Ephesians 6:17; The pictures, the rules, and the meek who seek both and find God’s face.

Class Outline:

Tuesday May 31, 2022

 

We will continue to look into the role of the word of God as God speaking specifically to each one of us in real time. God has led me to speak about the purpose of the word of God in pointing us to see God Himself, so we are not necessarily looking at a doctrine, but the reason for all doctrines. From here we will then focus on the doctrine of the sword of the Spirit, which will complete our doctrine of the armor of God. The next and last doctrine in the Book of Ephesians is prayer, but before we tackle that, I want to examine the ministry of the Holy Spirit to the believer in teaching, leading, and filling him. Tentatively, that is the current plan.

 

We’ve been noting that the word of God created the universe. That is not specifically the Bible, which is the word of God revealed to mankind. We could look at God’s word as His voice.

 

God’s voice that created the world is still within it. He is universally present. His Spirit is in us. His word is preserved for our full study and analysis. This is reality. Yet, the presence of God everywhere and within, and the reality of the creative and living word may not be manifested to the believer.

 

Reality and manifestation of reality do not coexist all of the time.

 

As believers, our vision of reality is constantly increasing if we are increasing in our vision of the Person of God.

 

We err when we think the earth and mankind are solely the domain of Satan. He is the prince and power of the air and the god of this world, but he only corrupted it. He created nothing. His kingdom is the corruption of what God has made, but God made him ineffective through Christ, and all believers are thus set free from corruption, sin, and death. Whether they chose to live free is a matter of faith in and through the knowledge and understanding of God’s word.

 

One of the errors of doctrine is that the world and the human body are so cursed as to be continually evil. But when you notice a cactus flower bloom where there was nothing but spines you marvel at beauty (as well as thousands of other things you see), when your baby is born you marvel and consider the gift and your responsibility. You don’t confuse milk and urine as the same since they both come from inside a cow (The Pilgrim’s Regress).

 

The world is fully inhabited by God [omnipresence], even though much of mankind will not honor Him.

 

ISA 66:1-2

Thus says the Lord,

“Heaven is My throne, and the earth is My footstool.

Where then is a house you could build for Me?

And where is a place that I may rest?

2 For My hand made all these things,

Thus all these things came into being,” declares the Lord.

“But to this one I will look,

To him who is humble and contrite of spirit, and who trembles at My word.”

 

People, even Christians, only see humility and the fear of the Lord as some sort of test that God puts on us so that He has a way of dividing us up into good and bad. God certainly judges, but the purpose of humility and fear is knowledge of Him. It is the only way we can truly see Him through His revelation of Himself. A studier of the word of God who is proud and lacks the fear of the Lord will not see the Lord, just as the Pharisees and Sadducees did not.

 

God’s life is here and in us now. God speaks to us now. He commands us to use our bodies to His glory. He commands us to give our bodies to Him in the image of a Levitical sacrifice, but alive and in God’s service. He promises that that life will be good, well pleasing, and perfect.

 

God made man in His image. He gave man marriage, children, family, work, production, innovation, culture, beauty, love, joy, entertainment, wealth, power, and more, and even though all of them have become corrupted, they still possess a portion of God’s original goodness. Theologically we have to be careful here. There is no divine good in man. We are all born separate from God and totally depraved. But when we fell, we didn’t become something completely different. We still felt happiness, pain, love, and joy. Corrupted, yes, but not absent. The divine is perfect, and that we completely lost. The false doctrine is that since perfection was lost that everything outside of heaven is evil. If that were true, then there would be no moral code upon the world at all and we might as well call hate and love the same. The gifts of God to the world arise in all humanity a longing for fulfillment, a desire for satisfaction, and a wanting to possess what is good and prosperous, which can only be God Himself. God knew many of us would make idols out of the things themselves, but He did things this way for His own good purposes. We can’t understand all of God’s purposes, but we can gather some.

 

The relationship with God is based on love. Love cannot be forced. It must be chosen.

 

He begins by loving us and, if we believe, we respond with love in worship of Him. Love has to be chosen by both lovers. Love cannot be forced. God has not created us as robotic slaves but as free agents who can choose to work His vineyard and live in His light and way, or to seek another master, but there really is only one other option: sin, evil, independence, loneliness, and death, which are all one terrible master.

 

God gave us the pictures of His creation, which are somewhat blurry to us, but arouse in us the desire for the perfect.

 

ECC 3:11

He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end.

 

Just before this, Solomon gives us the famous:

 

ECC 3:2-3

A time to give birth, and a time to die;

A time to plant, and a time to uproot what is planted.

3 A time to kill, and a time to heal;

A time to tear down, and a time to build up …

 

Etcetera … these are not things that are our choice, as if you chose the time of your birth, but are the various cycles of life that we are carried in, outside of our will. We are in a cosmic washing machine that it pushing us, spinning us in various cycles, but God is at the helm. He made them and He is in control of them. Like Solomon, and Job for that matter, we don’t understand it all, but one thing we know …