12.1 The Great Contention
© 2015 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
The reason we know that “they overcame him” must be one of the three great branches of truth coming out from God’s purpose to conform us to the image of His Son is that the stage God set for the revelation of Jesus Christ is a great contest, a great battlefield, a great Victory. It is inconceivable that God would close out this age of human folly in any way except by bringing to full Victory every nuance of every issue set forth by Him on the original stage.
Jesus is the Victory of God. But Jesus is also the very point of contention – The Word God Speaks. This IS the Big Deal!
The Word God Speaks
You have magnified Your word above all Your name (Psalm 138:2).
“Name” is everything that is God. God places the Word He speaks above Himself, above His purpose, above His heart, above His will, above His nature, above His holiness, above His love.
Word – the Always Speaking of God. Word – the good Speaking of Christ sustaining all things. Word – the sending forth of Jesus out from the Father by which all things are created, all things come into existence. Word – the words on the pages of the Bible coming by the Holy Spirit into our hearts through faith and becoming Christ in us.
Word
Word – the One who lays down His life for all. Word – the One who takes everything opposed to God into an empty grave. Word – the One who is always arising out of death, carrying all inside Himself into Life.
Word – the One exalted above every name that is named, higher than the heavens, magnified in glory above even the Father Himself. Word – the One who fills our hearts with all of His glory. Word – the One upon whose breast we always lean our heads. Word – His name is Jesus.
The Stage
I would magnify Word to you beyond all things with tears if I were somehow capable of doing such a thing.
Let’s arrange the characters and issues placed by God into the garden, here in the beginning of the Unveiling of Jesus Christ.
The two circles are the two trees; both are the Word God speaks. But that Word appears as two different forms before Adam, the one in whom the word is proven.
The tree of knowledge is the word God speaks on the outside and separate from His Person in the form of creature knowledge. The tree of life is the word God speaks on the inside in Person, the Lord Jesus Christ.
How You Hear
Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.
Word is Voice, the Speaking of God; Word is the Sending forth from God; Word must be received by the hearer. Take heed how you hear (Luke 8:18).
Tree of Knowledge – Tree of Life
. . . the new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life (2 Corinthians 3:6). The exact same thing. The Bible comes to the hearer and kills the one who hears it one way, but gives life to the other who hears it a different way.
All through the Bible
This dichotomy, this split between two, coming to the woman, to the hearer, to you and me, is found in innumerable ways, in pictures and symbols, in parables and in the contentions of God with man all through the Bible, in more ways than we could find or count.
WHAT DO YOU DO WITH THE LORD JESUS CHRIST?
The word is always the same. It is the voice that is different. The one who receives the word, receives that word by a voice, not just through which the word comes, but the voice that harmonizes the ear to hear one way or the other.
There were two voices in the garden; there are two voices available to our mouth.
The Great Contention
The Serpent Dragon
“Do.”
“Do ‘god’ for yourself!”
The Lamb of God
“Believe”
“I am your only life. Let Me be what I am.”
“Do.”
“Do ‘god’ for yourself!”
The Lamb of God
“Believe”
“I am your only life. Let Me be what I am.”
Jesus or Me-Me-Me-Me-Me
Here is how it works – every time – with every word.
Be perfect just as your Heavenly Father is perfect.
I have to do that? Come on. Did God really say that? He didn’t mean me; He didn’t mean “perfect.” Oh, but I have to obey, otherwise I don’t love Jesus. TRY, TRY, TRY – and lie. What a christ you are – pretend, pretend. Looking good, baby!
God CREATES and sustains by SPEAKING!
“Let there be light.” – And light became. “Be perfect.” – And we are perfect. For by one offering Jesus has perfected forever those who are being sanctified (Hebrews 10:14).
The Real Source
Not in all of my writing until this moment of writing this lesson have I seen or presented this great contention as clearly and as specifically as in these slides. I am presenting you with the ten most important verses in the Bible, but I have not placed among them as one of the ten the ONE Word that is the seed of God, planted on the inside of me from the age of 21, out from which this great TREE grows, with its mighty trunk of “Symmorphosed with His image,” out from which the three great branches of God in us spring – Filled with all the fullness of God – Out of your belly flow rivers of living water – Cast down the accuser.
Yet that one Word with her companions is cast upon nearly every page I write.
The Genes of God
A woman, you and me, clothed with Jesus, being with child, pregnant with the word God speaks, crying out in labor and pain to give birth.
And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to give birth, to devour her Child as soon as it was born. She bore a male Child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron. And her Child was caught up to God and His throne (Revelation 12:4b-5).
Then Mary said, “Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).
What do you want (DESIRE) Me to create in you? (Luke 18:41)
What Do You Want?
Jesus says to you: I AM the Word God speaks. AS I SPEAK all things are created. AS I SPEAK all things are sustained. WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO CREATE IN YOU?
And that is the ENTIRE difference. The Tree of Life requires another Person taking up residence inside of us, becoming Himself our very and only life. The Tree of Knowledge gives you the same package, but in a form you control, by which you make your own self, all alone.
Okay, Do It
You are created to contain all the fullness of God. Okay, do it.
You are created to subdue all things by rivers of Spirit flowing out of your belly. Okay, do it.
You are created to cast out of the heavens every angelic voice that speaks against the Word God speaks and to bring all disobedience into submission. Okay, do it.
God commanded you to love other people in exactly the same way that God loves people. You don’t? Why not? Just do it!
You Think You Can Do God?
Just exactly what “godliness” do you imagine you are capable of producing ON YOUR OWN far separate from God?
Okay, you think you can do God? Here’s the law. It tells you exactly how to do God so that you will know all by your little self. Do it. Do it. Do it. But if you break one jot or one tittle of that law. YOU ARE DEAD!!!!
For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled (Matthew 5:18).
Fulfilled – Death. Fulfilled – Death. Fulfilled – Death!
Or Jesus
Or Jesus. In our hearts and in our mouths. Fulfilling in us all the speaking of God, which He is. By faith.
And all of that ugliness on the evil side of the contention comes out of one thing. The absolute hatred and loathing of man against being as he is the real image and likeness of God.
The Word God speaks becomes flesh and dwells now in our hearts, creating in us all that the Father speaks, that is, Himself. The Word God speaks, clothed in weakness, bringing forth Life in the face of all opposition. A pregnant woman clothed with Jesus – many sons to glory.
It Began in the Garden
This is the great contention of God, set first for us in the garden, then set again for us by the history of Israel, then set again for us one day in Gethsemane, then set again for us in a Bible that can be life or death, then set again for us now in fullness, here, at this end of the age. It began in the Garden. And thus we find every nuance of meaning and reality out through which this entire story of God develops in seed form, set fully there, one day in Eden.
But against the horror of Eden, God set another day in another garden. One day, one precious day, in Gethsemane.