Prophecy to the Nations Part 3
Prophecy to the Nations • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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From Beginning to the End
From Beginning to the End
God knows the end from the beginning. This applies only to our time and space because God deals with the eternal. Therefore, God knows the times and what is to be done. It is we who need to concern ourselves with the times and knowing what we should be doing relative to God’s will.
Of Issachar, men who had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do, 200 chiefs, and all their kinsmen under their command.
Today, as I begin this sermon, are you thinking about how much of your time I will take? Are you wondering if I will go for a long time or a short time? Are you thinking about what you will plan to do after this time is through? In relation to the times, do you know what times we are in as a generation and a nation?
So many times, we try to figure out our times without having a solid understanding of the Biblical times? What are the “Bible Times”? The truth is, Biblical times are not just the past from thousands of years back that you read of in those Bible stories. The truth is, we are in Biblical times right now. How do I know? Because the Word of God is eternal and covers all times to include the present. You may hold a Bible in your hands at this moment within this space and time. But the Word of God within it is transcendent of the very space, time and moment of which you hold it. But when you write it upon your heart, you are writing eternity within.
As well, you can read throughout that entire Bible and find nation after nation that either once knew God or was told of God’s commandments and either rejected or turned from them, to include Israel. So, America is not the first nation in history to have been established by God’s grace then blatantly turn to idolatry and extreme wickedness.
“Do not make yourselves unclean by any of these things, for by all these the nations I am driving out before you have become unclean, and the land became unclean, so that I punished its iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants.
So, at the end of the day, we are the ones concerned with the end of times while God is more concerned with what we are doing in these times and the lands given to us.
In these days, would you say you spend more time doing what you want or what you ought to do? Do you know what God says you should be doing in these days?
He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
Sounds complicated doesn’t it? Sounds like you needs lots of pre-qualifications to do what is just and right by others; to be a kind person preferring to love others with integrity; and live each moment of every day upright and pleasing in surrender to the Lord. Sounds like something only super human beings have the capacity for.
But through Christ, with the transforming power of the Holy Spirit, God has indeed given you the capacity for such love, justice, and humility for such a time as this.
God had you and these times in mind from the very beginning (bereshit).
Bereshit בְּרֵאשִׁית is Hebrew for Genesis or “In the Beginning”. And in the beginning God had a place in mind where He desired His presence, His Holy Spirit, to dwell. That place was in a family of sons and daughters, those begotten of His heart and desire.
Understand this, any man can make a baby but only a true father can make a son or daughter. You do not have to be begotten of the flesh to become a true son or daughter. But you must be begotten of the Spirit of God to call yourself a son or daughter of the Most High.
You cannot say you are born of the Spirit of God yet your love for the world and the things of it define your life. You say you are born of the Spirit of God, but you still practice the ways of the world. You cannot live the life of Christ yet make room for a little Ba’al idolatry in your life. And it amazes me how many self ordained theological commentators we have today who will say, “Yeah but I think or feel such and such” relative to what God has commanded in Scripture. They appoint themselves as an authority on Scripture above God Himself. Yet, they cannot even tell you what Scripture really says about the very things they have pontificated.
1 John 1:12-13
But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
So, through the Godhead, the Divine Essence of God (Mashiach מָשִׁיחַ), God the Father had a plan that would reveal to us His grace and love that would cancel out the Yetzar HaRha יֵצֶר הַרַע (evil inclination). In fact, we see Messiah in Genesis.
The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.
Notice that it was days of darkness but God brought light into the darkness. Christ is the light of the world. As well, the Sages stated that the phrase “the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters” refers to the Spirit or soul of Mashiach. He is the divine “Spirit of Grace”.
So, by the hand of the Father, the hands and feet of the Son (the only begotten; the only one of the Father who can redeem us) are nailed to a cross, in our space and time, as a flesh and blood sacrifice unstained by sin for a renewed covenant of relationship with you.
As a result, His very presence, Holy Spirit, can dwell within you and has redeemed you back into His family making you a Holy Nation of true light even in the midst of wicked nations in dark days. So, from the beginning to the end, God is not caught off guard but makes a way of escape for you. You are the human but He is the Super, the supernatural transforming power that makes you holy in an unholy world.
One of the meanings of the Hebrew letter shin ש is “change”. God does not need changed, we needed changed back to the image in which God created us because sin had re-imaged or re-imagined us into something that separated us from the Father.
