GLORY THROUGH THE CROSS
Glory begins in the excellent
glory but comes to us through the Cross. That glory or metaphysical ooze
of the risen presence of Jesus Christ began between Father and Son in past
eternity. In John 17: 24 Jesus says,
“Father I
desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me WHERE I AM,
that they may behold My glory
which You have given
Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.”
(Emphasis mine)
In the High Priestly prayer
Jesus desires to share His glory. Only our spirits can take it! We know
Peter, James and John were overcome by it! We know the priests dedicating
Solomon's temple fell down before it! Nevertheless God wants to communicate
glory to those who fear His name and live in obedience.
In days of revival, when
heaven seeps into earth’s atmosphere, the manifestation of glory is common.
In the day of personal revival the glory of God can be our rear-guard.
One day as a young repentant believer I walked down the road and the rear-guard
glory manifested behind me. There is no more secure feeling in all the
world. You are held by the everlasting arms of God, with no trace of fear,
with a boldness and strength. How we need the glory. Once in the same town
I walked a mile or so with a close friend, David Cheetham, and we became
aware of the presence of glory as we discussed the Lord's return. Again,
the manifestation was behind us, and emanated complete security and freedom
of expression, in an atmosphere of holy awe.
This lovely phrase “WHERE
I AM” needs an explanation. Yes, it is Jesus in heaven when He is still
on earth (John 3: 13). Jesus lives in two worlds: in heaven, and on earth.
His discussion with Nicodemus was on earth, but He was also communicating
with the Father in heaven. We have our feet on earth but our spirits are
communicating with our Lord in heaven. Paul was a prisoner (Ephesians 3:
1) but communicated with God in the heavenlies (Ephesians 3: 10). Yes,
it is also our position of privilege in heavenly places (Ephesians 2: 6),
in the glory of our ascended Christ. Elsewhere in John's gospel we can
build up the picture. John 14: 3 famously says,
“And if I
go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself,
that WHERE I AM there you
may be also.”
(Emphasis mine)
We interpret this as a place
in heaven, and the second coming of Christ. In the previous verse there
is a strong clue this is not the full picture. “ In my Father's house”
must mean the synagogue then (compare John 2: 16), and church now (Ephesians
2: 19 – 22)! There are many dwelling places for God's glory in the members
of the church, in Father's house. Christ dwells in us by His Spirit (1Corinthians
3:16). The preparation of the place where He dwells i.e. our lives, is
through a real consecration, a Gethsemane where our will bows to the divine
will. A real place in us on earth now. Through this consecration we join
ourselves to the Lord becoming one spirit with Him (1Corinthians 6: 17).
Jesus will come again replacing our sacrifice with unsearchable riches.
Jesus dwells in us by His
Spirit, but also WHERE HE IS, there WE ARE, mystically seated in Christ
in the heavenly places NOW. When we are born again we are placed into Christ
WHERE HE IS in heavenly places. That is our position of privilege supernaturally.
Check out 1 Corinthians 6: 17 where our spirit is joined to the risen Lord.
To experience this blessedness the believer has to live as a living sacrifice,
dead to sin (Romans 6: 6). Evan Roberts was taken up into heavenly places
for hours every day in the Welsh revival. He made his position a real performance
of knowing the Lord Jesus. The result was heaven came to earth in power
and in glory.
Our service comes out of
being a living sacrifice (Romans 12: 1), and being where God is at work
for His glory, “... and WHERE I AM, there My servant will be also” says
John 12: 26, Jesus commands us to follow Him if we are to serve Him. Our
ability to follow Him is dependent upon us first denying ourselves and
taking up our cross daily (Luke 9: 23). The key to fruitfulness in service
is to remain in Him (John 15: 4). In Him is our legal standing, our position
that cannot be altered. However, there is also the vital side to our redemption:
the state of our hearts, and how we now live and move and have our being
in Him.
True servants work together
with Him: where He is, i.e. from heaven's viewpoint; and on earth where
His presence is manifest. To the religious bound Pharisees He said in John
7: 34,
“You will
seek Me and not find Me, and WHERE I AM you cannot come.”
(Emphasis mine)
You have to be born again, and
baptized into the Holy Spirit to experience glory.
