Into ME, see! (intimacy)

Billy Graham, in his latest book, tells about how he was on a college campus when a sophomore said, “Mr. Graham, you won’t let us down, will you?” Graham wrote, “Puzzled, I asked him what he meant. He explained, ‘Please tell us how to find God. That’s what we need.’ " (Editor's note: Read previous Graham "expose" posts on Jan. 23 and Jan. 11)

Graham said, “This lament of an honest student became a challenge to me to explain simply and plainly how to find Christ . . . First, you must be convinced that you need Him. If you feel that you are self-sufficient, capable of meeting life head-on and under your own power, then you will never find Him . . . Many divine promises hinge on a condition: ‘IF we walk in the light…the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin…IF we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness’ (I John 1:7, 9)

“ . . . You must count the cost. This is what I explained to one of the students seeking truth. It is important to note that Jesus discouraged superficial enthusiasm. He urged people to consider the cost of being His disciple: ‘If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me (Luke 9:23). Jesus said, ‘Count the cost…whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple.’ (Luke 14:28, 33)

“Like the rich young ruler of old, the student who asked how to find God went away sad. He did not count the cost and was not willing to pay the price of openly acknowledging Jesus Christ as his Savior. Rather, he counted his self-sufficiency more valuable than dependence upon the Lord.”

*****

John 17:3 says, “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”

Jordan explains, “Eternal life is not just living forever because you’re going to do that anyway. It’s to KNOW the Father. Not just, ‘Hi, how are you?’ It’s to have an intimacy (in-to-me-see) relationship where you share His life.

“Paul said, ‘I want this stuff to get a grip on you that God would grant you the spirit of wisdom, revelation and knowledge of Him. Not of you; of Him! This ain’t about YOU!’

“That’s a revelation! Somebody says, ‘Well, I go to church down there and I don’t get anything out of it.’ Well, bless your heart, it ain’t about you getting something out of it. It’s about Him. Probably if you aren’t getting anything out of it, it’s because HIM isn’t there. I mean, HE isn’t being put out too much. If ‘Him’ is being preached and you aren’t getting anything, well maybe the problem’s on you then.

*****

“When you knew Christ after the flesh, you knew Him after the prophetic program He had with the nation Israel, just like Romans 9: 3-5 talk about. We don’t know Him that way anymore. Why? There’s been a change in the program.

“Paul says in II Cor. 5:17, ‘Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.’

“There’s something new being formed today. Old things, the old program; that’s not your old personal habits here! This isn’t talking about, you know, when you get saved everything changes. A guy will say, ‘When I got saved, I quit smoking, I quit drinking, I quit carousing around. I lost any appetite and taste for that. God just made me a new man!’

“Agh, pfft! I know better than that! You may have just swapped one sin for another. Brother Reynolds used to say at the (Mobile Rescue) Mission, ‘Guys come down here to the mission and get drunk. I go out to these churches and I see people drunker on pride than anybody could ever get on Smirnoff.’

“You know why? Smirnoff will knock you out eventually! You pass out. Pride, it doesn’t quit. It just rides you constantly. Sins of the spirit you don’t get over that way. What this verse is talking about is not just the fact that I’ve got a new leaf turned over in my life when I trusted Christ. It’s that I became a new person. I got a new identity. I got moved out of Adam into Christ. I got moved out of that old man into this new man. Out of an old creation into this new creation.

*****

“There’s some folks who don’t like this stuff preached, and when they don’t like it you know what they do? They fight. So Paul says in II Timothy 2:3, ‘You’re going to suffer opposition and how you fight as a good soldier is part of what that review up there (in heaven) is going to be about. That has to do with your understanding of what’s really going on out there.’

“Verse 12 says, ‘If we suffer, we shall also reign with him: if we deny him, he also will deny us: and he says if we suffer.’ The word ‘suffer’ means to allow. We’re used to thinking about it as pain. It really means, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.’

“If you endure hardness as a good soldier of Christ, you suffer, and so you shall also reign. If we deny Him, He’ll deny us. That’s like I Cor. 3 where it says you get a reward (in heaven) or you suffer loss. If you don’t have a capacity to do a job because you didn’t here (on earth), which meant you had the capacity to endure the opposition, there’s some jobs up there that you can’t have. Got that?

“You say, ‘Well, what about if I deny Him?' What’s verse 13 say? If we believe not, what? Paul’s gospel: 'If God’s faithful, He can’t deny Himself.'

“You worried about all the people who can’t understand Paul’s gospel. People who fight over Paul’s gospel. If you got saved, you had to believe Paul’s gospel but everybody believes Paul’s gospel to some extent. It’s just where are you from zero to one hundred.

“If you just got in the front door at one and never grew anymore, at least you’re in the front door at one, because if you’re a member of the Body He won’t ever deny you. But the point of the passage is don’t stay at a No. 1—head up to No. 100.

“The hope of glory out here has to do not just with the fact that you get a bigger house on a wider street with a nicer neighborhood in heaven. You been worrying about that, hadn’t you? That you’re going to have MORE authority over people isn’t it because it ain’t about you!

“You’re going to have a capacity for His character, His wisdom, His understanding, His knowledge to be manifest in the ages to come. All that God is free to do for you through Jesus Christ is manifest in you.

“That’s the ministry now and you’ll have that capacity of what you know to reign with Him. So your hope of glory out there is Christ in you NOW! See why He wants you to know the riches of the glory . . . ‘Whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.’

“Isn’t that neat? Now the judgment seat of Christ isn’t something I’m scared of; it’s something I’m looking forward to so we can rise and shine.”

Body truth

Most people think they are their body and so the American advertising machine keeps everyone focused on who they are in their flesh.

 “If I was the devil, I’d try to convince you you were your body so you’d pamper it, bathe it, clothe it, exercise it, feed it, educate it, make investments for it and live for it,” says Jordan. “That’s what I’d do if I was the devil; I’d teach you you are your body.”

Satan’s program is to keep a person’s life so busy with things that don’t make a difference that people don’t devote the time to even consider the things that do make a difference for eternity.

***** 

A person’s soul is the seat of self. It’s what makes us self-aware. One of the facets of the soul is volition, so the soul is not only the seat of our will, it’s the seat of our emotions. The emotions are designed to stimulate activity of the will.

“Your inner man lives inside a house—a tabernacle, a house of skin—that is the vehicle that carries this inner man around,” says Jordan. “This is your home for the inner man. Death is your inner man leaving your outer man and that produces physical death.