The root word of imagination is “image”. But look at it from the Hebrew. The word “image” is tselem צֶלֶם referring to God’s authority, provision, protection and intent. But the word imagination is yetser יֵצֶר meaning form, frame, and purpose. What that means is that God created us from His intent and purpose (Yetzar HaTov יֵצֶר הַרַע good inclination) but the mind of man chose a different image for himself, one separate from the Father. When man did so, he lost his purpose apart from the intent of God. This is evil inclination. Apart from God’s intent, even your good intentions fall short of His righteousness.
You will never find true joy and peace in self-serving purpose that is apart from the divine intent of God. Instead, you will follow your mind and not His. You will find yourself unstable in all your ways because they are not His ways. This life is always changing. Therefore, it must be built and founded in that which is unchanging. God is unchanging according to Scripture.
“For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed. From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts. But you say, ‘How shall we return?’ Will man rob God? Yet you are robbing me. But you say, ‘How have we robbed you?’ In your tithes and contributions.
According to Rabbi Ginsburgh, in the shin we see three flames representing the divine revelation of the Godhead. These also present to use three levels of a flame: the coal, the inner flame and the outer flame. One is the source, one is a steady flame while the other is a constantly moving and changing flame. The flame is the love of God.
Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love is strong as death, jealousy is fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord.
The flame the three Hebrew sons stood in was the eternal, unchanging, steadfast flame of God’s chesed חֶסֶד or lovingkindness. This reveals to us the power of an unchanging God to change us within the midst of His unchanging nature through His steadfast love. In fact, “it is His unchangability and unchanging love that is the source of all change in our created realm of reality. The power that moves is unmovable” (Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, The Aleph-Bet). This is a guard of your heart and soul that must stand at the doorpost. He stands guard only if you allow His presence to “dwell” there and place His commandments there.
So, why do we see things happening in the earth and the nations so troubled in our days? The same reason other nations did throughout history.
But you shall keep my statutes and my rules and do none of these abominations, either the native or the stranger who sojourns among you (for the people of the land, who were before you, did all of these abominations, so that the land became unclean),
For everyone who does any of these abominations, the persons who do them shall be cut off from among their people. So keep my charge never to practice any of these abominable customs that were practiced before you, and never to make yourselves unclean by them: I am the Lord your God.”
And what are we to do in these times until what we consider “the end”?
In Judges 6 we see a young man named Gideon. Now the people of Israel were engulfed in the pagan culture and the idolatrous worship of Baal. But Gideon obeys God and pulls down the idol and altar of Baal. It is laying flat on its face. And he cuts down the Asherah altars as well. The people come to his home and want to kill him. But his father tells them, “If Baal is a god, let him contend for himself.” And this is what the Scriptures say about Gideon’s response to dark days:
Therefore on that day Gideon was called Jerubbaal, that is to say, “Let Baal contend against him,” because he broke down his altar.
And indeed it did escalate. The Midianites sought to destroy Israel. But God called Gideon to lead the men of Israel. Many showed up to the fight. Some with excuses and all with varying motives. But God put them through the test.
So he brought the people down to the water. And the Lord said to Gideon, “Every one who laps the water with his tongue, as a dog laps, you shall set by himself. Likewise, every one who kneels down to drink.”
And the number of those who lapped, putting their hands to their mouths, was 300 men, but all the rest of the people knelt down to drink water.
And the Lord said to Gideon, “With the 300 men who lapped I will save you and give the Midianites into your hand, and let all the others go every man to his home.”
Now, I have heard many explanations as to why God chose those who lapped the water opposed to those who knelt. But it is really quite simple if you know the mind of God in this entire matter. The whole reason Israel was in Midianite captivity was for their idolatry. And God started this whole thing with Gideon by calling him to pull down the idols. The reason God chose the three hundred is because they “did not take a knee.” Kneeling was not their nature because they had not been bowing to Baal. The one’s who knelt were those who were accustomed to kneeling before Baal. And these three hundred mighty men, who maintained their devotion to the one true God of Israel, were to be used by God for the ratification of the three hundred years that Israel worshipped false gods during the days of the Judges (Ginsburgh).
Who wants to be a an Elijah, a Daniel, Hananiah, Azariah, Mishael or Gideon in the midst of these days? Will you be filled with the Spirit of God to stand firm in faith? Start by pulling down the idols you have allowed in your own life. The only kneeling you need to do in worship is in worship and repentance to the God of all heaven and earth. Then avail yourself to the Spirit of the Lord. Purpose that from this day forward, until your very end, that you will make no more excuses for your evil inclinations but will embrace and be led by the Spirit of the Living God against the Baals of our time.
