I heard a word and you know how we get called Generation X and I was thinking about it.
On the treasure map X marks the treasure and the Lord is saying we're His treasure and
we just need to open up and He'll fill us with His gifts and His blessings and our treasure
will come out through the world to bless others, to bring them to Jesus and we need to walk
in that.
And we're the X's of the treasure.
I'm going to talk about the thunder of God's passion.
Second Corinthians chapter 8 verse 9, very powerful verse, a summary verse.
Paul's theology could be summed up if you will in this short passage, a very powerful
passage.
He says, for you know the grace of our Lord Jesus, that though He was rich, yet for your
sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich.
I'm going to read that again.
We're going to look at each phrase of this.
He says, for you know the grace of our Lord Jesus, that though Jesus was rich, what a
great thing.
That Jesus in eternity past was rich.
That's an understatement isn't it?
Yet for our sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich.
There's three key phrases here that sums Paul's life mission and his theology.
Number one, and they're all connected by the way, because you'll never understand the final
one, the richness that you have in Christ Jesus until you understand the other ones.
The first phrase in the grace of God and understanding the doctrine of grace is that Jesus Christ
was rich.
We're going to look at that in a few moments.
That Jesus Christ, the uncreated God, the second person of the Trinity, the Spirit of
God testifies truly of Him.
He was very, very rich.
He was a very wealthy king, in the eternal councils and in the fellowship of the Godhead
in eternity past.
He was very wealthy.
He was a king.
Then the next phrase we're going to look at for just a few moments.
That He became poor or that through His poverty, it seems almost unthinkable to say the phrase
His poverty when you're addressing or dialoguing about the person of Christ Jesus.
His poverty, it's unthinkable.
If the angels could have seen this before the worlds were made, they could have never
have believed that of the Lord Jesus, it could be said one day, His poverty.
Inconceivable that He could ever, even for a moment in time, dwell in poverty.
And then the final statement, that you became rich.
You became rich.
You will never know how rich you are until you know how poor He became.
And you'll never really know how poor He became until you know how rich He was originally.
It's all connected.
And the final sentence, the takeaway sentence, is that you became rich.
And there's many, many dimensions to this.
I couldn't begin to exhaust it, even to outline the dimensions of how we've been made rich
in Christ Jesus.
But I'll give a few thoughts on it in a moment.
But these three sentences together, these three massive themes of truth, I mean each
one of them, an entire volumes could be written on each one of these three massive lines of
truth, these divine themes.
Paul introduces these three themes with the phrase in verse 9, for you know the grace
of our Lord Jesus.
He says that this is what the grace of God is summed up in, these three themes.
You don't have to use the language of these three themes, but in the essence, this is
where the grace of God is.
This is where people are made powerful in the knowledge and in the revelation of these
three things.
He says, you know the grace.
You know, and he means by know.
He goes, not just that you have intellectual information, although it begins with intellectual
information.
I'm not in any way putting down educating the mind in the Word of God.
We have a full-time Bible school in our city, in Kansas City.
I believe in educating the mind.
Sometimes folks I'll talk to and they think, well, you're kind of putting that down.
I go, no, I'm really big on that.
It just doesn't stop with the education of the intellect.
When it talks about knowing the grace of God, it means far more than intellectual awareness.
It means an experiential knowledge of divine power.
To know grace means when divine concepts, when divine concepts enter into the human
heart energized by the Holy Spirit, it literally releases power on the inside of your inner
man.
It really does.
Some of you are familiar with the first, the passage in Ephesians 3.16 where it says, we're
strengthened by divine might on the inside in the inner man.
The might of God makes powerful the inner man, the emotional chemistry of human beings.
That's what we want.
I want the might of God to make mighty my emotional chemistry.
Ephesians 3.16, that's what that prayer's about.
It's been a favorite prayer for many years, an intercessory prayer for others, and I pray
for myself.
God, take my weak, frail, prone to the earth, human chemistry, prone to the carnal realm.
Fill it, infuse it with divine might.
Let the might of God cause something inside of my emotional makeup to become strong and
mighty like God.
That's God's will.
And the way that happens is when divine ideas enter our minds, we turn them into love, adoration,
statements to Jesus.
When divine ideas called the truth enters our minds, we take them, we bring them back
in dialogue with a person called Christ Jesus, we speak them back to Him.
Jesus, open the eyes of my heart, reveal these divine truths, and when those truths become
a little bit revealed in our heart, then the scripture is true.
You know the grace of God.
You have an energizing experience related to the knowledge of divine information.
That's what it means to know the grace of our Lord Jesus.
It doesn't just mean doctrine class.
It means doctrine class turned into meditation, and then meditation is the altar we offer
our hearts filled with the Word of God, and the fire of God awakens it, and then we have
divine might in our emotional chemistry.
