VII. Messiah
God is the God who comes down. The Jewish people should have recognized this when Jesus came. The entire history of the Bible expresses that God is not contained in the heavens. Though we don’t find Him walking around on earth here and now, and we don’t say that God is everything like the pantheists, we must recognize that God has decided to make Himself known. It says in Genesis 3 that God walked in the Garden. It says about Abraham that God spoke to him, and that He visited him. It says that Jacob had a dream, and when he woke up he named the place “Bethel,” because God was there. It says that God appeared to Moses in a burning bush. Then later in the life of Moses God comes down upon Mount Sinai before the entire nation of Israel.
Throughout the whole of the Scripture we read about the God that comes down. Jesus was the full expression of God in human form. He was the Divine man. What is it about Jesus that we need to understand in relation to the kingdom of God? What we first need to understand is that God has set up His Kingdom as a theocracy. God rules over His kingdom. God is the one who reigns, and He shares His throne with no one. The idea of the Messiah is not simply a savior. The Messiah is to be the one who rules. He is supposed to be the King.
What we find in Jesus is the full embodiment of God. He has been given all authority because He forfeited all authority. It is by this that He has obtained His rightful place on the throne in the Kingdom of Heaven. After we’ve ventured this far into the Kingdom of God, I want to now go back to the beginning. We’ve looked at the battle between good and evil, light and dark, and now we need to understand why it is that we need a Messiah. God has made Himself known as the God that comes down, and therefore God will be the one to rule upon this earth.
Jesus is fully God, and fully man. He has the right to rule, not because He is God, but because He has been exalted by God the Father. This is why I use wording like, “He is the full embodiment of God.” It isn’t that a man has been exalted, but that God has somehow stuffed Himself into flesh and blood. Though Jesus is currently contained in the heavens (Acts 3:21), the Holy Spirit is not contained in the heavens. When Jesus went up, He did not leave us empty. He sent down His Spirit.
In every instance, we find that God makes Himself known by coming down. He came down to view the tower of Babel. He filled the prophets of old with the Holy Spirit – even before Pentecost. The Old Testament saints were not left without the Spirit of God. God has ever and always come down, and this needs to be recognized because we as human decide that we want to go up.
Too often we build our own towers and monuments to rival the heavens. We use worship, tongues, and other means to exalt, or work up the Spirit. Never on the basis of our worship, prayer, prophesying, incessant words, or endless babel (tongues) does the Spirit get worked up. The presence of God comes solely on the basis of Him coming down. We cannot work it up, for when we do this, we are very likely to be tapping into a realm of our soul – or even worse: to be stirring up demonic presence for the sake of “felling.” Our service unto God is not on the basis of a feeling, but on the basis of “the glory of God forever.”
We are often times too temporally minded. We don’t think of the big picture view. Even less often than thinking of the big picture, we think of eternity. We quote the Scriptures that say we are seated with Christ in heavenly places, and we know all of the right phrases, but then the reality of our lives is lived as though we must go up. Jesus was exalted by going down. He went down into the Jordan, down into death, and was raised up by the glory of the Father. When we strive to go up, whether by prayer or by works, we are outside of the Spirit. It is the wisdom of Satan to exalt self – and that is precisely what we do when we strive to go up in our own ability. Those that truly desire to go up – even up to Mount Zion – must first be found going down.
This is one of the greatest paradoxes of the faith. It is upon our waiting, our silence, and our going down that we do more, speak more, and are exalted higher. Those that wait on the Lord are those that do greater works than even the biggest names in Christendom. Those that are silent until called upon are those that speak more – even with using fewer words. Those that go down into death are those that are raised up by the same glory of the Father into resurrection glory.
For the lack of even these basic truths, we need to reexamine the faith. We need to go back to even the most elementary aspects of Christianity and review afresh. What was the purpose of the Messiah, anyway? Why did Jesus even come? And why did He do what He did? What is the reason and heart behind all of this?
The Fall
There has been no greater tragedy than the fall. Our perception of sin and depravity fail us. We continuously think self-oriented. Sin and depravity are not contained to humanity. The fall stretches out to the fabric of the cosmos itself. All of creation moans and groans. Everything has been taken out of order and out of sync. It is the eternal purpose of God to bring it all back together again.
When we’re describing the fall, we need to understand its character and nature. It goes beyond knowing right and wrong – good and evil. It goes beyond being bad people. It goes beyond being spiritually dead before God. It goes beyond being evil. The core nature of the fall is described in the very word. To fall from what? We have fallen from the Divine order. Since everything is out of sync, we are now in a realm of chaos. Chaos is not simply the lack of order. We best intuit chaos through things such as stress, trauma, and rigidity.