“It’s obvious soul and spirit are not separated when they leave the body—they go together. Your spirit is part of your personality; a part of your person. It’s not a generic thing that you can share with everybody; it’s a distinct part of you that shares your mentality—your thinking processes—and that’s why it’s called the inner man.”

*****

The battlefield is always in people’s minds and Satan’s goal, knowing this, is to corrupt the mind.

Paul’s statement in II Cor. 11:13 sums it up perfectly: “But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.”

“I think that’s one of the great statements about the Christian life,” says Jordan. “I’ve noticed through the years that people want the Christian life to be so complicated. Go to the bookstore and there’s all these how-to books—how to pray, how to have victory over this problem or that problem.

“I’ve actually had people tell me, ‘I worry about worrying.’ They get all balled up, so they want answers that are complicated. Sin complicates life.

“You know, it’s the old thing about how if you tell a lie, then you’re going to have to tell another lie to cover it up and another lie to cover that up and pretty soon you can’t remember the lie you told? Pretty soon you don’t know the truth from a lie? It just gets like a ball of string that’s all tangled up.

*****

“You never find an answer to your problems talking about your problems. All you’re talking about is your problems. You want an answer—talk about the answer. The answer is, ‘It’s not I but Christ.’ Any questions? Well, let’s stand for the benediction. That’s all there is to say.

“You know that’s all you’re ever going to learn in your Christian life, you’re just going to learn it more thoroughly; learn it a deeper level? All the premises of all the psychologists and sociologists and economists and politicians; all their theories are wrong. The answer is in Christ so it’s not I! When you find problems in your life you’re going to find it’s going to be because it was you and the answer’s always going to be, ‘It’s not I, it’s Christ.’ ”

Believing is the power

Amazingly, Billy Graham was once given the Congressional Medal of Honor for preaching the gospel to "more people than anyone in history,” but the truth is he does a huge disservice to saved people and those looking to become saved--robbing them of any assurance or liberty--by sloppily mixing and mingling doctrines from all over the Bible and putting his own heretical spin on things.

As I mentioned in a post on January 11, Graham says one of the conditions for “finding Christ” is, “You must confess Jesus Christ as Lord of your life. I have always asked people to make public confession in our meetings because Jesus in His earthly ministry demanded a definite commitment. He had reasons for demanding that people openly follow Him. Jesus knew that an unwitnessed vow is no vow at all. Until you have surrendered to Christ by a conscious act of your will, you are not a Christian.”

*****

Paul writes in Romans 10: 9-10: “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. [10] For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”

Jordan reasons, “That verse is quoted constantly and said, ‘That’s how you get saved,’ but do you see anything about the Cross in that verse? There’s no blood in that verse.

“Notice in verse 10 the order is very clear. What happens first? Your heart believes and you get righteous. You’re justified. After you’re a justified person, your mouth naturally will confess what your heart understands.  Jesus says, ‘For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.’

“Paul says ‘with the mouth confession,’ but notice that’s not salvation to become justified. That salvation is something beyond justification because you already got justification whether your mouth said anything or not.

“All of a sudden you say, ‘Well, maybe I better study a little bit.’ What a concept! Because it’s not just like falling off a log.

“By the way, think about Matthew 6:33. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you.’ He’s talking to Israel about Israel’s program, and He said the first thing is the righteousness of God. How are you going to have that? You’re going to believe. ‘Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness.’ It’s to have faith in God’s Word to you.

“But when Israel believed God, there was a salvation package of things—the material possessions of Matthew 6 would be added to them. What came first? Righteousness. Then there was more to come for them after that. It’s the same principle here.

*****

“When Paul says, ‘if thou shalt confess with thy mouth,’ who is the ‘thou’? Look back at Romans 10:1: ‘Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved.’ Who’s he talking about? He’s talking about the salvation of the nation Israel.

“If you go back to Romans 9:1, he writes, I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost,
[2] That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart.
[3] For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh.’

“Notice he didn’t say he wished himself were accursed BY Christ, but FROM Christ. Why? For my kinsmen. That’s exactly the position the nation Israel is in in the dispensation of grace. That’s exactly the position Paul is telling Israel they’re in.

“Israel’s been set aside. They’ve been cut off. They’re no longer God’s chosen people in the dispensation of grace. And Romans 9-11 is talking about the nation Israel and the dispensational setting.

*****

“The missing element in modern theology is ‘Israelology.’ They’ll talk about soteriology, angelology, ecclesiology, eschatology, and all these other ‘ologies,’ but nobody ever has a department on Israelology! Paul did! There are three whole chapters where he explains what’s happened to Israel in light of the change of program.

“God isn’t finished with them. In fact, when Paul says in chapter 10, ‘my hearts prayer is that they be saved,’ look at chapter 11:25: ‘For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in.’

“Israel has been blinded until the dispensation of grace is over and ‘so all Israel shall be saved as it is written.’

“We live in a mystery age that wasn’t prophesied, but what God wrote in prophecy about saving the nation Israel, He’s going to perform once this age is over with. Paul said, ‘I don’t want you to be ignorant of that lest you don’t know what’s going on.’ So Paul knew Israel would be saved according to prophecy.

*****

“What about those blinded, lost Jews out there? Paul said salvation’s gone to the Gentiles to provoke those lost Jews to jealousy. Paul says, ‘I’m conducting my Gentile apostleship in a way that will provoke lost Jews to see the only hope they have is in what I’m preaching.’ That’s what Paul was doing during the Book of Acts!

“Romans 10:5 says, ‘For Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law, That the man which doeth those things shall live by them.
[6] But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise, Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above:)
[7] Or, Who shall descend into the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead.)

“That’s a quote from Deuteronomy 30. That’s what Moses said. Did you notice those parenthesis in verse 6. Paul adds that parenthesis; that’s not in Deuteronomy.

“Paul’s saying, ‘You know what, Jesus said it.’ Christ said, ‘Moses wrote of me. Search the scripture they are that testifieth of me and if you’d have believed Moses you’d have believed me. You know why you didn’t believe me? You didn’t believe Moses. I’m the Word of God. Moses gave you the Word of God. If you’d have believed in the Word of God through Moses, you’d have believed the Word of God when Christ showed up, because you’re in the business of believing in the Word of God.’

*****

“Paul quotes the same verses in Deuteronomy that they’re quoting; they’re saying these verses over and over. He says in verse 8, ‘But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach.’

“These Jews had God’s Word in their heart and God’s Word that was in their heart spoke of Christ; it pointed to Him.

“Romans 9:31 says, ‘But Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of righteousness.
[32] Wherefore? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that stumblingstone.’