It means our heart has the joy of God.
It has resolution to be God's.
We become lovers of God.
The first commandment becomes first in our life.
By the way, the Holy Spirit wants to make the first commandment first place in the body
of Christ again.
He wants to restore it to its proper place so that the second commandment and the great
commission can function properly.
The first commandment is out of place.
The second commandment, the great commission, will always be frustrated, and it will always
burn out the people trying to fulfill it.
The second commandment and the great commission only are effective and only are refreshing
to the very people when they're seeking to walk in the first commandment in the priority
of God.
Well, anyway, knowing the grace of our Lord Jesus, and you see the tenderness.
He says, not the Lord Jesus.
He says, our dear Jesus, He's mine.
The Holy Spirit permitted Paul to write it this way.
Actually, many times Paul refers to Jesus as our Lord Jesus, as my Lord Jesus.
There's that note of personal possession.
Anyway, he's summing up the doctrine of grace, and in just one verse here, he says, oh, beloved
Corinthians, I long that you would know grace, that you would receive divine information
in a way that is divinely energizing inside of your emotional chemistry.
You would know grace.
A lot of people say, well, I read the Word of God.
It doesn't get me anywhere.
You take the Word of God, you fill your mind with it, you turn it into conversation with
a person called Jesus.
That's called meditation, and you give the Holy Spirit time, and that thing will strengthen
with might your inner man over time.
Don't casually visit the place of grace.
Camp there, live there.
We need to be people that are absorbed with the Word of God.
I remember when I was the age of many of you, I was 18, 19, 20 years old, and I went to
youth conferences and weekends, and I had had some different ones I could tell you stories
of.
I won't take time to do it.
They challenged me to become a man of the Word of God.
They said, and the Word of God, when I was 20 years old, was so confusing to me.
I was trying to read it X amount of time every day, and it was a puzzle that didn't connect
or click.
It seemed distant.
It seemed boring, to be honest.
It seemed hard to get a hold of.
I liked meetings.
I used to always tell God, I go, Lord, I don't really like Bible study, personal Bible study.
I don't like prayer.
I don't like witnessing, and I hate fasting.
I said, but I like meetings.
I used to like to go to meetings, but I didn't like reading the Bible myself.
I didn't like praying myself.
I hated fasting, and witnessing, well, it wasn't so bad, you know, if the person was
cool, you know, it was easier to witness to him.
But witnessing was hard.
But it was probably the easiest of the four.
And when I was 19, 20 years old, I was on fire for God.
I just didn't like those things.
I said, God, I like you.
I just don't like Bible study, prayer, fasting, and witnessing, but I do like you.
And I like meetings that talk about you, and I like songs about you, and I like the music.
The Lord put in my heart back then, and I threw a, again, I'll skip the process, but
I came to the conclusion, I was 20 years old, I committed myself.
I said, I'm going to be, I went to a seminar, and they told me how to derive a life vision
for myself, and I still have the same life vision over 20 years.
And my life vision back then is I wanted to be an extravagant worshiper of Christ Jesus.
And I wanted to be an anointed, equipped deliverer of men.
And to say it in a summary fashion, I said, God, and I wrote it down, and I set my heart
on it, and I built like an altar, so to speak.
I'm using a metaphor from the Old Testament.
I made it a real stake in the ground time, and I've lived off of that mission statement
ever since.
I said, I want to be a worshiper of God.
No, an extravagant worshiper of God.
I don't care if I'm a preacher.
At that time, I was on my way to med school, and I was going to go do this or that, and
I said, I don't care what my profession is.
I want to be an extravagant worshiper of God.
I don't care where I end up, occupationally, where I end up in my life, where I live, what
I do.
When all is said and done, I want to end my life, and I want to present to God at the
end of my days a heart of wisdom, because it's a heart of worship at the end of my life
when I stand before the Lord.
I don't want to be a casual worshiper.
I said, God, I don't like prayer, fasting, Bible study, witnessing, but if you can take
this broken, weak heart and make me an extravagant worshiper of God.
And then after that, or alongside that, it's not one than the other.
They both grow together.
I want to be an anointed, equipped deliverer of people.
I want to be a worshiper and a deliverer.
I said, and I don't care if I'm a schoolteacher, a plumber, a medical doctor, a preacher, it
doesn't matter if I'm unemployed.
I mean, I don't want to be unemployed, but my occupation is not the issue I'm talking
about.
I'm talking about the reason I have breath and life on planet earth.
Okay, verse 9.
Though he was rich.
Let's look at that for just a few moments.
Though he was rich.
No, I want to look at you became rich.
Let's look at the third phrase first.
You became rich.
Well, there's many ways in which Jesus has made the redeemed rich.
I mean, it's just incredible.
Many, many, many ways.
I'll just mention one to you.
