Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered outside the gate.  Therefore, let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach.  For we have no continuing city here, but we seek one to come.

 
 
 

Going to Jesus

Daily Thoughts

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Thought for Today
Jul. 31

HIDDEN WITH CHRIST IN GOD

From a sermon by Pastor John on May 19, 2003.

The Most Holy Place in God's Old Testament temple was a room of deep darkness. There were no windows in that room, and no candles were ever allowed in there. It was a closed room in the very rear of the temple into which no man on earth could enter except Israel's High Priest, and he, only on very rare occasions for just a few moments, and without so much as the flicker of one of the temple's golden candlesticks to guide his feet. Solomon, in dedicating the temple, could only explain it with these brief words: "The LORD said that He would dwell in the thick darkness" (1Kgs. 8:12). What God used that room for, what God did in there, men could only wonder and guess. It was God's place. If men were evil-hearted, they hated being left out and no doubt criticized the construction of a room made of pure gold that no one on earth could see. If, on the other hand, they were good-hearted, they humbled themselves to confess that it was God's and that they were only men. Good people were happy that there was a place on earth dedicated to God.

God dwells in light that is so great that men cannot even approach it (1Tim. 6:16). Moses caught a glimpse of God's back parts, and for the rest of his life he had to wear a veil over his face because the brightness of his face hurt men's eyes (Ex. 34:29-35). After Moses glimpsed God, nobody ever saw Moses' face again. The light in which God dwells is too much for us; it would kill a man to see God's face. He mercifully chose not to fill His Most Holy Place in the temple with the light that would blind us and even slay us. Rather, to teach us that He dwells in a place that we neither know nor understand, He chose to make His earthly room very dark and mysterious. God does not dwell in darkness, but darkness is the best thing He could use to teach us of His glory and mystery.

Paul taught the saints, "Your lives are hidden with Christ in God" (Col. 3:3). When you enter into Christ, you become a mystery to this world and to the people in it. It is as if the new birth takes you into a pitch black room where men are forbidden to come, but the truth is that the world is in the dark and that we have entered into the light of God. "The world knoweth us not because it knew him not" wrote John (1Jn. 3:1).

Sometimes, men who do not know God try to guess what has happened to us and who we now are. If they do not like the changes Jesus made in our lives, they may call us a "fanatic" or they may accuse us of thinking we are better than anyone else, or even that we are in a "cult". But those are just guesses. Men really don't know who we are in Christ because our lives really are "hidden with Christ in God." The accusations some men make against us are like rocks thrown by naughty little kids into a dark night in hope of hitting an unseen target. They are just guessing. We must not take such accusations to heart, but have compassion on them because they just don't know what to think of us any longer. We have become a mystery to everyone in the whole world who is not in Christ. By the infilling of God's holy Spirit, we have been made a Most Holy Place into which no natural man has ever gone or can go. To them, it is very dark. To us, God has "shined in our hearts" and has given us the light of life.

Peter said that old friends would "think it strange that you run not with them any longer" in sin. Of course, they would not think that our conduct is strange if they were also in Christ, where we are now hidden by the hand of God, but they are not there, and they can only make guesses as to why we no longer behave the way we used to behave. Over the course of my life, I have heard of three separate cases in which family members committed a relative of theirs to a mental institution because those relatives began to speak in tongues. I don't know all the circumstances of those events, and so I cannot say for certain, but it appears that those families thought that their relative had developed a mental problem. But it was instead work of God, or it appeared to have been, taking those blessed into the "mystery of godliness", into a holy place far beyond the understanding of men in the world.

Men called Jesus "Beelzebub", who was the prince of demons, because they didn't know Jesus. That cruel accusation was just one of the many verbal stones that they cast into the darkness trying to hit him. But all their accusations missed. They were never right in what they thought about Jesus. Reminding his followers of the things of which men accused him, Jesus warned them to expect to receive no better treatment from the world than what he had received (Mt. 10:25). Jesus knew what it meant to be hidden in God from the understanding of men. And now, we who believe are hidden with him, and men can only guess as to who we are, just as they guessed at who Jesus was. Until they, too, are touched with the mercy of God, all they can do is guess. Be merciful when it happens; we once were foolish, too.

Even the devil doesn't know us any more, or how to get to us. The only way he could possibly know us now is to be with us, hidden with Christ in God, and he can never be there. He has been cast out of the kingdom of God, never to be readmitted. The only time the devil even possibly could truly know a child of God now, is for one of us to act like him. That old fool might recognize something like himself if he saw it. Let us be wise, then, and follow Jesus' example instead of the devil's.

Stay filled with the Spirit and stay hidden. The life of true holiness is a simple life of peace, purity, and joy. "The way of the transgressors is hard" (Prov. 13:15), but the yoke of God's will in Christ Jesus "is easy" (Mt. 11:30), and "God's commandments are not grievous" to those who have a heart to keep them (1Jn. 5:3).

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