12.2 Before the Cross
© 2016 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
We are looking at the complete union, the total inter-relationship among three things, Blood, Time, and Judgment. In fact, we could see judgment as the Father – justified, Blood as the Son, exchanging new for old, and Time as the working of the Holy Spirit, implementing judgment inside of creation. And when He (the Holy Spirit) has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment (John 16:8).
Remember our definition of judgment. Judgment is the transference of an individual person out of the old creation and into the new. Judgment occurred inside the heart of a Man in Gethsemane.
God Among Men
In this lesson, we want to look briefly at the period of time given to the old creation, from the sin of Adam to the cross of Christ. Through this season of time, the Cross had not yet shown itself in space and time out from the substance of God’s all-now pro-knowing.
If I were to construct a list of the ten most important verses in the Old Testament, one of them would have two references. And there I will meet with you, and I will speak with you from above the mercy seat (Exodus 25:22a). – Now the Lord called to Moses, and spoke to him from the tabernacle of meeting… (Leviticus 1:1). God among men – because of blood!
Three Witnesses
To best understand the unfolding of God’s substance through the season of human history prior to the cross, we will look at three men: Abraham as the believer in promise, Moses as the giver of the law, and David as a man after God’s own heart. Of these three, Moses stands unique as the ONLY human through whom God spoke the law, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, right and wrong, in tangible form. On the other hand, Abraham and David, as humans inside the old creation, humans who were NOT born again, yet who related with God by grace through faith (as Moses did personally), stand as critical and legal signifiers of the New Covenant, of relating with God by the tree of life.
Due Process of Law
First, we have seen that it is against the law and nature of God to remove from Adam the authority over all creation that he had already been given by God. God cannot remove that authority from Adam and his descendants except by the full judgment of due process of law. Out from the wisdom of God, God choosing the best means for the best ends, the unfolding of that judgment would take place over 4,000 years of time.
In a very real sense, God used these three men as the writing of an indictment of law against Adam and his children, as witnesses against Adam’s sin, that God might strip all authority away from Adam upon the cross of Christ.
Abraham
The first major writ of indictment against Adam was Abraham (similar to, but much more than, Abel, etc.). Abraham had NOTHING! Abraham was not born again; he had no knowledge of God as Adam had. Abraham had no knowledge of God’s law as Moses did, nor of God’s heart as David did, nor of any “Bible” as we do. Abraham was the least of all humans with whom God related during the time of unbound human sin. – Abel had far more advantage than Abraham, assuming that Adam had conveyed some truth to him inside of all the lies.
The only thing Abraham possessed was a simple word arising from his own heart, coming to him three times, initially.
Gentle Words
Abraham was an idolater living under darkness among heathens. He was 60 years old when that gentle word first arose in his heart. “Get out of your country to a land that I will show you.” Abraham acted on that thought of his heart.
Abraham was 76 the second time he heard that word, again arising in gentleness inside of him, “I will make your children as the sand of the sea for multitude.” Abraham, at 76, had no children; his wife was barren.
Abraham was 85 the third time he heard that word. This time, the word of God inside of him was so pure and true to him, that Abraham believed that God was telling him the truth. And upon that simple believing in a man who knew nothing, God based the entire New Covenant in the Blood of Jesus.
Personal and Human
We say “legal” and “judgment,” but do you see how utterly personal and human God always shows Himself to be? But, of course, Abraham immediately mucked it up in the birthing of Ishmael, a necessary stumbling that we might know that God proving His Word true has nothing to do with human performance.
When Abraham was 100 years old, Sarah bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of which God had spoken to him. God does what He says He will do. But that simple and isolated word arising in Abraham’s heart was not finished. When Abraham was 133 years old and Isaac 33 ½, another word, a terrible word, came to Abraham.
Because You Have Done This Thing
Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.
There was no hesitation in this simple man. God spoke the truth; that was enough. And though Abraham’s heart burst inside him every step of that journey, yet he took his son, Isaac, to the very place where the cross of Christ would stand, to offer his own son of promise back to this One whom he hardly knew. – By Myself I have sworn, because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son… In your seed, Christ Jesus, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.
Full Judgment
This action of Abraham, a man with no knowledge of God except a simple word arising in his own heart several times over many years, is all the testimony God needs to bring Adam and all of his seed to full judgment for their demented and dark hatred of the tree of life. Because you have done this thing – and by that word, God is free, now, to transfer the authority from Adam to Jesus.
But God does not establish anything except on the basis of two or three witnesses. The second witness that Paul and the writer of Hebrews use to establish the end of the old and the bringing in of the new is David. But first, we must place Moses.
