The Cross 02

The Cross - Des Walter

Now let us go back to Hebrews 2:10, "For it was an act worthy of God and fitting to the divine nature that he, for whose sake and by whom all things have their existence, in bringing many sons into glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect, i.e. bring to maturity the human experience necessary for his perfect equipment for his office as high priest, through suffering." That was CHRIST. He was made perfect through sufferings. Where was the suffering? Not simply at the Cross but they began when Adam took the fruit of the tree of good and evil. Now the earth was cursed but not the man. Oh, by the way, we had better look over here at Timothy 2:11 first, because people say to me, "Adam sinned so how can he be CHRIST who never sinned?"

Let the Apostle answer the question for us. Paul is speaking to Timothy his son in the faith, "Let the women learn in silence with all subjection". Hasn’t the church hammered that one. "but I suffer not a woman to teach nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence." So, what is Paul talking about here. Is it true that he has a dislike for women, saying they are not to teach in the church? NO NO, that is not what he is saying.

He is saying, "Don’t let the SOUL preach!" Of course, that is different all together. In some Churches you have a man standing in the pulpit, who wants to be called "father" but he is dressed like your mother, and He is just a LIVING "SOUL" ( the female aspect of mankind,) expressing itself. And God said, "Get Him out of there! HE’S NOT SUPPOSED TO TEACH."

And how many preachers do we have in the pulpit that still minister out of the soulish realm? And the soul is still teaching and preaching. That’s what Paul is talking about, not that you women can’t teach or preach, not that you have to be silent, and can’t say anything in church, no, no, but it better not be out of the soul, because God says look at the problems "Eve" caused.

"For Adam was first formed, then Eve, and ADAM WAS NOT DECEIVED". ADAM WAS NOT DECEIVED. Underline it if you want to. He WAS NOT DECEIVED! "but the woman being deceived was in the transgression". So you can see that I am not attributing sin to Christ! Can you hear that? Paul tells me, Adam was not in the transgression. It was not the Spirit that sinned, it was the soul, and that is why you always read in the new testament concerning, "the salvation of the soul", "save our souls" - SOS. Why? Because your SOUL NEEDS SAVING AND NOT YOUR SPIRIT. So Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.

You see this is a foundation that needs to be laid in your understanding, before you will understand the cross, so we need to hear the VOICE OF GOD and not the words of man. You need to understand these things, how man functions, how sin came into the world. Sin came into the world through the soul and not through the spirit. And you see, when God created man, He created Him SPIRIT in his own likeness and image, MALE AND FEMALE, or SPIRIT and SOUL united as one.

And if God is Spirit, we must also be Spirit, having come out of God, but after six thousand years of human history we have become convinced that what we see in the mirror is "me," and this is not true. You cannot see me for I am Spirit. You see the body that I live in, and that is what the government identifies as being me. They identify your "body" by your birth date, parents and photograph. But they can’t identify your Spirit because they cannot see it. But we need to develop our spiritual identity in this life, because that is what cannot die but will continue on. If you have a spiritual identity in this life, you will have a spiritual identity in the next life. For we are part of a "Melchizedek order" and therefore there is no beginning and there is no end. Hallelujah!

Heb 2:14, "For as much then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also Himself likewise took part of the same." He was flesh and blood. Jesus was as much a man as I am a man. He could not be any more M-A-N than what he was, because he was flesh and blood. So we need to understand this because otherwise, Christianity is totally confusing. The Gospel that has been preached by Christendom all over the world says, "Give your heart to Jesus and confess your sins, then believe He died for your sins on the cross, and ask Jesus into your heart and you are born again and a son of God." These are the doctrines of men. How can a mortal man suddenly become a Son of God just by giving assent to certain facts?

God never did create a "Mortal Man." God only ever created ONE SON and that was in the beginning. Gen 1:26. That is the only Son God created and he was neither mortal nor was he physical. Here is our problem, we think that MAN IS A BODY and simply "Flesh and Blood." Eph 2:10, says "You are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus". When were we created? In the beginning when God created his only Son, for every other man was IN HIM. This means that the identity of every man must be the same as the one from which we have come, and that is Christ, for you were created in Him.

Who or what is Christ? The word Christ is translated from the Greek word "CHRISTOS" and means "Anointing." The anointing is the likeness and the image of God, giving us the ability to manifest God in this world. It allows us the ability to bring the invisible God down into the visible world and to make Him known to men. Christ is not the "Name" of any person, because it belongs to the spiritual realm from which all men have come, and not the physical material realm.

