New Beginnings - Crossing Jordan I — George Warnock

New Beginnings Require Preparation

We've been talking through the sessions on new beginnings, because God has many new beginnings in the scripture. But from each one I believe we can learn much, not only by way of learning but by way of preparation.

I trust we all recognize that it isn't just in the knowledge of it, of what God is going to do. But in the seeking to walk in it, that God might prepare our hearts, it's only in that that the knowledge God gives will be of any value.

I use the expression, God wants to translate the knowledge we have into living truth. And I believe that's right. He tells us things, not, well, there's areas there that I don't know and I'd like to know but he only tells us the part, in fact a very small part.

We know in part, and it's not that we lack a little in knowledge, it's that we only know a little. And he shows us what we need to know, that we might have vision and expectations and hope and press on towards the goal.

The goal. And it amazes me that the Apostle Paul, having traveled through some of these same countries that we're talking about today, and I'm not just sure Bulgaria was a part of it or not, but traveled through those countries, lit a fire and went on, because that's God's way.

Not that you just have to stay there 50 years to establish a church, but when God is in charge, the light has sparked, and he could go on and come back, and here was a church that needed to be further established in the things of God.

Those things are tremendous, and we can't help but rejoice in what God is doing in these countries. But after, I never did find out exactly, maybe 20 or 25 years of that, he says to the Philippians, I want to know God, and I might know him in the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings.

Paul, didn't you know him? If I just knew God one-tenth the way you know him, I'd settle for it. Wouldn't you? He said, I want to know God. I want to know the fellowship of his sufferings and the power of his resurrection.

And so every time God moves afresh, it's so tremendous, so wonderful, so glorious, it never drops into our heart unless God by his Spirit makes it real to us. It's just the beginning. God has much more.

God has things that I have not seen nor heard, which have not entered into the heart of man. He's prepared for those that love him. And unto us, Paul says, God hath revealed them by his Spirit, for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the depths of God.

So whenever God moves in a new way, right in the victory song of the new thing God is doing, he plants the seed of a new working that God wants to do. He plants the seed of a new working in the very victory song of what he's doing today.

There are the seeds of truth that God has implanted for still another working. We find it all through the scriptures. So they come out of Egypt, all with a mighty hand of God. We talked a little bit about it.

God was bringing them into something. But to bring them in, he had to bring them out. I bring you out to bring you in. Let's never forget that. And as he brought them out, the joy of it, the victory of it.

Miriam took a tambourine and led the ladies in dances before the Lord. The horse and his rider he thrown into the sea. One of Moses' songs, then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song, Exodus 15.

From Egypt Into a Prepared Habitation

But right in that beautiful psalm of victory, there are seeds of God's intention of what he's really trying to do. It wasn't all in that. God wanted to do something else. 15 verse 2, I will prepare him a habitation.

Oh, yea, I know, but forget that. God has destroyed Pharaoh and the Red Sea. Right, we've got to rejoice in everything God's done. Paul said, writing to the Hebrews, I fear, I fear, lest the promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should come short of it.

Without going into that in any great detail, just catch what Paul is saying. Let's not fall short of God's intention. If God helps us, we will not fall short of it, because they received a message that in God's intention was designed to lead them not just out of Egypt where they were now in singing the victory song, but would lead them into a prepared place in God, a prepared place.

I will prepare him a habitation. Verse 13, Thou in thy mercy hast led forth the people which thou hast redeemed, thou hast guided them in thy strength unto thy holy habitation. God wants to lead us into his holy habitation, where God dwells in us, not just is in us, dwells, lives there, that's his home.

God wants to make you people his home, where he shall go no more out, where we shall go no more out. Verse 17, Thou shalt bring them in and plant them in the mountain of thine inheritance, in the place, O Lord, which thou hast made for thee to dwell in.

God wants to bring us to a place where God is dwelling, and dwell in him in that place. In the sanctuary, O Lord, which thy hands have established, if God gives us the right spirit, his desire is that every time we see something new in God, a new place, a new beginning, a new start, that he would open our eyes to see what is he saying about what's coming next.

