god with us - the book
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The Immanuel Project
The Immanuel Project: God with Us
Introduction - Sovereignty: Its all about you, Jesus
CENTRAL THEME
Many opinions abound concerning the central theme of the Bible and
the eternal question asked by mankind, Why am I here? Some touch
on mans relation to God; others delve into mans eternal destiny, and
the list goes on. However, I would submit that the central theme has
little to do with man and his visions of grandeur and much to do about
God.
Shelley Nirider sings a beautiful song on the Passion albums called Jesus, Lover of My Soul.
The most enlightening portion of this song lies in the subtitle, Its all About You. This song
portrays in a concise manner the very approach Christians must take concerning all things.
It's all about you, JesusAnd all this is for You
For Your glory and Your fameIt's not about me
As if You should do things my wayAnd You alone are God
And I surrender to Your waysThe book of Job runs headlong into an area that many in the Christian community are not
ready to face. An area that man, who has spent ages centering the universe around himself,
acknowledges but doesnt comprehend.
Teachings abound concerning the book of Job many focusing on Job, the man, by examining
why this righteous person was having so much evil poured out upon his life. Even the brief
observation into the heavenly realms does not provide the answer to the question proposed,
Why do the righteous suffer? Jobs friends didnt know, Job had no clue and interestingly
enough, God wasnt about to tell him. No one seems to realize that Job never gets an answer
to the question Why?
Elihu seemed to be the only individual that operated with an understanding of mans relation to
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The book in your hands presents the only valid view about mankind and his relationship with
God. The wakeup call centers on one key factor Gods purpose.
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Preface
Anyone that studies the Bible with any amount of vigor knows about the mystery of the Gospel
that Paul talks about so many times in his letters. But if quizzed, I wonder how many could
actually define the true depth of that mystery?
In writing this book, I dont claim to understand the full breath of the mystery of God. That
would be too presumptuous for any man. The mystery I propose to those reading this pertains
to the great mystery encompassing our salvation and the price God paid to be with us. Yes,
thats what I said, to be with us. You see, the focus of our salvation belongs to God, not
us. If you get nothing else out of this book, understand that your salvation belongs to God! He
planned it before man sinned; He manifested it when we did not know how badly we needed it;
He purchased it though there was nothing to gain except a bunch of unrighteous createdbeings; He provided it free of charge to any who accept it. He owns the ones Hes purchased.
He holds the bragging rights!
The question Why? should exist within every humble and repentant heart. Why should an
infinite (with no beginning or ending), omnipotent (all powerful), omniscient (all knowing),
omnipresent (everywhere) and transcendent (dwelling outside our physical universe) God step
into time and space to alter the course of history for a degenerate society of clueless beings?
So, as you enter into your time of reading, you must set aside yourself and focus completely
on the Creator God. You must ask yourself Why? What I present in this book could
potentially lead you into a newer, fresher and deeper relationship with God than you ever
dreamed possible. I want to get you past the acquaintance level relationship with God and
even past the friendship level relationship that many attain to. I want to encourage you to
establish a relationship that leads you to know a knowable God in the intimate way that I
believe He designed. Moses, Abraham, Joseph, Enoch, Elijah and Daniel walked in it. Jesus
showed us how we could do it. Now grab your Bible, your love letter from God, and follow me
as we discover a God that wants nothing more than to be with you.
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Chapter 1: Confining the Infinite
One of the greatest tragedies in reading the Bible, which proclaims to be the Word of God, lies
in our human limitations. A finite being struggles with understanding the unfathomable. How
can man understand God? Or how can we understand even remotely some of His basiccharacteristics. We use simple terms like omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence and
believe we have defined some aspect of God in a human delineated fashion; however, even
though our limited vocabulary contains over two hundred thousand words it cant even scratch
the surface when it comes to describing an infinite God.
Simply put, mankind cannot understand the eternal nature of God. God exists in a realm that
does not computer to the human brain. He exists outside of our time dimension. He sees the
past and the future in totality. Nothing ever surprises Him, and no event ever happened thatHe forgets. God operates in infinite mode. I like to challenge people with the following thought
provoking illustration to demonstrate my point about conceptualizing the infinite.
Most Christians know John 3:16
For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in
Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life
The last part of that verse reads, will not perish but have everlasting life. Most believers
understand that the Christians destiny in Christ leads to eternal life living forever. What a
concept! Imagine for a moment that you will never cease to exist. You will breath, live, talk,
worship and exist FOREVER! It sort of blows the mind.
Now that you took that first step in understanding future aspects of infinity, let us delve a little
deeper. A problem exists in our understanding of a never ending future. Though you can
perhaps discern the notion of an unending future in some simple fashion, we have a limitation.
We use a beginning reference point to carry forward our understanding of eternal things. You
were born. You started. You can conceptualize endless things from the starting point. But
when you remove that reference point, what happens?
For just a moment, think about never being created never having a beginning. That concept
rubs us wrong. Everything began. This defies the law of cause and effect, which essentially
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states that every effect in the universe was caused by something else. Even with Christian
understanding, we hit roadblocks to grasping the concept of never beginning.
Everything we see and know had a start. The car I drive started as iron ore that someone
refined into metal that someone else fashioned into parts that someone else put together. If
you believe in evolutionary theory, you believe that iron ore came from an explosion in spacebillions of years ago. The strange part is, I never met an evolutionist yet that explained how
matter came from nothing. All matter in the universe started somewhere, so what existed
before matter existed.
If you are a creationist, you can look at the Bible and read the story about Seth. He had a
beginning; the Bible says that he was born to Adam and Eve. His mother and fathers act
caused his existence, but what about Adam and Eve? Where did they come from?
Adam and Eve were caused or created by Gods hand. Adam was formed from dust and Eve
was formed from Adam. Both had a source a beginning. For Adam, it was dust, for Eve, it
was Adam. But where did God come from? Who caused him?
Even some Christians fall victim to the worlds evolutionary idea that it took 13.7 billion years
for the universe to evolve into its present form. But no matter how much time you add to the
creation of the universe, you have an infinite problem Where did anything come from?
According to the understanding of cause and effect, you get to a point where you no longerhave a starting point. You get to a point where what you exists with no cause because it
always existed. At this point, you reached God.
To rebel against that probability, some evolutionists state that the universe explodes, evolves,
implodes and then starts all over again. They call this the Big Bounce theory. The previous
universe collapsed in on itself and then blew up.1 But even it doesnt explain where that
universes matter came from. This looping theory will keep going and going with no beginning
in sight because everything exists because of something else causing it to come into being.
The well proven scientific law of cause and effect does not apply to God. Nothing caused
Him to exist; He has always been because He exists outside of our physical universe and time
domain. The Bible illustrates this in Gods introduction. In the beginning God2 Nothing
existed before him because He existed before time began.
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Einstein defined time itself as a property of our physical universe, and it can be altered by
gravitational forces according to his theory of general relativity. Look at all the physical
properties that God created in the first three verses of Genesis chapter one: time in the
beginning, space God created the heavens, matter and the earth and energy and He
said, let there be light. Do you realize that this same God that lives inside you and created the
world needed to create the space in which to place the entire universe? In the beginning, only
God existed. God created all the physical laws that govern our universe in the first three
verses of Genesis, but what happened for eternity before that? Where did God come from?
At first it seems to be a simple answer, but the more you investigate, you come to realize that
the understanding proves tougher to grasp.
He came from nowhere because He always existed.
When God reveals to Moses his name (another way of defining your very being) he uses the
most common subject and verb expression to denote all that He represents I am. In it God
says, I am not new; I have always been. 3
Now, just for a moment, try to imaging never experiencing a beginning no birthday, because
your birth never happened. It goes beyond our human comprehension. This stumbling block
befuddles man because it falls outside the framework of his understanding.
