Foundations of the Christian Life.Chapter 5 The Word becoming Flesh in us.
We are looking at the subject of the Word of God and so far we have seen the following things:
1. The idea of “Word” in the Bible is the idea of God revealing himself. The “Word” is the self-revelation of God.
2. This revelation came in many ways and through many people but came to a climax in Jesus Christ who, as the Son of God, perfectly revealed God to mankind.
3. The record of this revelation in Christ and the essential understanding of it was recorded in what we now call the Bible. The Bible was written under the influence and inspiration of the Spirit of God so that is not just the words of the men who wrote it, it is indeed the Word of God. The Bible is thus also a revelation from God.
4. God is still in the business of revealing himself to mankind and the primary way he wants to do this is through people. To do this, God calls people into relationship with himself and then pours his life through them in such a way that God is seen in and through them.
2 Corinthians 3:2.
“You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody.”
* God wants his laws, his ways, so written on our hearts that we always act in accordance with them.
* If this is the case then other men and women would be able to look at our lives and “read” our lives in such a way as to see God in them. We will be a letter from God to them.
2 Peter 1:3-9
“His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins.”
* God has already given us everything we will need for life and godliness.
* This provision has been made in the promises of God (found in the word).
* Through entering into the promises we participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world.
* We have to work hard “make every effort” to pursue these character qualities.
* If we do so we will be effective in Christ.
* And we will be received into heaven with joy.
We receive this provision through faith.
Hebrews 6:12
“We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.”
The question naturally arises, “How do we do this? How do we enter into the promises of God?”
There is a process – and it is the same for everybody. It is a “way of God” that he uses every time so that we can learn his ways and co-operate with him to achieve his purposes – which are to set us free from the power of sin and make us like Christ. What then is this process, this way?
There are seven steps to the process and all of the steps begin with the letter “P”, so we shall call it:
The Law of the 7 “P’s”. or “How to Become the Word of God”.
God wants us to “taste and see that he is Good”, But he also wants us to be the channel through which the world tastes and sees that the Lord is good. We are to be incense for them, food for them, life for them.
Step 1: Promise.
It all comes as promise (2 Peter 1:3-5). All of God’s gifts to us come to us firstly in Promise form, and the promises are found in the Bible.
The first step is that God makes us aware of a promise – some area of life that he wants to be our sufficiency. God brings us to a point where he wants to bring us into the experience of another of his promises. So He makes us aware of a promise of God.
Maybe something jumps out of the Bible at us – like we have never seen that promise before.
Maybe we go to a meeting and are taught something we haven’t heard before.
Maybe someone we know or a testimony we hear of how God provided in this way for them sparks us off.
Maybe we have a need in our life and we seek out his promise to us from his word.
God has all sorts of ways of making us aware of his promises.
But the first step is that he makes us aware of a promise – some area of life that he wants to be our sufficiency.
It is here that some people fail to enter into the process – some people want to decide for themselves whether or not the Bible’s promises are real and whether or not they will believe them. God is not interested in our opinion about his promises – he just wants us to believe and receive them.
We need to be aware of this fact: Once God has decided to bring us into the experience of one of his promises and has taught us the promise then the rest of the process I am about to describe is “in process”. You will be tested on the promise whether you agree with the promise or not. You will be tested on everything God teaches you - whether or not you agree with what he wants to teach you or even the idea that God will test you. God does not seek our agreement on what to teach us before he starts to teach us. He just starts.
The important thing is to understand the process I am describing here and learn to recognise when it is operating in your life. When you see the process at work you can ask God what he is trying to teach you even if you haven’t been aware of that until then.
Step 2: Proclamation – Confession
God wants us to claim his promises – we do this through confession.
Greek: Confession = “to say the same thing”, hence “to speak in agreement”.
i.e. God wants us to agree with his promises – to come to a point of believing that they are true and then to say that out loud. And say that we want his provision.
Confession is verbal – out loud. There is no such thing in the Bible as silent confession. You cannot “confess in your heart”. You can “believe in your heart” but you cannot “confess in your heart”.
