1.2 Focus and Layout
© 2016 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
The guiding idea of this course is that the Lord Jesus Christ is first Word, word coming out of the Father every moment, Word that creates and sustains all things. Thus we cannot understand the essence of anything unless we first understand Word, what it is, whence it comes, how it operates, and its continual effect on all things. But most importantly, the guiding idea of this course is that this Word that sustains all things is first and always a Person, the Lord Jesus Christ alive inside of us.
First we want to refine our focus for this course. Then second, we will construct a brief layout and explanation of the sessions of this course.
Essence Defined
Let’s list the essential elements of “essence” and “substance.”
Essence: 1. That by which a thing is what it is. 2. The necessary or elemental substance of something. 3. The fundamental characteristic of something; it’s ultimate or intrinsic nature.
Substance: 1. That which underlies all outward manifestations. 2. The permanent cause of any phenomena, physical or spiritual. 3. The abiding part of any existence. 4. The essential elements or components of anything.
Conditions of Knowing
How do we know what is the essential definition of anything or what rules should govern our thinking? We return to the guiding idea of this course.
Word comes out of God and everything else comes out of Word; thus we must know this Word, who and what He is. God says that this Word is a Person and that the Word lives in our hearts, and Jesus, the Word, says that the Holy Spirit will lead us into all truth, that is, into knowing Him.
The essence of all things lives in our hearts and causes us to know Himself by His Spirit joined utterly to ours. Everything we know must be known first by heart.
Focus #1: Ignorant and Blind
The first absolute we must know, before we can even begin this great task re-defining how we know everything, is this. I am blind; I am ignorant. We must begin here. Those who think they see will never see God. Those who think they know will never know God. I have NOT seen Him; I have NOT known Him.
Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that IF He appears to us, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is (1 John 3:3 – modified to fit the Greek).
We Do Not Know
We do NOT know what we are – we do NOT know ourselves. Those who think they know themselves are wrong – if John is telling us the truth. Whatever Jesus IS – which we do not actually know – we are exactly that. Thus – the only way we will ever know ourselves is to know Jesus Sent first. If John is telling us the truth, then, if we imagine that we are NOT just like Jesus right now, it is clear that we do NOT see Him as He is, that we do not know.
We must begin here: we are blind and we are ignorant.
Focus #2: Able to Know
We are able to know God.
We know that we are of God. We know that the entire cosmos lies under the sway of the evil one, the liar – that all we have ever known by separation and outward appearance is false. We know that the Son of God has come into our hearts and has given us a dianoia, a through-mind, an understanding, a mind-heart-spirit capacity, that we might KNOW Him who is true. We know we are in Him who is true, in His Son, Jesus Christ (1 John 5:19-20 – modified).
We are able, we have the capacity to know God.
We Can Know God Now
God has planted in us the capacity, the ability, the mechanism, the organ that allows us to KNOW God and to KNOW Jesus Sent. More than that, our knowing God is the only true God and the only thing that is age-abiding life. Our knowing God is the only thing real, the only thing normal, the only thing true.
The first false thing removed is “I already see and know.” And the second false thing removed from our minds is the idea that we cannot know God now, that God is “mysterious” and “far away,” and we “down here” cannot really know the truth. Get rid of “We can’t really know”; it is a lie.
Christ in Our Mouth
The Word is near you, in your mouth (Romans 10:8). We remove all false thinking by speaking Christ in our mouth.
Of myself, I am ignorant and blind; everything I think I know must be colored and shadowed by the lies and the lying that fills the cosmos. BUT!!I am not of myself.
(Say the following out loud with your own name in the blank.) “I know that I, Daniel Yordy , am of God. I know that God has planted Christ in me as my capacity, my easy ability to KNOW God. Separation and outward appearance cannot rule in my mind.”
Focus #3: The Holy Spirit
It is the Holy Spirit’s job, sent into us, to lead us into all truth.
However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine. Therefore I said that He will take of Mine and declare it to you (John 16:13-15).
ALL truth means all truth. We never ever limit God. When God says, “All,” we believe for ALL. Learn to believe in the Holy Spirit doing what He is.
One Spirit with Me
He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him (1 Corinthians 6:17). I know that the Holy Spirit, one spirit with me, is leading me, step by step, from glory to glory, into ALL truth, into ALL the knowledge of God, right here on this earth, right now in this present body of flesh.
These three things are sufficient for us, then, as we believe, to be assured that God is causing us to know Him. We are assured that the Spirit of God is, in fact, replacing all the false assumptions of this present cosmos that have so ruled our thinking – replacing all that nonsense with Christ our only life. The Spirit of God IS leading us into all truth.
Limiting the Focus
Then, in this course, a journey of exploration, we must limit ourselves severely. We cannot know the definition and reality of all things in a 30-session course. Of truth, we will be knowing Him anew every morning forever; the increase of the knowledge of God will never end.
Thus we must limit ourselves to a handful of concepts in this course, specific essential assumptions that must lie beneath all of our thinking about God and reality. And we will do that by first asking a question in each session. The biggest question we will ask, many times, is – what is God?
Starting with Words and Logic
We begin the course, however, with an exploration of words and human reason, the logos/logic, that is, the thesis of the universe as found in John 1 & 5. Everything that exists comes out of words, that is, out of Christ.
Then, the biggest question we must ask is: What is God? Most people have no idea what God is. Most conjure up a picture in their minds when the word, “God” passes across their thinking, a picture, an image, that is, in fact, the claim that the serpent in the garden is the one who shows us what God looks like –
– A high heavenly being emanating lights and perfections, a great and mighty far-away Thing. –
A Man on His Face
Not us. We begin our answer to the question “What is God,” with the picture in our minds of a man lying on His face in the dirt under a cross He cannot carry. Everything else we might know about God flows out from that description: He that has seen Me has seen the Father.
What a quandary, however. When we ask God what He is like, He shows us a Man, born of weakness, meek and lowly of heart. When we ask God to show us what a Man is like, He says, “Man is like Me.” The reality of Jesus means that we cannot define God without defining man, and we cannot define man without defining God.
Original Creation – Entrance of Sin.
Sessions 5 - 10 draw a picture of God in His Being and expression inside the original creation, heaven/earth, and the original creation of Adam and Eve in their innocence, before sin and death. This picture will include God’s intention for the appearance of all things. The answers to what is God and what is man revolve around each other. The capstone will be to discover God’s intention for symmorphy, our union with Him, Person inside of person.
Then, sessions 11-12 will ask the questions: What is sin and death? and – How does God relate with a shattered universe?
Redemption - Christian Lies – God’s Answer.
Sessions 13, 14, and 15 raise the questions – What is Christ Jesus? and – What is Redemption? and – What is Salvation?
Then, in spite of the sacrifice of Jesus and the redemption flowing out of it, another Jesus and another gospel conquered the gospel of Paul and replaced it in the thinking of Christianity. Sessions 16-21 explore the questions of how separation and outward appearance triumphed over Christ our life in the minds and definitions of Christians. We must know the source of all Christian lies.
Sessions 22-24 bring God back into the picture, a ripped open Heart, a carrying Jesus, and a comforting Spirit.
God’s Opportunity
Next we must understand the essence of God’s opportunity to obtain His original intentions out from the creation of man, of you and me, His image and likeness. Sessions 25-27 explore the nature and substance of the Church of Christ, the plant of Jesus now walking this earth, the many seeds, many sons birthed out of that Church, and the moment when all blindness is removed and all eyes see what has already been true all along.
Finally, Session 28 will take a brief look at what comes after that moment, what we can glean from the Bible regarding the ages to come.
Yet through all, the underlying rule we seek is – what is God?
This Journey
This course, Symmorphy II: Essence, approaches the major realities of God, Christ, man, and salvation from a definitional point of view, an attempt to know what these realities ARE.
The guiding idea of this course is that the Lord Jesus Christ is first Word, word coming out of the Father every moment, Word that creates and sustains all things. Yet we know this Word as a Person, our closest and dearest Friend, the One who fills our hearts with His glory, with all of Himself, the One upon whose breast we always lean our heads.
We walk this journey into all truth, into an endless unfolding of the knowledge of God, KNOWING first that we are carried by Jesus, that we are utterly in the best of Hands.