I mean, besides the fact we're forgiven and we're not spending eternity in the lake of
fire, that's pretty significant right there, but I won't even talk on that one right now.
One of my favorite verses concerning our place in redemption is Revelation 3 20.
I'm just going to quote it to you real quick.
Jesus is speaking and he says something that is unthinkable.
He's the only one that would have the right to declare such a thing.
He says to the church of the Laodiceans, I mean, the worst church described in the entire
word of God, the Laodiceans.
I mean, they would have run a close race to the Corinthians, but still I think they would
have won.
The Laodiceans, the most carnal of all the churches of the first century.
He gives them the greatest promise.
It's amazing.
He looks at them.
He says this.
He says, if you overcome, he says, you will sit with me on my throne as I sat with my
father on his throne.
That is unthinkable for several reasons, many reasons.
Nobody sits in the presence of the majesty of God.
Nobody does.
Every single created being that is before the throne of God is either pictured as lying,
prostrate before God, or they're standing in honor and respect.
Nobody sits in the presence of the majesty of God, only Jesus.
Jesus declares something unthinkable as the angels hear him.
He says, there will be a group of people, the redeemed, I believe from the ages.
My theology is such that the entire church is in the realm of the overcomers.
I don't have in my thinking the overcomer group that's the more intense group than the
rest of the group.
I believe the blood of the Lord Jesus has made us overcomers.
I mean, I understand the theology on both sides and the arguments.
Most of you aren't even aware of it, so don't even worry about it, but that's for the smart
guys out there.
But I believe it speaks of the saints in general.
We will sit in the presence of God because of the redemption of Jesus on occasions.
That's unthinkable.
The angels must have thought no one but him would have the right to say such a thing.
And not just that we sit in the presence of God, we sit on thrones in a place of leadership.
I mean, we have all sinned so much in our life, none of us are qualified to be leaders
in reality if God was to mark sins.
We're not just leaders, we're leaders in the realm of eternity forever on a throne.
Every one of us, if God would mark sins, who could stand, David said in Psalm 130, who
could stand if God held us account for all of our sins?
But the redeemed end up at the end of natural history qualified for leadership amongst the
host of heaven in the eternal realm.
It's amazing.
But not just leadership, not just a throne.
He said, those that overcome, they will sit in the presence of the Father on my throne.
They will share the very throne that God the Father gave me.
Again, I can't imagine what the angels thought when they heard such a statement.
That the love of God would be so rich, would be so deep, that it would bring demonized,
sinful, rebellious people to such a state of cleansing and such a state of renewal by
the impartation of divine love that it would enable us and equip us to sit as a qualified
ruler on the throne of Christ Jesus in the presence of the host for all eternity.
Paul said it the same way in Romans 8.17, he says, co-heirs.
You know what a co-heir is?
I mean, we're used to the phrase, possibly, we're co-heirs together with God, we're co-heirs
together with Jesus.
You know what a co-heir is?
A co-heir is a co-signer of the check.
Jesus said this, again, it's unthinkable.
He says, Father, from this point forward, I will require two signatures before the thing
goes forth.
I will not rule alone, but I will only rule because of my great love and humility with
her in my embrace, speaking of the bride of Christ.
She is now a co-heir.
She is now stands alongside me as a peer in a certain sense.
I will wait for her signature before the edict goes out.
A co-heir is unthinkable when we think about who we're co-heirs with.
Why would Jesus want such a relationship with a fallen human race?
Paul the Apostle says, the height and breadth and the length and depth of the love of God
we cannot begin to comprehend the fullness of it in this age.
We're co-heirs.
Beloved, we're rich.
We'll live forever.
This isn't just some doctrine.
This is your story.
This is as much a part of your testimony as what you did yesterday.
It's just futuristic.
In the realm of God, it's already established.
It's already a past tense fact of history that God knows that the church will stand
in this position.
You're forgiven.
You have a glorified body.
You're in the immediate presence of God.
You're in the most infinite position of a creature over all the hosts of heaven at the
very right hand sitting at the right hand of Christ Jesus.
Glorified bodies.
We are the one that He would cleave to forever through the eternal ages and share His rule
and the glory of the Father.
Do you know even who you are?
He talked a little bit about the church, the bride, the people of God in one of the parables
in Matthew 13, verse 44 and 45.
He said Jesus, speaking of Himself, He says there was a merchant.
He was looking for a pearl.
When he found the pearl, the pearl was of such great value, he sold everything and purchased
the pearl.
Jesus looked at the church and the plan of God.
It was so beautiful to Him.
It was so wonderful.
He sold everything to purchase this pearl that it could be His.
He's talking about your life.
And when Jesus sold everything to purchase you, we're going to look at that in a moment
when we talk about His poverty.
But beloved, you're rich.
