9.1 An Enemy Has Done This
© 2019 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing,” spoken by Jesus upon the cross and directed to the vilest blockers of God ever to stand between.
“An enemy has done this” is Jesus’ explanation as to why the field of His Church is thick with tares growing with the wheat, the lies of the evil one mingled with the wheat of Christ such that no one can tell the difference.
Stand against the methods and schemes of the devil [the one who accuses]. Because we are not wrestling or contesting against blood and flesh, but against the rulers [sources], against the authorities [influences], against the cosmic powers of this darkness, against the spiritual evil in the heavenly realms (Ephesians 6:11-12).
Not the Enemy. Paul is making it clear that regardless of the involvement of humans with the words of the evil one and in the promotion of an angel of heaven as “what God looks like,” a “God” who “knows good and evil,” our fight is not against humans, but against the wicked powers of heaven. Other humans are NOT the enemy, regardless of what they might think, say, or do.
The accuser of our brothers and sisters has been thrown down, the one accusing them before our God day and night. And they have overcome him through the blood of the Lamb… (Revelation 12:10-11). Accusation cannot be cast down out of the minds of our brethren by the use of accusation!
A False Marriage. Yet we must understand what is really going on, otherwise we cannot help our brethren. Iniquity and the sin of Adam is the marriage of unthankfulness with accusation. Although accusation is the contribution of evil spirits, however, it shows up inside the Christian psyche as unforgiveness becoming bitterness. All accusation is against God, and thus all unforgiveness is a refusal to forgive God for having made us the way we are and for having led us through any particular circumstance.
Our problem is that man is the master, and “the enemy that has done this false thing” is a servant. Our warfare is against that enemy, but to be free, each one of our brethren must forgive God and others, and must give thanks for being human.
Two Kinds of “Preachers.” There are two kinds of ministry in the Church, at whatever level each ministry is operating. The smaller number feed God’s people with the portion of Christ they know, always connecting the believer with Jesus at whatever level they know, and always setting each believer free of themselves to walk forward with God. These faithful servants do not have to have everything “right.” They just have to believe in Jesus.
The larger number, however, choose rather to stand in the place of Jesus, working more to forbid the Christian from connecting with God through Jesus than to actually feed them with any bread of life.
Striking the Believer. Here are two pictures of these unfaithful servants, who, in my subjective experience, are the majority in Christian circles, from the large ritualistic entities to small “deeper truth” sects.
I opened for my beloved, but my beloved had turned away and was gone… I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him, but he gave me no answer. The watchmen who went about the city found me. They struck me, they wounded me; the keepers of the walls took my veil away from me (Song of Songs 5:6-7).
The believer imagines falsely that Jesus is “far away.” Thus they go out “seeking for Him.” There they meet the preachers who insist that a “Jesus-far-away” is their fault. The preachers strike the believer with guilt and shame, removing the covering of Christ Jesus from their flesh.
Feeding Themselves. Here is God’s rebuke to irresponsible ministries in the Church. Thus says the Lord God to the shepherds: “Woe to the shepherds of Israel who feed themselves! Should not the shepherds feed the flocks?” (Ezekiel 34:2). Ezekiel continues this metaphor filled with relevant truth.
The faithful shepherds give all they know of Jesus to His people. The unfaithful shepherds use their place to “feed themselves” by ruling over the Church of Christ through the gospel of the serpent. The problem with the faithful shepherds in the Church today, however, is that they also know only the gospel of the serpent. None feed the flock with all that knowing Jesus really means.
Guilt. What, then, is the root core of the unfaithful shepherd in whatever Christian circle or level of entrance into God in which they might stand as abusers? Guilt. Unresolved guilt. And the shame of burying that guilt deep underneath an outward “good show of appearance inside of flesh.” Guilt, yes, but even more than guilt – the absence of the fear of God. Yet these can preach “the fear of God” more than most!
A faithful shepherd knows that, regardless of what he or she has to give or not, the last thing they want to do is to connect God’s people to themselves and not to the Lord Jesus. No one wants to be anywhere near when Jesus confronts those who have put their hands upon His Bride, showing her nakedness by removing Him from her, and using His people to cover their own hatred of God with superior self-rightness.
Unthankfulness with Accusation. We want to look, now, at seven specific ways in which the rebellion of Adam merges together with the definitions coming out of the accusations of the serpent. This marriage is always unthankfulness, which shows itself as a lust for superiority, married with accusation of guilt, which shows itself as unforgiveness. No preacher and no Christian comes up with this horrific marriage in themselves, for “an enemy has done this.”
In the remainder of this lesson, we will briefly outline these seven marriages of unthankfulness with accusation as they rule the sermons preached in the church. Then, in the next lesson, we will look at examples of how this wicked gospel is taught in the three stages of Christianity in this world.