So, in Heb.10:5 it says here, "Wherefore, when He (Jesus Christ) cometh into the world he says, "Sacrifice and offerings you did not require, but a body hast Thou prepared me". God never required that men should offer sacrifices at all. Jer 7:22. But, you gave me a body! Why did God give him a BODY? The answer is, because GOD IS SPIRIT and so if he wants to express himself in THIS PHYSICAL WORLD, it is essential that he has a BODY. From creation MAN was always intended to be the DWELLING PLACE and the expression of God.

Man expresses what "he" is through his body, but most people have never yielded their BODY to be an expression of God. When Jesus Christ came into the world he said, "I come to do thy will O God." The only sacrifice God is interested in today is a LIVING SACRIFICE, and not one that is DEAD. Paul says we should, "Present our BODIES as a living sacrifice unto God which is our spiritual worship." Otherwise we can never fulfil the purpose for which our body has been given to us.

So, if I believe I am an alcoholic I will get drunk, because I will express what an alcoholic is. If I believe I am a sinner then that is what I will express through my body. Isn’t that right? You keep telling a child, "You’re bad, and you will never be any good," and what will they do?

They will be bad because to them it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. So now we understand, GOD WANTS YOUR BODY, through which to express Himself, and not for you to express what you think YOU are!
 
This is a truth Israel never understood, for thy offered the BLOOD and bodies of animals to God, but never made their own bodies available to him, through which to express himself. But when Jesus came he made his body available saying, "In the volume of the Book it is written of me, I come to express thy will O God." God did not desire BLOOD SACRIFICE at all, but wanted a BODY that would be a "living sacrifice," and not a sacrifice that was DEAD.

Okay, turn back to Ezekiel, chapter 16. I haven’t got time to go through this chapter. However I would like to, because it is a very interesting chapter revealing the Jewish or Hebrew concept as a superior nation that enjoyed a very special relationship with God. All the other nations were considered to be heathen. One day two heavenly visitors called on Abraham telling him they were going to destroy Sodom and Gomorra. Abraham pleaded with them but in the end he was content to trust God.

We tend to read the Bible as if it were just a history book instead of bringing a spiritual message to us today. Fire in the Bible speaks to us of the cleansing power of God which is not destructive. So religious people like to dwell on God destroying these evil cities. We read of their destruction by fire, but the preachers never tell you the end of the story, because they believe it is dangerous to preach GRACE.

In Ezek 16:47 the Prophet tells this chapter He tells Jerusalem that they were WORSE than Sodom and Gomorrah. He said one day you will see that I am restoring them to their former glory. Hallelujah! The Grace of God hath appeared. Okay, Chapter 16, verse 1. "The word of the Lord came to me saying, Son of man cause Jerusalem to know her abominations and say, Thus saith the Lord God unto Jerusalem; Thy birth and thy nativity is of the land of Canaan; thy father was an Amorite, and thy mother was a Hittite". Listen to this. This is not a history book. But Israel thought they were the chosen of God because Abraham was their Father. But God reminds them concerning their natural ancestry.

In Matt 23:9 Jesus tells us, "Call no man your Father upon the earth, for ONE is your Father (God) which is in heaven." Our natural generation has little to do with our true origin, For this reason people in every land pray saying, OUR FATHER which art in heaven!

He said to Israel: Your father was an Amorite, and your mother was a Hittite, and that is why you have the problems you have, because of what you believe about your origin. And yet, when Jesus came they kept saying, "We are of our father Abraham". And what did Jesus say? "You could have fooled me. Abraham loved me, but you want to kill me, so how can you be his children?" Alright. So you see, Israel came out of a heathen father and a heathen mother, but where did we come from? Can you keep your finger there again.

Turn to Galatians. Like I say, if we put these verses together where they belong, they always mean far more than if we just read them independently. We are talking about our origin. We are talking about our mother here. Do you know who your mother is? Well, I'm going to tell you.

This is Gal 4:25, "For this Hagar" (which was the Egyptian slave woman that Abraham took to bear what he thought was going to be his heir), "is Mt. Sinai in Arabia and answers to Jerusalem, which is now, and is in bondage with her children". This is true even today! "But Jerusalem, which is above, is free, which is the mother of us all". Come on, you need to underline that one. That is your mother, JERUSALEM, WHICH IS ABOVE.
 
The "Jerusalem which is above" was the city that Abraham looked for. It says here he was a pilgrim and he was looking for a city. What kind of a city was Abraham looking for? "A city that has foundations and whose builder and maker is God". What does a "City" speak to us of? In the natural it speaks to us of the center of commerce and commercial activity.

So Jerusalem, which is "above," must be the centre of GOD’S ACTIVITY. And where is the center of all divine activity? Christendom will tell you that it is in a beautiful place up in the sky called "heaven." But this is not true, for the divine activity is centred IN YOU! YOU ARE GOD'S CITY! And all divine activity is centred in you. Whatever God is doing in this world, even in terms of bringing all the nations unto Himself, will be done through a PEOPLE! WE ARE THAT PEOPLE! YOU ARE THAT CITY!