So, as a Christian, whether you want to go with the world and believe that it took billions ofyears, or you choose to believe God when he says that He did it in six days a few thousand
years ago, you must still wrestle with the infinite for those of you that believe God took
billions of years to evolve everything, where did the material come from that caused the big
bang? Every atom in the universe formed somewhere. And if you say that God created it,
how long did that take? Couldnt He just make it all good the first time? If God can create
time, He surely could create everything instantly with the appearance of time.
We see this in the creation account recorded in Genesis. God creates everything so that it has
the appearance of time. God did not create man as a fertilized egg. He created him as a full
grown man. In the same way, God created trees, shrubs, fish, dogs and cats. Since God
created time, He could easily create the appearance of time as seen in the earth and universe.
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Do you think the trees God created had rings? Did pine needles cover the ground? Did river
valleys exist, beach erosions decorate the landscape, and what about Adams teeth? Baby
or adult?
Faith begins where understanding ends. And yet, we grow in understanding as our faith
increases. God wants us to lean more on His understanding (which is our faith) and less onour own.4
I wager that most people give up trying to understand the concept of the infinite. Why?
Human limitations prevent us from grasping it. This fundamental understanding makes the
premise for the book you are reading even more mind-boggling. What possible motive drives
an infinite God to confine Himself in flesh and want to dwell among men?
The Bible reveals the good news that God decided to intervene in human history throughJesus Christ. He took an active role in creation, laying aside robes of deity for robes of
mortality.5
This event, known as the incarnation, broke history in two. God got involved with His creation.
He walked and talked with His created beings. He suffered at the hands of the very physical
laws that He created. He ate to stay alive, slept to maintain sanity, breathed so as to not faint.
At any time a runaway donkey pulling a cart could run him down while he crossed the street,
so He needed to look both ways before He crossed the street just like we teach our kids to dotoday.
Philippians 2 provides a little insight into the depth which God descended in order to reach out
to man. Verses 6-8 should confound even the wisest of us about Jesus role, who being in
very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made
himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being
found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death-- even
death on a cross! (NIV)
Let us break this down a bit. Even though He existed in nature as God, he set aside the Godly
robes of his infinite existence to put on human robes of limitations. He set not aside his deity,
just his form. His function stayed the same; He could still forgive sins as only God could do6.
He still called Himself the I Am7, but His form was forever altered.
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It reminds me of the story of the prince and the pauper. You remember it from Disney, staring
Mickey Mouse and Mickey Mouse. Both the prince and the pauper looked alike, and so, one
day they switched places. The prince put on peasants clothes while the pauper donned royal
splendor. However, try as he might, the prince could not escape that that royal blood and
coursed through his veins making him the heir to the throne, though he became subject to
some of the rules of the villagers. He still took take back his kingdom.
Jesus, in similar fashion, donned mortality disrobing immorality. He stepped into mans finite
shoes setting aside the infinite. Jesus himself says this in so many words when he promises
the gift of the Holy Spirit. He told His disciples that His leaving allowed Him to send comforter,
the Holy Spirit. Why? In his present human form, Jesus only existed in one place at a time.
The Holy Spirit, in His form, exists in everyone at one time.8
He also subjected himself to death. What does this mean? To understand what Paul saud,
you must first understand the different meanings for death in the Bible. The first, physical
death means that the flesh fails and everyones fate end the same; we physically stop
breathing and die. Second, spiritual death9 results from human sin. When we come into this
world as a baby, we are actually born spiritually dead. Our eternal destiny lies in hell right out
of the gate. It takes salvation found in Jesus to breathe the breath of life into our dead spirits
so that we might live.
The third death experience occurs to those cast into the lake of fire (ghenna) at the end of all
things. Ghenna represents the second death10 (as John calls it). What makes this death so
bad rests not in the lake itself, though you would think that would be enough. The worst part of
hell lies in the fact that God does not exist in hell. Gods omnipresence stops at the gates of
ghenna.
Even Hades, the place Jesus described in His story of Lazarus and the rich man11, contained
godly people within earshot. The rich man suffering in torment saw and spoke with Abraham
across the great canyon that divided them. What torture that must have been. The rich man
agonized so much that of all the things to ask for, he asked for one drop of water to cool his
tongue.
Hades tortured people because they always crave but satisfaction never came. Torment came
in ways man cant even dream up. Ever wanted something so bad that you would do anything
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to get it, but you cant? It just burns you up inside. You crave it, but you it lies outside your
reach. Hades exhibits that a trillion times over. When you die without Christ, you go to Hades
until the end after Christ rules and reigns for 1000 years. At that time, Jesus casts Hades
occupants into a place known as ghenna or the Lake of Fire. .
In ghenna or Hell, Abraham no longer lies within earshot. Light eludes you. And mostimportantly, Gods exists elsewhere and no hint of Him ensures. The totality of the second
death and complete separation from God for eternity in a lake of fire with the antichrist, Satan,
unrepentant humans, demons and fallen angels suffering follows you always.12 Paradise does
not exist across the way; saintly conversations fade from the background. The only sounds
emanating from ghenna come from the endless wailing and gnashing of teeth of those
suffering.13
Jesus experienced this second death briefly while hanging on the cross. God turned His back
on Him because of the sin of the world that he was bearing. The only complaint Jesus utters
on the cross is My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me? 14 He experienced something
that for eternity had not taken place. He felt Gods presence leave him while He took on the
sin of the world. God the Father, for the first time, took His loving eyes off his One and Only
Son. Dont think this was any small matter. Jesus experienced the second death in our stead
when His Father forsook Him on the Cross.
We must understand that the wages of our sin is death total separation from God. The price
must be paid by everyone. No exemptions or immunity exists from the price tag.
Unfortunately, when you purchase something that cost you your life, you wont get the
opportunity to enjoy it. The reason lies in the fact that your death does not purchase eternal
life; your death repays a debt.
God created mankind with eternal life before Adam sinned. The sin committed caused man to
drop below perfection. We dont have enough in our lifes bank account to repay that debt
even with our whole life. Therefore, we need to have someone with a bigger checkbook, so to
speak, in order to pay the price we cant pay to obtain eternal life.
The price tag for our sin only takes into consideration our debt to sin, not our eternal life. Only
God could pay both the debt to sin and give us to ability to regain the eternal life that was lost.
That part required Gods forgiveness.
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Let me summarize that point this way. The payment for sin is your death (separation from
God.) Everyone is required to pay that debt. However, repayment of the debt does not allow
us to regain what we lost. It only repays a debt leaving us with nothing.
Gods grace and forgiveness makes us regain our lost lives. Millions upon countless millions
will one day repay the debt to sin; even Satan is paying that debt. But it doesnt regaincitizenship. God returns citizenship to us through receiving something we dont deserve. God
calls this grace. We receive grace only by accepting grace. The gift of grace makes it truly
unique. It cant be bought, borrowed, stolen or earned. Only grace freely given matters, and
only grace freely received by faith works. Paul said it this way, You are saved by grace
through faith, and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God so that no one can boast.15
This fundamental concept provides greater understanding concerning the true depth of despair
you and I existed in and the true blessing of grace that we received if we accepted life through
Jesus Christ. God knew you as aliens and foreigners, now He welcomes you as citizens.16 If
you accept the work of Jesus, you have both a cleared debt to sin and a name written down in
the citizenship records of heaven.
This salvation we have directly results from the very involved process that God went through to
restore relationship with man. God stepped out of time and eternity to encounter man. He
went from infinite to limited. The robes of deity that he took off were robes of infinite. The
robes of man that He put on were robes of limitations. Think about the potential impact. God
Almighty, maker of heaven and earth would need to learn how to speak, eat, sit up, crawl and
walk. He wet his diapers, got hungry, cried, skinned his knees, smashed his finger with a
hammer and went to school like the rest of us. He grew up both physically, emotionally,
mentally and relationally while he walked with man as the Son of God. Truly, God desperately
sought a relationship with His creation.