“Unbelieving Israel stumbled because they didn’t believe God’s Word. So Paul says, ‘Look, all you lost Jews out there. I want you to get saved. I understand what’s going on. God’s Word said this and you were quoting God’s Word that was pointing to Christ. But you didn’t believe any because you didn’t believe God’s Word. It’s right there in your mouth! It’s right there hidden in your heart! You got these verses! You just need to believe what the word said!’

*****

“Do you ever wonder what Paul was preaching in the synagogues when he went around in Acts 9 and Acts 28? People who read the Book of Acts try to figure out what he’s preaching. Paul tells you what he’s preaching in Romans 10. You don’t need to read Acts 13, 17, 18, 19 to figure it out.  He tells you right here what he preached. Luke’s telling you what he preached back there about something else.

“In Romans 10: 9-12 is Paul’s message to the Jews in the synagogue when he’s trying to provoke them to trust Christ.

“There were two great issues the Jews had. One, they didn’t believe He was the Messiah.

“Go to I Kings 8. I’m just going to use this verse because it’s easy to use. You could start in Leviticus 26. God required Israel to confess. To get out from under that fifth course of judgment, Leviticus 26:40 says they had to confess their sin and their breaking of the covenant; they had to confess Him as their Savior.

“Solomon, when he dedicates the temple in I Kings 8:33, says, ‘When thy people Israel be smitten down before the enemy, because they have sinned against thee, and shall turn again to thee, and confess thy name, and pray, and make supplication unto thee in this house.’

“Verse 35 goes on, ‘When heaven is shut up, and there is no rain, because they have sinned against thee; if they pray toward this place, and confess thy name, and turn from their sin, when thou afflictest them.’

“When he says ‘confess thy name,’ that’s Jehovah. Confess Him as the one who’s going to provide for them what they couldn’t do for themselves. He’ll be their Messiah and Redeemer. Their Savior.

*****

“In John 8:24, Jesus is talking to the Pharisees. The verse says, ‘I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.’

“You see, a Jew had no problem with the issue of a blood sacrifice. They did it all along. They just believed Jesus wasn’t the Messiah. They believed He was a counterfeit. So the first issue for a lost Jew was he needed to recognize that Jesus Christ was God’s Messiah; God’s Redeemer. The real deal.

“The other thing those lost Jews back there had a problem with was the resurrection. They believed it was just a big hoax; just a rumor.

“You remember the story in Matthew 28 that the chief priest told the soldiers to say? ‘Go out and say that His disciples came and stole Him’ and they spread that abroad. That was the answer everybody had to the resurrection.

*****

“Now, the resurrection is the testimony to the identity of the Savior. And what He’s telling them is, ‘You know what you need to do; you need to recognize who the Lord Jesus is.’ That’s the issues the lost Jew faced. Now those things weren’t going to provoke a Gentile, but they would provoke Israel.

“So He says to them in verse 10, ‘For with the heart confession made unto salvation.’ Notice the order clearly. With the heart man believes unto righteousness. If you’d sit down and do nothing else, you’re justified. How do I know? That’s what God said.

“And as a response, the mouth would make confession unto salvation. It would confess to the program that’s going on. Verse 11-12: ‘For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.
[12] For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him.’

“Well, that’s not true in ‘time past’ in Israel’s program, but it is true today. Now you tell a Jew that--in the Book of Acts you know what he did? He went bonkers. Go back and read Acts 13 when Paul goes in and the whole city comes together to hear the word and the Jews begin to contradict, blaspheme and have a cat.

“And that’s when Paul says to them, ‘It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you: but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles.’

“What’s he doing? That’s that provoking ministry and that’s what he’s doing here: ‘for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.’ He’s sticking it in their eye and saying, ‘See, the Gentiles are out there calling on Him because they believed on Him! You ought to too!’

“My point to you is if you understand what this passage is about, you understand how that the prayer and the confession and all that stuff back here is not the point. Now, what you and I need to do is make sure we have our mind keyed on what IS the point.

*****

“Paul says that ‘the gospel which was committed to me was how that Christ died for our sins, was buried and rose again the third day and was seen.’ Two doctrines and two evidences. One, He died for our sins according to the Scripture. He was buried—proof that He died. He was raised again, according to the Scripture. And He was seen—proof that He was resurrected.
“You see, it’s by grace through faith and not of yourself; it’s a gift. You just believe that Jesus Christ, that His blood paid for all of your sin debt; that it settled every issue between you and God. And you place your trust; you place your dependence exclusively in Him.

“Then, as a saved, justified person, you call on Him—over and over and over and over and over. Why? Because you have peace with God. You have access through Him, with boldness and confidence based upon His blood.

“You see, when you begin to add that religious twist at the end of it, because Romans 1:16 shows you why this is real important. Where’s the power of God unto salvation? It’s in the gospel of Christ that Jesus Christ died for our sins and was buried and raised again for our justification.

“It’s the power of God TO everyone that believes. You see the proposition there?

“The way you get the gospel to be the power of God for salvation for you, is you believe it. If you don’t believe it, it’s not the power of God to salvation for you. That’s why it’s important.

“Because if you come along and tell somebody that you got to work, then you told them believing wasn’t enough, and grace isn’t grace anymore because the only response grace will accept is faith. And grace requires faith as the only response.

“So if you tell somebody to pray, or confess, or to walk an aisle, shake a preacher’s hand, make deals, go do ceremonies, live a life, turn away . . . if you give then anything to do to get saved, even as simple as praying, you substituted a work for faith and the gospel is the power of God only to those who simply, exclusively believe in Jesus.

“And you literally, in the words of I Corinthians 1, ‘make the cross of none effect,’ where people can know all about the gospel, know all about the Cross, and it have no impact in their life. Why? Because they didn’t simply believe it, trust it, depend on it exclusively. The first prayer a saved person should pray is to say, ‘Thank you, Lord, for saving my soul.’

“You need to keep your mind, keep your ears tuned like a laser. Just like your tongue can taste the difference in meat, your ear needs to be able to hear that message.

“If you listen to the Christian radio, you read Christian literature or you watch Christian television, its design, its intent, its result, is to dull your hearing so that you aren’t sharp enough, because your flesh would like to do anything it can; the religious system would like to do anything it can, the Adversary would like to do anything he can, to hide the gospel of God’s grace, and you and I need to be careful that we don’t fall into that trap ourselves.”

Live in His sight

In the last chapter of the Old Testament in the Book of Malachi, the second coming of Elijah is talked about. Elijah’s also one of the two witnesses (Moses being the other) in the Book of Revelation.

“Moses tells them in Deuteronomy 18 that in those ‘last days,’ and Peter quotes it in Acts 3,‘the Lord’s going to raise up a prophet like unto me,’ and that’s why when you go over to John 1, John the Baptist says, ‘I’m not the Christ; I’m not that prophet and I’m not Elijah,’ ” explains Jordan.

“Well, who was that prophet? It was ‘that prophet like unto Moses.’ You never hear him identified by name; he’s just that prophet like unto Moses.

“That’s why people, when you get the two witnesses in Revelation, they argue, ‘Everybody knows the one is Elijah, but the other one must be Enoch because Enoch didn’t die and everybody has to die.’

“But everybody doesn’t die. ‘The dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air.’

“The verse that says ‘it’s appointed unto man once to die and after that the judgment,’ is a general statement; it’s not true in an absolute 100% sense, else at the Rapture you couldn’t have any living saints that are caught up. So you know it’s a general statement; not a requirement.

“So when Enoch didn’t die, Elijah didn’t die. Elijah’s caught up into heaven in the whirlwind, the chariot. Enoch was not because God took him. Some people say, ‘Well, God took him from one place in the earth to another place,’ but that’s because they want him to die.

“In the Scripture, it’s not Enoch who’s the witness, it’s Moses. That’s why these two guys are here because here’s a picture of the kingdom and they see the Lord in His glory.

Notice Mark 9: ‘And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.
[2] And after six days Jesus taketh with him Peter, and James, and John, and leadeth them up into an high mountain apart by themselves: and he was transfigured before them.'

“When was that? It was after six days that this happened. Watch how Luke does this. When Luke gets it, it’s different. Luke 9:27 says, ‘But I tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God.
[28] And it came to pass about an eight days after these sayings, he took Peter and John and James, and went up into a mountain to pray.’

“One says it after six and the other says it’s about eight, so what’s after six and about eight? You got seven. You say, ‘Well, why didn’t they just say seven days?’ There’s a reason for that because all those numbers mean something. In the Bible, seven is divided, over and over and over, into four and three.

“In Exodus 19, when God came out to meet Israel at Sinai it was on the third day. This idea about the third day--this is not the first time you’ve run into it in the Bible. What I’m trying to get across is this is a pattern.

“The reason he says after two days in the third day is because he wants you to understand there’s a whole bunch of significance in the timing here.

“When he says there in Hosea 6:2 that ‘after two days he will revive us live in his sight,’ the issue is His coming. The passage says, ‘After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight.
[3] Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the LORD: his going forth is prepared as the morning; and he shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth.’

“The Second Advent of Christ is described as the morning after a rainstorm. The rainstorm’s going to take place for two days, then there’s going to be a bright clear morning and that morning is when, as Malachi 4 says, ‘the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings.’

“The Lord’s coming is like the rising of the sun. All of that has to do with how the Lord’s gonna come to Israel.

“The flight path of the Second Advent of Christ literally is what’s taking place during that two-day period. When He comes forth and comes to them, the remnant’s going to be up in the land and the Lord’s going to spend two days fighting.

“It starts in Damascus. He comes down the Mediterranean coast, down through to Mt. Sinai and then up the eastern side of the Dead Sea, crosses the Jordan River right at the place in the Book of Joshua.

“You remember when they went in across the Jordan River in the Book of Joshua 3 and 4, the ark of the Lord there, He is coming in to possess the earth. He’s going to be that Lord of all the earth coming to repossess the earth.

“When He did that, you remember they put 12 markers in the river and 12 on the bank? Those 12 stones that were in the river, John the Baptist when he was baptizing in Matthew 3, that was the spot he was baptizing in.

“When he told them ‘these stones are raised up,’ he was talking about those stones in the river! The markers where the Messiah’s going to come in the day of His wrath. That place right there, that’s where Elijah went out of the land. It’s where Elijah came back in the land.

“He’s going to come across there and go to the Mount of Olives, and that’s one of the first times He’ll touch the ground. This is called the Wars of the Lord in the Book of Numbers. And He’s going to be fighting all this period of time. This journey through here will take the two days.

“Hosea 6 is not talking about two thousand years; it’s talking about two days. And in the beginning of that third day, He’ll have the battle part of it over with and so forth.

“If you go back to Hosea 6, just to kind of recap it, here’s what the believing remnant, the little flock, will say in the last days. ‘Come, and let us return unto the LORD: for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up.’

“ ‘Let’s go back and trust him. Let’s go back and trust his promises.’ These people in Hosea are going to know exactly where they stand and thus they’re going to know what to do about it because Leviticus 26 tells them, ‘If you’ll confess your sins, if you’ll acknowledge your offence and seek my face and hear the words . . .’

“Hosea is literally giving them the words to say and the promise and the hope of how it’s going to take place.”

Underlying the 'picture'

The false allegorical idea taught in so many Christian churches is that Jesus Christ is “reigning in the hearts of men.” They say, “As long as He reigns as Lord in your life that's the Kingdom of God working.”

 *****

An astonishing thing about the Bible is that every book in it has a statement about the Lord Jesus Christ. He's in every single book, either in connection with prophecy, or through a picture-type, or as a direct reference.

When it comes to the Book of Psalms, for example, almost all—if not all—of the 150 individual psalms have some kind of reference to Jesus Christ. Some times you'll simply read it as, "The Lord is my shepherd." Christ says, "I am the good shepherd."

There are references to Him as our shield, our helper, our salvation, on and on.

Throughout the Psalms, the situations and circumstances where it talks about David or someone else serve as allusions or parallels to things Christ does or is involved in somehow.

You can look at a psalm and know it's a reference to Jesus Christ that underlies the picture of the event being discussed.

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In the New Testament are actual quotes from certain psalms that provide direct statements about Jesus Christ, not just allusions or parallels to Him.

Take, for example, John 13:18. Peter, talking about Judas, says, "He that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me."

This comes from an obscure little verse in Psalms 41 that says, "Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me." This is Christ talking.

 

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We know, for instance, Psalm 8 is a “messianic psalm” because it's quoted half a dozen times in the New Testament, including in Hebrews 2:7, where it says, "Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; thou crownedst him with glory and honour, and didst set him over the works of thy hands."

The psalm in its entirety reads: "O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens.
"Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.

"When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;
"What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?
"For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.
"Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet:
"All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field;
"The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.
"O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!"

 

*****

Psalm 8 begins by referring to man and God's purpose to extend His dominion in the earth through Adam and mankind.

But since Adam failed, the reference goes forward to the Lord Jesus Christ as "the last Adam," the true Son of Man who's going to do for man what man failed to do for himself.

When man failed his commission given by God, God reasoned, "Okay, I'll send my Son to become a man and accomplish for man my original purpose in creating mankind."

The psalm is anticipating that day when all of God's purpose for man is accomplished through Jesus Christ, who will reign as King on earth. That's why David says, "O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth."

Of course, the word "our," refers to the nation Israel. The God of all the earth is the God of Israel.

God provides for a "seed of the woman," and that seed becomes the seed of Abraham (the nation Israel), which then becomes the line of David and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Abraham's given the promise of the nation, and David's given the promise of the throne along with the kingdom blessings, but none of it will be accomplished except in the Lord Jesus Christ.

God gave Adam dominion in the earth and he failed. The Lord Jesus Christ is going to accomplish what Adam was originally intended to accomplish and so His dominion is going to be in the earth.

That's why Christ says, “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth,” and, “Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.”

God has a plan and purpose not just for this planet but for the whole universe. That's what it's saying in Psalm 8:1—“who has set thy glory above the heavens."

Patriotism is God's design

“When people call on the telephone and ask for prayer, I tell them they don’t need our phone number,” Jordan said in a study the other week. “You don’t need a prayer line. You don’t need me to pray for you. Pray for yourself.

“You can pray directly to God on your own for yourself and get more benefit out of it than if I pray for you or someone else prays for you. When you begin to rightly divide the Word you begin to understand what prayer is in the dispensation of grace.

“Prayer’s not, ‘I’ll get someone over here to pray and if I get enough people to pray, then God will do something.’ That’s that old heathen thing.

“Paul writes to Timothy, ‘I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.’

“When he says ‘first of all,’ he means this is the first primary thing. You can go to church growth groups and hear people talk about how to build churches, and be involved in planting churches and the ministry in churches, etc., and seldom does that become the first issue. Most people when they think about prayer, they think, ‘Let’s have a prayer meeting.’

“I say on the TV and radio, so that people don’t call, ‘If you need prayer, don’t call our number; it’s not a prayer line. If you need prayer, pray. Pray for yourself. Learn how to talk to God directly.’

“All this stuff people usually think about with regard to, ‘Well, let’s set up a prayer group and a prayer chain and a prayer meeting and have an all-night prayer.’ That isn’t what he’s talking about. He’s talking about how prayer functions today and there’s a great lesson in that in Romans 13.

“Paul starts out in chapter 12 . . . If you want to see what an authentic Grace Believer looks like as far as their lifestyle’s concerned, Romans 12 is designed to show you that.

"It starts out with presenting your body a living sacrifice. It talks about renewing your mind, being transformed. It talks about the relationships you have and to think soberly. He talks about ‘let love be without dissimulation,’ and how you live among the brethren.

*****

“Adam is called ‘a son of God.’ Lucifer before he fell was called ‘the son of the morning.’ God designed to have His creation operated by sons. A son in the Bible is an adult who’s fully educated in what the Father is doing, understands the Father’s will and delightfully participates in it as though it were his own. Lucifer was created for that and he fell. Adam was commissioned in the same way.

“Every nation in the earth is patriotic. I’ve been in a dozen different nations and every nation is patriotic. You know what they’ll ask you? ‘How do you like our country?’ Because they’re naturally proud of their country. Why? That’s the way God designed it for them to be.

“Back in the mid-90s, when I was in Bulgaria and the communists had only been fallen for about two years, we sat at the table and talked to a man who’d been the No. 2 man in the communist government running the department of information. And he said to me, ‘You know, our country doesn’t look real good right now, but we’ve been in bad straits before and we’ll come back.’

“And in spite of all that had happened . . . of course he had about a 1,500-year track record for his country that he was right about, but for all of that, he still was committed to it. And I thought, ‘You know, that’s exactly what Genesis says will happen.’ And God did it that way on purpose.

*****

“To understand the structure of how nationalism works is essential to understanding how to function and minister in the dispensation of grace. Paul is the Apostle to the Gentiles. He has a ministry for the nations; for every man.

“God isn’t operating today like He did through the nation Israel; one nation. So if we’re going to be able to go out and minister to the nations, we need an understanding of how the nations are designed by God to function.

“They’re not a homogenous thing. Acts 17:26, ‘And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation.’

“We all came from Adam but we also all came through Noah’s sons Ham, Shem and Japheth. One of the reasons God scattered everyone in Genesis 11 at the Tower of Babel is because the people were trying to have a one-world nation, one-world language and do exactly the opposite of what God told Noah to do; that is to scatter and replenish the earth.

“They’re trying to get it all together under one head and God says, ‘No, no, I’ve got a new structure now; nationalism.’ And so He scattered them and set the bounds of their habitation. Borders, language and culture.

“Here’s the reason in Acts 17:27: 'That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us.’

“That’s an interesting way of saying it and what he’s saying there is it’s like groping around in the darkness after God. They’re in total darkness; they can’t find Him.

“He set up nationalism literally to enhance evangelism. He did it for the protection of people but also so He could divide up mankind into more reachable groups, if we can put it that way.

*****

“When we live in a culture, our first job is to understand what’s going on. So Paul brings up this issue of prayer for all men. We need to go understand how the nations work, and to the kings and those that are in authority that make the culture function in governmental units, nations, borders, languages and culture.

“We need to understand that so we can operate the local church, which lives in one of those nations in one of those cultures, and prayer is designed to be the catalyst that causes the sound doctrine that Romans 1 says we’re to maintain to work in the inner man.

“It’s to work in the conscience for conscience sake for the assembly to produce the godly attitude and actions in the culture, especially when injustice and Christ rejection is the norm.

“The whole culture, whatever they are, are set up to reject the Lord Jesus Christ, and our response is to be quiet and peaceable, to be the good works in all godliness and honesty. We’re going to live godly.

“Now somebody will say, ‘Well, what happens if the culture violates the Word of God?’ Then you obey the Word of God.

“You go all the way back to Exodus 1 when God first begins to create the nation Israel, and what do you have? Pharaoh says, ‘Go out and kill all the baby boys,’ and what do the Hebrew women do? They don’t go down and protest city hall. They just quietly don’t do it. They quietly disobey. And they have passive resistance.

“You go all through Scripture, you see you can’t obey one verse of Scripture by disobeying another verse. The problem with that is is you bring up that objection because you just don’t want to do what the verses say to start with and that’s to be subject.

“You say, ‘But I don’t like what the government. . . ’ There’s nothing in here that asks you to like it. Paul lived in a government far worse than anything you’ve got to deal with. You got to remember that.

