. Now they abide in the living death that was passed on by Adam, from one generation to the next. This is what I meant by these words:
Romans 5:12-14
“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.” (Emphasis added.)
“Little son, if you were to prepare a meal for someone you love, would you use any of this as an ingredient? No! You would not allow even one 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, or has even touched it, 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. Every speck of Death must be annihilated and removed from My living Presence. And so will it be!
“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 against which to compare this. In their delusion, many mindlessly pray to Me, asking Me to help them to ‘improve’ the corruption that is in them. They ask me to ‘use’ it, or they say to Me, ‘come into my ‘life’! They remain blind and deaf to their true state before Me. Satan has deceived and blinded them to that extent!
“They expect Me to accept and bless this abomination and somehow make use of it. They have no idea what they’re asking. But can you see it now? Even your own fallen, corrupt flesh is recoiling with horror as you experience the Death and Corruption that is before you. What you see is in all human flesh. Now can you agree that the only thing to do with it is to dispose of and replace it completely with something brand new that I must create and give to you? When My Son came to represent you and atone for you, it was not enough to punish Him in some way; He had to be reduced all the way down to zero and killed! If this is what I had to do to Him so that He could atone for you, can I do less with the real thing He represented? This is why My beloved Son said this to His disciples:
Luke 9:22-26
“…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. For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses or forfeits himself? For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when He comes in His glory, and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.’” (Emphasis added.)
Romans 6:23
“But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
“This filth is what I commissioned My Beloved Son to take upon Himself and represent and atone for in the Eternal Covenant! It is for this that He became the Lamb slain since before the foundation of the world! His Sin-lessness and innocence and sacrificial death had the authority to kill your Death! Only His perfect human obedience and faith and crucifixion and death could have atoned for and redeemed and made this right. He was the Scapegoat, the Garbage Man, for all the rest of you. Although He remained ever holy and innocent, He took all of mankind’s corruption upon Himself, and gave Himself to be executed and buried…taking all of this with Him, into Death, to set the rest of you free from this and give you His perfect Righteousness in exchange.
Now can you see why He was sweating blood in the Garden of Gethsemane? The powers of Darkness were swirling and screaming all around Him to get Him to turn His back on you and leave you to your fate. And if He had not remained faithful and persevered…none of you would have been redeemed! But I sent My Spirit to sustain Him and take Him all the way across the Finish Line. So can you see what the issue is? I am God! My nature is Perfection. I never change. I will have My Creation as I have decreed that it will be. I will have it if I have to create everything anew. And that is what it will take to set things right. I made humans to be My image and likeness. My image and likeness is precious to Me. But in their present state, they are not what I created. But I will not abandon them. For My Name’s sake I will always be faithful to Myself and to them. That is why I put Myself and My own beloved Son through such agony! Can you see how much I value My original Creation and why My Son told Nicodemas that unless he was ‘born again’ he would not be able to enter the Kingdom of Heaven?
John 2:23-25
“Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name, observing His signs which He was doing. But Jesus, on His part, was not entrusting Himself to them, for He knew all men, and because He did not need anyone to testify concerning man, for He Himself knew what was in man.” (Emphasis added.)
“You must all stop putting faith in what you are and in other people like you and in what you all try to produce to cleanse and justify yourselves. To Me that is all death and corruption. So you must exchange all of that—for My Son and the perfect, finished work that He has already produced in your name. All of your corruption was crucified with and joined to the death of My Son. Death and burial are the only remedy, the only way to dispose of your living death and to make sure it never touches anything else. My Eternal Covenant immerses you into My Son’s Atoning Death and burial, so that you may then be immersed in the perfect Purity, Holiness, Perfection and Eternal Life of His Resurrection. He is and must be Everything to you…Now can you see why?
“Imagine what it was like to have to send My Son, My living Word made flesh…into 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 this and identify with it and be surrounded by it. He had to see, touch, smell, abide in, love and pay for it, as your Blood Covenant Representative. And yet, not once did He become part of it. And He endured that ordeal gladly. Not once did He despise any of His human brothers and sisters that were all 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.