You say, forget that, this is good enough. I'll tell you why it's not good enough. Because God says, I can't rest till I find a habitation. You say, God doesn't need a habitation, he dwells in the heaven of heavens.

God could never find a home in the universe he made, could never find it. Thus saith the High and Lofty One, and inhabiteth eternity. I know he does. I dwell also in the high and holy place, but with him who is poor in contrite, to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite one.

God says, I dwell there. The place that you build unto me, where is the place that I might find a rest? Because we get the notion so often that God is finding his rest in something that he's already done, something that we're doing, that God is finally delighted in it.

God says, build me a house. We talk much about building God's church, and God's building his church in the earth, and he uses his people to be co-neighbors together with him, and all that's very wonderful.

But we must beware lest we think that we're building a church to present to God, because when we get that attitude, like the Israelites had, we built this temple for you, Lord, aren't you happy about it?

God says, where is the place of my rest, if not my hands made all these things? I've made it all, he said, you didn't do it. But to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit and that trembles at my word.

So he brings us back to that. He dwells with the humble, he dwells with the contrite. Why? Why God? Because God will not give his glory to another. Contrite means, look it up in Dr. Strong's, bruised, broken, broken so much that he's useless, smashed.

Why does God want to dwell there? Because unless he breaks the vessel that we've been preparing for him, he cannot be glorified until he smashes it and brings forth a new creation for his own glory. For God will not give his glory to another.

Let me thank the Lord for every mighty working of God, every victory of man. A new day had come. They'd crossed over, they'd been delivered from Egypt. But even as they do that, they're reminded, God is guiding you to his holy habitation.

He's going to bring you in and plant you in the mountain of his inheritance and the place which he made for us to dwell in and the place that he made for himself to dwell in. And so the story is, out of Egypt and into Canaan, that's what God wants, not just out of, but into.

The Wilderness Reveals the Heart

But it had to be through a wilderness, which he didn't tell them about too much, because he had to take them through there to prepare them for Canaan. They never did understand, they never did understand why God would have taken them through the wilderness when he promised them to bring them into Canaan.

He promised Canaan, he brings them to a wilderness. How devastated we've been at times when we saw the promises of God and embraced them, and the first thing you know, we're in a wilderness. You get a little foretaste of it, even in the wilderness, you get the foretaste of the land, because God is faithful to give us a little taste of it so that we know what it's all about.

So they bring back the grapes and we taste it and we know it must be good and we hear the report, yes, it's a land flowing with milk and honey, but somehow we can't learn to so walk with God and to so partake of that heavenly manna that we come to know God's ways.

So that to the people of God who came out of Egypt and sang the victory song and danced before the Lord because of the victory he had given to them, he said, these people have not known my ways and I was grieved with them for 40 years.

I swear in my wrath they shall not enter into my habitation. This frightening thing that God, the God who blessed a nation as he's never blessed any nation on the face of the earth with his abiding presence hovering over them by day and by night, feeding them with manna faithfully every day, a food that had every ingredient in heaven that was needed to make them to be healthy and strong and vital, something we don't know today in the church.

Some gave them water out of the rock, the abiding presence of God over their tabernacle. Not once, if it happens once on this continent, it becomes a matter of something we can write about and we remember it for 50 years.

It happened up in Canada at a convention they used to have about 60, 70 years ago. The glory cloud had a bite over the tabernacle. People coming with their horses and buggies, they say, there it is, there's God's presence biting over the tabernacle.

And it's something that you remember, something that happened once and that happened to Israel for 40 years, day and night. And God says, they have not known my ways or not my heart's been grieved with them.

And I swear in my wrath they can't enter into my rest. What does God want? He wants a place to live in. And he can't find it in the heavens and he can't find it in the churches. So he's building a church, building a habitation for himself.

And that's the Canaan. We can't get there until he deals with the old life, and that's what the wilderness is. When God was trying to deal with our old life so they could come into Canaan, they blamed God for it.