Glory is manifestation of
the divine nature, the revealing of His true character. When Moses asked
God to show His glory, the goodness of God, the grace and compassion of
God passed before him (Exodus 33: 19). The glory of God is released only
where we allow the Cross to powerfully do it's work in our lives. This
is illustrated by the transfiguration of Jesus (Luke 9: 27-36). As He prayed
on the mountain with Peter, James and John His appearance was changed as
the glory of God came, as the atmosphere of heaven came down to earth,
two members of the cloud of witness's were seen talking with Jesus: Moses
and Elijah. The topic: the Cross that was looming up ahead for Jesus. The
disciples are overwhelmed by the glory of God, their focus is to want to
pitch their tents and stay there! Perhaps we can identify with them, the
Cross is not a pleasing prospect to our flesh but by His grace we are enabled!
God adjusts their focus by telling them this is His beloved Son, and gives
a command to “...Hear Him” (Luke 9: 35). We need to concentrate on the
revelation word when we are in His glorious presence. Our natural thinking
is useless when we have a realization of the enthroned life with Christ
in heavenly places.
GLORY AND SACRIFICE
In 2 Chronicles 7: 1-3 we
see the relationship between our sacrifice as a burnt offering and the
glory of God. There in three verses we see a divine sequence for us to
follow:
1) PRAYING
2) OFFERING AND SACRIFICES
3) FIRE
4) GLORY
5) HUMILITY
6) WORSHIP
7) PRAISING |
v 1
v 1
v 1
v 1, 2
v 3
v 3
v 3 |
One problem today is we want
to do 6 and 7 before 1 and 2, and become confused as a result of neglecting
the divine order. The steps to the glory of the Lord are clearly PRAYING,
the LIVING SACRIFICE and FIRE. Prayers from the heart come to an end so
we enter the sanctuary stillness (see Psalm 72: 20). Solomon also had finished
... praying. Any prayers from the old man cannot even be heard from heaven.
Fervent prayers, inwrought by the Holy Spirit, upon the mouths of righteous
men will bring the quietude from eternity. From here the fire of the Spirit
will consume the sacrifice.
Has there been consecration
in His presence in your life?
Have you laid your entire
life as a burnt offering on the altar of God?
Contemporary preaching fails
to bring this essential message that leads to His glorious presence. Moses
knew God as a consuming fire at the burning bush. Will we hand over the
useless bush of our lives? We must come empty handed. For the temple of
our bodies to be filled with His glory we have to GO OUT. We have no right
to our lives. We must surrender. The priests could not enter the temple
because the glory of the Lord fully inhabited the place reserved for God.
When our flesh enters our lives by various forms of selfishness we prohibit
the glory of God. We cease to demonstrate His disposition.
Romans 6 is essential for
maintaining ourselves as a living sacrifice. The old man is dead, gone
and finished at the Cross, verse 6 is past tense. However, when an old
man dies in his house, his belongings are still there in the property!
According to Romans 6: 13 the Spirit must put to death these belongings
of the old man. Habits die hard. So the progress of the process of
eliminating flesh works from our lives is found in Romans 8, the chapter
we all want to experience! There is a reckoning on what Jesus HAS already
done, and a dealing with deeds of the body through the Holy Spirit. The
verbal confession of being dead to sin helps to release the power of our
co-crucifixion with Him. Declare:
“Worry and
fear I have died to you in Jesus' name. Jesus never owned you and now I
refuse you because I am
dead in Christ Jesus
to you. Abiding in His love and faith I live and move and have my new creation
being in Him.
Amen.”
Upon the foundation of Romans
6: 6 – 11 the Holy Spirit can now be more specific and deal with the belongings
of the dead man, for example: gossip, selfish ambition, or pride in one's
ministry or appearance. The Lord, if we allow Him, will lead us to sacrifice
and consecration, and separation.
Once a man in New York did
up his home to sell it to a property developer. The purchaser laughed and
said, “you've wasted your time, for I only want to knock it down!” When
we seek to improve our lives we hinder God's property developer: the Holy
Spirit. He wants to knock down the Adam life in us, that unit of evil based
on our human birth. The Spirit of truth will build beauty that gives God
glory, from the ashes and futility of our self life!
WISDOM AND GLORY
In 1 Corinthians 2: 6 -16
we have a fundamental passage showing the priority of revelation over reason.
Politicians and philosophers are coming to nothing because a new age of
revelation opens up before the believer. The hidden wisdom is FOR OUR GLORY
(2: 7). As we obey the revelation word from God, the glory of God will
appear to us. In Leviticus 9: 6 this link between our obedience and the
glory of God is to do with the specific thing God commands of us. An exciting
story from the Argentinian revival confirms this.
Edward Miller had worked
hard as a missionary for many years and seen nothing. After months of personal
prayer for a breakthrough the Holy Spirit led him to call for a prayer
meeting. Four attended with the command from the Lord that they must stay
from 8pm till midnight. They continued for a few nights mostly in silence.
No one heard God except the wife of a backslider who had an impression
she should bang the table. However, she didn't do it maybe thinking it
was too obscure to have been the Lord! After much frustration at the silence,
the missionary led the others in a chorus as they walked round the table.
They all banged the table except the woman. Nothing happened! But as soon
as the woman who had the special revelation obeyed, the wind of the Spirit
entered the room and the glory came! The hidden wisdom is what God is saying
to you personally – a given strategy to know what to do with what we know.
Once in Tema, Ghana, at a
pastor's house, six of us prayed in tongues and the glory of God flowed
through the ceiling so that you could not see the ceiling anymore. Then
a skinny African sister of 19 sang a chorus on her knees and God was everywhere
– you could not move. The river of tongues had gone on for two hours, some
warfare, some singing in the Spirit, some mysteries in the Spirit. The
Spirit of wisdom of revelation tears away the blindness from our eyes,
so the eyes of our heart can be flooded with light. Only filled with the
Spirit can we have the mind of Christ, and judge (or discern) the source
of all things. We may not be wise according to the flesh but God calls
the foolish things of the world to confound the wise.
-
How foolish to bang a
table!
-
How foolish to pray in
unknown tongues for two hours!
-
How foolish for Hosea
to marry a prostitute!
God looks for obedience from
the heart. Only obedience to a specific command brings God on the scene
where His glory is manifest.
Reason crucified the Lord
of glory.
Revelation went to the Cross
as a fulfillment of Father's love plan.
Reason is always stabbing
revelation in the back. Cain killed Abel. The Jews delivered Jesus up,
out of envy. Saul hunted David with murderous intent. The harlot bride
hates the true church that is cleansed by His precious blood, and is sustained
by the washing of the water of the Word. The wisdom of God is found in
the word of the Cross.... the daily cross where our will and God's will
cross. These things of God's interest only the Holy Spirit knows and He
must let us into His secrets.
The Spirit of wisdom and
revelation leads us to discover the hidden wisdom of God in the power of
the Cross.
What does this practically
mean?
The revelation is imbued
with glory, the presence of Jesus, as the Cross in its power is proclaimed.
Relief from mental torment once came to me as a song was played on a grand
piano: I felt the blood of Jesus do a work in my brain. The word of the
Cross was present in the lyric and playing of the instrument. Glory always
follows the power of the blood of Jesus Christ. Sermons minus the redemptive
power of the Cross cannot bring the glory of God. An act of service done
from the basis of “I die daily” will contain glory. When we act in the
name of Jesus we will have denied an area of flesh (or self) life. Our
secret weapon over the
-
tyranny of self
-
triviality of the world
-
temptations of Satan
is the personal cross. Glory
comes in lives yielded to death throughout our days on earth.
“We overcome
him (the enemy) by the blood of the lamb by the word of our testimony and
they DID NOT LOVE
THEIR LIVES to the
death (until our dying day).” Revelation 12: 11
(Emphasis mine)
We do not have to overcome sin.
We reckon ourselves dead to sin on the basis of Romans 6: 6. Sin will never
be dead to us, but we can be dead to sin by sinking down into the death
of Christ and finding His death is our own!
We must overcome, however,
the world (1 John 5: 4) and the enemy. These battles continue throughout
our lives, there is no let up. Faith in the word of the Cross, and faith
testifying to what the word says that the blood does, will bring victory.
The redeemed of the Lord should say SO! Proclaim His victory with me:
“Lord Jesus
I am redeemed from the grip of the terrible. I am redeemed from the curse
of the law, of poverty and
sickness. I am brought
and bought out of the market place of sin by Your precious blood. The life
of God in
Your blood, Lord Jesus,
cries out to the Father on my behalf. I'm forgiven by the blood of Jesus
from all sins.
(Wait on the Holy
Spirit and name the specific sins that are unconfessed.) The blood stands
against every
assignment of the
enemy, every control and manipulation. The Lion of the tribe of Judah smashes
all principality and
powers that harass
and torment and deceive me. (Now wait again on the Holy Spirit for light
to see the wiles of
the devil.) Amen Lord.”
Why is this declaration important?
Faith forms a bridge of Spirit-filled
words that take us from our circumstances to the Living Christ. Our confession
gradually becomes our possession of the inheritance. Hallelujah!
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