Sin is a condition. Death and sin are things that bind us moment by moment. Death cannot be defined as something that happens at the end of life. It is a moment-by-moment choice to choose life or choose death. Death is something that works in us to a deeper and deeper degree. It is another word that can’t be defined. We can only intuit the affects. Why are there some people who live to be in his or her nineties and still get out and enjoy life? Others barely make it into his or her fifties before they need a walker, are diagnosed with a disease like cancer, or need some other form of medical aid. The affect of death is to strain out life. Eventually our breath will no longer continue. We all become cadavers at some point.
This is true for the whole of creation. The entire thing is winding down. Death is taking a toll on creation itself. Animals are becoming extinct, trees and plants are bearing less fruit, the weather is becoming more intense, and we have discovered that even the amount of usable energy in the universe is being consumed (a thing called entropy). We need a Messiah as humans. But the truth is, Jesus’ death upon the cross has more power in it than to save us from hell.
Paul writes in Romans 5:13 that before the law was given, sin was in the world. Is that a statement of human depravity, or does he really mean that this whole world is infected? I know the obvious context is speaking of mankind. However, when we pair this with Ephesians 1, we find that Paul does have the thinking that all things are interconnected. In Ephesians 1:10, Paul makes the statement that it is not simply that humanity is to be brought under the one Head, Jesus Christ, but that the whole of creation is to be brought under that one Head.
The whole system and hierarchy that God had made and intended from the beginning has been upset. We aren’t living in a world that looks anything like the Garden of Eden. Everything has changed. By one man’s sin, the whole infrastructure collapsed. Now even the animals go according to their own way. When God had established it that everything be vegetarian, why do we now find carnivorous animals? There are even carnivorous plants. The whole thing has been capsized.
Understanding this view of everything being fallen helps us to understand the significance of humanity. It also helps us to understand the wickedness of sin. God is specific. He has a very specific order in the way that He made all things. We’ll look in a later chapter at how theocracy is only fully established when Jesus rules from Zion. Why would God pick that place? Why be so specific? Everything in God is specific. The result from the fall is that the whole thing that God has made is leaning and about to fall. It is like the Jenga game when we start pulling out the blocks. This is the result of sin. God has established one specific place, the Garden, in which He will be in perfect fellowship with mankind. He must rule from that one place that He has chosen. At the beginning it was called the Garden of Eden, but since the Flood He has chosen Zion and Jerusalem. Whether Jerusalem is in the location of Eden before the flood, I cannot say. Whether it is or is not, it does not aid or eliminate the place that God has chosen.
The Cross
Jesus’ death upon the cross is something bigger than humanity as well. Just as the fall was bigger, the salvation is bigger. Jesus did not simply come to save mankind. Though this statement is true that He does seek to save mankind, His goal was to restore all things. Peter has even said in Acts 3:21 that Jesus is contained in the heavens until the restoration of all things as spoken of in the prophets. Jesus’ death upon the cross was a monumental moment. It is not, however, everything. There is still a restoration coming. There is still a moment when mourning and crying flee away. There is still a time coming when darkness is cast out and we remember our tears no more.
I don’t in any way wish to make light or less of the cross. Quite the opposite is true. The cross is not a one-time event. It is the culmination of all of God’s events. Every moment is a cross. Whenever God works, He bears a cross. The cross of Christ was a powerful statement of the God who endures suffering. Any and every suffering that we would endure unto death for God’s sake (which we might define as “in obedience”) is a cross. Bearing our crosses before men releases the power of the cross.
Though the cross of Jesus has disarmed the powers of darkness, it has not obliterated them. They still remain until their final defeat. It is upon that final defeat that God rains down fire from heaven, and the only thing to follow is the judgment seat (see Revelation 20). The end of this world is the destruction of everything by fire. Fire has always represented cleansing and purging. God refines, and the symbol is always by fire.
The final defeat of the principalities and powers, and the refining of this earth, is the display made by Satan leading an army against Jerusalem for one last and final time. The war against Gog and Magog concludes this age. The last moment is a clash of the two powers: the cross versus violence. I am back and forth on whether I believe that the end of the age will be with literal fire. I am uncertain of how literal this fire is and how metaphoric it is of an ultimate purging. Either way, what we see demonstrated in Revelation 20 is the rule of God from Jerusalem. It is from that witness – the wisdom of God – that this world ends.