It is just at this point that many people miss out on the provision God has for them. God wants to provide for all our needs but the key to that is our confession. Many Christians are so embarrassed at the sound of their own voice that they will not pray out loud. But confession is by speaking and only by speaking. Confession does not, and cannot, happen in your head or in your heart.
Two areas of confession he wants from us:
1. That we agree with him about our sin.
1. That we agree with him about his great and precious promises.
We in the western world have lost touch with spiritual reality and so we don’t understand how the spiritual realm works and how it impinges on the material world.
Genesis 1 is probably the best illustration of how the two are related. In the beginning there was nothing – except God who is pure spirit. But “God said” – he spoke words and the material world came into existence. The spiritual world and the material world come together at the point of words. What God said had tremendous power in the physical realm though he is pure spirit. But the same is true for us. What we say also has tremendous power in both the physical and spiritual realms because we are both spiritual and physical.
The power of our confession is that it causes the physical world to line up with the spiritual world. So what we say is important. If we confess the promises of God with our mouths then we will find that our spiritual and physical experience begins to line up with the confession we make. Our experience begins to line up with the promise of heaven. But if we confess unbelief, evil and hatred then we will find that our physical and spiritual lives will begin to line up with Hell. We have the power of choice as to whether we live in the presence of God or the presence of torment and the choice is made through what we confess. But failure to speak means failure to get action from God.
One scripture – there are many that teach this but it is a teaching in its own.
Romans 10:8-10
“But what does it say? "The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart," that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming: That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. “
* There are two stages here – believing and confessing.
* Notice that believing leads to justification – our sins are forgiven and we will go to heaven.
But confession leads to salvation. Salvation is more than justification – it includes justification but is more than justification. Justification deals with our legal standing before God. Salvation describes our personal experience of that in real life now. It is wonderful to be justified – but it is even better to be saved – to be delivered in experience from the power and guilt of sin, shame, the law, Satan, the flesh and so on.
* The difference between justification and salvation comes by one thing – confession.
Confession activates a promise and the process of entering into the promise. In one sense the process does not begin for us until we lay hold of the promise by faith and begin to confess it. But we need to recognise that God has been at work before we come to this point – he has decided what promise he wants to fulfil in our lives, he has made us aware of it and the need for it. But it is at the point of confession that we really come on board the process.
However we need to be aware – if God has determined to teach us about “this” promise then he will activate the process whether or not we come to a point of agreeing with the promise and confessing it or not. The difference will be if we agree and confess we will eventually come through into the experience of the promise. If we don’t agree with the promise and don’t confess agreement then we will “perish in the wilderness (Hebrews 3:17)”, we will end up living in the problem (see below for the Problem) instead of living in God’s answer.
God’s word has power to achieve what God wants it to do (Isa 55:11) but until we agree with God and begin to confess, say the same thing as God, that power is not able to be released in our lives to bring about the fulfilment of the promise.
There is another word in the Bible closely related to confession and that is the word, “Meditation.” There are tremendous promises God gives to us if we meditate on His word, the Bible.
Joshua 1:8
“Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.”
Psalm 1:1-3.
“Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its
fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.”
* God’s word needs to be in our mouth – meditate on it.
* There are principles in it we need to live by – things we need to do.
* If we meditate and do then we will be successful in everything we do.
These verses indicate that through meditation God’s blessing (the fulfilment of his promises) comes to us. So what does it mean to “meditate”?
The Hebrew word used here means literally “to chew the cud (like a cow).”
The idea it is trying to get through to us is that, for the Word of God to become real to us in experience, we need to do two things with it.
1. We need to take in into our hearts by faith; we need to receive the word of God.
2. Then we need to put it in our mouths and speak it out over and over again. Just like a cow chews the cud over and over again so we need to put God’s word in our mouths (i.e. speak it out) over and over again until it comes true.
Biblical meditation is not just thinking about God or spiritual truth – it is actively claiming it for ourselves by speaking it out in faith.
Or as Jesus said: “Ask and keep on asking (Matthew 7:7)”
We are not to ask just once – but we are to keep on asking, keep on claiming and confessing the promise, hold on to it with faith and speak it out – over and over and over again, until it comes true for us in our experience. Our words have spiritual power to change the circumstances so that we can receive the promise of God.