You know in Isaiah 14 it describes Lucifer, son of the morning, filled with divine light,
the covering cherub that led worship in the courts of God, that got an evil thought in
his mind.
In Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 it's described.
And Lucifer, the thought of evil, entered his mind and he decided it wasn't good enough
to be closest to the throne of God.
He wanted to ascend the very throne of God and sit on it.
And it says that Lucifer said in his heart, I will ascend and I will be like God.
What Lucifer described is the very position God determined for the bride of Christ.
That's why his rage is against the church.
Because he risked his eternal destiny to make that great leap to sit on that throne and
to be like that God.
The very thing for which you were created and ordained for.
The very thing for which Jesus Christ, though He was rich, embraced poverty that we cannot
fathom.
That you could be at His right hand on a throne like the Son of God conformed to His image
was the Father's plan from the very beginning.
But here's the thing that's so powerful about that.
Satan risked everything and fell into eternal damnation.
And we resisted the grace of God and the grace of God pursued us and He chases us to the
ends of the earth to give us that prized position that Satan risked everything for.
And it makes Satan enraged against the church because we don't value it, we don't even
understand it, we don't even want it.
He says, I don't want the Word of God, I don't want to be God's, I want to go do my own thing.
And it just enrages Satan with jealousy that incenses him to such madness.
The very thing that He gave everything for is your testimony and it's what Jesus shed
His blood to give you.
You became rich.
I hate just moving on but I'm going to move on.
There's so much involved in you becoming rich.
This is what defines my life.
You know, Jesus is like the Father in the Spirit, He's uncreated.
There was never ever a time when Jesus Christ was created.
So Jesus Christ is dwelling in the embrace of His Father.
That God was a Father from eternity past.
The fatherhood of God was not something that fell on God at a point in time.
God was always Abba, He was always Papa to Jesus in the eternal counsels and the fellowship
of the Trinity.
And Jesus was rich in His own divinity.
He was rich in possessing all the treasures of being God.
Oh, the wealth of Jesus, the uncreated God, the second person of the Trinity, fully God
in every sense of the Word.
You know, we're awed by Jesus, His power and His wealth.
He's rich in so many ways.
Again, we could spend all kinds of time.
He's rich in wisdom, rich in power, rich in the essence of His being as God.
Many, many ways of which He's rich.
And each of them deserve a long discourse.
But let me say this, we study the Gospels and we look at Jesus and we look at His power.
He raised Lazarus from the dead, commanded the sea, multiplied the bread, and we go,
my goodness.
Well, let me take it up a notch.
Something far more powerful than when Jesus healed the sick and raised the dead and calmed
the sick.
It's what Moses did.
Moses, in Exodus 7-10, had far greater demonstrations of power than Jesus did.
I mean, we're blown away by Jesus.
Jesus said, well, read your Bible.
I did a lot more through Moses than I'm doing through myself right now, or that the Holy
Spirit's releasing through Him.
Moses commanded and creation, I mean, the sea split, plagues fell, waters turned to blood.
I mean, the acts of God in nature at the command of Moses were far more dramatic than even
what was happening in Jesus' ministry.
Well, if you think what Moses did was hot, it's really...if you read Exodus 7-10 in a
fresh way, it's pretty startling, well, the things Moses did in the power of God.
Well, let's take it up a notch.
Go right back to Genesis 1, when Jesus spoke the original Word.
You know, Jesus is so accustomed to the Genesis 1 power that when He was walking on the earth
healing people, amazing everybody, Jesus was probably thinking, you know, the mystery isn't
that I'm healing these people, the mystery is that I'm the Genesis 1 God, and this is
how powerfully I'm restrained right here.
They were awed by what He did.
The angels were awed by what He didn't do.
They said, we saw you.
It says in Job that the angels sang for joy when the foundations of the earth were established
by the Word of Christ Jesus in the beginning.
They said, we know who you are.
We got a billion volts plugged in to something that can only contain 110 volts and it's not
consuming it.
They said, your restraint is awesome.
The power of God in what Jesus didn't do was far greater than what He did do.
He was the Genesis 1 God.
He was walking in human form on the earth as the Genesis 1 God.
He wasn't impressed by what He did.
He was impressed, I believe, far more by what He was restraining to do.
He remembered it all.
He could, in his fellowship with the Father, saying, Father, He says, you know, I enjoy
them but they have no understanding.
I made bread multiply.
He says, what will happen when they see me in my glory and the power when I created and
spoke and the very galaxies flung into order?
He says, they think it's really something that fish multiplied.
I tell you, beloved, more powerful is what He didn't do.
A billion volts contained in 110 units not frying it.
That is the power of God.
The idea that Jesus Christ, I don't understand this.
I'm not a theologian.
I've never worked on this hard.
I don't know that they even understand it but they understand a lot more than I do.