Every moment of God is a cross. From the inception of the creation to the New Heaven and New Earth, everything must be understood in light of a God that endures suffering. The whole creation goes through a Calvary experience, which then results in a resurrected creation (Revelation 21-22). Jesus suffered before even the foundations of the Earth were laid (Revelation 13:8, 1 Peter 1:20). Humanity needed to go through a cross, and so does everything else. This is the nature and pattern of God.
The Crown of Thorns
I’m sure we’ve all read the passage in Galatians where Paul reiterates the verse in Deuteronomy about how anyone who dies upon the “tree” is considered cursed. Paul makes the statement that in Christ’s death upon the cross, He became curse. He took up the curse, and therefore had victory over the curse through His resurrection. There is another statement made in Jesus taking up the curse. This is the statement of how He was crowned: with a crown of thorns.
When we read Genesis 3:17-19, we find that thorns are a part of the curse. Everything in the life of Christ seemed to be directed by the hand of the Father. If this is true, then why would thorns be the crown upon His head? Christ took the curse by even having a crown of thorn. Is there any crown more fitting for Him to have? Maybe something that we need to examine would be what the thorns represent.
In Matthew 7:15-20, Jesus gives a parable of good and bad fruit. He says that good fruit does not bear thorns. Nor does good fruit bear thistles. In such a manner, we may know false teachers by their fruit. So if thorns are a sign of bad fruit, then what shall we equate as bad fruit? I had thought that thorns were fruitlessness, but this isn’t so. Thorns represent bad fruit. Those that are dead do not produce fruit. So these are people that have been made alive by the calling of Christ, and yet are not bearing good fruit.
In the very next passage, Christ starts to explain how there will be many that say, “Lord, Lord.” The ones that Jesus turns away are the ones that bore bad fruit. So for Jesus to take up a crown of thorns, He isn’t taking something fruitless and making it fruitful. Jesus is taking the bad fruit and purifying it. He is making it holy. Think of the story of Jesus turning water into wine. The water from the Jordan was filthy. No one drank that. They had big jars to purify the water before anyone would even consider putting it to their lips. Yet Jesus didn’t send the water through the purification process. He simply said to put it in the jars and take some out. When it was taken out, it had changed to wine.
We have the same thing being reiterated within the crown of thorns. A faulty religion that is based on man’s ability is taken to death so that in resurrection it might be glorious. Though the pagan soldiers mocked Jesus by putting upon Him that scarlet robe and crown of thorns, the nations will one day bow the knee and worship Him. The religions of those nations that only bore bad fruit will be abolished and all nations will go to Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles (Isaiah 2:2, Zechariah 14:16).
But why would the nations have the sudden change in heart? God will work a wonder in their midst. The Jewish people that are sifted through all nations will one day be restored. Upon the return of their King, they will behold Him whom they have pierced. When they see that sight, they will weep in repentance. They will come to know their God. It is precisely in that moment that Israel will take up her priestly call to the nations. The crown of thorns is a symbol of Israel. They continually reject their own God so even the prophets have claimed that the generation sent into exile is the same that mumbled in the wilderness. Though they are currently that crown of thorns, that nation will one day be God’s crown of pure gold – a sign of divine glory.
In the crown of thorns, we find a symbol for all of our humanity that strives to know God and be godly on our own. It is explicitly said in Zechariah 4:6: not by might, nor by power, but by God’s Spirit. This is man apart from resurrection. Our own striving and ability is not enough. This is why Israel has constantly been in disobedience to God. It has very little to do with their rejection of Him. Their rejection of Him is an outworking of their desire to be independent. They don’t want to have the need of God. They would rather serve Him in their own strength. But that is not enough.
This is why when Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:5, He misquotes it. Deuteronomy 6:5 says to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, and strength. Jesus said to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind. It is not in our strength that we love God, but in His strength. But the Jews didn’t get it. So Jesus made an obvious misquotation purposefully to get their attention.
The crown of thorns upon Jesus’ head is deeply symbolic, and is also displayed in the cursed fig tree. In Matthew 21:19-20, Jesus cursed a fig tree and declared, “No one will ever eat from you again.” It withered instantly. The disciples were then astonished at how quickly it withered. What does this fig tree represent? Go back to Genesis 3. Adam and Eve learned that they were naked, and they sowed fig leaves together to make skirts. A fig leaf is curved in a way that it hides, or covers, fruit. For Adam and Eve to use the fig leaf is rich in meaning. The bad fruit that had been produced through the taking of the tree of knowledge of good and evil is quickly hidden by man’s efforts in making him a skit out of fig leaves.
