27. A Man Who Shows You Jesus

27. A Man Who Shows You Jesus - for Notes

The most profound thing we receive from David is the realization that God is showing us the inward parts of Jesus' soul through some of David's Psalms. It is evident that Psalm 22 is Jesus upon the cross and that those words are His thoughts.

Before we look at Psalm 22, we want to understand this principle of prophetic Scripture and how it works by perusing Psalm 69. Consider these words.

For Your sake I have borne reproach; shame has covered my face. I have become a stranger to my brothers, and an alien to my mother’s children; because zeal for Your house has eaten me up, and the reproaches of those who reproach You have fallen on me.

Taken out of Context. John, with no immediate connection to Paul or the writer of Hebrews, applied these lines directly to Jesus. If it were anyone else, however, Bible students would claim that John took those words out of context.

Verses 1-4 sound similar to Jesus' thoughts in Psalm 22, but verse 5, the opening to "Zeal for Your house," says this. O God, You know my foolishness; and my sins are not hidden from You.

Is this also Jesus? If this is not Jesus, then how could "Zeal for Your house" be Jesus?"

A Principle of the Spirit. We could state that Jesus is referencing God's laying of our sins upon Him, that He became sin for us. That would be true, but it also comes close to something I learned to dislike over the years, the practice of bending the metaphor to fit the required interpretation, not something I do intentionally.

When you observe, by the Spirit, how the gospel writers use Old Testament verses, you see a Spirit principle operating most every time.

The Spirit is free to draw one point from a metaphor or passage and completely disregard other points.

Knowing a Spirit Word. Ezekiel 28 is a case in point. The Spirit of God uses the metaphor of the king of Tyre in three different ways, back and forth.

Part of the time, the Spirit goes beyond the metaphor to reference directly the angel in Eden, anointed of God, other times, the Spirit goes back and forth between the metaphor and the angel, and sometimes it references only the human king.

Of truth, this principle of Spirit is normal, and you will find it in use all through the Bible. People who like to hammer Bible verses into a mental box, however, don't typically understand this common principle.

A Spirit-Mind. What we are saying is that the Spirit of God can use David as a metaphor showing us Christ in one verse, but as David showing us David in the next.

How are we to know God's word? We reference Ezra in Psalm 119 and Jesus in John 6. I have hidden Your Word in my HEART (not brain-mind) that I might not sin against You. - It is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh (brain-mind) profits nothing, the Words that I speak to you are Spirit and they are life.

A Spirit-mind is a Spirit gifting and known only by those who place themselves before God inside the Spirit, knowing only Jesus as Word inside their hearts.

Practicing the Mercy Seat. My point here is that we are free to know the Jesus who lives in our hearts, the same Jesus who walked this earth, by many of David's lines throughout his psalms, even while ignoring other lines nearby.

Let's now turn to Psalm 22, which has just increased exponentially in my understanding over the last couple of weeks, including the meaning of practicing the Mercy Seat, that is, sharing heart with God.

God has this 'bad habit,' when He wants to show me something glorious for the next writing topic, of taking me into travail where, as I reach for Him in agony, that next Word of Christ just happens to be right there.

We Have Become Strangers. Here is my own recent "Psalm 22." I have become a stranger to my brothers…; because zeal for Your house has eaten me up, and the reproaches of those who reproach You have fallen on me.

Because I place my heart out over the entire Church of Christ, and because I cannot bear with the Christian claim that my Father knows evil, I have become a stranger to my brothers and sisters in Christ.

The men standing in front of Jesus upon the cross were the Levites of Moses, the elders in the temple, having committed their lives to protect Israel from deception, from those things that are contrary to God.

A Mysterious Phrase. They were those who preached and defended "Biblical" theology. And as today, they completely missed the whole point - Christ in your heart.

You have read Psalm 22 many times, and you will likely read it many more. Psalm 22 is where we find the full and practical meaning of that mysterious New Testament phrase - "setting forth one's soul for the sake of others."

Jesus is in the confusion of His very human soul, with His brain-mind screaming that God had forsaken Him and His emotional fear denouncing His enemies.

What Jesus Did. Yet despite all that, we see that Jesus did two incredible things inside the agony of His human soul.