But the idea, I don't know how this can be, that the uncreated God, the second person
of the Trinity, steps into the created order and somehow becomes like in the likeness of
sinful man, never sinful but in the form of man.
Again, the angels of God are awed by this.
They can't conceive of it.
They can't conceive that He could walk in such inconceivable containment and restriction.
In limitation.
That is the power of God.
The very power of God that He could dwell in such restriction, containment, such limitation
and He could live there without exploding to me is the power of God.
He's walking on the earth.
He's from another order.
He's from another realm entirely.
The world, He came into His own, His own knew Him not.
They didn't have a clue who He was.
His disciples were clueless in reality who He was.
They knew He was the Savior in a limited sense.
I mean, they knew He accomplished salvation in the full sense but they had very limited
understanding.
So much so that when John, you know, 60, 70 years later on the island of Patmos, he's
in his nineties, Jesus appears to him in Revelation 1, His best friend John, who laid his head
on his breast, John falls like a dead man in the presence of the one He laid his head
and Jesus says, oh, you didn't really understand who I was back then, did you?
Well, this is nothing, John.
There's so much that I'm not showing you in my essential glory even now.
They didn't really understand who He was at all.
He came into His own and they didn't have a clue.
God is of spirit.
God is in the, it talks about in the scripture that Jesus was in the form of God.
In that form, we don't really understand but we know it's spirit.
The Holy Spirit is in the form of spirit, obviously.
Holy Spirit.
God is spirit.
In the same way that Jesus lived in John 424, Jesus lived in the same form as the first
and the third persons of the Trinity.
But something very radical happened.
He took upon Himself the form that was entirely, entirely foreign to Him, the form of a man
and He stepped into the created order and He walked in such limitation.
He walked in such restriction.
That is the beginning of what it means, His poverty.
His poverty was so great when He dwelt in the form of man.
He's walking on the earth, He says, I'm so accustomed to doing Genesis one things.
He goes, this is such a new way for me.
He looked around and He had to wait.
He had to learn obedience through suffering.
He felt the sting of temptation.
He goes, Father, this is so different than the eternal ages of how I dwelt before You
in Your embrace.
The Father says, but it's so necessary if she's going to be rich and reign at Your
side with you.
He goes, I know, I understand.
Job is going to talk about the awesomeness of redemption.
I'm just going to give you a couple of hint phrases here.
I mean, because I can't really develop them.
He's going to give from verse 5 to 13, 10 statements about the majesty of God, of Jesus.
Ten statements.
And each one of them, again, deserve an hour.
Each one of them are absolutely fantastic.
And after he gives you those ten statements of God's majesty, then Job's going to make
a point about the love of God.
He starts off and he said, the dead tremble, I'm reading from the New King James, and those
under the waters and those inhabiting the waters.
Sheol is naked before Him and destruction has no covering.
What he says is all the great pompous, wealthy kings of the earth and all their garments
and all their power and their armies and their robes and horses, when it's all said and done,
all the pompous glory of the human race will all stand at the very end before Him.
None of them will be bragging.
None of them will have their wealth.
They will all be naked and trembling before this king.
That's how human history ends.
All in trembling before one man.
His name is Christ Jesus.
That's, there, again, there's a lot you can go with there.
So we're talking a little bit about the majesty of Jesus.
He goes on in verse 7, this man, he stretches out the north over empty space.
He hangs the earth on nothing.
Psalm 48 says, on the sides of the north, that's the word, the eternal city.
He takes the eternal city, heaven, and he stretches it out and he hangs the earth on
nothing.
This is the Genesis 1 Jesus.
Again, you could go off on that and all kinds of things.
Verse 8, he binds up the waters in thick clouds and yet the clouds are not broken under it.
He takes the billions of gallons of water.
The very seas on the earth are contained in the clouds worldwide.
He takes billions and billions of tons of water and stores it in vapor in the earth
by an activist power and the clouds aren't broken under the weight of it.
Jesus says, oh, that part was easy.
Goes on to say that he covers the face of his throne and he spreads his cloud, or his
glory over it.
Psalm 104 verse 2 says, the face of God's throne, he wraps his throne in a garment of
light to protect the very seraphim and cherifim by being completely consumed by the brilliance
of his glory.
He puts a covering around his throne to protect the inhabitants around him.
He covers his throne in the garments of light, the cloud of glory.
He drew a circular horizon on the face of the waters and at the boundary of light and
darkness that hid the artistry of God, the colors where the sun set meets the ocean.
He painted the skies with his glory.
He talks now about the elders and the four living creatures, the pillars.
I believe it's talking about the leaders of heaven.
They tremble.
The highest beings around the throne of God tremble before him.
This is Jesus.
This is the one that is our sweet Jesus.
They tremble before him.
They are astonished at his rebukes.
