Hi all,
This is the time of year we celebrate the birth of Jesus, but this series is about His life before He ever left heaven to become the Son of Man. Isaiah 9:6 says in part: “Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given…”
God so loved the world that He gave from heaven His Son, who became the child Jesus born in Bethlehem. In John 17:5 Jesus is talking to the Father and says: “…now glorify me with the glory I had with you before the world ever was…”
The Word of God
The Word of God is first and foremost the person who is the Word of God. The written Word flows from the person who is the Word of God, and the Holy Spirit brings life to those written words.
Unfortunately in our day, many Christians know the written Word better than they know the person who is the Word. I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count how many times I’ve said to myself or Barb: “If they knew Him better they wouldn’t think the Word says that.” The written Word flows from the person who is the Word.
If someone tells me my wife said something that isn’t consistent with who I know her to be, I’ll tell them, “That doesn’t sound like her.” Same with what some say scripture says – if they knew Him they wouldn’t think the scripture says that.
Some ‘stand on the Word’ without ever first consulting with the real Word of God to see if He agrees with them. And if the real Word doesn’t agree with the written Word that person has chosen to ‘stand on’, there will be no presence of the Holy Spirit to bring it to pass, nor even bear witness in one’s spirit about it. They can speak the written Word all they want, but there won’t be any Life in their declarations or proclamations.
We cannot separate the written Word from the person of the Word. The written Word is not a book of incantations that if you follow certain words or actions ‘magic money’ will fall into your bank account. Nor is the person who is the Word moved by us repeating the written Word’s chapter and verse until we are blue in the face.
Hebrews 1: 1-3 says this: “God (Father) having spoken through many ways and parts in times past by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son; whom He appointed heir of all things, by whom also He (Father) made the ages.”
“Who being the brightness of His (Father’s) glory, and the express image of His (Father’s) substance, and upholding all things by the Word of His (Father’s) power, when He had purged our sins sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high…”
Notice Jesus Christ upholds all things by the Word of the Father’s power – this is not saying there is power in the Word, but rather Jesus upholds all things by the Word of the Father’s power. The Father has the power, not Jesus. Jesus is the Word of His Father’s power.
For example
Let’s say a father tells his son to go outside the house and call his brothers and sisters to come inside because its time to eat dinner. If one of his siblings resists, the son might say ‘I’m telling dad’. The power is in the dad who remains in the house, the son is merely the expression of the father’s will, expressed by his word to the son and then through him to the son’s siblings.
The son has authority to carry out his father’s word and commands, but the power resides in the father. We could say that son was sent from the father to tell his siblings to come in for dinner, making him the word of his father. That is Jesus to our Heavenly Father. Jesus upholds all things by the Word of the Father’s power.
That is why we are told in this passage the Father has appointed Him heir of all things. That’s why Philippians 2: 5-11 (v9) says the Father has because of Jesus’ actions, given Him a name above all names. It is why we make prayer requests to the Father as Jesus commanded and as seen throughout the NT. We don’t make requests of the Holy Spirit, nor of Jesus, but Jesus said to ask the Father in His name. Why? The Father has the power. Jesus is the expression of that power, the Word of that power, but the power including the power to answer prayer, is with the Father.
(Please don’t email me saying something like ‘But I pray to or ask the Holy Spirit’ or ‘is it okay if I say Holy Spirit please’, or ‘I’ve always asked Jesus for things’ – just obey Jesus and change your ways and you’ll step into a higher realm of your walk with the Father, for it is all about the Father and His will being done on earth as it is in heaven. There is no prayer to the Holy Spirit nor prayer request to Jesus, from the Lord’s Prayer through the letters of the NT. Does He sometimes cover our ignorance, yes. But now you know a path to higher truth, and it is simply obeying Jesus, so change from disobedience to obedience.)
Jesus is the will of the Father made flesh
In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God, the Word was God…the Word became flesh and lived among us. (John 1:1, 14)
How did this happen? Did it just suddenly happen when Jesus left heaven to be conceived in Mary’s womb? No, there is much more to the story than that…Let us go back to around 1100 BC, when the boy Samuel is in the temple as a helper to Eli the High Priest. He is sound asleep when the Lord comes into his room…
We are told in I Samuel 3:1: “The Word of the Lord was rare in those days, there were no open visions (of the Lord).” The Lord called out to the boy 3x, and after Eli told him it was the Lord, verse 10 says this: “The the Lord came and stood as He had previously, and called out, ‘Samuel. Samuel.'”
Verse 21 tells us this was a new time for Samuel and Israel, the start of open visions of the Lord. Between the death of Joshua and the first King, Saul, Israel was merely a loosely affiliated band of tribes, led in times of crisis by a judge who would arise to solve the problem.
Samuel was the first prophet to the first king, and it set a precedent that every king of Israel and Judah would have a prophet (or more) to help guide the nation. The lean time with no open vision of the Word of the Lord was over. We are told starting with the boy prophet Samuel: “And the Lord (Yahweh/YHWH) revealed Himself to Samuel again, as the Word of the Lord…”
Understand who Samuel was…
When the Word of the Lord started appearing to Samuel, it set a precedent for all the prophets to follow. The phrase we see in the books of the prophets, “The Word of the Lord came to…” does not mean some prophet was sitting at a table with a quill pen and scroll having is hand guided in a journaling exercise that became for instance, the book of Jeremiah.
No! It means from Samuel through the centuries, the person who IS the Word of the Lord appeared to the prophets and told them what He was telling the nation, or with Him, also a vision of things to come. The Word of the Lord appearing to Samuel set a precedent for all the rest of the prophets to the new nation of Israel. We’ll pick it up there next week, until then, blessings,
John Fenn
