“that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us”
(John 17:21, NKJV)
The readers of these teachings will start to wonder why the image of the sculpture that appeared in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream still appears at the top of this teaching. Remember – we worked through all five earthly kingdoms in detail, and mapped each one out in its historic context. Then we started describing the sixth kingdom, namely the eternal kingdom of Christ (Eph. 5:5; 2 Pet. 1:11; Rev. 1:9). To understand this kingdom in which and through which all things must come to completion, we had to investigate the period before time, since we have very little knowledge of it, and since no specific portion of Scripture deals with it. For this reason, we had to look at different ways in which we can read the Bible exegetically, and in the last teaching we applied some of these reading strategies, and came to amazing insights about how the period before time and the completion of all things are woven into one another.
We concluded the previous teaching with three themes that warrant further unpacking, namely the importance of the garden as metaphor, the role of the cherubs before paradise, and the role of the primordial (pre-creation) waters. We also come to know God as “a revealer of secrets” (Dan. 2:47), and indeed: “everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened” (Matt. 7:8). This remains a very important truth: “To conceal a matter, this is the glory of God, to sift it thoroughly, the glory of kings.” (Prov. 25:2, NJB).
Do not miss the great truth that is hidden here: “To conceal a matter” = (THIS IS) “the glory of God.” The phrase “a matter,” or as other translations note, “a thing,” is the Hebrew word dabar, which is the Greek word logos.
[The manifestation of the Bride can only occur after the manifestation of Jesus in the flesh, and did occur when the Bride manifested from His side. The entirety of our understanding of Logos and Rhema, of Jesus and His Christ, is thus a New Testament phenomenon. The word word in the Old Testament is thus not as set as in the New Testament. The dynamic Hebraic equivalent of logos in the Old Testament is dabar, and for rhema it is millah. Yet both words (and a few others, like omer) carry the genes of the others, since both Jesus and His Christ were still in a pre-incarnation state when the word word is used.]
In the light of this one could translate Prov. 25:2 in four exegetic ways:
- It is the glory of God to conceal LOGOS, but the glory of kings is to search out LOGOS.
- It is the glory of God to conceal LOGOS, but the glory of kings is to search out RHEMA.
- It is the glory of God to conceal RHEMA, but the glory of kings is to search out LOGOS.
- It is the glory of God to conceal RHEMA, but the glory of kings is to search out RHEMA.
Take some time to ponder the differences of each statement – they carry enormous implications! The fact that all four are possible, and yet are so different from the others, means only one thing: regardless of what angle or perspective you take on it, the end goal of all things is the reconciliation of all things. And: the active process that underlies and guides this, is the fact that it involves searching!
The spiritual foundation of each of these interpretation possibilities is Jesus’s remarkable prayer in John 17:21: “that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us …” The foundation of something being a mystery, and the accompanying search, is immensely important for the restoration of the glory. Selah on this.
2 Thess. 1:10 speaks of “when He comes, in that Day, to be glorified in His saints”, but the DBY-translation is perhaps most correct: “when he shall have come to be glorified in his saints”. Col. 1:27’s “hope of [the restoration of] glory” is made possible by the “mystery” of “Christ in me.”
When “the mystery of God” and “my tabernacle,” as Job 29:4 notes, are folded into one another, the glory of God manifests WITHIN me. The word mystery in Hebrew is the word sôd, which in its pictorial origin means “a level place, foundation” (Ancient Hebrew Lexicon of the Bible). Thus, the foundation of unity is the knowledge that I in you, you in me, us in Jesus, Jesus in God, God in us, is the cradle of what God has enabled. This comes into being when we start searching for Him. In 1 Sam. 13:14 it is said: “The Lord has sought for Himself a man after His own heart …” The entire gospel is motivated by Luke 19:10: “for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost”. In John 4:23, where Jesus speaks about the Holy Spirit that will come to live within us, we also see that “the Father is seeking such to worship Him”. Thus, in His full manifestation, God seeks you. The process and procedures of how He seeks you, where He seeks you, or the details and grief of the search itself, is part of the mystery of God, something we can only guess the scope of. The depth of God’s attempts at coming closer to man is for instance seen in a Scripture like Deut. 1:33, and makes one realise how little you understand of His tireless attempts: He explains to Israel in the desert that it was He “who went in the way before you to search out a place for you to pitch your tents, to show you the way you should go, in the fire by night and in the cloud by day”.