First, we see that He knew the Father utterly with Him underneath all that stuff, inside His heart, "Father I welcome You as sharing all this confusion with me." And second, we hear the actual words that He spoke to those same wicked men, "Father, forgive them for they don't know what they are doing."

What really happened is that Jesus brought Father and us into His heart, sharing His agony, that we might meet together with God inside of Him.

My Human Agony. Then 1 John 3 says, AND WE ALSO are committed to setting forth our souls, in the same way, for our brothers and sisters.

Here is the first most wondrous thing I knew in my recent experience of Psalm 22. My human agony and frustration is right and true and good and perfectly inside of knowing Father with me.

In all my years, my human agony and frustration was defined by me and by others as God far away from me. That was NEVER true. And so I can rest all my human agony inside my Father JUST LIKE JESUS did.

The First Principle. This is the first principle of sharing Hheart with God.

Your human agony, your human mistakes and stupidity, your human anything - NEVER do anything with it except place it into Jesus, "Jesus, this belongs utterly to You; this is You, sharing Yourself with me." And that includes "sin."

We do not place our actions that we know to be sinful into Jesus in order to excuse them or to continue in them. To a son, sinful actions are the worst agony. We place our sins into Jesus, because He is the ONLY Salvation God has offered to us.

"Father, You Share." AND - Place the same human anything with Jesus inside the Father, "Father, You share every part of my life with me through Jesus and You direct my every step inside of Your love. All that I find myself to be is Your expression exactly as You wish, for You energeo all things in me.

"For that reason, I KNOW that my difficulty is not about me, but for others, for You have joined with me so that Wwe might share travail for their sake, that they also might know You. Father, You ARE inside of Jesus, inside of all my human ANYTHING, reconciling the world to Yourself."

What Are Words? But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised by the people. All those who see Me ridicule Me; they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, “He trusted in the Lord, let Him rescue Him; let Him deliver Him, since He delights in Him!"

Let's consider two very important things related to these thoughts banging around inside Jesus' troubled soul. In fact, the first leads directly to the second.

The first is words. What are words? These men were not hurting Jesus physically; they were just throwing words at Him. Yet look at what 'just' words did to Jesus!

Together with God. Now, on my recent trip, God placed Him and me together into a great press, specifically inside this topic, setting forth our souls for the sake of our brethren. And inside this great press, the Father showed me so many things. Much of what He showed me, however, has to do with WAR, with all-out total war.

Still, even that remains fully inside Jesus' soul shown by David in Psalms 22 and elsewhere.

I hope to insert a few lessons that will likely become part of A Highway for God, but which will fit now inside of "A Man Who Shows Us Jesus."

War! The Great War, the war of the ages, is a war of words.

And in saying that, I find great sorrow in my own inadequacies and forgetfulness as a teacher. I have forgotten to make clear and paramount the most important thing God gave me through Sam Fife. But that is a topic for the next lesson.

Then, I have discovered a new chapter in my Bible that I had not known before, Hebrews 12. Hebrews 12 is all about our incredible part in this massive war, in setting forth our souls for our brothers and sisters that we might win their minds for the Jesus of their hearts.

A War of Words. Most of what we discover inside a new Hebrews 12, however, must also wait for another lesson inside this topic, "A Man Who Shows Us Jesus."

I want to bring in one Greek word, however - antilogia. This word is used three times in Hebrews and once in Jude. There are other synonyms elsewhere.

Here is the WAR: antilogia - homologia.

Anti-word carried inside of anti-spirit against same-Word carried inside of same-Spirit. And so we see that anti-word was being thrown against Jesus, anointed by a powerful anti-spirit.

Brethren. But who were these men? They were Jesus' brethren, the leaders of God's house.

For it is not an enemy who reproaches me; then I could bear it. Nor is it one who hates me who has exalted himself against me; then I could hide from him. But it was you, a man my equal, my companion and my acquaintance. We took sweet counsel together, and walked to the house of God in the throng (Psalm 55:12-14).

These were the men anointed by God to protect His people from deception, but they hated a God who reveals Himself through human weakness.