“When he wrote these things, the emperor Nero eventually is going to kill him. He lived in a pagan world. The city of Ephesus was a godless place where Timothy went. Timothy’s job wasn’t to go down and protest the city government. Paul used the government; he appealed to Caesar. He used the rights he had as a citizen of Rome to do good, not evil.”

His poetic masterpiece

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are the four inspired prophetic portraits of the greatest life that was ever lived but they’re by no means designed to be the complete biographies of the Lord Jesus Christ.

John 21:25 says, “And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen.”

“The Four Gospels themselves recognize that they are not complete biographies,” explains Jordan. “Four would not be enough. Thousands would be too few to contain it all.

“What Matthew, Mark, Luke and John do is demonstrate the selectivity of God’s design. He picked out certain things to record about the earthly ministry of Christ because there were things in the Scripture that told Israel: ‘Be looking for this so that shows up.’ There’s symmetry between what prophecy told Israel to be looking for and what you find in the Gospel accounts of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

*****

"Paul tells us in Romans 15:8 that Jesus Christ in His earthly ministry was a minister. He was a prophet, priest and king. He acted under the ‘time past’ regime where God dealt with men on the basis of a distinction He made between the 'circumcision' and the 'uncircumcision.'

“If you don't understand how the Gospels fit in God's grand scheme, you’re going to try to take things out of them and make them work for you and practice them in your life, all because Jesus said them.

“He didn’t say those things to you and me today! He said those things to the nation Israel and the people who came to God through the nation Israel.

“That’s why, for example, when He says, ‘Fear not little flock it’s your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom,’ the next verse says, ‘Sell everything you have and give alms.’ You ever wonder why in Acts 2 and 4 they sold their possessions and laid them at the apostles’ feet? They’re doing what Jesus told them.

“Now before you get all righteous and say, ‘Well, I just want to do what Jesus said,’ why don’t you practice Luke 12:33?

“I have a good friend who had just gotten saved in a big church and soon the preacher preached on ‘Sell out for Jesus; sell all that you have,’ and my friend went out and sold everything he had. He even sold the rug on the living room floor.

“Little while later when he was in trouble financially and in need, he went to the preacher and said, ‘Why ain’t it working?’ The preacher said, ‘Well, you crazy nut, I didn’t mean do that!’ My friend said, ‘Why not, that’s what the verse said?!’

“You don’t have to talk yourself into being an unbeliever by claiming verses that God never gave you, and when they don’t check out in your life and in your experience, go and say, ‘Well, it must not mean what it said!’

“The verses say what they mean and mean what they say right where they say them. You need to go back and ask those questions about who said it (the Lord Jesus Christ as a prophet of Israel), when did He say it (time past) and to whom did He say it (the nation Israel). If you study those books that way, they’ll mean more to you than they could have ever meant any other way.

******

“The Lord came to Solomon at night in a dream and said, ‘Solomon, what can I give you? I’ll give you riches and power—whatever you want,’ and Solomon answered, ‘I want wisdom.’

“Then the text says Solomon awoke and what he’s saying is, ‘You know, it doesn’t help you to work incessantly; stay up all night, get up early to go to work, work through all kinds of difficult, sorrowful, hard, painful experiences because God gives you His gifts when you’re not working at all. When you aren’t conscious. You’re asleep.’

“I thought about that; it’s not of works. It’s His workmanship, not of us. This stuff all comes from Him. Think back through Scripture. When did God give Adam Eve? When did He cut the covenant with Abraham? He put him in a deep sleep. I mean, Solomon isn’t the only one in Scripture that that’s true of, and that’s why he wrote it.

“When Paul says, ‘For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God,’ he’s saying God’s the one who gives the blessing, not based on your merit, but on His giving. ‘For we are his workmanship.’ This is His doing.

“That word ‘workmanship’ (Eph. 2:10) there is talking about a work of art. A masterpiece. Preachers like to point out that the Greek word that’s translated there is the word we get our term ‘poem’ from.

“That word comes over in English as ‘poem.’ You’re His work of art. You’re literally the form through which He’s going to express Himself. A masterpiece is something you do to make yourself known.

“Paul only uses the Greek term twice. Romans 1:19. Everybody knows something about God. He’s manifest in them. Chapter 2:14 says, ‘For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves.’

“You see God has indelibly printed into the heart of man, all men, some information. He manifested  Himself. Everybody knows there’s a God.

“You have to educate yourself out of that, and what the educated guy says is, ‘Well, if you want to be sophisticated and educated, you have to get over your primordial tendency to believe in the superstitious idea of something bigger than you.’

“To get over that is to get over the mystery of life itself and to become nothing but a crass materialist where the only thing that’s real is what you can hold in your hand and you believe in the survival of the fittest even though you’re never going to be the fittest so you’re never going to survive. It doesn’t add to life; it detracts!

“You can look at creation and see the wisdom, knowledge and understanding of God; the fact there’s a Creator revealed right there and that verse  that term ‘things that are made’ is a translation of exactly the same word in Ephesians 2 about workmanship. Creation is God’s workmanship. It’s His masterpiece that demonstrates His wisdom, His understanding, His knowledge. He’s placed it in the creation.

“When you look at the creation, what you’re seeing is God manifest His wisdom, His knowledge, His purpose, what He’s accomplishing. You find out about Him!”

God doesn't hear sinner's prayer

In the midst of a very cold jog Christmas morning, my sister-in-law suddenly asked me, “What do you think of Billy Graham?” I told her he was an apostate preacher with bad theology who couldn’t even tell a person how to get saved, and actually probably hinders a lot of people from becoming saved.

The other month, in a swing through the Christianity section at Barnes & Noble, I flipped through Graham’s 2013 book, “The Reason for my Hope: Salvation.”

He stipulates that people must, among lots of other incorrect advice for basic salvation, repent of their sin and “confess Jesus Christ as Lord of your life.”

Just look at this one passage from Graham as an example: “I have always asked people to make public confession in our meetings because Jesus in His earthly ministry demanded a definite commitment. He had reasons for demanding that people openly follow Him. Jesus knew that an unwitnessed vow is no vow at all. Until you have surrendered to Christ by a conscious act of your will, you are not a Christian.

“No transcribed prayer grants a sinner salvation, but the Bible is clear that we must recognize our sin and repent of it, be willing for God to change us, and obediently follow Jesus Christ. This is the most important step anyone can take in life and is the only way to truth.

