Why The New Testament Makes No Sense To Modern Christians – Grand Prairie DCLC #3

Okay, I want you to try to comprehend, for a moment, a spiritual realm with no dimensions. Now, that gets significant in a minute. Now, there is a physical realm, and one of its unique characteristics, by the way, is that you and I live in it: it has mass. Can you comprehend what I’m saying? There’s some mass right there. Believe it or not, that also is mass. There’s mass there. Do you understand that? Maybe that’s a gas I just got, but there’s mass to it. You can weigh it. It’s mass. Here’s what Einstein said. He said, “We have the idea that if we were to remove all matter from our universe, there’d be a great big gaping hole of nothingness, and we’d be able to measure it. And there would still be time. There would still be space.” He said that is not true. “Time and space exist only where there is physical matter. Dimension only exists because there is mass. If you remove all mass, you remove space, and you remove time,” He said. “Do not think that if we removed all the mass in our created universe, that there would be a great abyss of nothingness,” He said. “No, even nothingness would disappear.” Now chew on that. In other words, if you took physical matter from our realm, you would end up having the spiritual realm. It is a realm without dimension. No big, no small, no little, no yesterday, no tomorrow, and there’s no physical matter there whatsoever. It was, in fact, created in the image of God, who is spirit. Now, I’m sure you all were thinking about this at lunch today.

I’m going to read some of these passages of Christian vocabulary. I want you to know something: what I just said to you, a first-century Christian would have understood perfectly. I want you to listen to this. Now, why do we not just kick this kind of vocabulary around all the time? Why is this not our daily conversation with one another? It was with them. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. Well, now you can look at that and bluff if you want to, but I’m going to read it again. He’s just piling words upon words that actually are meaningless. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing that is in the other realm in Christ. Now, I’d like for everybody in the world who knows exactly what it means to be in Christ to please stand on your head. I mean, this is not something we comprehend. Or that we have received the spiritual blessings that are in the other realm? Oh, yes, by faith I have them. Oh, this is positional truth, fully on positional truth. This man is not right. I don’t see anything about positional truth.

These people understood that they had touched that which is God-blessed in other realms in Christ. It was their reality. It was their spiritual reality. Just as He has chosen us or marked us off before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love, He marked us off to adopt us as sons through Christ Jesus Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished upon us. In all wisdom and in all insight, He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to the kind intention which He purposed in Him. With a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavenly places, and things on the earth. In Him…

Alright, I understand that last Sunday your pastor brought a message that clarified every bit of that. I missed that message. Here’s another one. This is Colossians 1:15. And He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in Him all things were created. Well, we know that. In Christ all things were created. Both the things that are in the heavenly realms were created in Him, and the things on the earth were also created in Him. The things that were visible were created in Him, and the things invisible were created in Him. Didn’t matter whether they were thrones, dominions, rulers, or authorities. All things have been created through Him, in Him, and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him, in Him, all things hold together.

Then he gets even more mysterious. He is the head of the body of the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself might come to have first place in all things. For it was in the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him. Tell me. Tell me that is clear to you. Tell me that that is your experience. Tell me that that is your reality. Why is that even in there? I’d rather go over to Romans 3. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, I can get that the wages of sin are death. Now I can preach on that all day long. That’s easy to understand, but what’s all that? And the New Testament’s full of this. I’m going to do you another one to make this really exciting, and this is thrown in almost as an afterthought by Paul. I read this passage many times and realized that he had actually brought up the subject while discussing something else, and yet they all understood it. This is 1 Corinthians 15:28. And when all things are subject to Him, then the Son Himself also will be subject to the One who subjected all things to Him, that God may be all in all.

Now, I’m here to say to you that that can become as clear to you as the first-century believer and can become your reality and experience. He has given you all the spiritual blessings in heavenly places. The Father has given you all spiritual blessings in heavenly places that are in Him. Now, I’m going to try to explain a little bit of this, then we’re going to go home, and I hope I’ll see you again. Alright, I think we always begin in the wrong place when trying to understand our Lord. First, we usually begin with ourselves and with redemption. Sometimes we’ll even begin in Revelation. Rarely would we ever dare to begin in John 1 or in Genesis 1, but I would like to begin before Genesis 1. You know, over where it says printed in the United States. Genuine Morocco leather. Copyrighted in 1986. Even before that. So, yes, before the foundations of the world. I want to take this where we are, look at our physical creation, and say, ‘No, not here.’ Let it disappear. It’s never happened.

Let’s back up to the eternals, to the other realm, the heavenlies, the spirituals, it is called, and let that vanish and come even before that. Before angels, before thrones, before dominions, before the invisibles, before the visibles, before all things. What have you got? God. God and a great, endless realm of nothingness. No, in order to have nothingness, you’ve got to have matter, and God is Spirit. I cannot comprehend this, and you cannot comprehend this, but there was a time before time when there was nothing but God, and you couldn’t get on the outside of him to find out what was on the outside of God. He was all there was. He was the All, and there was no place left outside of Him for anything to happen. Therefore, if anything was going to happen, it had to happen inside of Him.

He is the all. Just a few years ago, they found the quasars, these pulsating energy places; they still don’t understand what they are, and they were describing the intensity of the power of it. I was reading about it. My eyes got bigger and bigger. I thought they found God. There was so much energy. But then I stopped and realized, no, that’s part of creation. He created that thing. That’s inside the creation. The enormity of God is just incredible. These things are all going to take place in Him. Every bit of them is taking place in Him. Nothing but what is taking place in Him.

Now, there is no eternity yet. Now, I know that’s not possible, but it’s true. God creates the eternals. So, we’re going to build an imaginary circle. You see my imaginary circle? Have you ever looked at your camera and seen the little infinity symbol? It’s an 8 lying on its side. That’s infinity. You can’t draw a circle because that’s a limitation. You’d have to take the symbol of infinity and draw all around it, and know that there is no circle. But imagine, nonetheless, God. Now then, what is there? There’s no creation. What is in Him? Now you help me. What is in Him? What’s there? What are we looking at here? One thing we’re looking at is nothing because He’s invisible. If you and I were standing there, we couldn’t see anything, because He’s, by nature, invisible. So, He is first, we’re seeing something invisible. What’s the second thing? We discover He is Spirit. Not a spirit, but the Spirit. Can you help me? You’re afraid to guess what’s here? Let me go on and say there is light, not artificial light, not like the sun, but light, real light, and there is the only Life that exists. And there is the eternal Son somewhere in there at the very center of God.

Now, here is the most fascinating thing about God, because He’s non-dimensional. Now, you see, you’ve been thinking big all this time, haven’t you? Really big? Not necessarily. Not small either. Neither. Big, small, up, down, none of these are there. This is what you and I do when we think, because we belong to a captured, limited-dimensional realm. The eternal Son is there.

There’s a verse in John that says He gives His Spirit without measure. Now, here’s what I’d like for you to stop and understand for a moment as you look at this living God. I would like for you to know that all of God is in every part of God. As great as He is, any portion of God contains all of God. Well, Gene, that’s not possible. In my mind, that is not possible. In your mind, that is not possible. All of creation is not in my thumb, but I’m dimensional. He’s not. All of God is in every part of God. Now, brothers and sisters, that’s not true. He’s the busiest God in creation, listening to all of us pray at different times, in different places, and in different ways. All of God is in every part of God. All the fullness of God can dwell in you and in me; I don’t understand that. Yes, brother, you are correct. Long before creation, there was a part of you back up there. Which part? The part chosen before the foundation of the ages. Marked off, and that is the exact translation of that word “predestined”. Marked off in God.

There’s the eternal Son. There’s light. There’s invisibility. There’s His eternal nature. Of course, we’re speaking here of the Father. But somewhere right about there, waiting for time and space, which don’t even exist, waiting for a moment when that portion of Him will intersect with a given moment in time. For me, that happened in a cemetery in Commerce, Texas. Where did it happen for you? Port Arthur, Texas. Eternity and time intersected, and a portion of you that had always been met, a portion of you who had just gotten started. He marked off a portion of Himself to be placed in you. You became a partaker of divine nature. Did you follow that?