You read the book of Revelation at the rebukes, the judgments of God at the end of the age.
They are always falling off their thrones all the time and from their high places, astonished
at Jesus' rebukes to planet earth at the end of the age.
But they tremble when they come before him.
He stirs the sea by his power.
By his understanding, he breaks the storm, the most powerful force in creation, the storm,
the tornado and the hurricane.
He breaks it by his word with no problem.
The Genesis 1 Jesus.
These are just little hints about the Genesis 1 Jesus.
Oh, I like this one, verse 13.
By his spirit, he adorns the heavens.
The Holy Spirit is the artist of God.
He makes beautiful the heavens.
He makes the sun and the stars light up in the dark and he makes the sun set.
The Holy Spirit is the one that adorns the very atmosphere, not only around the earth
but around all creation.
His job is to be the interior design to decorate the creation of God.
He adorns it with beauty, with color and with brilliance and with fragrance.
The Holy Spirit does.
Not just this earth but all of creation.
His hand pierced the fleeing serpent.
Jesus' pierced hand is the one that destroyed the serpent by his death.
And he goes on to say, indeed.
Well, actually, he's talking about his hand being extended to bring lo the devil after
the work of the cross.
But verse 14 is where it ends.
Then Job says something unthinkable.
He says, indeed, these are merely the edges of Jesus' ways.
These are merely the whispers of Jesus Christ.
Look what it says, but the thunder of his power, who can understand it?
It says, when he spoke and the heavens were created, when he adorned his throne, when
he held the cloud, the waters of the earth and the clouds, these are the whispers of
God.
God says, these are nothing.
He says, you think it was something when I walked on the water and the manna and the
healings?
He thought it was something with Moses.
He thought Genesis 1 was something.
He goes, let me tell you, straight out of my heart, those were my whispers.
Those are the edges of what's on my heart.
He says, but the thunder of God, who can know it?
The thunder of God.
We find it in Revelation chapter 5, and that's where we're going right now to end.
Revelation chapter 5 gives us the, I believe it gives us some representative picture.
I don't believe John's brought back to the original act, but somehow he's enabled in
the realm of eternity to grasp things outside of time.
The thunder of God.
You know what the thunder of God's power is?
Relatively speaking, those ten acts of majesty, or he doesn't even call this power.
The power of God was thundering when that volcanic desire erupted in the heart of God.
I must go and redeem them.
Nothing can stop me from purchasing them for my Father and for myself.
I like to think of the heart of God like an erupting volcano.
There's nothing I can imagine more powerful than when that time, the fullness of time
comes and that river of hot lava just explodes out of the mountain and consumes everything
in its path.
Daniel 7-10 talks about the Holy Spirit as a river of fire.
There's a river of fire in the natural order.
It's a volcano.
When that river of fire, I believe it's a dim picture of the river of fire that breaks
out of the heart of God depicted in Daniel 7-10, which is the love of God by the Holy
Spirit.
Beloved, there was a time, there was a day in eternity past in the eternal councils of
the Godhead when they gathered together.
And I don't know, but it was the Father's good pleasure that this plan should be enacted.
And he looked at his son and that volcanic river of fire exploded in the Son of God.
He said, nothing can keep me from purchasing her, from giving my Father the family that
has due him.
Because in eternity, he's always been a Father and by providing the very bride, and there's
so many themes on that that I can't get into right now.
But I think of the act of creation, creation so often as dim little glimpses of the heart
of God.
Psalm 19 says, you look at creation, you see the glory of God, just hints of it.
And when I see, I went and bought a video on a volcano and that thing exploded, they
captured one.
I thought, that is a dim glimpse of the fire that exploded in the heart of the eternal
man, the eternal God before he ever became a man, Christ Jesus.
He said, I'll do it.
I will step out of the realm of God, although always being God.
There was never a day when he was not God.
But I'm going to lay aside the form of God.
I'm going to become the form of a man.
I'm going to step down to planet earth.
I'm going to walk as a stranger in an order that I created by the whisper of my power.
This is beloved as the thunder of God.
Who can know such a thing?
Who can understand it?
Paul said, the love of God, the length and depth, who can know it?
And there was a time when the thunder of God seized him.
And I don't know the mechanics of it, but it was enacted.
And I believe that it's depicted in Revelation chapter 5 right here.
It says here, the whole book of Revelation is centered around this issue.
The first three chapters are issues pertaining to the church, and I don't want to talk about
them.
But chapter 4, now we go to the realm of eternity.
And the vision of eternity, now the rest of it is around the throne of God, what's happening
around the throne.
Occasionally, we see a few things that manifest on the earth, but now we're gazing on the
eternal realm from chapter 4 on.
What's off in chapter 4, there's a throne that's revealed, it's the Father.
And that throne is so powerful.