Step 3: The Principle.
Every promise of God is conditional. There are things we have to do to secure the promise in our experience.
It’s one thing to claim a promise – it’s quite another to understand the principles behind the promise and to live in the principles so the promise can become true in experience.
Stated simply: the principle involves a change of lifestyle for us – a repentance – whereby we come to understand God’s way of doing things as being different to the way we naturally do it and we change and start to live God’s way. In other words we die to ourselves and live for Christ.
The basic principle behind all the promises of God is that we die to self (our own ways) and live to God (live his way).
Isaiah 55:8,9.
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my
ways," declares the LORD. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher
than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
The way into the blessing of God’s life is always through death and resurrection – it is the way of the Cross. But God is not interested particularly in some vague generalised death to self that has no reality in life. Rather death to self has to be actualised in real life situations where we stop living according to our desires and start living according to God’s. There is no Pentecost without Calvary.
Take financial provision for instance. God does promise financial provision for all our needs. In fact Jesus talks more about money than he does about any other single topic. We would have to cut out a large chunk of the Bible to get rid of prosperity teaching.
But God’s provision is a conditional promise – and one of the conditions of financial security in God is Giving – Tithes and Offerings. There are other conditions but let’s dwell just on this one for a moment.
Now, in the world’s eyes, it seems crazy to give away 10% of your income and then give offerings on top – with the belief that God will bless you richly so that you will be better off. How can you give away “10% plus” and be better off? It’s crazy. But, because it is God’s will, it works. He doesn’t ask us to understand how he makes it work, He just calls for faithful obedience.
So claiming the promise involves finding out the principle – the life-change point of repentance where we stop living to ourselves and start living for God in that area of life.
This is often where people go wrong and miss out on God’s provision. Because God’s ways are not our ways – and often His ways seem crazy to our natural thinking.
“Every promise in the book is mine”
This is true – but often people fail to realise that the promises are conditional. Now you can find a promise for every situation you face – and many of these promises will be unconditional in the immediate context – but throughout the Bible the same promises elsewhere will be tagged with conditions. We need to study through the scriptures in an area of promise until the conditions are clear – and then meet them. God is not obliged to fulfil conditional promises if we don’t fulfil our part, i.e. the conditions.
Warning: There is a danger here. Most of God’s promises have several “conditions” because they require a whole lifestyle change in the area God is testing. The danger is when we don’t seek out all of the conditions but remain satisfied with only one condition. Obedience to the one condition in isolation can actually bring deception and ruin because it is not balanced by the other conditions.
For example, again in the area of money. God promises to bless if we tithe and give offerings. But these are not the only conditions on the promise of prosperity financially. Some preachers encourage giving in isolation – promising blessing if people give to their ministry. But this can lead to financial poverty if wrongly practised.
The 4th step – the Problem.
Generally God does this through allowing us to experience a need of some kind. Often financial problems, relational problems, health problems and so on can be God preparing you to press into his provision in Christ in that area. The truth is we pray harder when our need is greater; we press into God harder when we are in pain. So God allows a little pain in our lives in order to bless us.
In simple terms the problem is that we will experience situations that are the exact opposite of God’s promise. Everything will go wrong. The circumstances will change in such a way that the promise of God seems to be a lie, or impossible.
There are reasons for this the prime one being that God is wanting to purify our faith in fire. Will we trust him when the circumstances say the promise is a lie – or will we believe the promise? Is God really sovereign in this situation even though it looks bad, or has God lost control?
James 1:3-5
“Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
* Trials, temptations are the testing of our faith.
* Such testing develops perseverance.
* Perseverance leads to spiritual maturity and wholeness in character, not lacking anything we need for life and godliness.
This is the purpose of temptation – but temptation in the full sense of the word – that of testing. The test is fire and it has two purposes:
1. To bring us to repentance for not living in the principles of God and thus to lifestyle change.
2. To build steel into us to hang on to the promise until the provision comes – even when the circumstances are totally against the promise.
The Bible often talks about the metaphor of fire to illustrate God’s dealings in our lives. Two would be important here:
1. To purify gold.
1. To harden steel.
But fire is not very comfortable – but, if we continue in faith, as we pass through the fire it will change us – we will mature. Like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego who went into the fiery furnace – all that got burned was the ropes that held them in bondage. God needs to put us into fire so that the things that hold us in bondage will be burned off.