“Pray this prayer: O God, I am a sinner. I repent of my sin. Forgive me and help me turn from my sin. I acknowledge what you have done on the cross for me and receive your son, Jesus Christ, as my Savior. I confess Him as my Lord. Give me faith to believe and trust as you lead me into obedience, relying on you in all things. Thank you for redeeming me and making me your disciple. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”

*****

 Last Sunday, Jordan dedicated his morning service to the issue of basic salvation. Here is part of what he said:

“Oftentimes when I’m sharing with people the gospel, and even here when I’m talking in a meeting, I tell people, ‘You don’t have to go anywhere, you don’t have to move a muscle. You don’t even have to pray.’

“What you have to do to get saved is believe and that’s a real important issue frankly. The only response grace will accept from you is faith because faith is not you working; it’s you trusting what He said. Faith is also the necessary response. It’s the required response.

****

“Years ago, I made that statement down at the Pacific Garden Mission and got some people really mad me. They said, ‘Well, you’ve got to pray The Sinner’s Prayer!’ That’s a common religious idea.

“People say, ‘You need to repent and turn from your sins to get saved.’ No, you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ to get saved. Others say, ‘You need to ask Jesus into your heart; make Him lord of your life.’ No, you need to believe that Jesus Christ died for your sins and was buried and rose again for your justification.

“All this other stuff is just a bunch of religious confusion. People say, ‘Well, you need to confess your sins and turn from your sins.’

“Why would you tell a lost person to do something he can’t do?! The only thing a lost person can do without working is to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.

*****

“You need to develop a discerning ear about these issues. Elihu says to Job in Job 34:3, ‘For the ear trieth words, as the mouth tasteth meat.’

“I’ve always thought that’s a great thing to remember. Your mouth can taste a hamburger and you know where it comes from. You know whether it’s McDonald’s or whether your momma made it.

“Your ear’s designed to try words. You’re supposed to have a discernment in your listening capacity when you hear things taught. Where you can discriminate between them, just like your mouth can discriminate between a piece of bologna and a T-bone steak,

“Your ear is able to tell differences in messages. One of the things that caused Galatianism, the mixing of law and grace, is they lost that ability to distinguish between the messages they were hearing.

*****

“Galatians 3 says, ‘O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?’

“Notice they started well. Before their eyes, Jesus Christ was evidently crucified. When they started their Christian life, it was thought they were there watching the Lord be crucified. It was that clear and plain and simple to them. They grasped it to that depth. It was a reality in their thinking. They knew about it.

“ They believed it, trusted it and it was set forth before them and the doctrine had an impact on them. They had an understanding of what took place a Calvary.

“But now Paul says, ‘You’re foolish.’ That word ‘foolish’ doesn’t mean dumb, stupid or ignorant. It means you’ve quit using your head. A fool can have a brilliant IQ but not have the ability to think through the common issues of life.

“They’d been bewitched. They let somebody come along and trick them; cast a spell over them. Make them not use their thinking processes properly.

“We’re talking here just about the issues of salvation. We’re not talking about functioning in the Christian life. You have to get salvation first in your Christian life, and when you lose the issue that ‘by grace are you saved through faith,’ it isn’t what you do or your resources, but trusting in what He’s done . . . when you lose that, you lose any capacity to have your Christian life function at all because you’ve transferred all of your dependence from Him to yourself or to others.

*****

“This thing about The Sinner’s Prayer comes from an account in Luke 18 that Jesus taught as a parable. Verse 9 says, ‘And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others.’

“Notice who He’s talking to. People who trusted in themselves. People who thought it wasn’t ‘by grace plus nothing, not of myself.' Here’s people trusting in their resources, looking down on others.

“When you think about prayer and praying, praying won’t save you because in the Bible, prayer is a work. When you tell somebody to pray, or you give them a prayer to recite after you, or tell them to pray and ask God to save them, you’re telling them to work! Salvation is not of works.

Colossians 4:12 (‘Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ, saluteth you, always labouring fervently for you in prayers, that ye may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God’) is the verse that caused such a problem at the mission that time. What was he laboring fervent for them in? Prayer. That means prayer is a labor.

“Romans 15:30. You see, prayer is one of the good works that believers perform. I Timothy 5:5. The reason prayer doesn’t save you is because prayer is the function of a Believer.

“That will help you understand the verse in John 9 in the account of the blind man Jesus heals. Verse 9:31 says, ‘Now we know that God heareth not sinners: but if any man be a worshipper of God, and doeth his will, him he heareth.’

“You take that verse at face value. Why would you tell a lost man to pray if God doesn’t hear sinners? God hears Believers.

*****

“The problem with praying is that prayer is a good work for Believers! Someone will immediately say, Well what about the verse, ‘Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved?’

“In almost every tract, in almost every gospel presentation that you’ll hear an evangelical, fundamental gospel preacher preach, he’ll use Romans 10: 9-13 as the closer. I picked up two in the last week at places.

“Can I tell you, that is a mark of a lack of understanding. That’s a mark your ear ought to catch just like that because of the confusion it causes.

“There’s an order to this thing. First, the guy gets sent, then he preaches, then they hear and when they hear, they do what? Who’s the ‘whosoever’ in verse 13?

“Well, according to verse14, you don’t call until you believe and when you believe, what happens to you? Verse 10 says, ‘For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.’

“The first thing you do is believe and when you believe, you get righteousness. That’s called justification. You get the righteousness of God when you believe, you don’t get it because you prayed, confessed, worked, gave up, held out, let go of. You got it because you believed God’s Word. You trusted God’s Son. You believed in the Lord Jesus Christ.

“It’s Believers who call upon the name of the Lord. I Corinthians 1. Believers call upon the name of the Lord, but they’re not calling on the name of the Lord to get saved; they’re calling on the name of the Lord because they ARE saved! The issue isn’t prayer; the issue’s believing.”

Back to Adam and 'Steve'?

“It’s always been a fascinating thing to me that people get so caught up with the sins of the world,” says Jordan. “One of the great sins of our day among evangelical Christians, and people seem to be just horrified of and afraid of, and throw up their hands at and say, ‘The world’s coming to an end!’ is homosexuals.

“The unnatural activities of homosexuality and the perversion of it is evil. But when God thought about Sodom, and when God described the sins of Sodom, look at what He said!

“Ezekiel 16:48: As I live, saith the Lord GOD, Sodom thy sister hath not done, she nor her daughters, as thou hast done, thou and thy daughters.
[49] Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.
[50] And they were haughty, and committed abomination before me: therefore I took them away as I saw good.

“He’s talking to Jerusalem and Israel. I read that and I say, ‘Whoa! The things that God was more interested in than sodomy were pride, fullness of bread, abundance of idleness, not strengthening the hands of the poor and the needy, and being haughty and having a bunch of religious idols that were abominations; idolatry.