YOU ARE THE HEAVENLY JERUSALEM!
The "Heavenly Jerusalem" is the feminine side of God through which he births his sons. Just as Sarah was the vehicle through which the promised seed was to come. Isaac was the natural seed but Christ was the SPIRITUAL SEED.

This is where God's center is. This is where His temple is. This is where His throne is, and from that throne he is functioning today. YOU ARE THE PEOPLE OF GOD! Do you hear that?

Go back to Ezek 16:4. "And as for thy nativity, in the day that thou wast born, your navel was not cut". What's he talking about? See, we have got to get beyond the ink on the paper. We read that and say, "Ah, poor kid". But what is the spirit trying to say to us? We cannot be connected to any earthly origin or it must of necessity pollute the pure stream of LIFE that flows from God.

It means he was tied to his mother, that is, the umbilical cord, if that is not cut, you will continue to be fed from the natural realm, and remain a part of your mother and never be free. God was telling Israel, you and your mother are going to remain one, and she was a Hittite. You want to be a Son of God? Well, then you better let God cut the umbilical cord connecting you to any human origin. How can we be a part of the Melchisedek Priesthood if we are tied to any earthly origin. Melchisedek is without FATHER and MOTHER and without beginning or end.

Abraham is coming back from the battle of the kings and somebody meets him called Melchisedek, who was the King of PEACE, and not the king of war. Abraham had been out there fighting and he comes back and meets the King of PEACE. Do you realise that God has ways of doing things that we haven't dreamed about yet. When He wanted to deliver Israel from the land of Egypt, God didn't give them all an AK-47 rifle. God didn't train them in jungle warfare or whatever, but he released the nation of Israel from Egypt without firing a shot.

They walked free from their captors, and not even a dog could bark against them. That is the KING OF PEACE. The wars and all the fighting in the world are not our problem. Jesus told us not to resist evil, the reason being that evil has no reality and there is only ONE POWER in the universe, and that is GOD. Man is functioning out of a false sense of identity that says, "I want, I need, I'll have to get".

And so, let's go on in Ezekiel, "Thy navel was not cut, neither wast thou washed in water to supple thee, and you were not swaddled at all. None eye pitied thee, to do any of these things unto thee, to have compassion upon thee, but you were cast out into the open field to the loathing of thy person in the day that thou was born." Beloved, if you can't identify with that you are not honest. Haven't we all groaned and been discouraged by our natural heritage and what we believed ourselves to be. I can tell you I was. When I was at school I felt like I wasn't going to make it. It was all too hard for me. And, as I grew up beyond that and went to work, I believed everybody else out there was bigger than me, better than me, and I believed I was inferior to everybody else.

This is what the Prophet is talking about. It was like you were in an open field when you were born. But I want to tell you something. Psalm 139 tells me that when you were in your mother's womb, Father moulded your being. He brought the parts of your being together when there was nothing there, and He formed you for Himself.

And when you were born, you did not come out into some cold, sterile ward with a smell of disinfectant around you - Father was there with His loving open arms and said, "Come on, you are my Son. You're my Daughter. I made you for myself, and I have a tremendous plan for your life"! Ah, but we forgot that didn't we, and went out like the prodigal son to make a life for ourselves. Let's go on a bit further, otherwise we are not going to get through this. I want you to look now at Ezekiel, chapter 36.

GOD’S RESCUE PROGRAM
Ezekiel 36:22, "Therefore say to the house of Israel, thus saith the Lord God; I do not this for your sakes, O house of Israel, but for mine holy name's sake, which ye have profaned among the heathen wherever you went. And I will sanctify my great name, which was profaned among the heathen, which ye have profaned in the midst of them; and the heathen shall know that I am the Lord, saith the Lord God, when I shall be sanctified IN YOU before their eyes".

Please ponder the words for they express so much. But you may say, "This was for Israel and not us today". We are certainly not natural Israel, but WE ARE THE ISRAEL OF GOD and ABRAHAM’S SEED. (Gal 3:16,19) We are those that God has called unto Himself to be what natural Israel could never be. We are that HOLY NATION. We are a KINGDOM OF PRIESTS. We are those things NOW. So, He says, "I am going to sanctify Myself in you before the eyes of the heathen". Now, how is He going to do that? I mean, haven't we all sinned? Haven't we all done all sorts of things that have violated the Law of God putting us under the curse of God?? Well now listen, and I will show you how He is doing it.

Verse 24, "I will take you from among the heathen and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you to your own land". The first thing he needs to do is to separate us from the "heathen" in the world. What's your own land? This does not involve some "rapture" lifting us physically on to "cloud nine," leaving the sinners to endure awful punishment here on earth! NO, Paul tells us, "He has raised us up and made us to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus N-O-W." Our feet do not leave the earth, but our consciousness functions in the spiritual world. So what is this land into which God is gathering us.