Jesus cursed that tree. That barren fig tree that pretends to be good, but produces no good fruit is left for nothing but to be cut down and thrown into the fire. It is religion outside of God. An entire system had been made to bring people close to God – a system that made God’s Law into a formula instead of instruction. We can be guilty of this exact same thing in Christianity. We are not outside this possibility. Jesus cursed that fig tree and declared it shall never be eaten from again.
He took upon Himself a crown of thorns – something that should be humiliating and disgraceful. What was Jesus’ shame is our glory. What was His embarrassment is our delight. Because He went to death with that shame, we see that our shame too went to death in Him. We are going to be called upon to perform that same priestly work. We too must go to death shamefully and humiliated. We don’t bare our own shame – what shame is there to bear? Our shame has already been hung upon the cross. We bear the shame of Israel. We bear the shame of God’s people that are not God’s people.
We need to take up our own crown of thorns. We also will become curse. But there is something of encouragement here. Jesus cried out Eloi Eloi, lama sabachthani. Did God the Father turn His head away? Never. I think instead of understanding that God the Father turned away, we need to understand that there was no other moment in the life of Jesus that He obeyed more fully. This obedience would have actually drawn the Father’s face closer instead of further. His cry of, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” is to be understood in the same context that Gethsemane was anguish.
Jesus was not apart from the Father. He isn’t a coward. Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane doesn’t show cowardice. These are deep subjects that need to be probed. Why did Jesus seem to be so “scared” before going to the cross? Maybe it wasn’t fear at all. It is possible we misunderstand entirely. Gethsemane is no more Jesus being afraid than the cross is the Father looking away. Both are heresy. But more than heresy, these teachings are actually damaging to we that expect to endure to the end. What transacted in the Garden of Gethsemane is the same thing that transacted on the cross.
That same anguish of soul came upon Jesus. The sweat of blood was the very blood of redemption. Gethsemane was a cross before the cross. Jesus’ anguish, and His cry upon the cross, are best understood when we experience them. Words do not explain. This deep kind of wrestling needs to be experienced if it is to be understood. The Father was right alongside of Jesus the whole time. His face was more intently looking upon Jesus on that cross than ever before. Jesus bore His suffering through the eternal Spirit (Hebrews 9:14). He was fully surrounded by the other two aspects of the Godhead.
What I want to encourage you with is that when we take up our own crosses for the sake of Israel, we too will feel this same anguish. Take heart, though. Jesus never was alone. He and the Father were one. If that is not true at the moment of Him becoming curse, then it wasn’t true at the moment He spoke it. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Isn’t Jesus really expressing the heart of David here? Isn’t this a reference back to Psalm 22? For Jesus to make that cry was for Him to blow the whistle on all of those that surrounded and mocked. This wasn’t about Jesus being forsaken. This was about Jesus prophesying even on the cross. He is still preaching. He is still proclaiming life to the dead and freedom to the captive. Our deaths are not moments at the end of our lives. They are platforms to express the very heart of God. When we will die in such a way as to bring God’s message and bless them that curse us, then we are truly offering freedom to the captive and sight for the blind.
What was Gethsemane from the disciples’ eyes? They were asleep. When the time came that Jesus was taken, they all scattered. Not one of the disciples – except maybe John – saw Jesus upon the cross. What happened? Gethsemane is more than an anguish of soul because Jesus has to go to the cross. Something was transacting in the heavenly places that would cause Jesus anguish, but go completely unnoticed by the immature disciples. That same thing that caused Jesus to anguish was the very thing that when manifested caused the disciples to flee.
Gethsemane comes before the cross. If we liken the cross to our time of tribulation, then Gethsemane would be that time of anguish before it comes. Where I live, you can tell when a big storm is coming. You can smell it. The wind changes, the air becomes saturated with water, and the temperature drops. I believe that this same thing will take place before the time of Jacob’s Trouble (Jeremiah 30:7). Those who are mature will sense it. Those who are not yet mature will be able to sleep as though nothing is on the horizon. The very thing that caused Jesus agony was completely unnoticed by the disciples. I think we can learn a lot from this.
We are increasingly coming to a time when hell will break out. I have seen multiple people that desire to make timelines and charts. I don’t feel as though this should be done. I was talking to my dad about these things, and he asked when I think they will come. The result was that he seemed to think, “Well, if I have a few more years, then I guess I’ll continue to live in luxury for now.” There are some people who are Hezekiah. They hear that destruction and devastation is coming, but then are happy because it won’t be during their lifetime.