“I read that and say, ‘Hmm, He must have missed the one we get upset about.’ Well, He didn’t miss it because it’s what’s connected with the idolatry. Every time you see sodomy in the Bible it’s connected with religious apostasy. The only time that activity takes over in a culture is when the truth of God’s Word is abated.

“But you see there were a whole bunch of other things that were more in the mind of God. The sins back here in Genesis. There’s some more fundamental things in God’s mind about government that’s an issue.

“Paul says in Romans 13:3, ‘For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same.’

“When he talks about the evil work, he’s talking about there is not some violation of some political economic principle that you hold dear. The evil work there is chaos. It’s violence. It’s disruption. It’s the unruliness that comes from the imaginations of men to do evil; to do whatever they want to do and to be unrestrained.

“Psalm 2 says, ‘Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?
[2] The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed.’

“That’s the evil! It’s the evil of violence and chaos. It’s the opposite of the order for which God created the governments; the governmental system.

“God specifically designs nationalism to remedy the product of man’s heart; that devolving effect of sin into violence and chaos. The good works are the opposite; there the works of peace and quietness.

*****

“Genesis 6:5 says, ‘And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.’

“By verse 12 it’s ‘And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.
[13] And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.’

“The evil that was in man’s heart, the evil that the imaginations of man’s hearts led them to, is the issue of violence, this upheaval; this chaos, this unruliness, this disruption of the order that God had established in His creation in order to carry out His purposes.

*****

Notice it’s only in Genesis 4 that they’re developing a family; they’re beginning to be fruitful. They’re multiplying. What happens? The kids grow up and one’s a farmer and one’s a sheep rancher. You’re developing a culture of things. Some to grow groceries and some to raise sheep so we can have some clothes.

“Verse 16-17 says, 16] And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden.
[17] And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch.
 

“There’s the old question: ‘Where’d Cain get his wife?’ (Pennsylvania preacher) Henry Culp used to have a sermon: ‘Where did Mrs. Cain get her husband?’ I’ve always thought, ‘That’s a good question!’ I mean, who would have married that dodo?!

“By that time, Adam and Eve have had many sons and daughters who had sons and daughters who had sons and daughters. There’s this culture. Look at what Cain does. They’re multiplying and replenishing the earth; filling it up. They’ve got a city going here! You’ve got a whole culture going!

“Read on down through Genesis 4 and you’ll see the development of agriculture (verse 20), the development of the arts and entertainment (verse 21), the development of industrialization and manufacturing (metallurgy verse 22). You see a legal system developing down in verse 23-24.

“You start in chapter 5 with Adam and verse 30 ends with Noah. If you count the lifespan of the people of Adam, and Adam lived 130 years and he begat Seth, and Seth lived 105 years and begat Enos. If you do that all the way down, you’ll discover there’s a time period of 1,056 years between Adam and the birth of Noah.

“Now you add 600 years to that because the Flood comes in the 600^th year of Noah. So between Adam and the Flood is 1,656 years in the text. So you’re talking almost 2,000 years of human history going on here of them being fruitful, multiplying, replenishing the earth and subduing it.

*****

“He gave them the ability to execute capital punishment, not as a personal vengeance kind of a thing, but as a judgment of a court kind of a thing. God’s setting up a legal system, and when you get someone to take a person’s life, you’ve given them the right to take everything up to that. When you take someone’s life you take everything; you take their freedom, you take their time. That’s sort of the thinking behind understanding what’s going on here.

“In chapter 10, he begins to give you the genealogies of all these boys. Verse 32 says, ‘These are the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations: and by these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood.’

“You’ll see it was divided up by families, tongues and by countries. Borders, cultures and languages is what’s used here to define a nation. So you have these national entities established and each one of these governmental units is designed to foster protection against the evil that’s in man’s heart.

“So what God did was He established a governmental system that was specifically designed to remedy the product of man’s heart; the evil that was in man’s heart. We’re talking about the evil Romans 13 is talking about. When He set up nationalism, He did it to counter one specific evil—the evil that was in man’s heart.”

(editor's note: subsequent article tomorrow)

The powers that be

God established the concept of government but didn’t establish any particular kind of government. He will, though, when Jesus Christ comes back.

“It’s not going to be a representative democracy or republic; it’ll be a monarchy,” says Jordan. “From God’s point of view, the most efficient form of government is a benevolent monarchy. A monarchy that’s run by the Righteous One.

“Paul writes in Romans 13:1, ‘Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.’

“God established that His universe would be run by some controlling authorities. There’s no power--no authority to control things, run things, operate things--but of God. He’s the one who set that up. God established government, rule, authority, order. It’s the methodology by which His business is going to be carried out in the universe.

“When it says, ‘the powers that be,’ that’s the subdivisions of the power structure. The thrones, the dominions, the principalities, the powers, the mights, the magistrates--all those things that He established at creation.

“It says, ‘The powers that be are ordained of God.' That’s why Jesus told Pilate, ‘You’d have no power if it wasn’t given you of God.’ That’s why Satan would say to Jesus in Luke 4, ‘All these kingdoms are mine and the power thereof, whomsoever I give it.’

“By the way, that doesn’t mean that God put everybody in them. God didn’t elect the president of the U.S. He didn’t elect the mayor of the city of Rolling Meadows. He didn’t even establish the presidency."

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In Genesis 2, God puts Adam “into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.” He gives Adam “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” Adam, of course, was told not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Jordan explains, “What God in essence told Adam is, ‘Here’s creation. I want you to go out there and explore it, I want you to learn from it, I want you to see the wisdom and knowledge and understanding that I put in it and use it to enhance it; be an entrepreneur in my creation. But the choice of deciding what’s good and not good; that’s mine. You don’t do that.'

“Genesis 2:19 says, ‘And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.’

“The Lord brings all the animals to Adam and you see He didn’t say, ‘Adam, name the animals.’ He brought them to SEE what Adam would name them.

“The first work, what he understood his job to be, was an intellectual, conceptual discovery of why he was put there, and the Lord’s just saying, ‘Do you understand what I told you?’

“Adam’s perception of what he should be doing is exactly what God told him. He used his skill to extract from each of those creatures an understanding of what their function was and he named them; he identified their function.

“It’s one illustration of Adam’s understanding of what his role was. So he understands, ‘I’m the one who has control and dominion and develops creation.' That’s vested in Adam as the head of the home. Then there’s the marriage, the family, the culture that that first family develops.

“By the way, after the Fall, God tells Eve, ‘You’re going to be subject to your husband in this family structure here.’ Prior to that Adam and Eve were co-regents.”