The Super-Christ. The first element in the preacher’s playbook is the mental image of a “Christ” far-above and faraway. This image is always made to be “superior” to the lowly Christian in the pew.
More than that, being like or even knowing this “high-above” Jesus is always assumed to be just beyond reach, a tantalizing prospect that cannot ever be touched. This super-Christ image then requires a Sisyphean task of the believer, that of becoming “like” something that is imagination only. And the lowly Christian is beaten with condemnation for every way they cannot “measure up.”
This image, however, feeds the unthankfullness in the hearts of both preacher and Christian, their lust for an “image of God” that is better than humans on this earth.
Contempt for other Christians. The preacher will always, then, display contempt in one form or another towards his audience, but especially towards all those “fleshy and deceived Christians out there.” The preacher will take on the same air of “superiority” as the image he holds before the people, setting himself above the congregation. Many place themselves as the “vicar” of Christ, that is, “Since Jesus is absent, I take His place towards you.”
These find the Bible verses that enable them to condemn others, even though it is their own flock they are targeting. They attempt to control the flesh of their hearers by misusing the law and the “cross.” Yet they always see the church as a failed experiment, a temporary blip on their path to superiority now and after death.
All Limitation of the Atonement. The image of the “above-you-Jesus” is always the first trick of the conmen because it appeals to the lust of every Christian, with contempt and condemnation being its natural fruit. But the most important card that these imposters play is to limit in every way they can the Atonement accomplished by the Lord Jesus.
They limit Gethsemane; they limit the Blood; they limit and re-define the Cross; and they limit the Resurrection. They fix these things in the distant past and shine their dark light instead upon present outward appearance and human performance. Rather than walking as Jesus walked, with no consciousness of sins, they increase all consciousness of sins to a fever point in the minds of their victims.
Death. The largest and most significant card the preacher plays, however, is death, the foundation of which is the fervent religious belief in a “God” who knows good and evil and who has created a universe of good and evil forever. Death eliminates Jesus as every Word God speaks; every wondrous word of Paul’s gospel is countered with, “We’ll know what it means ONLY after we are dead.” No salvation can be here and now, for death alone takes the believer “to glory,” as they endlessly wait for a “someday Jesus.” “Death takes you to ‘Jesus.’” “Being dead is ‘salvation.’”
And out of the mouths of imposters and conmen, death reigns supreme over the very dwelling place and revelation of God All-Carrying.
Refusal to Enter the Holiest. The final three marriages of unthankfulness and accusation preached by these wolves in the Church are simply the natural products of the first four. In fact, these are partly things not-preached.
Because the preachers do not teach the gospel, Christians refuse to place all sin and sinfulness upon the Lord Jesus Christ. They refuse to put the Lord Jesus Christ upon themselves. They refuse to live inside all the fullness of God through faith. Instead, the preachers teach them to labor and weep over sin and over the sins of others in an abject refusal to give thanks in and for all things. The preachers teach that they are, by definition, “being tested by God,” that God “refuses them” because of their flesh.
All Hiding and Pretending. Because the preacher is adept at wearing a mask of self-rightness, often anointed by the Holy Spirit (I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh – Acts 2), the congregation learns by his or her example to live by pretending their own rightness. The preacher boasts in self, allowing the audience to think that “I am seeking the will of God,” that “I will do His will and not my own.” In this way, they exalt human so-called “obedience.”
And so the Christians learn to wear together a masquerade of faces. They learn to pretend to one another that they do “measure up,” when everyone knows they do not. Into this masquerade, then, creeps identification with this world, believing the lies of the world, and the worship of human government and expertise.
All Accusation against God. If you were to show these preachers the wondrous verses of Paul’s gospel that connect us fully together with our Father, they would respond with a hard forehead – not here, not now, not you. That is, they accuse God of lying.
These preachers teach a God who knows evil, that God is in charge of or causes or brings forth evil. Believing that God made them falsely, they mutter inside the refusal to be guilty and executed. They are unthankful.
By calling themselves and their flock “sinners,” they refuse to know the good speaking of Jesus always sustaining them. They accuse God of not leading them in triumph, of not embedding their every step inside of love. They accuse God of being separate from His people.
Going Silent. As we know personally the words of this Jesus in our hearts, connecting us always in every way with our Father, causing us to walk as one together with Him, so we hear underneath the words of these preachers, if we are subjected to those words, every form of accusation against God and against His Word.
Time and again, I have heard the preacher read the words God speaks from the pages of their Bibles, and then turn and preach the very opposite of those words entirely upon the assumption that the serpent spoke the truth in the garden.
It would be good, I think, if these preachers and theologians, priests and apostles, bishops and seminary professors would simply go silent before God. But we know that even these are carried inside our precious Savior all the way through their opposition into thankfulness, all the way through death and into life.