When we make tables, charts, graphs, timelines, etc to display to people what to expect and when, we run the risk of cheapening the very message of God. Those who are truly in tune with the Spirit will suffer Gethsemane. They will know when it is coming upon them. Corrie Ten Boom once spoke in Africa and told the saints there a story from her childhood. Her father asked her, “When I send you to go on the train, do I give you the ticket three weeks ahead of time?” No, he gave her the ticket when it was time for her to go. Likewise, God gives us the strength necessary to endure when the time comes. Gethsemane is not a time of anguish because we’re afraid. It is a time of anguish because we are not afraid.
Christus Victor
When you study the early teachings of Christianity, you find that people did not teach that Jesus died for me. The teaching of the early Church fathers was that Jesus died to destroy the power of the devil. By His resurrection from the dead, He fulfilled that age-old prophecy in Genesis 3: a son of Eve would crush the head of the serpent. Christ was victorious over the power of the devil. And what is the devil’s power? We’ve expressed it over and over again. It is darkness: “secrets” and hidden things.
Have you ever had an older sibling or a friend that held knowledge over you – “I know something you don’t know?” It is easy to be tricked. It is easy to be manipulated. The power of the devil lies solely in manipulation, force, intimidation, lies, etc. Jesus wasn’t intimidated. He wasn’t manipulated. He went down into death. No one took His life; He gave it willingly. And because Jesus gave His life willingly, it was His life to then take back up. The devil thought that he had victory. Satan assumed that he had overpowered the Son of God. In this we see the two wisdoms. The one results in death, the other results in life.
How is it that we can gain victory over the devil? It is by taking up that same cross that Jesus bore. We are more than over comers because we love not out lives unto death. A power is released when we stop following the lie of Satan. When we humble ourselves even unto death, and we take up our own crosses and follow Christ, resurrection power comes into our beings and we have authority as well as strength to overcome all that is in the world. And note that this doesn’t necessarily mean that we are free from persecution. We might be tortured. But that isn’t the point. Our freedom and our lives are not lived on this earth; they are first and foremost wrought in heavenly places. They are going to kill us, and that will be our crown.
The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil
When Jesus calls us to take up our cross and follow Him, what is it that He implies? When we look at the Garden, we see two trees. Man ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now mankind is bound to that tree. Every single one of us is born under that curse. We cannot be free from it on our own strength and power. Jesus, being born as a man, came under that same oppression and curse. He was bound to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
When we look at the end of the Bible, Revelation 22 (the last chapter) talks about only one tree: the tree of life. Where did the tree of the knowledge of good and evil go? It rests at Calvary. Jesus bore His life upon the tree of the knowledge of good and evil so that humanity might follow Him in doing the same. On the other side of that cross is resurrection – the tree of life.
If we have died upon that tree of the knowledge of good and evil and been resurrected by the fruit of the tree of life, then why would we continue to live according to the knowledge of good and evil? Why do we continue to live bound by sin? Why do we continue to live as though there is no change? We might believe Jesus’ words about how much we’re loved and how forgiving the Father is, but why can’t we believe the words of Jesus on how we’re able to overcome sin? Jesus said to the woman caught in adultery, “Go and sin no more.” Was He mocking her? Or does she actually have choice and power to not sin?
If we only view the tree of life as a symbol for the end of the age, then we will lack the resurrection reality here and now. We cannot fulfill our mandate as the Church without this. We cannot display the manifest wisdom of God to the principalities and powers, and we cannot drive the Jew to jealousy by anything less than resurrection. How are we to do either of these things if we’re playing the same game they are? Our need of a Messiah comes down to this: we are fallen and cannot get up.
God’s requirement is that we would be a light to the world. We cannot let our light so shine before men if that light is either hidden or nonexistent. Jesus is the light of the world. Outside of Him, we have no light. He must dwell inside of us. Our need of a Messiah is more than an issue of king or redeemer in the sense of saving us from our enemies and oppression. There is a greater enemy than the Philistines. There is a greater oppression than Pharaoh. To miss this is to miss the faith.
The Kingdom of God can only consist of a people that are like God. Any moral defect or character flaw cannot stand in His light. Just imagine it. What will happen we see Him as He is? Anything in us that is racist will squeal. Anything in us that is manipulative cannot remain. We must go through an ultimate refinement. That ultimate refinement is nothing short of death itself. The wages of sin are death. No one goes into the next life without passing through those wages. We either die upon our own crosses, or we pass through death at the end of our lives. As Tozer has said, “One thing about a man carrying his cross is certain: he is not coming back.”
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