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Chapter 2: The Immanuel Project God with us
So the Master is going to give you a sign anyway. Watch for this: A girl who is presently a
virgin will get pregnant. Shell bear a son and name him Immanuel (God-With-Us).17
What a strange way for God to interface with our universe. He chose to start from the
beginning. He chose to come as a baby. He chose to be born as a man. He could have come
in like Adam fully formed with good looks, the breath of God poured into him and no belly
button. But He decided to come in low and quiet, and if it werent for a crowd of noisy angels
in the heavens that couldnt contain themselves any longer, no one would have noticed.
Well there were those Magi following a star. You know, people have tried to identify that star
for years, but that star might not have been a real star. It might have been the twinkle in Gods
eye. The wise men saw the twinkle because they were looking for it. Wise men still seek
Him.
However, as important as this event, the incarnation is not where the Immanuel project began.
The projects plan began in Genesis 1:26 when God said to Himself Let us make man in our
own image. (Just a side note; God set the precedent on talking to ones own self, so dont
think it strange when I do it. Im just imitating my creator.)
The most inspiring component to the passage above lies in what God doesnt say. He never
mentions anything else created in His image like the baboon, the tree, the squirrel or the
whale. He only says it about man.
He set, as it were, a mark on man His own image. So that man would always see in Himself
a reflection the fingerprint of God. By making us in His image, God signs His creation with all
the joy and pride that only God could have.
If you will pardon my simple illustration, it is like an artist that signs a painting in the lower right-
hand corner. He, in essence, puts his stamp on it that says, This is my work. The signature
then becomes part of the art work. I especially like one painting in the Gettysburg battlefield
museum. The painter painted a huge cyclorama of the Picketts Charge. In the middle of the
painting, he painted himself leaning up against a tree smoking a pipe. Like the Gettysburg
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painting, God put His image in us, not just His signature. God may not be smoking a pipe
against the hardwood in your life, but He did put His image in you.
However, God didnt stop with a signature. He took the painting home. The first time we see
man, we see God. God placed him in the garden. God brought to man all of the animals
searching for a help-mate. When none could be found that would adequately meet that need,God performed the first surgery on man taking everything that he needed from him to make
woman.
I know people think God took a rib from Adam and made woman. Actually, the phrase there
could be translated out of the side.18 When Adam awakens in a couple verses, he notices
that he changed because he says, this is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. God
took something from Adam physically and emotionally and placed it in the woman. This is the
driving force behind marriage. When man and woman come together in the marriage act, the
two pieces God separated come together and become one flesh.
Let me pose a question for you to ponder. What did God look like to Adam? I mean, was God
just a voice from the sky, and impression in his heart, a noise in the trees? Or, dare I say it,
did Godphysicallypresent himself to Adam and just simply talk face to face with him?
Its hard to put a dramatic pause in a book, but if I could, I would place it right about here. That
is because the bible does tell us how God presented Himself to Adam.
We dont see it until after Adam and Eve sinned, but we can only assume that God did it daily.
The picture is priceless and tells quite a bit about Gods character, love and passion.
I must call your attention to Genesis 3:8, probably one of the most incredible scenes in the
bible. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the
day
Where else in mans history do you find the creator of the universe in His entire splendor
walking in a garden? And what is he doing there?
I am sure that this was not the first time that God strolled through His creation. Ill even go so
far as to say that I believe God probably habitually walked in that garden. And I am sure many
of the walks He experienced with Adam and Eve. In this moment, we find Gods basic desire.
He was there because He desiredto be with man. He created man to be with man.
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Indulge me while I lay down the scenario in my paraphrased manner. Six oclock PM and
Adam and Eve just defiantly ate a late afternoon snack at the bidding of a soon-to-be legless
reptile. Failing to look at his Blackberry, Adam forgot his appointment with his Creator to
meet him in the garden for their late day stroll. Every day, Adam had looked forward to this
time. He loved to walk side-by-side with His first love. Nothing stood between them and they
could, and probably did, talk about anything.
But now darkness encompassed Adams soul. He had forsaken his first love for a new path
one that led him to death and total separation. How could he face his maker now? He had
failed. Now this dark cold penetrated so deep. The shame felt so overpowering, that he sought
anything to cover his body, his soul, his heart. He frantically ripped leaves from a tree and hid
himself in the bush.
God, knowing what just happed, walked nearby to ask Adam, Where are you?
This isnt because God was unaware of Adams location. God said this because Adam lost his
way and became unaware of his location when he sinned against his creator and friend.
The question God utters, Adam, where are you? opens a small portal into the nature of God.
In it, we see God reaching out first. God always makes the first move, especially when we are
frozen solid in our fear, guilt and shame. Paul tells us later, While we were still sinners, Christ
died for us.19
Real love doesnt respond to situations, but proactively pursues people in their situations. Its
easy to feel empathy when someone hurts, but Gods love differs. He wants to be with man so
bad that He chases after him. Mans sin caused a barrier that would cost God dearly to
overcome. That cost was completely paid by Him, not us. We think of ourselves to highly
when we say things like, I found Jesus. We dont find Jesus, He finds us. We hide off in the
woods with poorly assembled leaves for garments. God must find us because of our lostness.
Adam didnt get up from his sinful spot and chase after God, God here I am! I ate the fruit like
an idiot! I am so sorry! He did what we all still do when we sin. He hid.
Second thing I notice in the question God asks is that God is asking a question. Yes, I know
that is obvious and somewhat redundant, but think about this. The all-knowing God asks a
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question. Why would God ask the question for which He already knows the answer? Is he
testing Adam? Is He ignoring the problem?
It reveals God uses love as the weapon of choice. He could have come at Adam in His
holiness and blasted him off the face of the earth. But God chose to come at Adam in love
knowing full well that His holiness would still need to be satisfied. God did this for Adamssake. Adam discovered Gods love in the way God approached Him after the sin. This made
Adam want to build His relationship with his creator.
Who wants to serve and angry God? I know that there are religions out there that preach the
anger of God before the love of God. But Gods love existed first. This component protects us
from the fury of His wrath and allows us to return to Him. God gave Adam a choice to obey at
the tree. He gave Adam the freedom to receive and return Gods love after He sinned. What
an amazing God!
In addition to all of this, we get a sense that God asked the question more than once. When
Adam finally responds, he tells God that he heard His voice and hid. That means that Adam
heard God walking around probably in some manner that indicated that He didnt really know
Adams location. God probably looked around the big tree in the corner and then went to the
big rock in the middle. He did this until either he found Adam or Adam couldnt take it anymore
and came out of hiding.
You are probably saying right now, This writer has gone loco. I would agree with you
normally, but I believe God made a habit of doing this, and that it happened more than once.
Im going to call Gods approach the self-discovery technique. It is a highly effective way of
getting someone to recognize their own demise.
One example that immediately comes to mind is the picture in Revelation 3:20, Behold I stand
at the door and knock; if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and
will sup with him and he with me. (KJV)
This verse is actually Jesus talking. He says that He is knocking, but to listen to His voice.
Have you ever had someone come up to your door and just start knocking incessantly? In
fact, they not only relentlessly knock, but they yell out Hey Jeff, you home! Answer the
door!
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Usually if someone knocks, I get up slowly and take my time answering the door. If they knock
repeatedly, I say something like, Yeah, yeah, Im coming, hold your horses. But if they knock
repeatedly and yell through the door, I almost run to the door. They tend to get my attention.
In this verse, Jesus is ceaselessly knocking at the door hoping desperately that someone will
answer it. He wants to come in and dine with the person at home. One of the reasons that Heis so passionate is because the door He refers to is the door of the church, His body, and not
the door of the world. Jesus could barge in, but He leaves it up to the home owner to let Him
in.
Thats the self-discovery technique I see God using in the garden. Hes lifting bushes,
searching around trees, looking under rocks its like He somehow knows that something is
wrong with Adam, and He needs to find him quickly. And like the Revelation door-knocking
episode, God is chasing after someone that was saved and has now sinned.