What Jesus Did. It will not be unbelievers who strike the painful blows that almost destroy you, but brothers and sisters who think in their minds that they are serving God by speaking anti-words against your 'false claims' that God shares your life with you.

Yet you probably already know this. Here's what Jesus did inside this horrific press, after He had placed Himself in all His human confusion utterly upon the Father.

"Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. - Here am I AND all those whom You have given Me."

The Mercy Seat. We know what was really going on inside of Jesus by this most important Old Testament verse. And there I will meet with you, and I will speak with you from above the mercy seat (Exodus 25:22).

Notice the speaking — WITH YOU — homologia. And notice the place — the Mercy Seat, that is, inside of Jesus' heart.

You and I have spoken anti-words against Jesus our whole Christian lives. It's what we were taught to do. Yet Jesus still receives us into Himself to join with Father already there.

Cut to the Core. Yet now, when we hear our brethren speak such anti-words against Jesus, those words cut us to the core and we stagger in confusion and pain, just like Jesus.

And so one close to me admonished me with "correct Christian doctrine," but the ideas in the words were almost the most evil accusation against God ever uttered by humans.

Yes, I could recount that 'doctrine' to you - and have, but hearing those 'correct ideas' spoken, carried by a spirit as all words are, they struck me with horror so great I could hardly sleep that night.

Another Word. Yet all night long, I practiced what I am teaching you here, I kept Father always with me, even in all my human emotions of anger and humiliation.

Look at Jesus thoughts against those men. They were not good thoughts. Yet John heard what Jesus actually spoke, the only words carried by Spirit. And so I also did, all through the turmoil of a very long night.

BUT - another word showed itself inside of me as well, the remembrance that it is Abraham who is our father and our example even more than David.

Life Arising from Death. You see, here is what Jesus felt, "You have brought me to the dust of death."

And such a press, being willing to draw Father into us as sharing our pain with us, and being willing to draw this one into our heart as well, even against our great desire to SCREAM, "Why do you speak such evil against God?" "Do you imagine you will find life in all the 'correct ideas' in your head?"

We feel that way, and it sure feels like death. And so comes the word of Abraham, the same word that filled Jesus' heart through every stumbling step and every painful blow. — "God, You will raise me up into LIFE!"

I Am Alive! God, You will raise me up into LIFE!

I will arise from this death as Your resurrection LIFE, and I will carry my brother with me. He belongs to me and I will never let him go, all the way through the darkness and into age-unfolding life. This is what Jesus did - AND WE ALSO, just like Him.

You see, this is Covenant. God has bound Himself to us, to share our lives with us. And what we require of Him, His Spirit will do, even to break our brothers and sisters free into the full Joy of their Glorious Salvation. But first there is WAR, that is, sharing Heart with God.

Let’s Pray Together. I am not suggesting reading for next time, because the topic is not so much the lives of OT brethren.

Our prayer this time is to draw our brothers and sisters into our hearts, past all the anti-words that they hurl against us, and into the safety of the Love that is God, shed abroad in our hearts.

"Father, we place all our human everything into the Lord Jesus and thus into You. Father, we belong utterly to You and You direct and share every moment of our lives. Father, we call our every human experience as You in us, reconciling the world to Yourself."

For the Sake of Others. "Father, in our agony and in every moment of our travail, we call ourselves only as You inside of us sharing our agony with us for the sake of others.

"Then we turn, Father, and we see this one, a brother or sister in the Lord. We know, Lord Jesus, that You live inside their hearts. Yet they speak such words of contradiction against You, Lord Jesus, against God Oour Father, and against us.

"How those words hurt, for they are carried by anti-spirit. Yet, Lord Jesus, as we stagger in anger and humiliation, we see You in and as them, and we are humbled by the Love of God to us we see from them."

Call Your Church. "Father, we open wide our hearts and we draw these who speak such anti-words against You past all our hurt and into Your Love shed abroad in our hearts.

"Father, we join them with You and You with them, here in our hearts, above the Blood of Your Son sprinkled here. And we release them all into Your liberty and into Your joy, that they might KNOW You.

"Father, we are just overwhelmed with tears of such gratefulness, that You have chosen to share Your Heart with us. Father, call Your Church into Your Heart through our confidence in You."