And God was leading them through the wilderness merely to reveal to them the state of their own heart. And so they'd no sooner come out of Egypt and the beautiful song of victory, it must have thrilled them to see a million people there or more, maybe three, four million rejoicing over the victory God gave them for their enemies.

And talk about dancing before the Lord. And a few days later, God led them to Marah and they were thirsty. They had nothing to drink because they'd gone three days without anything to drink. And they saw the pool and they ran to it and looked down and took of it and drank, and just bitter they couldn't drink of it.

They called it Marah, bitter water. Why wouldn't they blame God? I mean, how could you help but blame God when they're famishing and he leads them to bitter waters because they didn't know his ways. They didn't understand, it never penetrated their hearts that the God who opened up the Red Sea was able to make every bitter experience to be in his will.

They didn't know that that pool of Marah was God saying, this is what you're like. You're born in bitterness, you walk in bitterness, you're filled with it. This is what you're like, taste it and see what you're like.

And the first thing they'd see, because it wasn't a running stream, it was a pool, the first thing they would see is their own face. And God was showing them themselves. And they drank of it and it made them embittered, trying to drink fountains out of the bitterness of their own hearts.

Moses was baffled, I guess, but he looked around for God's direction. God showed him a tree up there in the banks, cut it down and threw it into the waters and he did and the waters were sweet and they drank thereof and were refreshed.

I mean, all through the wilderness, and there were 41 different stopping places before they got to this one. We can't go into all that today. All through, God was revealing to them the inherent bitterness, sin, corruption of their own life.

What for? That in this wilderness which we are, God might plant his garden. That the wilderness in this solitary place would blossom as the rose. That we are that wilderness. And they didn't understand that.

We are the wilderness, because it's here that God wants to live. It's here that God wants to build his sanctuary. This is the place that you have ordained, O Lord, as a place for thee to dwell in. This is the only place.

He couldn't find anything else, because he didn't make anything else that was compatible with him. He made a man in his image. He made a man to be his image in the earth. What about other planets? I don't know.

But the totality of God's eternal purposes are to be found in the man that he made in his image. No other place. And I know it's in this human family. I know that because Jesus came into this human family.

I'm not taking on him the likeness of angels or other celestial hosts. If there are, who knows? But, O Lord, Jesus came into this humanity. He became an atom. That in this last atom, God might restore that image that he might finally have found for himself this habitation that he never did find in any degree of fullness before, even though in the first atom he had a foretaste of it.

God never gives up on his vision, his dream, his plan, his purpose. You and I can. You can call it far-out things if you like. I know it's far-out, things that I haven't dreamt of, I haven't thought of, I haven't heard of.

Paul says, God's prepared for those that love him. And so he led them on. He showed them the tree at Manah that made the bitter waters sweet. And so, what's your complaint? What's your bitterness? What's the thing that's bothered you?

I sense that, with most of you at least, I'm sure that God has made every bitter thing sweet. If he hasn't, find the tree. It's always there in the banks of Manah. It's always there. It's the cross, I know, but you have to find that application of the cross in your life for any bitterness that you discover in your own life.

The Christian Life Is a Journey

Now, we just touched on this morning. But God is leading them on, on and on, to another beginning. I wish you could realize that this is a journey. There's nothing new. I'm saved, baptized with the Holy Ghost.

I speak in tongues and prophesy. There's nothing new. I've been settled down. It's a journey. In the New Testament church, before men coined phrases to describe something that God does, and when the New Testament church got walking with God, it was called the way, this way.

They didn't know anything about the way. I used to wonder about that until I realized it is a way. We're on a journey. We're not to be stagnant. We're not to settle down. Thank him for every good thing he does, every blessing he gives, every victory he gives us, but it's a way.

And all along the way, there are new experiences that pose trials, perplexities, problems. So they arise from Mara, having had their thirst quenched with fresh water. And God says, is this to say, don't you know what I'm teaching you?