And I'm skipping that in chapter 4, it's fantastic.
Chapter 5, I saw in the right hand of him who sat upon the throne a scroll written inside
and on the back, sealed with seven seals.
I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, who is worthy to open the scroll and
to loose its seals?
No one in heaven or on the earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or even
to look at it, or the NIV says to look inside of it is what I believe it means.
So John says, I wept because no one was found worthy to open it, to read the scroll or to
look at its contents.
But one of the 24 elders said to me, don't weep, stop.
The great tragedy isn't as it seems.
Behold, there's a king, he's pictured as a lion.
The lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David has prevailed to open the scroll, to
loose its seals.
I looked and behold, in the middle of the throne of the four living creatures, in the
middle of the elders stood a lamb as though it had been slain, her seven.
And then he came.
He took the scroll out of the right hand of him who sat upon the throne.
There's so many things going on here and I'm out of time so I can't really, but I just
want to again just advertise the passage to you.
I believe that the scroll is the most sacred thing in creation in one sense.
The scroll, I believe, is the document that contains the hidden eternal plan of God the
Father and the Son and the Spirit.
I believe the scroll speaks of what Paul refers to a number of times in the epistles as the
great mystery of God, the mystery of God.
The plan that the Father had already determined before the foundation of the world, a plan
that he hid from the angels, it says in Ephesians 3, 9.
He wouldn't let the prophets look at it.
He wouldn't let the seraphim and the cherubim look at it.
He wouldn't let nobody look into the contents of the great plan, the mystery.
And I believe that the mystery, the unfolding of the plan of God is contained in the scroll.
It involves the judgments at the end of the age, but that's only a necessary inevitable
consequence of the contents of what's in the scroll.
You can tell how sacred the scroll is.
It's the plan of redemption.
It's the title deed of the earth that is brought under the cleansing of Jesus.
It's the necessary judgments because there was sin in the world and because in rebellion
they resisted his redemption.
The scroll involves all of those things.
It's the great mystery of God.
You can tell how powerful this scroll is because nothing touches the throne of God.
Nothing touches the throne of God.
Nothing.
But this scroll, to my knowledge of the study of the scriptures, is the only thing ever
portrayed as actually touching the person of God the Father and it's in his right hand.
What's at his right hand?
The Son of God is at his right hand, but there's a scroll that is so worthy that it's at the
very right hand where the Son of God is.
I believe it's the plan.
It's the mystery hidden from all the ages past that the Father and the Son and the Spirit
would look at one another in the full knowledge that the uncreated God would one day thunder
and walk in the midst of his creation, be crushed by the wrath of God.
There's a scroll.
There was something that nobody could look into it or touch it.
It was in the very hand.
It pertained to the very person of the Father himself.
No object of creation ever touches the Father, but this scroll does.
The Father's sitting.
It's finished.
The Father's calm.
It's already decided upon.
It's already established.
Ephesians 1 calls it by the good pleasure of the Father's will.
The Father says it's costly, but I'm pleased with the contents.
I like it.
It satisfies my righteous heart.
Then a strong angel came and proclaimed with a loud voice, who's worthy to open the scroll
to lose its seal?
What he's saying is, see, it's not an issue of who can come up and just open it because
to touch it, it's the only created thing that we know of.
It touches the very person of God.
Who can touch it?
Who can open it?
It's not a matter of opening it like you go open a can of Coke or something, because to
open it means to take upon yourself the responsibility for its contents.
It means to be responsible to pay the price for the enacting of what's in the inside of
it.
Nobody can touch it and open it.
Nobody.
Because it requires a very unique individual.
It requires somebody who's fully God and fully man, and there's only one that would qualify.
Jesus is in, and again, I don't know the exact language, but He's different in some ways.
The Father and the Spirit never became in the form of a man, and they will never ever
touch creation in that way, ever.
The redeemed in our most highest position of exaltation, we will never be God.
The gulf is infinite.
We can never be the uncreated God.
We're always the redeemed, just at the right hand of Jesus, but always the redeemed, there
by mercy.
But there's one who did the unthinkable.
He thundered far beyond Genesis 1.
He stepped out of the realm of God, always possessing deity.
He became a man.
Now, here's how it works, though.
Here's how it works, beloved.
The Father says, when this plan is enacted in secret, before the foundations of the world,
He says, Jesus, and of course it didn't happen just this way, but for our understanding,
He says, you understand, Jesus, that when you become a man, when you do fulfill redemption,
you don't lay aside the garments of humanity when you come back up, you will be a man forever.
You will never again dwell exactly in the form uniquely like the Father and the Spirit,
just Spirit only.
You will always be in the form of man.
Jesus says, I know.
He says, this is not something you're wearing to accomplish a task.
This is something that will define you billions and billions of years.