God is always chasing after sinners. If this were a movie, it would be sad. The hero in this
movie is a rescuer that can save the lives of millions of drowning people. His technique is to
dive into the water with a life preserver and swim up to the victim and ask them to put on the
vest. The struggling victim says that they can make it on their own despite the fact that they
are hundreds of miles from land.
Looking back to Adam and Eve, the same sad tragedy plays out after their fall as the discoursebetween them and God leads to blame, avoidance, curses, punishment and banishment.
Adam blames Eve, Eve blames the serpent, the serpent is cursed as is the lowly couple where
they are finally banished from the garden prepared by God for them.
However, encoded in this unfortunate event we find a single sentence that sets in motion
events that would take 4000 years to come to fulfillment.
God says, I will put hostility between you (the serpent, a.k.a Satan) and the woman, between
your seed and her seed (offspring) and he shall break your head and you will break his heel.20
If we look beneath the prophecy in this verse that shows the Messiah would one day destroy
Satan, we see God leading the charge. The sentence starts off I will put. God is going to get
back that which was stolen. God is going to redeem where no one else can. God is going to
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win where there seems to be no hope. God is going to vanquish the universe of sin no matter
the price, no matter the time, no matter the depravity of man.
My favorite portion of the Bible is the first 10 chapters of Genesis. In it you will find everything
you need to live a victorious Christian life and you will find all the teachings of the New
Testament veiled within its verses. This story of the fall of man is no exception and shows usthe roots of several biblical themes sin, pride, selfishness, evil, lying, corruption, etc. But
there is a greater purpose to the events that took place that fateful day. This is the story of
Love.
Love? you ask. How in the world can the most dreadful day in human history be a story about
love?
You have to understand what love is to truly grasp the power of this moment. Love is not afeeling, thought, emotion or any of the butterflies that flutter in the tummy. Love comes from
one individual to another through some act that reveals the love element. To do this, one must
make a conscious effort to show love. Love requires a choice not to love in order to be love.
Until the day God planted the tree in the midst of the garden and set the rule that said, Do not
eat,21 there was no opportunity for Adam to demonstrate his love for God. He could not
compare the options to love God or not love God unless he had an option to choose not to love
God.
Every time love is demonstrated, a choice is made. Husbands, you chose to love your wife
every time you do the dishes. The alternative would be to avoid the dishes at all cost. But
when you fight your desire to please yourself by sitting in front of the boob-tube and decide to
bless your wife instead, you have shown love.
Wives, in the same way, when you show interest in the things your husband enjoys, not
because you especially like NASCAR, golf or cars, but because you want to be with him no
matter where he is just because he is the one you love, you show love.
Hold on. I hear you say, I cant do those things, I dont like them. They dont interest me.
That is precisely why you should do them. Wives wouldnt you be surprised if one day your
husband told you, Honey, heres $500. Go shopping. Ill clean the house top to bottom for
you.
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Husbands, wouldnt you love for your wife to call you at work one day and say those three
magic words we all want to hear, Lets go golfing!
The number one rule in making friends is showing interest in the other person. Why do we
have such a hard time when it comes to the person we said I do to
For Adam the rules were simple. All he had to do was stay away from the tree. I look back on
that day and say (in my best Monday morning quarterback voice), If I had been Adam, Id
have taken the sharpest rock, tied it to a stick and started chopping that tree down. But he
didnt.
What I find really interesting about this story lies in where God placed the Tree of the
Knowledge of Good and Evil. God planted it smack in the middle of the garden.
In our human reasoning, we would expect that if God really loved Adam and, He should place
the tree somewhere where it would be easy to avoid. Why couldnt he put it in the corner of
the garden next to the persimmon tree? Adam surely would have never gone over to the
persimmon tree yuck!
But God never asked a rational humans opinion, so He placed that tree right where Adam
was going to be every day, right in the middle of the garden next to the Tree of Life. That tree
was the one the tree Adam and Eve had to eat from of every day. 22 In this we see plainly the
test for Adam. God says, If you love me, you will obey me. 23
Have you ever noticed sometimes that the things we need to avoid exist right next to the things
that we need.
Let me tell you a little about myself now that youve been with me for a chapter and a half. I
pastor a church and I work for a large pharmaceutical company as a computer systems
specialist. I spend a lot of time on computers. Much of what I do for both the church and work
require me to browse the World Wide Web (a.k.a the internet). I need many of the resources
that exist on the internet Music, studies, system information, training, application code, etc.
But I am constantly on guard because I know that if I type in the wrong search words, I could
be pummeled with porn or my computer could be destroyed by viruses. I must avoid that tree
of the knowledge of good and evil every day.
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You could say the same about anything TV, billboards, magazines, movies, the Super Bowl.
Nothing seems to be safe. The temptations are everywhere. The question is, do we have
enough love for God to avoid that which displeases Him, or do we rationalize our wayward
moments like Adam and Eve thinking that God is holding back from us and doesnt want us to
have fun.
God wants our love to be freely given by us to Him. He sets rules and boundaries for two
reasons: 1) Our own good so that we are protected and safe. 2) to allow us to demonstrate
how much we truly love him.
But dont think for a moment that God puts all the responsibility on us. Love works both ways,
and Gods love always flows first. Gods love is proved in that He loved man enough to give
man a choice to love Him back. In so doing, God opened Himself up to rejection. True love
takes risks. God laid it all on the line knowing the end from the beginning. Yet, even though
He knew the outcome, He didnt falter on demonstrating his love to us.
First, He showed love by giving us a choice to love Him in return. Second, He showed love
through reaching out to us after we rejected His first offer to love Him willingly. This second
form of love shows the relentless nature of Gods passion for man.
If we knew that someone was going to betray us, could we go out of our way to show love to
them knowing full well that they would soon hurt us?
God only got to experience love from man in its purest form for a few days, maybe weeks
before man blew the whole thing. Once this happened, man could never again walk with God
in the garden. If man simply looked upon God, it would cause instant death to the onlooker.
God had to drive Adam and Eve from the garden, and worst, from His physical presence.
From that day on, only prayers, offerings, worship and other forms of long distance messages
could be sent to God. No longer could he walk side-by-side with God physically speaking.
Man wasnt satisfied to be made in Gods likeness; he desired to be like24 God by his own
means and that trumped Gods ability to be with man. However, man could do nothing that
would trump Gods passionate desire to be with man. Nevertheless, the Immanuel factor
(God-With-Us) had to be placed on hold, but it would never go away.
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Chapter 3: The Ultimate Sacrifice Challenging what you thought you
knew
The concept of the previous chapter proves challenging for me to understand completely. I
find myself revisiting it and discovering a little more each time. In the midst of one of thosevisits, I stumbled upon something that shocked me. And when I saw it, my heart clung to God
all the more knowing that His sacrifice held more significance and value than I could ever
imagine.
Quick quiz what was the sacrifice God made for our sin? If you answered Jesus death on
the cross you would be agreeing with every true believer. Our payment was made when the
Messiah/Savior died. His death fulfilled so many prophecies and types and has been
venerated throughout scripture. But one day I asked some tough questions that I have never
heard asked, If Jesus died, rose and went back to heaven, where is the sacrifice? What is the
cost? What did He lose if everything is as it was before He came to earth in the manger? Isnt
a sacrifice supposed to cost something?
Every sacrifice that you read about in the Bible meant that the one sacrificing would not regain
the sacrificed object. It was lost forever. It could have been burnt up with fire or in the belly of
some priest that just ate it, but it was gone. Sacrifice by definition means you lose it.
With that in mind, how do you explain Jesus sacrifice? If you think that Jesus set aside robes
of deity, put on robes of man, walked the earth 33 years, died, rose again and went back to
heaven as he was before He came, then the sacrifice was more of a rental than a purchase.
No harm, no foul as they would say. But I ask, Is that what happened?
To put Jesus sacrifice in perspective, one must first understand what Jesus was sacrificing.
We already know that God cant die. So how did Jesus die if He cant die? I know that the
simple response is, He died physically but spiritually he didnt die. That may be a nice,
simple answer, but then I go back to my initial question, Where is the sacrifice? That human
body was only temporary. Death was only for a moment. How did Gods sacrifice cost Him?