If you will walk in my ways and obey my statutes, serve me. I will lay upon you none of the diseases that I've laid upon the Egyptians, for I am the Lord that healeth. God is saying that having rooted out all the bitterness of the old life, as we begin to walk in covenant union in relationship with him, he is going to fulfill the promise that his church will walk in physical as well as in spiritual health.

I wrote the Feast of Tabernacles. I went through a wilderness of my own, because God was revealing those things, even while the rest, by and large, the majority of Latter-day Churches were caught up with the gifts of the Spirit and healings and prophecies and mighty movings of God, and there were missionary outreaches and going to nations, and it became a worldwide movement.

But even at the beginning, God said, the reason I'm restoring my gifts of the Spirit to the church is that I might prepare that church, that I will make of them one body to prepare me for my appearing.

God never lost that vision, though the majority of the people in what became known as Latter-day God's moving, it's raining, it's raining, it's raining. Healing evangelists, they didn't come out of that movement, but God raised up great healing evangelists at that same time.

God was pouring out his Spirit all over this continent in one way or another, with 8, 10, 12 great healing evangelists with their big tents, filling them with people, not only to be healed but to see the mighty works of God that he was doing in others.

It went on maybe 10 years, and then they all folded up. We wonder why. It's because God cannot let his people rest, nor will he rest until he finds the desire of his heart. And that's a people walking in total harmony and union with him, where we dwell in God and God dwells in us.

That's his desire. He won't forsake it. And if we forsake the vision, God just leaves us, that's all. Having done great things and giving us victory over Pharaoh and sweetening the waters at Marah and all that, God must have a prepared people to go into this prepared place.

Moses' Faithfulness and Joshua's New Beginning

After the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, it came to pass that the Lord spake unto Joshua, the son of Nun, Moses' minister, saying, Moses, my servant, is dead. Now, therefore, arise. Oh, they lamented over the death of Moses.

We always lament over the end of a past era. But we shouldn't if we know God's ways, because when God does a mighty thing through his people in the very thing that he is doing, he sows the seeds of what he would do next.

And God intends that that will be our vision then. Oh, how people lamented when Ladder Ring petered down. I don't think it lasted too long. In my own experience, I felt that maybe two or three years, the impact of it bothered me, troubled me.

Not only that, but God was closing down the healing ministries. It flourished there for 8 or 10 years, and it seemed to be petering out as well. I'd even take a book off my shelf sometimes and read it to get a little encouragement.

It was a book called The Feast of Tabernacles. But I thought, why did I write that anyway? I remember two or three times taking it down and reading it. Why did I write that? Nobody wants to read that.

It lay around for 2 ,000 copies that were printed originally. I think it took about 10 years. But it's been encouraging these days to run across people who read it then when I was in a wilderness and got help from it and got out of their wilderness.

So I'm assured that the vision is right. God hasn't forsaken his vision. He won't settle for something less just because you and I are equipped to do it. He will not rest until he establishes, until he makes Jerusalem a place on the earth, until the salvation goes forth as the shining, brilliant light.

That's what God said. And because he said that, he shares the burden of his heart with his people. In Isaiah 62, he calls them watchmen that he set on the walls. Watchmen have various duties. One was to warn the enemy, warn the people of God of the approaching enemy.

I know that. But another purpose of the watchmen is to cry unto God day and night and to give God no rest until he establishes and until he makes Jerusalem a place on the earth. Because that's God's vision, and therefore he puts that vision on the hearts of his people, his watchmen, not everybody.

But those whom he calls watchmen on the walls, I have set watchmen upon my walls of Jerusalem who shall not hold their peace. Day or night, ye that make mention of the Lord, keep not silence and give him no rest until he establishes and until he makes Jerusalem a place on the earth.

God declared that was his vision in verse 1 and 2. He says, this is my vision. I can't rest until it happens. So he needs helpers. We call them intercessors, or people who come into union with God. Because we come into the yoke of Christ, we carry the same burden that he carries.