The second person of the Trinity, the uncreated God, dwells in the form of a man.
That's why nobody can touch it, because it takes only someone that is fully God and fully
man.
Nobody can answer the dilemma.
But there's one who thundered from eternity.
No one on heaven or on earth was able to even look at it, because to look at it or to take
it was to assume responsibility for its contents.
They said, no, it's too holy.
The Father Himself holds it.
What could be in the scroll that the Father holds?
You know what happens when the Father comes into contact with creation in Revelation 20,
verse 11?
It says, when the Father's unveiled, heaven and earth are no more.
They flee, and they are disintegrated when the Father's glory.
Nothing can touch the Father like this.
But He's holding it in His hand, the Father.
John's weeping, because he doesn't fully understand all that's going on.
Again, he's peering into, I don't know the timing of it, but he's catching, I believe,
this is my theory, he's catching a glimpse or a representation or something of what happened
in the day that it was announced in part what was taking place.
One of the elders said, don't weep.
He says, look, behold, look at that man.
There's a king.
He's a lion.
John looked, and he didn't look at a lion.
Don't get the imagery of a lion.
It was a man in kingly garments that was like a lion.
Not in the sense of he had the face of a lion.
That's not what John's saying.
He means he had regal authority.
He had kingly stature about him.
Behold, a king.
He's more than a king.
He's the root of David.
He's the source of the whole Jewish race.
He's the whole history of redemption that comes from him.
He's the root of the whole Hebrew tradition.
And John looks, and there's this king.
Behold, a king.
And then he looks at him again.
He's the author of redemption.
He's the root of the whole Old Testament heritage.
He's looking at these two faces of Jesus.
He said, he's prevailed.
He says, let me show you.
Verse 6.
And then I looked, and then behold, this man, this God,
was wearing a different face.
He stood in the very center of the throne of the Father,
the very center of the elders, and the very center
of the creation.
It says in Colossians 1, 18 that God
was pleased to make him preeminent.
He is the very center of everything.
And he did this that his father would be glorified in all
things.
He stands in the center, but now he
stands with a different look.
He stands like a lamb that's slain.
Now again, don't think John saw a four-legged lamb.
He saw the man Christ Jesus with wounds in his humanity.
John looks at him, because John knows
the typology of the Old Testament.
He knows he's the sacrificial offering.
He stands, again, not a four-legged lamb,
but as the man Christ Jesus, now not just in his kingly glory,
but with nails scarred hands.
He stands as a slain lamb.
Beloved, not only in his poverty did he become a man.
When you and I get to eternity, our resurrected bodies
will be like his almost.
He will be the only one that is scarred forever
with the marks of the shame of enduring the wrath of God,
forever.
It says in Hebrews 2, 12, he despised the shame.
And the Father says, the way this works,
the marks of your shame will be in you forever, forever.
He will stand before his people as the only scarred one.
He's a lamb that was slain.
He stands in his scarring.
It's like the guy that saves his whole life, whatever,
and buys the $400,000 car, and it has a dent in it forever.
Jesus has a dent in his frame, so to speak, forever.
He has scars.
The shame that he despised, the marks of it remain in him.
Not a million years, not a billion.
For the eternal ages, he stands as a lamb slain.
Verse 7, he walked up, the only one that could ever
walk up to the Father.
He bent over and he took out of the Father's hand.
He took the scroll.
He said, I'll do it.
I will be responsible for its contents.
For he was the lamb slain before the foundations of the earth.
Obviously, this is in the eternal realm
because it all had to be acted out in time.
Beloved, there was a time when the thunder of God,
that volcanic eruption arose in his heart when he looked at you
and he said, the pearl, I will sell everything
to purchase that pearl for my Father and for my heart.
Amen, let's stand.
Oh, we love you, Lord Jesus.
Jesus, we stand before you.
Oh, we say we thank you that all the songs
in the book of Revelation magnify your redemption.
How rich were you, Lord Jesus?
How poor did you become?
How rich are we today?
Oh, we marvel at creation.
We marvel at the very edges of your ways.
We marvel at the very whispers of your power,
but your thunderings.
And I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus the measure.
Who are you, Lord?
The measure.
Who is able to take the scroll?
And he arose and he took the scroll.
How he grew.
And the thunder went through all the mountains.
How he grew.
And the thunder went through all creation.
The sinner came down unclean.
Oh, we've become rich, beloved, in his poverty.
You don't have something to die for.
You really have nothing to live for.
Most people are dying of terminal boredom.
And what God is using Rock the Nations for is to raise up a genuine,
authentic vision that resonates in people's spirit when they hear it.
The Spirit of God says, this is that.
They're raising up, taking hold of the challenge, changing their lives.
And that's what I think Rock the Nations is doing.
They're saying yes to Jesus' invitation to young people to call them into this relationship.
Forever.