POD EP 2 - Supernatural Foundations

Hey everybody and welcome back to Because of Christ. It is great to have your ears today because I have something to say. Well, I have many things to say, but today I want to bring to you a foundation. A foundation that the modern Christian world is largely missing. A foundation that the entire church is built upon. A foundation for the worldview of a Christian and a foundation of their hope! ok ok what is it? It is a foundation of the supernatural.

The supernatural realm is not easy to discuss because we can’t see it. In fact the culture we live in today is greatly informed by the enlightenment period. This was a time in our history where the learned people of the world took the supernatural out of everything, including the bible, and led the ones who read their work to believe them.

The enlightenment was a period of the 17th and 18th century, and before I lose you because I am bringing up history, I want to you know this is important! It was a period of time that built upon the great scientific discoveries of the 16th and 17th century. Scientific methods were being discovered and written. Many by Christians. Many great discoveries were happening in the realm of the scientific world. Including medicines and technologies.

However, like most good things, men abused them. The enlightenment drove the desire for free thinking, skepticism, and the enjoyment of the material world. Not too different from what we live in now, but exceptionally different than the world of the 15th and 16th centuries. One of the major take aways from the enlightenment time period was a removal of the supernatural from almost everything. Higher education became skeptical of miracles. They taught a deism which primarily means that a god created the world, but he doesn’t intervene or interact with it.

Oh the repercussions this were great. Higher thinking led to the inflation of reason. Virtue eventually, especially in the late 19th and 20th centuries became an antiquity… The worship of science, the worship of medicine, the worship of man and the material world unfolded.

So in the world we live in today, the supernatural is a punch line. If it weren’t there would not be so many horror movies. Because if we actually believed in a supernatural those things wouldn’t be entertainment. They would truly be horror, unable to be watched due to the implications.

But Christians are not able to dismiss the supernatural. This is because our king came proclaiming that the supernatural realm was just as real, and far better than this real. Now we get to the scripture I want to consider today and let it lead us into further discussions. John 18:36 Jesus was being questioned by pilot. The highest earthly authority in Israel at the time. He was the representative and ruler of rome in israel. IN his questioning, Jesus tells pilot something very interesting.

John 18:36 LSB

Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be delivered over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not from here.”

Now pilot doesn’t seem to be taken back by this. Pilot would have been very familiar with the supernatural. He would have been accustomed to thinking of the world in terms of gods. His thinking as a student of greek philosophy would have been that there are gods that are in another realm. However, the puzzling thing is why was he here. For a god to interact or to manifest himself on the earth was not a heard of or logical thing. It didn’t matter though, politics got the best of him and he handed Christ over anyway.

Jesus’ statement though leads us to consider the lives of the early apostles. Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world. They understood this to some degree too. On the mount of transfiguration Peter Jame and John saw heaven meet earth. IN the blink of an eye Jesus was standing on the mountain and the apostles were standing in the midst of Moses and Elijah. Both dead. But both recognizable. This was not strange to them. They were accustomed to thinking in terms of spirits.

When Christ rose from the dead they thought he was a spirit. Luke 24:36-37

Luke 24:36–37 LSB

Now while they were telling these things, He Himself stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace to you.” But being startled and frightened, they were thinking that they were seeing a spirit.

That seemed logical. They weren’t opposed to this frightening as it was. What they weren’t ready for was the resurrection.

Luke 24:38–43 LSB

And He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? “See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; touch Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when He had said this, He showed them His hands and His feet. And while they still were not believing because of their joy and were still marveling, He said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave Him a piece of a broiled fish, and He took it and ate it before them.

He was showing them, as he had showed them in a number of other ways, that heaven and earth are not separate. He told pilot, my kingdom is not of this world, or kosmos. The material ordered that can be seen. There is a visible realm and an invisible realm. This invisible realm is not natural, it is supernatural, because it is of a different substance.

I don’t want to get too far in the weeds on the substance or the metaphyscis of it all. I simply am wanting you as a Christian to realize the supernaturalness of christianity. We do not think about it enough. Because we are caught up in this created, natural, realm. Which isn’t a bad thing. We are not talking about gnosticism which believes all material is evil. No, we are talking about being aware that there is a supernatural realm that Christ’s kingdom exists in.

The question becomes, which kingdom are YOU a part of? Christians are given the privilege to become a part of this supernatural kingdom. This is not through meditation or some eastern mysticism. It is through the gift of the Holy Spirit. We will talk about Him in later episode. However, we as Christians, who have been born again, by grace through faith, become NEW CREATURES. Because we, being followers of the king who is not of this world are partakers of the kingdom which is not of this world.

We should be interested in this relationship because it is at the core of who we are. Where is God? Heaven. Where is our king? In Heaven. Where do we go when we die? Heaven. Where is the battle between angels and demons happening? In the unseen realm. Where do the angels come from that we could entertain unaware as hebrews says? The unseen realm. My point in laying a basic consideration here of the supernatural is to start the deeper consideration of this relationship. It is to flesh our what francis shaffer once said, that

“Christians are called upon to be a demonstration at our point in history, that the supernatural, the normally unseen world, does exist. And beyond that, that God exists.”

The aim is that we see that the world is beyond what we can see. That what we do here in this temporal stage of space and time, is effecting the invisible. We don’t have to be afraid of the supernatural realm, Christ created it all…

Colossians 1:15–16 LSB

Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him.

Not only that His death on the cross silenced the malificent rulers

Ephesians 3:8–10 LSB

To me, the very least of all saints, this grace was given, to proclaim to the Gentiles the good news of the unfathomable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for all what is the administration of the mystery which for ages has been hidden in God who created all things; so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places.

My friends, Christ is the ruler, the king, of the kingdom of God. Which does not find its foundation in the seen realm. If you are following him you are a light, a fractal, a reflection of that supernatural place in this space and time. We need to get this, so that we don’t become mystics who

Next time, we will look further at the implications of this. What does it mean that Christ is the first born from the dead? What does it mean as Jesus proclaimed that this unseen kingdom is now here? How can we as Christians proclaim that this supernatural world exists?

All of that and more as we continue to look at this foundation of the supernatural.