“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. He did it as your Covenant Representative, making Perfect, Infinite Atonement before My Perfect Justice. Yet, because of how damaged, blinded and twisted humanity became after the fall, no one could understand Him or what He was doing. They were so blind and deaf that they had no idea that this corruption is what they had become. They had never seen an alternative to this filth, so they assumed that this is what I had created, and that just because they had become religious, they were as good as anyone could be!
“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 they all love; they eagerly, greedily cluster around and seek it out. That is where they live. They feed on it, make their 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. If they submit to Him, He will return them, pure and clean, to My arms, as His perfect image and likeness.
“When My Son came, no one grasped the full realization that the Living God was actually there with them, in pure, Sin-less incorruptible human flesh, rescuing, redeeming, protecting and saving them from their own 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 corruption does to human minds and faculties. They cannot help it or do otherwise. Truly they do not know what they are doing!
“This fallen flesh rose up to try to kill its Creator and it spurned its Redeemer. That’s what is in you and all the others. It’s in your natural, instinctive thoughts, reactions, urges, judgments, choices, motives and initiatives—abominable filth. And I had to deliver Him 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 and paid for every bit of it even as they were killing Him. He shed His precious Life-Blood to the very last drop on your account. That is how much your Creator and Redeemer values you, no matter what Sin has done to you. This is how precious you are in Our sight and how much each one of you means to Us!
“Because Yeshua (Jesus) took all of this upon Himself, you are free, healed and restored. And because of His Authority and Righteousness, which I apply to you, you are now guiltless, pure, free, righteous and beautiful in My sight. So do not ever assume that there can be any other way for anyone contaminated by this putrid Sin to be saved, except by My living Word and the perfect Work that He has already done in your name! His is the perfect, infinite Redemptive Atonement that has been made on your behalf. And I have accepted Him and all those He represents, forever.
“Don’t ever think that any of you could ever add one thing to the Perfection of what He has already done. Don’t think you can do anything to save or cleanse or deliver yourself, independently of Him. If you try that, your deadness will only produce more death. I gave My beloved Son to you. He is the only Way, Truth and Life that I will accept. No one can come to Me but by Him, for He is the One Human in Whom I am well pleased. Listen to Him. Embrace Him. Obey and depend upon Him—and live! I proclaim Him to be the only one that is ‘good enough’ in My sight! That is why I commissioned Him to be your Covenant Representative Covering. That is why I joined you to Him. Whatever He is, you can share in, if you submit to and abide in Him, as your Representative, Substitute Lamb, Lord, Master and Owner!”
So What Did I Learn?
From that day on, I cannot see the Christian faith as being about us, or what we do, or how we do it. We can do nothing in the present or future, ‘for God’. What had to be done has already been DONE…in the past. And it is perfect. So it will never be about us decapitated people, trying to be more ‘like’ God or doing something ‘for’ God. It is not a ‘self-improvement’ endeavor. We must die to trusting in Headlessness. It is about being joined to our true Head from whose perfect, already-finished work we receive true eternal Life, and everything we will ever need in this world, from now on!
I never see my acceptance of God’s Gospel, or the need for my ‘Head-less’ existence to be crucified, as a loss or imposition, or inconvenience. It is not something to resent or complain about. It is not about God, arbitrarily imposing on our self-assumed ‘rights’ or ruining our ‘fun’, or being rigidly unreasonable and uncaring toward our personal ‘rights’ or comforts. The Gospel is never a cause for resentment, never an inconvenience. It is Life out of Death! It is Light out of Darkness and Joy out of Agonizing Devastation! How can I blame God for trying to re-connect me to my true Head or wanting to deliver me from the horrid corruption of this fallen ‘living dead’ world? How can I blame Him for what the Sin-full hearts of the decapitated men and women around me decide to do or not do? I know who created all this evil. The Serpent did. And My Father sent His Word to overcome that demonic evil with His infinitely perfect and eternal GOOD!
Once I saw our true state before God, and how utterly horrible the bad news about the Sin that killed 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 or anyone else’s fallen, soul-driven flesh. I can better understand God’s glorious Good News, and why He is always so Yeshua-centered in all that He says and does on our behalf.