He carries the main load, I know, but if we're in his yoke, we'll feel the burden of his heart. And remember that. You can only carry a burden that's of the Lord as you get in his yoke. Others will try to lay yokes upon you because they feel that's their yoke.

If it is, that's good. But God has a burden for you as you come into his harness. And it'll be the burden of God's heart for you, very individually. And so you don't shrug that off because you like what somebody else is doing.

It looks more appealing. It looks more wonderful. There seems to be more success in it. You have to bear the yoke that God has laid upon you, whether it be a sower of the seed, a plowman, and a sower, or one who waters it, or one who goes and reaps the harvest.

You want to be one who reaps the harvest. I always did. I never wanted to sow seed. I wanted to be an evangelist. But it's not of my choosing. Why did I want to be an evangelist? Because I was brought up in Pentecost, and the only man that was really doing anything effectual for God was the evangelist.

Teachers, you'd hear them say, I remember once, they didn't know I was listening, but, yeah, I think George would be a teacher. I don't think he'd be an evangelist. You'd urk under that. Teacher? Because in those days, I never sat under a vital teacher of the gospel, go through studies and dry.

I don't want to be that, Lord. I want to see signs and wonders and miracles. I want to see souls come in. I don't want to see that, but I'm a member of a body, and it's happening. It's happening in the body of Christ.

In measure, but let's not settle for it yet. When can we settle? We can't settle for it until God settles. God says, this is what I've been looking for. This has been the dream of my heart, a holy bride without spot or blemish or any such thing will be presented to the Lord Jesus Christ, and she's going to come to that place.

And I always want to remind people, because they've always got this crazy notion that we just live in sin and imperfection down here, and then we're translated suddenly. We're the beautiful bride of Christ.

It's by the washing of the water, by the Word, that he's going to prepare this holy bride. Moses, my servant, is dead. Don't look back now. Moses was faithful. That's good, and we're glad he was faithful.

Because he was faithful, Joshua learned the ways of the Lord as he walked with Moses. But he says, now Moses is dead. Go into the land now and take it. God had prepared it. He called it his land. His eyes are upon it day and night.

Entering the Prepared Land

How be it? There are in that land abominable nations that God says you've got to subdue. Seven abominable nations. God says it's your land, and it's a prepared place so you don't have to go in and build the houses.

You don't have to go in and plant the vineyards. You don't have to go in there and irrigate the land with your foot like they used to do in Egypt. They had sort of a crude irrigation system and a pump that they had made that they had to pump away there with their foot to get a little trickle of water out of the Nile.

Because God was going to have streams flowing in that place. But we like the old pump better, don't we? Pump away, try and get a little trickle of water. Thank God for the little trickle of water, but pumping away until you're weary.

God says the rivers are flowing, the houses are built, the fruit trees are yielding fruit. It's all prepared. You just have to go in and confront these enemies, and God will put the fear of God upon them so that they'll yield readily.

They'll be terrified at your presence. The thing that ran through my mind this morning is there'll be no hardship and devastation and trouble in this land or we'll be a prepared people. Forty years? I don't think so.

Because I know God can do a quick work in the land. Their country or mine are not ready to receive the three or four brethren that went to Bulgaria and to see the same things happening amongst them as happened there.

They were prepared through persecution. Church sends delegations to Washington or to Ottawa, do something about human rights in these countries because the church is persecuted. Do something about it.

Over there, and I was told this for a fact, they're praying, God, do something about America by way of persecution and hardship that they might come to know you. God was going to send him to America. I think he was itching to come.

I tried to discourage him on it to know for sure God's timing. But he said God showed him that he was going to send lights from Africa to dark America. We used to talk about sending a light from America to dark Africa.

That's his vision. He's anxious to get over here, but I don't think he was really ready and I don't think America's ready yet. But you're going to see it, I believe. Missionaries come to this one. You say, we don't need it.

We've got all kinds of Bibles. I know you have all that, but you're not a prepared people yet. These people don't have the Bibles and the understanding and the knowledge, but it's a prepared land, prepared by persecution, prepared by an evil system.