It was while pondering this that I felt the Lord illuminate some scripture for me. It comes from a
little passage in 1 John 3:2, We shall be like Him. Ive read that scripture many times, but
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never really understood it until that day. This scripture opens up a huge mystery what is his
present condition that defines how we shall be like Him? In order to find out what we will be
like, we need to know what He is like.
If you say that Jesus is as He was before the incarnation, then you can translate this to mean
we will be gods, spirit beings. But I believe scripture argues against that point. In fact, theBible actually describes for us what he is like right now; we just have to put the pieces
together.
After the resurrection, Jesus describes Himself like this, See My hands and My feet, that it is I
Myself; handle Me and see, for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have. 25
Jesus tells us after His resurrection that he wasnt spirit but that He was flesh and bone.
Remember Thomas? When Jesus appeared before him, He held out his hands and showedhim His side to show Thomas the scars.26 Years later John the apostle, while writing about his
Revelation of Jesus, describes seeing Jesus in heaven and that He looked like a lamb that
had been slaughtered.27
I believe the Bible is showing us that Jesus is still bearing the scars that He took on the cross
for our sins. If He existed in the same form He was in before the incarnation, then Jesus would
not be bearing any scars. He would be Spirit better known as the Word.28 Somehow,
Jesus actual form altered so that physical traits from this world passed on to His spiritual body.
Gods form as a whole was altered when Jesus came to earth. Until that point, Jesus was so
much a part of the Godhead that there was virtually no way to distinguish the Son from the
Father because in order to be the Son Jesus had to be born. To illustrate this further,
Matthew tells us that when Mary asks how she is going to have a child because she was a
virgin, the angel told her that the Holy Spirit would come upon her and the power of the Most
High would overshadow her29. In essence, the Holy Spirit and the Father are present for the
inception of Jesus into the womb, yet only the Father is called Father. My point is that it is
impossible to tell where the Father stops and the Holy Spirit begins. Prior to Jesus
incarnation, we could never tell where either of them started or stopped. God said that He is
one God. That singular nature seemingly conflicts with our understanding of plural reality of
God. Yet we must understand Him as being one God.
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We know from the first chapter of John that Jesus has always been. John uses an interesting
name for Jesus prior to the incarnation The Word.30 I have always been fascinated by this
name. What does it mean, and why does John use it?
I must preface my explanation by saying that we only know about God through what He wrote
about Himself. Because the Bible only has a few thousand pages and doesnt spend all of itstime describing God, we know very little. I believe, as John did, that if you were to begin
writing down everything about God, the whole earth couldnt contain the pages that would be
needed.31
Genesis 1:1-3 show the three person Godhead functioning as a unit. In the beginning, God
created This shows that God is creator Yet we discover from Johns gospel that Jesus
created everything. How can this be? And where was the Father and Spirit?
Not every mentioning of God in the Old Testament was referring only to the Father nor only
to the Son. Sometimes it was a combined mentioning. In fact, one of the most used words for
God in the Hebrew is Elohim which is a plural form of God.
I remember when in Israel a few years back, we traveled to the shrine of the Dead Sea scrolls.
The Book of Isaiah is sprawled out across the wall in that building. We had our Jewish guide
translate Isaiah from the scroll out loud. He would actually say, Gods when he came to the
word Elohim. What I find most interesting about this phenomenon is that the key verse in theBible for the Jew is Deuteronomy 6:4; it is known as the shema, and it states, Hear O Israel,
the Lord our God is one Lord.
This scripture is called the shema and is the central passage for the Jew, and in reality, all of
us. But the question remains, why does God say He is one in this passage and still He uses
a plural when referring to his own self elsewhere?
Even Genesis 1:1, In the beginning God is plural. It could rightly be translated, In thebeginning Gods
Maybe a better way of translating the shema is the way in which many Hebrew teachers have
translated it. Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God The Lord alone. This is perhaps a more
literal translation and would explain better to us that it is more important that there is no other
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god than that God is one in the literal sense that would confine Him to human understanding
of one body, one spirit, one personality, one persona, etc.
Jesus states in one of His dissertations, I and the Father are one32 Based on Deuteronomy
6:4, you really have two ways to go from this scripture, either Jesus and the Father are the
same literally, or they are one in spirit, deity, purpose, unity, but separate in form.
There are honest Christians out there that teach the Jesus is the Father. I can understand the
difficulty in reconciling in our minds a concept of oneness and separateness in the same
person. Our culture actually sees that trait as a flaw. We give medicine to people with split
personalities that show these same characteristics.
There are many issues you have to overcome in scripture though if you want to hold to the
belief that Jesus is the Father and there is no other. First, and most blatant, He prayed toHimself all the time.33
Second, there are scenes in the Bible where you see more than one of the God head in one
place at a time. At Jesus baptism, Jesus is in the water, the Father speaks from heaven and
the Spirit descends upon him.34
There are many more, but I found one that takes the cake. When God gets ready to create
man, He has, what can only be described as, a conversation with Himself. He says, Let Us
make man in Our image. Who is Us and Our? Is it God and the angels?
I hope not. Heavenly angels are described in almost terrifying terms. Some have four faces,
four arms and four wings, others have six wings. We see angels on earth looking like man
because they took on a messenger form. I suppose this was done so as not to frighten man.
But when we see them described in their heavenly form, it isnt anything like man.
I submit that God is talking about His plural unity. We have labeled this with another word not
found in Scripture Trinity. But the result is the same.
By the time God fashions man from the dirt, He has already revealed himself using the plural
term Gods found in the Hebrew word Elohim and that God created everything by speaking it
into existence. That word He utters later becomes Jesus the man as described in John 1 as
the Word becoming flesh. In addition to all of that, we see the Spirit of God hovering over the
water.35 So in the end we see Father, Son and Spirit all present, all working in the creation.
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For God to say, Us and Our, He is just continuing the revelation that there is more to God
than man can understand. He is plural, and He is singular. But one thing is for sure; there is
no other God like Him. So you can definitely say, He is the Lord alone.
I said all that to say this, God does not change in essence. However, there is substantial
evidence to suggest that though He is immutable, He did transform His likeness for manssake.
This transformation began as a promise. There are many prophetic utterances in the
Scriptures indicating that a savior would come from God, some elude more to the concept than
the method such as the one in Genesis 3 where God promises to Eve and warns Satan that
though Satan would strike at Eves seeds heal, Eves Seed would crush Satans head. This
would be an instance where the concept is present, but how God intends to do it is a mystery.
However, there are some very poignant prophetic moments that reveal the method in which
God will fulfill His promise to man. It is in these scriptures, that we find some incredible
revelations concerning the depths God is willing to go to in order to save man.
We too often think of the price paid for our sins as being our sacrifice. I understand how this
can be somewhat confusing, but the sacrifice was not ours, it was Gods. The sacrifice was
made in our place because we couldnt provide the adequate sacrifice to make the necessary
payment for our sin.
The price that was paid by Jesus dying on the cross was the price of our sin. That event was
the atoning payment for our sin. By definition, a payment costs someone something; however,
the payment did not cost us anything. So I ask; who paid the price? Of course the answer is
Jesus. But I return to my original question. If Jesus price was to come to earth, live as a man,
die, return to heaven, where is the sacrifice?
Isaiah reveals to us the key element that truly defines the immensity of Jesus sacrifice. Thevirgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel (this word means
God with Us)36
There is a fancy word we use to describe this event, The Incarnation. Literally this word
means in flesh. God placed the fullness of the deity of the Word into human flesh.37 This act
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translated God from spirit form to flesh form. He took off robes of immortality, omnipresence
and even, for a time, omniscience and became a full participant in His creation.