The world judges itself according to its false scale of 1 to 10. But that is an unreal standard of judgment. The truth is that all men are born dead…into the state of Sin and into a nature that desires to trespass against God (Eph. 2). So in terms of God’s Righteousness, all men and women are stuck at zero! So now we can see through all the layers of cosmetically placed facades, disguises, charades and religious, ‘self-improvement’ scams that this humanistic, self-centered, God-less world invents for itself. How could any of us ‘improve’, or ‘save’ the death that was in that cooler? What good would it do to ‘refreeze’ it or ‘dress it up’ with a lot of gold medals and bangles and perfumes and spices? How would freezing it or deodorizing it change its inherent death-nature? How could we have been so blind and arrogant to think that one part of what was in that cooler could be ‘worthier’ or ‘better’ or more ‘excellent’ than the rest of what was in there? Can one dead thing be better or of more value than another dead thing? Can there could be any hope or use for any of it? And How could God be so patient, long-suffering and loving with those that are His avowed enemies? And how could we think that we can handle life in this world without the constant supply and protection of our Heavenly Creator and Redeemer – the living Word of God?
I realized that not only is that corruption resident in our human bodies, regardless of how much time and money we spend clothing, washing, perfuming, teaching, gratifying and showing them off, but even after we’re saved, the residue of it keeps trying to take over again in our souls—intellect, will, emotions, motives, choices, reactions, plans, desires and 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. But if you read texts like Deut. 6:4-9 and Mt. 7:13-27 and 10, and Lk. 6:27-49 and Romans 12, and 1 Cor. 13; and 2 Cor. 4, you’ll see what God’s indwelling risen Word will be able to do in you and through you, when you die to your old radical independence, and allow Him to be your new and eternal Spirit-empowered Life. But as long as we remain radically independent and self-sufficient, we remain…the ‘living dead’.
Let’s Go Back to Isaiah
Isaiah had been called to be one of Israel’s prophets. So when the reign of King Uzziah came to an end, his eyes were opened to the truth we’re discussing. Uzziah had been a fairly good 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 wanted to burn incense to the Lord, despite the legitimate protests of the chief priests.
But, king of Israel, or not, Uzziah was a descendant of fallen Adam. He had corrupt, mortal, human nature—‘flesh’, as the Bible calls it. And in the sight of God, it was ‘Head-less’. Therefore 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.
But Uzziah was anointed to be Israel’s king, not 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 body began to manifest itself upon his body. (See Uzziah’s story in 2 Chron. 26).
Now that the corruption’s deterioration process had speeded up in Uzziah, he became an object of horror to himself and all of his subjects. Now the rot and corruption that were in his fallen nature became visible on the surface of his skin. And the other, fallen, corrupt people around him, once they saw on him the ghastly corruption that comes from Sin, immediately agreed with God’s Judgment upon it and 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. But little did they know that it was in all of them as well.
So even though he was king, Uzziah was ostracized and forced to lived apart, like all the other lepers. They went about as abandoned souls, with covered face and mouth and limbs, viewed by everyone else as objects of disgust, horror and shame. The rest of society had not yet been personally, affected by the visible manifestations of the death they all had inherited. Nevertheless, whether they realized it or not, they were all full-fledged spiritual ‘lepers’…every bit as corrupt and ‘unclean’ as Uzziah.
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 exemption and looked down on him and shunned him, never suspecting that what they saw before them, was the very thing that lurked within them all, even though it was, at the time, only outwardly apparent in their hapless king.
But when Uzziah died, 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-less Love to Isaiah through His living Word. And later, Isaiah revealed to us all, exactly what He had seen:
Isaiah 52:13-15; 53:1-6
“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.” (Emphasis added.)
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 and justice on their behalf, he saw himself for what he really was by comparison. His mortal, fallen flesh was like a nocturnal cockroach suddenly exposed by a blinding Light. The Light of God’s Holiness and Purity and penetrating self-less Love sought him out in the darkness where he had been lurking and exposed Him to the blazing Light of the real Truth of human selfishness. 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 Sin-Death that was in his own heart. He realized as never before, that the demonic selfishness that was in him had forced God to pour Himself out to the last drop…and endure unspeakable agony…on our account.