Keeping this in mind it is now very easy to see why parousia, or the appearances of the Lord Jesus, are so important, and that we should continually expect Him in this way! In fact – He still largely appears to those “who eagerly wait for Him” (Heb. 9:28).
Man’s main task and function is thus to seek God. You are not seeking Him because He is missing, or cannot be found, but because the process of seeking is that through which the restoration of the glory is made manifest – it is the foundation of the mystery of before time! Yet this frightening truth that Scripture presents to us is found in both the Old and New Testaments:
- “For the people do not turn to Him … nor do they seek the Lord of hosts.” (Isa. 9:13)
- “But who do not look to the Holy One of Israel, nor seek the Lord!” (Isa. 31:1)
- “…. but they do not return to the Lord their God, nor seek Him for all this.” (Hos. 7:10)
- “There is none who understands; there is none who seeks after God.” (Rom. 3:11; Ps. 14:1-3).
This reality once again has one realise that because of this fact man is not able to know God. You cannot seek Him if He did not seek you out first! Realise the absolute grace that is already contained within this idea. As with the dark primordial waters of the Beginnings, no light could be generated from this “abyss” (ABP) – it needed the Spirit of God to move over the waters: “The Spirit of God was moving (hovering, brooding) over the face of the waters.” (AMP).
Along with the prophet Isaiah (40:12-14) one can rightly ask: “Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand measured heaven with a span and calculated the dust of the earth in a measure? Weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance? Who has directed the Spirit of the Lord, or as His counselor has taught Him? With whom did He take counsel, and who instructed Him, and taught Him in the path of justice? Who taught Him knowledge, and showed Him the way of understanding?” Actually, the answer to this is a rhetorical question – all initiative came from and through God.
But how can anyone then seek God? It is clear – only if the Spirit of God becomes the incubation space in which someone is set apart. Jesus explains to the disciples in John 14:4 that they already know the way back to God: “And where I go you know, and the way you know.” The disciple Thomas is however honest when he answers that he and the rest do not know: “Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?” (verse 5). This mystery makes clear that we do indeed know the way to before time, but that we’ve forgotten how to get there! The section from verse 6 to 9 is so well-known that one does not notice the meaning within it: “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; and from now on you know Him and have seen Him.’ Philip said to Him, ‘Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father …’”
According to Strong the phrase “so long” in the verse above does not refer to the three and a half years that the disciples had known Jesus, but points to vastness: long, many, much. To understand that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life, is to understand that He is “the copy and shadow of the heavenly things” (Heb. 8:5).
Realise the importance – how God reproduced Himself fully in His Son, and how He became the Example, “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible … All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.” (Col. 1:15-17). Then He transferred the Spirit of God to the twelve disciples (John 20:22). Apart from the fact that the disciples/apostles received it, there were 70 sent out that certainly also received the Holy Spirit, as well as the 120 people who were gathered when the Holy Spirit was poured out, and the 3000 people who were added to the ecclesia (Acts 1:15; 2:5; 2:41). After this, the Spirit of the Lord was transferred through the laying on of hands, and was established in human tabernacles, up to today.
What is then the Way with which we return to God, and thus are able to seek Him? The answer lies in Eph. 3:20: “Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power [= Christ – 1 Cor. 1:24] that works in us.” The prophecy of Ezek. 38:16 has become true, in dramatic terms: “It will be in the latter days … that the nations may know Me, when I am hallowed in you …”
- Selah: Try to internalise the final paragraph.
- Read: 2 Thess. 2-3; 1 Tim. 1-6; 2 Tim. 1
- Memorise: 2 Thess. 2:1 (what would this Scripture mean within the context above?)