A Most Humble Man
Having come to understand Moses as a person through writing The Feast of Tabernacles, I now see Moses with Abraham as the most precious of humans to the Father. Moses was given the second worst task of all humans, that of imparting to the human race God’s justice in putting the entire creation to death upon the cross of Christ. God gave Moses that task because he was a most humble man among all humans; I cannot keep from shedding tears when I consider the humility of Moses.
Although Moses walked with God by grace through faith, his role in God’s legal proceedings was not a witness of faith, but as the one through whom God would bring all into total guilt.
To Bring All to Guilt
We have already established God’s clear purpose for giving the law through Moses. “Hey, Adam, you think you can do all right living by the tree of knowing right and wrong? Well, let’s have a real go at it and see just how well you do.”
Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin (Romans 3:19-20).
Yet bringing all to guilt is not the primary quality of the law. According to Paul in Galatians 3, obedience to law can never give life; the law is VOID of life.
Establishing Precedent
The law did, however, present blood as a foreshadowing of the real Blood yet to come. Yet the blood of the law was incapable of imparting life, that is, of transferring any human from the tree of knowledge to the tree of life. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins (Hebrews 10:4).
Judgment cannot come by the law. We MUST know these chapters of the Covenant. God making Himself known REQUIRES 4000 years of establishing precedent before the cross entirely for our sakes; that is, God knows we need a full and detailed story over time.
They Don’t Care
I want to insert here the real guilt and the just anger of God against all those who say, “Hear and obey. Do what God says, seek to find God’s will instead of your own, so that God will be pleased with you and not cast you out.” They don’t. But their total and constant failure to obey is not their real guilt. Their real guilt and the indictment of God against them, is that they don’t care that they do not obey.
Do you want to know why I am so persistent in writing and speaking Christ my only life? Because I KNOW that I fail in all ways to please God, and I CARE against my entire life.
I Cannot Please God
I sat under teaching for years that insisted that God requires us to duplicate to perfection the example of Jesus’ obedience in Hebrews 5:7-9, vehement cries and tears – learned obedience – having been perfected. Now, no one in that fellowship, including all who have taught this level of perfect obedience for years, have ever fulfilled this word, nor, by God’s mercy, will they ever succeed.
I have no knowledge regarding what God is doing in the hearts of those who continue to lay before God’s people a weight of requirements they themselves have never met. But here is the difference for me. The fact that I do not and cannot please God became absolute in my consideration.
Many Convincing Proofs
In complete contrast to that word of obligation on the outside of me, a word that God never actually spoke to me, either through the Bible or from my own heart, there was a true word of God arising in me many times over many years. “You are My son. I will fulfill in your life all that I speak.” And that word came into my experience with overwhelming and convincing proofs: God does what He says He will do.
Yet, underneath my wretched inability to please God, I have believed with all my heart that God is telling me the truth. That I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness… but that which is through faith in Christ, that I may know Him (Philippians 3:8-9).
Intensely Personal
We are speaking of Life, foreshadowed by blood, and the judgment of God as it unfolds through the seasons of time. Yet God is always intensely personal, revealing His substance through very human humans, and again through you and me.
The word of Jesus arising in my heart came to me before the law, as it came to Abraham. Yet God gave me a season under the requirements of “obedience” that I might come to the complete end of hope. And all the way through, with zero regard for my continued failure, God arose in me continually as gentle words of promise and life. It was only after I refused all “hear and obey,” however, that God brought me to know of a man after God’s own heart.
David
David is the indictment of God against all those who seek to be justified by law, by hearing what God says as word on the outside of their hearts and being sure to do it.
David was not born again, was entirely inside the dispensation of law, and knew well the instructions of Moses. David, on occasion, when he was forced to, looked briefly at Moses’ instructions to follow them. Most of the time, David paid no attention at all to anything Moses had said. (Jesus based his authority in part on this tendency of David to ignore Moses’ law.)
But the most important time for us was when David savagely broke 5 of the 10 commandments to sate his own wicked lust.
One Place Alone
If David had regarded God’s law, then when Nathan confronted him about his sin, he would have insisted that the priests take him out and stone him to death.
WHAT is God saying to us by David?
David did not live in sin. David did not live in the law. David lived in one place ALONE, in every thought of his mind, in every breath he breathed, in all the passion of his heart. One thing I have desired of the Lord, that will I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple (Psalm 27:4).
God’s Legal Foundation
David, a man who was not born again, a man living under all the dispensation of the law, lived ONLY inside the tree of life. David knew only life, only God, only his Rock, his Savior, his Love, and even caught in the most horrendous acts of wickedness, he never saw himself anywhere else, but ran right into the holiest place in the universe BECAUSE he would be found only inside of Jesus.
Abraham and David, each on either side of the indictment of God against Adam through the law, stand as the witnesses of God against living by the tree of outward appearance. By these three witnesses, then, God possesses the legal foundation to bring all of Adam’s creation to death upon the cross and to transfer Adam’s right entirely to Jesus.