There was no difference between what afflicted lepers like Uzziah on the outside, and what was lurking within Isaiah on the inside. That death caused by Sin had been there, since his conception. But he never fully realized it until that moment. That’s why he wanted to cover his face and the unclean lips through which he had dared to utter pronouncements in the Name of God. He saw that he too, was a leper full of living death:
Isaiah 6:1-5
“In the year of King Uzziah’s death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple. Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called out to another and said,
“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.”
There is no devastation anywhere in this world that can compare to the sudden atomic 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 God’s spiritual Goodness and Reality as He 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, arrogant self-deceiving soulishness. It cuts us open like a sharp antiseptic surgical scalpel. And we see our dismal 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.
Hebrews 4:9-16
“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.”
When you finally see how bad the bad news is, and understand what the Lord had to put Himself through to save you from it, you finally ‘get it’. You grasp what God is saying and gladly side with Him against yourself. You realize that you will gladly spend all of eternity praising, thanking and glorifying Him for His incomprehensible, Eternal Mercy, Patience, Kindness and Blood Covenant Love. You will never again forget His agony or take it for granted, or blithely dismiss it. Nor will you dare look down your nose in arrogant, self-righteous judgment against any other human being again, no matter who it is, or how different from you on the outside they may seem. On the inside, we humans, Jew and Gentile alike, are all the same…miserable, blind, naked, dead, helpless, totally bankrupt…and utterly EQUAL!
Galatians 6:1-3
“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!”
The above text 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.’
Isaiah 64:5-9
“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.”
I have 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 by what it has cost our awesome God to save us, how deadly serious and terminal the stakes are, with which the Gospel of Salvation has to deal. The bad news is really bad…and that’s why the Good News is utterly inexpressible in its awesome, eternal…Wonder!
Something We Must Always Remember
And now we must make a major distinction to help you understand the bad and Good News even more deeply. Please note this and take it to heart:
God’s perfect nature never changes. He will always hate Sin. But He will always love you. He will never change toward you or waver in His love for 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 choices that will condemn us.
Matthew 12:33-37
“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 you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” (Emphasis added.)
God created you and all the rest of us to be His image and likeness. And He is intent and determined to do whatever it will take to finish the task to perfection. But as His intended image and likeness, you have free will. And because God’s perfect nature never changes or wavers, He will not take away your free will. You will have to choose…between eternal Life or eternal Death. God, by nature, is eternal, infinite Love. He has always loved you and always will love you and mean you nothing but good because He made you to be His image and likeness. So how would you think God would react to and feel about – His own image and likeness?
But He will not force His Salvation on you. You must choose to come to Him to receive it. We are made by God’s Word, for God’s Word…to serve as His mirror image. And so God’s Love and Affection and Tender Covenant Faithfulness toward us are everlasting (Ps. 136). Even while men live as His sworn enemies, God never stops loving them and caring about them. Our Sin and corruption never diminish or change the way He feels about us, individually and corporately. We are God’s beloved people, He summons us to become His Blood Covenant Family, and He is intent on rescuing and restoring us and forging us into the perfect eternal Body of His Perfect Son. So…since you already know that the Bad News can’t work in your favor…what is keeping you from turning to Him and asking Him to apply His awesome Good News to you…right now?
At the end of this Salvation process, God has promised that we will be like a ravishing, beautiful Bride, ‘without spot or wrinkle’ and totally desirable and pleasing in His sight. By then, to see us will be to see Him in us. So His Perfection will cover us and permeate us completely. This will happen then, if we submit to Him on His terms now…and receive what only He can give to us. Look at how He describes our ultimate destiny!
Revelation 21:2-8
“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.’”
Luke 18:9-14
“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.’”
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. Let Him be to you and do in you, what only God can do. Make sure God judges you by what is in the Life and ‘Track Record’ of His Son, rather than what still belongs to you because you didn’t receive Him or allow yourself to be covered by His perfect redemption. Receive Him and submit to His Authority in the certain knowledge that His heart is always with you and for you:
Zephaniah 3:19-20
“‘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.”