Jesus went through everything we go through in life wet diapers, potty training, skinned
knees, crawling, learning to walk, the list goes on. The bible says that he grew in wisdom and
stature and in favor with God and men.38
Jesus experienced everything in life that weexperience. This happened because he was fully man and totally susceptible to the laws of
this world. He had to eat, sleep and drink. At any moment a runaway cart could run Him over
and he would be dead (if it were His time) because he was 100% physical in nature.
He totally gave up his divine form for a form that limited him. In fact, at one point he tells the
disciples that if He doesnt leave, He cant send the Holy Spirit could dwell in each one of
them.39 In His earthly form, he could only be in one spot at a time, in the Spirit form, God could
be in each of them.
So what could the sacrifice possibly be? Is it that God changed clothes? It is that Jesus died?
To being, just the thought of God dying causes a stirring of impossible thoughts in me. It is
almost an oxymoron to say God can die. But the truth be told, that is exactly what happened.
And the impact of that death still affects Him today.
Jesus sacrifice started in the cradle. It was on that day that God, the Word, the Son, took off
divine robes and put on human flesh. The kicker is that this was a one way trip. He would
either live forever in that form, or He would die in that form and continue on into eternity in that
form.
The sacrifice is found in the fact that God altered His very being so that He could spend a few
years with His creation in order to provide a way for Him to spend eternity with His creation.
The sacrifice is an eternal sacrifice. The cross merely sealed it for Him and for us, but the
incarnation was the real sacrifice for God. God became man and dwelt among us.
When Jesus rises from the dead, He is seen in human form. Thomas recognizes Him by the
scars in His hands, feet and side, John in Revelation sees the scars and describes Him as a
lamb that had been slaughtered. You never again see Jesus as He was before the
incarnation. Never again is He just the Word. He is flesh; He is bone; He is the Son.
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Chapter 4: Blending the Spiritual and the Physical
When we think in terms of the physical world, we usually think materialistically. Scientists
describe our universe as multi-dimensional. There are the three dimensions of space, the
dimension of time, physical properties of gravity, electromagnetism, weak and strong nuclearforces. These are things that we can perceive and touch. We know them. We are familiar
with their effects. We base our beliefs on our understanding of the physical world. The bottom
line if it doesnt fit in our understanding of the universe, then it cant possibly be true.
Scientists are actually discovering that our universe has at least eleven dimensions to it. Much
of this is unknowable currently.
Any way you look at it, the physical universe is huge, but there is a world even larger the
Spiritual world.
The spiritual universe is a much larger domain than we give it credit. God, the angels, demons
and Satan operate primarily in this world. Good and evil, sin and love abide in this world along
with things that man cannot even utter40 The physical world in which we live is not separate
from the spiritual world but a part of the spiritual world albeit a very small part.
Which do you think came first, the spiritual world or the physical world?
According to the creation account, God made the three components of our universe in the
beginning. In Genesis 1:1, 3, God creates matter, space, time and energy. In the beginning
(time), God created the heavens (space) and the earth (matter). God said, let there be light
(energy) and there was light
God did all of this from the spiritual world. God had to actually create the space in which
everything in the physical world exists. Laws were set up at the beginning that made this
physical universe work. Gravity keeps the planets close to the sun, light keeps everything
alive on the earth, etc.
We know many of the physical laws that govern our world, i.e. gravity, time, space, etc. We
are bound by these laws in our physical universe. However, these laws do not apply to the
spiritual world. In the spiritual world, there is no time, space, gravity that we can define, but
somehow things that happen in our world affect the spiritual world.
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Did you realize that the act of disobedience by Adam and Eve in this physical world initiated
the seed of sin in man that would cause every person ever born of man to be born into sin?41
Our physical world and the spiritual world are connected. Sin is a spiritual property with
physical symptoms. God said to Adam, In the day you eat of [the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil] you will die.42 The act of spiritual sin brought the result of physical death.
Likewise, events that happen in the spiritual world directly impact the physical universe. The
spiritual laws of sowing and reaping43 cannot be tied to any physical property. Jesus said,
You will reap what you sow. This happens because the spiritual law applies to physical
actions. God even tells us to test out this law and see if he doesnt bless you. 44
One of the Ten Commandments comes with a physical promise. Respect you father and
mother God, your God, commands it! Youll have a long life; the land that God is giving you
will treat you well.45
How can you attribute long life to obeying your parents? I know what youre thinking, You
didnt know my parents. If we disobeyed, theyd kill us. Perhaps, but the principle addressed
here is a spiritual blessing that affects a physical property.
Even the simple act of blessing and curses can have a profound physical impact on people.
They are sounds uttered that can physically encourage or destroy even those that did not even
hear the blessing.
Isaac and Jacob are remembered for their faith, not because of some act they performed, but
because they spoke spiritual words of blessing over their kids believing that generations later,
those words would be true. The surprising thing is that they did come true.
I love how the Message version reads in Hebrews 11:20 and 21, By an act of faith, Isaac
reached into the future as he blessed Jacob and Esau. By an act of faith, Jacob on his
deathbed blessed each of Joseph's sons in turn, blessing them with God's blessing, not hisown--as he bowed worshipfully upon his staff.
They reached into the future in their blessing. Words get their power because they are so
closely tied to the spiritual world. In fact, every word you utter is recorded in the spiritual world
by God and you will be held accountable.46
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Words are what we use to communicate with the spiritual world. The function of words
operates on sound waves, but its not the sound that causes communication; it is the
understanding.
Our prayers offered to the Lord are done upon the wings of words. Its the transport system
that God established to reach into the spiritual world and communicate with the creator of theuniverse.
Jesus tells us that we are not to live only on physical matter (bread) but on spiritual food
(Words of God)47
In our world, words dont mean what they used to mean. Once upon a time, a mans word was
his bond. Today, you need 300 page contracts with signatures and initials on every page in
order to carry out a transaction. On top of that you have fine print, hidden clauses, andaddendums. The words used are only legible to a select group of individuals called lawyers.
But in Gods eyes, the testimony of two or three witnesses establishes a matter.48 Words still
mean things with God. They are so valuable, in fact, that He sent the portion of the Godhead
known as the Word to our world in the form of Jesus.
Think about that. Jesus is the Word of God. Everything God has uttered is wrapped up in this
part of God. How awesome is that?
Think of Jesus as the verbal contract of God with man. When Jesus succeeded in his earthly
journey and climaxed it on the cross, God was essentially signing His verbal contract with man
in the blood of His Son. It cannot get any more powerful than that.
So what do I mean when I say, blending the physical and spiritual?
To better explain this, I am going to use the illustration of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Simply put this is the field of energy in the universe that gives us light in its various forms.The only real difference between the different types of energy in the electromagnetic
spectrum is the wave length.
If I have lost you, lets try it this way. Visible light is the light you see made up of the colors of
the rainbow violet through red. What you cant see in the light spectrum is everything to the
left of violet where the waves get further apart (i.e. ultra-violet, X-rays, Gamma Rays) and
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everything to the right of red where the waves get closer together (i.e. infrared, radar, FM
Radio waves, Television waves, shortwave, AM radio waves, etc.) Although all these items
exist in the same electromagnetic spectrum, you cant see them. You can only see a very
small portion of the whole spectrum namely visible light.
You can only see the influence of an AM radio by capturing the electromagnetic waves using atool called a radio. This gadget is specifically designed to capture and send waves of energy
through the electromagnetic spectrum. These waves are all around you everywhere you go,
but you cant see them until you turn on your radio.
In a similar way, our physical universe is actually part of a larger spiritual universe. We cant
see into the rest of the spiritual universe without some sort of tool i.e. prayer, the bible, etc.
Man is drawn to this spiritual universe because man is part spiritual creature as much as he isa physical creation. Since man decided to walk away from God, he has tried every sort of tool
to contact the spiritual world. Witchcraft, horoscopes, astral projection, Hinduism, etc. are all
created by man to reach into the spiritual world and somehow grasp this larger universe. The
sad truth is that it accomplishes that feat. However, the contact with the spiritual world is not
controlled by God, but by every evil force that resides in the spiritual world.
God never forbid us to contact the spiritual world, He just said, There is only one mediator
between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.49
God provided us with two basic tools tocommunicate with the spiritual world the Bible and prayer through Jesus. The person we are
to contact in the spiritual world is specifically defined, You shall have no other God before
me50
In fact, God encourages us to spend as much time as possible in contact with the spiritual
world. He tells us to be filled with the Spirit of God.51 We need to fast and pray and spend time
in the Word. We need to devote ourselves to God wholeheartedly.
The spiritual and physical worlds are interconnected and God designed it that way.
Have you ever wondered why God sent Jesus into this world to die for our sins? Couldnt God
have just rewritten the contract in heaven and be done with it? If sin is a spiritual matter,
couldnt it have been taken care of in the spiritual world alone?
The short answer is, No.
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There were spiritual laws and penalties to sin that had to be accounted for. God doesnt cook
the books. He doesnt make accounting errors. Everything must be addressed. Every dime
must be accounted for. The wage for sin is death.52
Hebrews 9:22 tells us that without the shedding of blood, there is no freedom from sin. A price
must be paid and it couldnt happen in the spiritual world because God cant die.
How then do you overcome this dilemma? How does a God that cant die, die?
Thats where the physical world comes in. If God could totally take on the elements that would
confine him to the physical universe he could tie himself to humanity by making himself human
fully man. If this can be accomplished, then He could die. But how do you do this?
God had a plan from the beginning to come into this world in such a way that the sin in this
world would not corrupt Him and in a way that would make sure that He was fully man and
therefore able to die.
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Chapter 5: The Sin Problem
The largest obstacle for God to overcome in the process we call incarnation is sin. The
incarnation is the point where God transforms himself into man. To be affective, the
incarnation has to happen at the cellular level. He has to conceived, carried in the womb andthen birthed; otherwise; he would not be fully man. He would be more of a facsimile of man
and not a real man. As I mentioned earlier, angels have encountered our world many times in
human form but they were no more human than a team mascot for the LSU Tigers is a
tiger. To be a tiger, you would need to be born a tiger. To be man, God has to be born as a
man.
The main problem is that when man is born, he is born into sin because of the sin passed on to
him from Adams original sin. The spiritual curse was passed down in the physical genetics of
the human gene. The bible calls this the seed.53
The seed issue would seem to pose a huge problem because you need it in order to be
conceived.
However, God set the law of sin upon other principles. There are two things that make a good
law: one is that it needs to be well defined. Obscure laws open to interpretations are not very
effective. The meaning of a law can change the next time a judge rules on the law. So when
they create laws, they try to capture the original intent of the law in the law itself.
The sin laws original intent is to produce a punishment namely death. The law is violated
automatically just be being born.
A method was created to satisfy the laws price. This was done by shedding blood.
It might surprise you to discover that the first shedding of blood was not performed by man but
by God.
After Adam and Eve sinned and tried on their new leaf clothing line, God exchanged those
leafy garments for animal skins.54 But where did God get animal skins?
He must have killed an animal first. He then placed the skin of the sacrifice over mans naked
flesh, so the first sacrifice was performed by God himself. Incidentally, the last and ultimate
sacrifice was also performed by God. What does this say about God? It shows that He is
desperate for reconciliation with man. It shows that man is not as involved in salvation as he
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thinks he is. It shows that man cannot muster up enough righteousness to overcome his
situation and that it takes the greater power of God to transform a sinful life.
The second component of a law is that the law must be based on something greater. In our
nation, we use a Constitution. When judges make rulings on laws, they are judging the law
against the Constitution and determine if the law is Constitutional.
The law of sin is also based on greater rules. One greater rule is the holiness of God. Sin
cannot abide in Gods presence. Even looking at God in our sinful state is cause for death.55
The holiness of God demands obedience and that is the foundation for righteousness. When
we disobey, we perform an unrighteous act which violates sins law. Adam did that based on
the single rule of obedience God set up with Adam, Dont eat from the tree.
Sin is a bad thing, but a good law. The law of sin is necessary in order for God to remain holy.
If God allowed sin in His presence or performed some form of sin, then he would violate Hisholiness.
The mission of Jesus had to be one of holiness. If He failed at any point to obey God, His
Father, He would immediately lose favor with God and become a blemished sacrifice. He
would no longer be able to provide the ultimate sacrifice for mans sin. He would never be able
to be one with the Father.
Jesus states his current state of obedience when He tells us that He only does what His Father
tells Him to do.56
This presents that old theological issue, Could Jesus sin if He wanted to? The answer has to
be Yes.
The reason it has to be yes is because the governing rule for obedience according to God is
love. Love, as stated earlier, demands a choice not love in order to be love. If you have no
other option but to love, then you cant choose to love or not love.
Jesus had to have that choice. If He didnt, then Satan wasted his time. Do you remember the
temptation by Satan?57 Satan is giving Jesus choices. He can do this mission the Fathers
way or take the easy way out. At one point, Satan even says that he would give Jesus
everything if Jesus would just bow down to him one time.
Satan was going to surrender if Jesus would just disobey God one time. How could it hurt,
right? I mean, God would forgive His only Son, and He wouldnt have to die and go through all
the pain.
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Dont tell me that wasnt a powerful temptation. But that is all it was. Jesus knew the rules.
Do not bow down to [other gods] or serve them; for I, the Lord you God, am a jealous God. 58
That act would have been direct disobedience leading to death. Not a good thing for the savior
to do if he wants to be the savior. This makes Philippians 2:8-10 come alive. It was because
of the choice to obey the Father and humble Himself in death that God promoted His name
(Jesus) to a point where every knee will bow and tongue confess that Jesus is Master of all.
That means that Satan, the one that Jesus could have briefly bowed down to, will have to bow
down to Jesus because of the victory found in winning the battle over sin. There was a lot
riding on that temptation, and Jesus came through victorious!
It is important to keep in mind that God does not violate His nature nor does He violate His
own spiritual laws. Notice, I said spiritual laws. He can suspend natural laws anytime He likes
because He has not restricted himself to those laws.
When Jesus walked on the water59, He violated several laws of nature. Did He sin because He
broke those laws? By no means; in fact, we call them miracles. He even tells us that we will
do even greater things than that.60
You mean we get to break physical laws to and get away with it? Yep. It takes faith, but you
can lay your hands on a sick person, pray for them and see the sickness disappear.
I know I am making that somewhat simple, but so did Jesus. We make it so complicated
because we doubt. Have you ever wondered why we dont see miracles like we should, like
they did a hundred years ago? The simple reason is that Christians dont believe. Sadly, we
have more information about our faith than any Christian generation ever, but we do not
practice it. There is no commitment, no passion, no repentance, no holiness and no faith.
The only hope is the scriptures that tell us that in the last day, God is going to pour out His
spirit on all mankind and great things are going to happen.61 The last days get closer each day
we get out of bed. One day soon, God is going to find a church ready for His Spirits
outpouring. He will find them because they will be on their knees crying out to Him in Hishouse.
When He finds that church, look out world!
Back to Gods sin dilemma. How does God become a birthed baby and not catch the sickness
of the sin seed?
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That is found in the sin-law loop hole. Really good laws have loop holes for special
circumstances. The sin-law has a limit. The sin seed is passed through the one who is
accountable. How do we know this? Check out Genesis again.
Adam is formed by God from the ground on the sixth day.62 After man was created, God
planted the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the garden.63 He
then commanded the man not to eat of the tree.64 Notice though, who is not at this meeting
the woman. She isnt created for five more verses. You never see God tell her not to eat from
the tree, so who do you think told her the rule?
By design, the responsible person to God was Adam. God was going to hold Adam personally
responsible. Eve wasnt there. She is not accountable to God.
This concept is borne out through the scriptures. I know that people think that there is some
element of men lording over women in the Bible, and to some extent, you will find thoseaccounts. But the part you dont hear is that the woman was not responsible for the sin.
Here is a thought for you. If Eve ate the fruit, and Adam did not, would there be sin in the
world? Was it Eve, Adam or both eating the fruit that caused sin?
We know that their eyes werent opened until Adam ate the fruit. So the act of Eve eating the
fruit did not cause her to feel guilt, shame and sin. In fact, she rather enjoyed it. She actually
gave it to Adam to share. Why? It is because she ate it and didnt have any adverse effects.
God said that they would die. She didnt. Therefore, it must be fine for them to eat it.
I submit to you that Eves act alone had nothing to do with the problem of sin. Adam had not
sinned yet. I believe that evidence throughout Scripture bears a testimony that if Adam did not
eat, he could have possibly atoned for her guilt and the sin seed would have died with her.
There is a priestly order to things in the Bible. The husband is the individual in the household
that is directly accountable to God. Its not that the others in the house are less important, it is
that the responsibility for the household falls to the husband. That accountability is seen
throughout scripture. Men are found in leadership because God holds them accountable for
the family, not women.
It sounds odd given our humanistic society. And it certainly wasnt designed to devalue
women. This principle is something that God Himself follows within the Godhead.
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The Bible tells us that Jesus submitted to the Father in everything. That is to say, Jesus is
accountable to the Father. Accountability does not show that Jesus is less valuable than the
Father; it is simply a chain of accountability. Yes, there is an element of submission to it, but
not in the sense of a Master/Slave submission. Rather, it is a voluntary submission in love
knowing that you are building the other up in the process.
Jesus did everything to bring glory to His Father. In turn, the Father brought glory back to the
Son. But it started by the Son submitting to the Father.
This principle carries over to the church. Jesus is the head of the church in the same way that
the Father is the head of Jesus.65 Jesus is the head because He sacrificed his life for it.
That same word head is passed down to the husband and wife. The husband is the head of
the wife.66 Like the other relationships before it, this one must be saturated in love. Notice
also that it always costs the head something to be the head. Husbands must lay their livesdown for their wives. Jesus died for His church.
This accountability is like a priests duty. They are responsible for those accountable to them.
The priests duties are to atone for others sins. But if the priest sins, there is no atonement
left. They had to be clean to be a priest.
Adam forfeited his ability to atone by participating in the sin. When he took the fruit, he gave
up his responsibility. That is out of Gods order. Instead of God being his head, he made Eve
his head. We arent allowed to transfer our allegiances.
In short, it was Adams act of eating the fruit that cause the sin seed to be born in man. There
was no further redemption that man could conjure that would overcome the act of
disobedience.
Adam was the one that told Eve not to eat, but in the end, he failed.
I have one quick side note about the passage in Genesis 3. When the serpent talked with Eve
(which she did not find odd at all) she changed Gods rules. The law was, Dont eat. She
added Dont eat, and dont touch it.67 This is the first occurrence of legalism in the Bible.
Legalism are rules added by men on top of Gods law to make you feel more spiritual by
putting people in bondage to more rules thinking they make you more holy. Eves legalistic
touch didnt keep her from violating Gods laws. Legalism is no way to enhance your spiritual
claim to holiness. It only leads you to death.
When Gods divine order is messed with, chaos is just around the corner.
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Looking at the sin seed again, so where is the out clause?
Believe it or not, the woman is the out clause.
You mean that the very person that started this has a way of getting us out of it?
Yep. Its funny how God works sometimes.
God told the serpent the loophole that he designed into the sin law. Genesis 3:15 gives man
hope. The seed of the woman will strike your head and you will strike His heel. Interesting,
but what does it mean?
It tells us that, because the woman was not held responsible, she would be able to produce an
offspring that would be pure again. That offspring would defeat the one that defeated man.
But it would cost the womans offspring dearly.
From that point on, the women of the Bible understood that any child born could potentially bethat deliverer. Eve recognized this right away and thought Cain might be the man.68 Later,
after Cain killed Abel, she bore another son, Seth. She saw him as a seed replacement for
Abel.69 She thought to herself, Maybe this one will be the one.
However, the deliverer didnt come until after God gives more clarification. The child had to be
born of a virgin.70 Why a virgin?
This was done because the man carries the sin seed. It is a feature that exists due to the
accountability factor.
The way around this is to take man out of the loop and leave woman. The Holy Spirit was the
Father and Mary the mother. Therefore, if God was going to be the Father, then the sin seed
would not be present at Jesus birth.
When the angel Gabriel came to Mary 4000 years after Eves promise, he told her that the
baby in her was conceived by the Holy Spirit.71 God had used His loophole in the sin law to
get the savior God into the flesh of man.
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Chapter 6: The Incarnation
There is something about the Bible that I always found curious. There are some doctrines we
believe today that arent talked about in the Scriptures like we do today. For example, the
Trinity doctrine is based on many passages. But no single passage exists that says, Jesus isthe Son of God, the Father is God and the Holy Spirit is God, yet all three are one and yet they
are different. We call this the Trinity.
From a theological point of view it would be great to point someone to that one scripture and
say, See, it says right here as plain as day.
The Scriptures are not laid out in doctrinal fashion. They are designed to make you read
them and discover what God is saying. In fact, God says, search the scriptures. He wants
you to read them, not as a doctrinal thesis, but as a living love letter from Him to you. TheBible, unlike any book you will ever read, is alive. God uses it to speak to His people. If it was
just doctrine, it would not have that personal touch. It would come across more as a rule
book and less as a book that shows God reaching out to man passionately.
Probably the greatest example of this is the doctrine of God. You will not find in the pages of
scripture any place where God sets out to prove His existence. In fact, God is just assumed.
Genesis 1:1, In the beginning God He doesnt waste any time talking about why He exists,
what His purpose is for existence, how we know He really exists. He just states unequivocally,
I exist.
Later He takes that statement as His name. When God first called Moses at the burning bush
event, Moses asks a great question, Who do I tell them [Pharaoh and Israel] who sent me.
God answers Moses, Tell them the I am sent you.
Moses never proves that God exists; only that Egypts gods are no gods at all. The Egyptians
already knew there had to be some form of deity above man. They just had it wrong when it
came to who that deity was.
God is not the substance of his creation. He is not divided up into multiple gods constantly
warring. He is not the uncaring, uninvolved sovereign that just lets the world runs its course
without His loving intervention. He is, and He alone is God period end of discussion.
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The name I am became so closely associated with God, that Jesus was accused of being a
blasphemous deceiver by the Jewish rulers because He used the I am phrase when referring
to Himself. He said, Before Abraham was, I am.
The incarnation was the single most significant event in human history. It was talked about for
centuries before, but when it actually occurred, man was somewhat disappointed. They did
not understand the purpose of the incarnation. They wanted something substantially different.
This misunderstanding was due to the fact that they misinterpreted the Scriptures, and Jesus
held them accountable for not understanding the Scriptures.
To understand the incarnation better, you have to understand why it occurred.
The prophets had foretold that the deliverer or Messiah would come. I dont think anybody
had any real issue with that. The problem was that nobody understood the purpose in His
coming.
The Scriptures give two main functions of the Messiah, and I think that the problem everyone
ran into was because they blended the two together or they simply ignored all the bad parts
and just wanted to believe the good stuff.
The two veins are as follows: The Messiah would be a conquering king, and the Messiah
would be a suffering servant.
Put yourself in the shoes of the typical Jewish leader in Jesus day. You are preaching your
messages on Saturday morning for generations about the Messiah who would come. Do you
think they concentrated on the parts that showed him suffering, dying and being rejected by
the Jews, or do you think they preached about the conquering king that would come and
deliver His people from the captors and rule the world putting all of Israels enemies under His
feet?
They werent about to ruin their Saturday morning crowds with bad news. They only wanted to
see the good news.
The problem is that they didnt understand that the bad news of the Messiahs suffering was
their good news. The words good news are translated gospel and that is defined by Paul
as the following, Jesus died, was buried and rose again. Yes thats bad news, but it is also
good new