The truth of the matter is that the circumstances of this world are no sure certainty of God’s will – Satan is allowed to manipulate the circumstances in order to test us. Satan is the agency of God’s testing. And Satan has a vested interest in stopping us from entering into the promises of God so he will do anything he can to stop us.
The fact that everything has gone wrong and the promise has been contradicted is not a sign that the promise is wrong – rather it could be a sure sign that you are on the right path and you are not far from the provision. On the other hand the fact that everything looks good for a certain course of action may not indicate it is God’s will – Satan could be tempting you into a place of disobedience. Satan manipulates circumstances to provide “Short cuts” into God’s will – but they are not really short cuts, they are dead ends. We need to understand that behind every promise of God is a principle – and fundamental to the principle is the dying to self and living to God. Satan will always offer us an easier way than dying to self.
It is here that many people go wrong and fail to experience the provision of God. Instead of hanging on to the promise and understanding that the principle involves deep personal repentance and change they believe the circumstances and so they abandon the promise and thus they fail to enter into the provision.
Many people teach that you know something is God’s will because the circumstances line up. Satan can manipulate the circumstances so that they line up to a proposed wrong course of action. God will align the circumstances when his timing has come – but contrary circumstances are no guarantee of it not being God’s will, and nor are favourable circumstances - if that is all you have. You need more than just circumstances to know the will of God.
Step 5: Perseverance.
Hebrews 4:11
“It is by faith and patience that we enter into the promises.”
The Greek word translated “faith” probably should not be translated such. When we read the English word “faith” we tend to think of it as a noun, but we should rather see it as a verb, i.e. faithfulness.
The problem is a test of contrary circumstances.
You claim Gods promise of provision and then you go broke.
You claim Gods health and then you get sick.
You claim some step of guidance God has given you and then all goes wrong so that it looks impossible.
The question is this, “What are you going to do now?”
Are you going to accept the circumstances as being the truth? Or do you believe God’s promise and fight for it? Are you going to stand against the circumstances and deny the reality of the circumstances – your broke-ness, your sickness, the chaos all around you? It’s hard – but we walk by faith not by sight.
It’s at this point that many of us just conclude the promise is not true. We never actually say that because we are good evangelicals and we all believe the Bible is true. But in our hearts we give up the pursuit of the promise. We conclude it is not for us and we begin to rationalise why it hasn’t come true for us – when all the time it is because we didn’t press through.
Step 6: Patience.
One of the things we need to realise in this process is that God has a higher purpose in the process than we are aware of.
For us we have sensed a need, we have seen a promise of God answering that need we have and we are pressing through with the aim of getting God’s provision for that need. For us the focus is on the gift we seek from God.
But for God the focus is quite different. Though God has an interest in meeting our needs and has provided for them in Christ, that is not his primary focus. His focus is not on the gift he has for us, but is on us – ourselves. What he wants primarily is the character change, the repentance, that the process brings whereby we come to reflect the nature of Christ and be a letter that can be read by all. This is why the writer says we inherit the promises by faith and patience. Patience is a character trait that takes a long time to develop. The inner man is deeply changed as we learn patience. In fact the whole fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:) develop as we learn patience. Fruit takes time to grow.
For this reason God delays the fulfilment of the promise – not because he wants us to suffer, but because he has a higher blessing for us – the character of Christ in us.
In actual fact you could say that any promise you claim that is immediately fulfilled in your life is really not worth having because it has not involved character change to get it. Because it hasn’t changed us it hasn’t achieved the reward God wanted for us and, in a sense, we have missed out on God’s highest. The Prodigal Son got the goods without the character change and he ended up in the pigpen.
“An inheritance hastily gained will not profit in the end.” (Proverbs 20:21)
Only that which is gained by patience has eternal value. Everything else is strictly temporal and will pass.
How do we press through to the promise? There are three keys:
1. Keep confessing the promise in faith.
2. Keep being obedient to the conditions – i.e. keep walking in God’s ways.
3. Be patient.
The 7th step- the provision.