You are the heavens and the earth. That is what you are. God says, "I will bring you into your OWN LAND, which I have given you. At the moment your "land" or body is controlled by the natural mind, unless it has been renewed in the Holy Ghost. Did you know that? You get a little pain, "Ooo, I think I've got cancer". You blow your nose three times, "I think I've got hay-fever". And you get it, because your mind controls your body. But God says, I am going to give you back your own land, and you can get rid of the enemies within, that have oppressed you. But the question is HOW is God going to accomplish such a thing.

Verse 25, listen to this, "Then I will sprinkle clean water upon you". I thought He was going to get a lamb and kill it or a bullock or something. Surely He must want blood to be shed, because He is going to sanctify Himself IN YOU! He says, "I will tell you what I am going to do. I am going to sprinkle clean water upon you and you shall be clean". Can you hear this? He says here that "you SHALL be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you". God is not saying, "I want you to quit being an idolater, and stop sinning and be good". NO! he says, "I am going to sprinkle the clean water on you".

What do you think He is doing today? He is sprinkling the CLEAN WATER OF THE PURE RIVER OF LIFE on you. It is the clean and pure water of the WORD, beloved! This is not "water" that man has contaminated with his carnal thinking, that has no power to cleanse us from all our filthiness. This involves no list of Do’s and Don’ts but just a simply statement, "I'm going to sprinkle clean water on you and that CLEAN WATER will make you clean from all your filthiness"! Come on, this is truth, and God is cleansing you right now as you hear his voice speaking the pure Word. It is taking away from you that sense of "Woe is me for I am undone". That sense of "Oh God, I'm a dirty rotten sinner and please, forgive me?" He is taking all that from you, so you can stand up in the presence of God and say, "My Father, my Lord, and my God"!

Verse 26, He says, "I will put a new heart in you. I'll give you a new heart, and a new Spirit will I put in you. And I will take away the stony heart". You get a transplant out of this! You think man was the first to think of that? God was the first one to transplant hearts! Of course he is not speaking of the pump that circulates blood to your body! He said, "I will give you a new heart", because the heart is the centre of man. The heart is that out of which we function. It is the soul of man. That is what the heart is, and the heart determines how you live. If you have a hard, stony heart, then you will be angry and you will be a destructive person in your life.

The NEW heart God has for us is a heart of LOVE, that will allow you to love your enemies, and to LOVE GOD. It will extend Grace to all and condemn none. That is the kind of heart God will give you. I will give you a heart of love that will bind you together like you have never been bound together before. I will give you a heart that won't leave any gaps in the seats when you fellowship, because you will want to be together. Then you will understand, "That there is a bit of me in you, and there is a bit of you in me". The Spirit that is in you, is the same Spirit in me, and your Father is my Father. Come on, WE ARE ONE!

He says in verse 27, "And I will put my Spirit in you and cause you to walk in my statues and keep my judgements and do them". This is the Spirit of the Living God. No longer will we be LIVING SOULS as ADAM became, but we will be LIFE GIVING SPIRITS able to quicken the dead. And He said, "YOU WILL LIVE OUT OF THAT SPIRIT, because I will put that Spirit IN YOU"! The Spirit that activates God, THAT IS GOD, I will put in you. That will make you "Gods," under the Most High God. We won't replace God. Don't run away with that crazy notion. That is what people out there try and tell us, because they think this is blasphemy, just like the Jews in Jesus day, who tried to kill him for the same reason. Jesus upset them when he said, "I and my Father are one". Jn 10:30.

"I will put my Spirit in you and cause you to walk in my statutes and you will keep my judgements and do them". This is not writing Ten Commandments on a piece of stone. This is not God writing them on the wall and saying, "this is the law I want you to keep". God is not saying that here. He says, "I will put my Spirit in you and you WILL walk in my ways." You will not have to try to walk in my ways, because my Spirit will function in you and you WILL WALK in the ways of God. Can you hear this? For this is the gospel, and we have not even mentioned S-I-N nor have we spoken about sacrifice at all. Now, you can begin to understand why I am telling you all this before I talk about the cross. Beloved we need to understand this.

And He says here in verse 28, "And you will dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers and ye shall be my people and I will be your God". Isn't this good stuff? Is it doing you good? Ah, the struggle that I had in my life to get rid of all that stuff we call sin. I struggled against my bad habits and failures because I did not want to continue to do them. I was like Paul who said," The things I want to do, I am unable to do, but the things that I do not want to do, these are the things that I find myself doing." God help me! "How can I be delivered from this body of death?" Then Paul says, "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord".