Introduction to the Deeper Christian Life Part 1 (July 1988)

I want you to get your pencil and paper out if you have them. I’m not going to read these passages of scripture, but I’m going to ask you to look them up after the meeting. Genesis 2:24, Isaiah 6:1-3, 2 Kings 6:16-17, and all of the rest that I’m going to give you here for a while are John 3:13,27, 31, John 3:3, 3:34, 5:19, 6:57, 7:29, 7:34-42, also 8:14, 8:56-58, 10:30. 14:8-9. 16:27-28, John 20:22, and Revelation 4:1.

Now, folks, I’m going to tell you a story. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you don’t understand that I once read the Bible. I think there are parts in Numbers I’ve only read once. Yes, and I really mean that. I just kind of go over some of those names, and I know I’m not supposed to. I’m going to tell this story, and then this afternoon, I’m going to interpret it. It’s going to be like a parable, and we will meet this afternoon at 2:30 for one hour, and we’re not going to have any singing or anything, maybe a prayer. That’s about it.

Now, quickly, can you help me just reset the stage? What did we talk about last night? The history of the deeper Christian life. There was something going on in the first century: A close proximity to things that had happened in all eternity in the past, a very close proximity to a recent Lord, people who knew Him. A deep fellowship with Christ within the community of the believers, and I’m reluctant to use the word church because it conjures up something else.

Strange things happened after Constantine. There came Catholic mysticism growing out of Greek pagan philosophical mysticism. Plato was a mystic, and it’s basically Platonic mysticism interpreted in Christian words. The Protestant church lost all glory of things deep. John Wesley gave us back salvation by experience, and the Pentecostals gave us speaking in tongues. Today we have books, but we don’t have handles.

Now, I want to tell you a story that I hope will impress you. And as you listen to the story, remember that you are part of this story. And anything that is told here, the possibility is, it is also yours. Actual, relevant, and experiential. Now, I’m not going to tell you the name of this story, but I’m going to tell you now where it began. You’ve heard about long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away. Well, this happened long, long ago, long before you and I were born; before Abraham, before Enoch, before Adam and Eve in the garden, before the heavens, before angels and archangels, cherubim and seraphim, before the word, because in the beginning was the word, and this is before the beginning. There was a time that was not time. That was before all.

It’s very difficult for us to imagine a period when there was only God. There was not God plus nothingness. There was no nothingness. You could not move if you went there. You could not go no matter how far you went. But what there was God. Let me explain it this way. He was all there was. There wasn’t God plus anything. He was the immensity of all. We say He was the All. Now, this state existed for a long, long time. And quite frankly, you and I are never, never going to understand the Christian faith or our relationship to our Lord until we understand that period. That period is the longest period there is. The only thing that’s ever going to equal it is that which will come, but not what is now. This went on for a long, long time. Have you ever been far away, in another country? Have you spoken another language and come home to find it was difficult to speak your own language for a while? That you had searched for English words or whatever your other language is. Imagine someone who spent all eternity somewhere, and then he comes into this land, this area, this creation, totally foreign. He would be telling us all sorts of things we never knew, and he would not be reporting to us things of our space and our experience, but of His own.

So, let’s go back and look at this. Here is God the All, but that’s not big enough. When I make a circle like this, the circle is not big enough because He encompassed all, and everything He encompassed was Himself. And this is the state that He’s normally in. This is His normal state. And now I want you to try to understand something, and I’ll do this again and again. That is, you can’t measure God. His spirit is without measure. His being is without measure. Oh, then He’s very large. Not particularly. I didn’t say He was so large you can’t measure Him. I said He is without measurement. He has no height. He has no depth. He has no breadth. He has no length. He is without measurement, and dimension.

And here He is, and what’s going on? I want to tell you what’s going on. The Christian life is going on. The Christian life is going on. Consider that. There’s someone out there living the victorious Christian life. We now know someone finally did do it. There was someone out there living the conquering, abiding, victorious…what else? Resting, positional, faith-rest, exchange, what? Pulsating. Glorious Christian life. And the question is, was it also community? Was it corporate? Was it church life? And the answer is absolutely. There is going on here the fellowship of the Father and the Son and the Spirit, and that is the embryo of the Christian community. That’s where it really began. It did not begin at Pentecost; it began back there. Do you get that? We have the Christian life being lived in all eternity past, and the community of the believers.

Now I’m going to give you another one to chew on. There has never been anything real, and there never will be anything that’s real except that. Everything else that has ever existed came after God the All, and everything that has ever existed has, since then, been a type, a shadow, a replica, an image of that. The only life that has ever existed is the life of God. But what about my life? An image of God, not the real, but an image. Do you get that? It’s an image.

Brothers and sisters, there is an image of one-third of a human being. Can you see it? It’s shaped like a human being, but it’s not a human being. A human being gets inside. Please understand that in eternity past, there was God the All, and within Him is all reality, and everything else that has come from there is not only an image, a shadow, a type, but what you have came as an idea out of God.

You have never had a drink of water. You have never eaten food. Now you have never had a bite of food. You have never seen light. Brothers and sisters, you do not have life. Now, follow me for a minute here. I’m not talking to you as a Christian, but you have never breathed air. That’s right. Air, Pneuma, Spirit, same word. The true life is God’s. There was food in God, and the food was God. And there was drink in God, and the drink was God. And you and I, when we drink and eat, only have a picture of food and drink. It is an image, a replica of real food and real drink. The real existed there. See, you and I are sort of egotistical. We live in our little world and our little realm that’s created, and we say, “Well, you know, water’s here and food’s here and lights here.” But if we could turn around and look, we would say, “No, there’s only imitations here.” Imitations of that which existed so long, long ago.