God makes the promise real in our experience – but with the added bonus of character change – we have become a little more “A letter from God to be read by all.”
So there we have it:
Everything we need has been provided for us in and through Christ.
This provision is made available to us through the promises of the Bible, the word of God.
But there is a process God uses to bring us into the experience of his provision:
Promise
Proclamation
Principle
Problem
Perseverance
Patience
Provision.
It nearly always works this way.
On many occasions God allows the problem to come first – he allows some situation, some need to arise in our lives that will make us feel uncomfortable – the reason for this is because he knows we settle down. We tend not to seek him unless we are in pain in some way so he – on occasion – allows discomfort – pain to come into our lives for his purposes – to drive us to seek out his promise and his principles to meet that need. He wants to be the source of everything we need.
But the rest still works the same. You still have to:
* Find the principles and obey them.
* Repent and change your lifestyle.
* With faith and patience in the God who is in control, hang in there until he brings the provision.
But most of the time he works these steps in this order. Why? Because he is not so much interested in us experiencing his promises as he is in changing our lives. The Principle stage is the important one – where we undergo deep personal repentance and change – we become Christ-like in character. But that character has to be tested in fire to “set” into our life.
Three Bible illustrations:
1. Joseph: Dreamt he would be a ruler – brothers and father to bow down to him. But he spent 13 years as a slave and prisoner first. He was tested on his integrity many times to prove his character.
2. David – anointed king – but spent years fleeing from Saul as a fugitive. Several times he had opportunity to kill Saul but he resisted the temptation.
3. Israel – God promised a land to Abraham but they spent 400 years as sojourners and slaves in a foreign land. Then in the Wilderness God tested them many times over 40 years to prove them.
HOMEWORK:
1. Read Hebrews 3:1-4:16.
In this passage you will find reference to many of the steps outlined in this chapter.
Write the seven steps on a piece of paper and write the relevant verses in Hebrews 3&4 next to each stage.
2. Think over your Christian life. Have you been in any situation where everything has gone wrong? Where you had specific promises from God that seem to have been not fulfilled?
* Write it down.
* Write down the specific promises God gave you.
* Did you continue to confess the promises when you were going through the problem? Or did you not confess them?
* Ask God to show you (if you don’t already know) the principles you needed to obey to receive the promise. Write them down. Be honest with yourself, which ones didn’t you obey and walk in? Identify the ways you walk now – doing it your way. Ask yourself what is the differences between my way and God’s way? Repent before God for doing it your way and start to walk in his way.
* Examine the problem you went through. Did you decide the circumstances were true and God was a liar? Did you decide the promise was not true for some reason? Did you just stop pursuing the promise because it was too hard?
* Looking at the problem: Do you see the work of Satan in the problem? Can you identify how he worked? Can you separate the work of Satan from the people he worked through and forgive the people?
* Can you identify areas of character failing in yourself that were exposed in the problem? Did you lose patience? Were you fearful? Overly timid? Read through the fruit of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5. Which character did you display? All those wrong character traits that were exposed – give them to Christ to be put to death on the Cross and receive from him the new nature being renewed in his image.
* Acknowledge the grief you feel over not entering into the promise of God. Give it to God to be put to death on the Cross.
* Reactivate the promises by confessing them in faith.
3. Don’t forget to review this chapter a couple of times during the week and do the Transformer verses and prayer daily (morning and evening if you can). Read the verses and the prayer out loud.
TRANSFORMER VERSES AND PRAYER.
James 1:3-5
“Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
Hebrews 6:12
“We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.”
PRAYER:
Father God, I thank you that you have a higher purpose for me. You want me to not only enter into your promises but to develop the character of Christ.
Father I recognise that your way of bringing us into this purpose of yours is through the fires of testing. Thank you for the wisdom of your plan.
Help me to see and understand how you work in my life to change me into your image.
Father in this situation I am involved with now I thank you. By faith I count it all joy that there are difficulties because they give you opportunity to show me how to rely on you and receive from you your provision.
Put to death in me those reactions that would be against your image through this circumstance. Give me strength by your Spirit to stand in a holy way and continue to believe and confess your promise.
Amen.
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