You say, how can that be? The land that was flowing with milk and honey, cultivated, gardens planted, houses built, was done by people who hated God. The seven abominable nations of Canaan. They don't get any credit for that.

Because of their wicked and abominable deeds, God wiped them out. Nevertheless, he used them in the meantime. God always uses the devil, you know, to fulfill his purposes at times. And God never gives the devil credit for it, because the devil is out to subdue and to destroy and to defeat and to conquer.

We know that. But God, and it's all in the cross, it's all in the teaching of the cross. God revealed to us the glory of your cross, that here was a man defeated in the natural, in the appearance, devastated, persecuted, harassed, slain by the enemy, by Satan.

Satan not knowing that what he was doing out of the blindness and darkness of his soul, God was working it into his purpose, that he might be our Redeemer. And that in his crucifixion, he was literally being crucified by the wise of this world who didn't know God.

In God's purposes, he was destroying these principalities and powers, making a show of them openly, triumphing over them in his cross. Not long ago that Jesus was defeated on the cross, that that was defeat, it was his resurrection that was victory.

I hope that he was just using terminology that wasn't quite correct. It appeared to be defeat. But the cross, and not the resurrection, it was the cross where he destroyed Satan. Because just as we...

I'm going to digress a little again, but it wasn't a case of Jesus saying, I must go to a cross and... Oh, Father, you'll have to arrange somehow that people will crucify me because I must die for my people.

He was the light shining into the world. He was God revealed in the flesh. He was truth. He was the very expression of the heart of God. Nothing that was in God was lacking in Jesus, and yet he came as a man that it wouldn't be something, that deity wouldn't be something in the realm of which he would walk.

He would be secluded in his humanity, and he would live as a man in total dependence on the Father, doing nothing because I'm God in the flesh, but because I'm a man in whom the Father can live and move and direct and to whom I must be totally obedient.

So that he did what he did on earth as a man, and that's tremendous. Because I know in my early days, it always seemed to me he was half God, half man, and so when he needed to be God, he stepped into his deity and walked in the water or turned water into wine or said, Peace be still, because he was half God and half man until I realized he was totally man as well as totally God.

But his deity poured into humanity, making him weak. God taking on flesh, making him weak, humbled, emptied, it says in the original, emptied himself. Weak, becoming poor. In that state of humanity, weak humanity but perfect without sin, in that humble state, God could show forth his glory and his power.

That he would be a servant, he would be a doer. When I saw that, then I realized he is my example. He is my example. But you say, Yeah, but he has sinned, he had no sin, we have sin. And that's why he comes to bring us redemption.

He who had no sin became our perfect sin offering, he had to be without sin, just as that lamb had to be without blemish, that he could be our sin offering, that we could come away from that embracing of the cross that our sins dealt with, so that now he is bringing us up to his level.

As an Adam, free from sin. So now we are on his level, if you understand what I mean. As far as nature is concerned, he is always our Lord and Master. But because he took not on him the nature of angels, but took on him the seed of Abraham, and was in all points made like unto man, and tempted in all points, sin accepted.

He is not ashamed to call us his brethren, saying, Behold, I am the children whom thou hast given me. I just emphasize that, because now he is our example, because he dealt with our sin, and he is our example.

And so Paul was able to say, Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something he should strive after, but emptied himself, and was made in the form of man.

And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself still further. To become incarnate was a great step of humiliation for Almighty God, just to take upon himself human flesh, because that made him weak.

It made him finite. It brought him into the realm of need. He hungered, he thirsted, he grew weary, he got tired. That was humility, just to become a man. But he didn't become a king or a prince. He became a doulos, a bond slave.

He took the lowest place in the world by reason of the fact he became a man and laid aside that glory and became a doulos, and faithfully in the realm of humanity as a slave, as a bond slave, he kept, he did the will of God.

It became his total delight, and God was well pleased and exalted him to the highest throne in the universe. And Paul says, have that same mind that was in Christ that caused him to go that route. Humble ourselves.

Take the place of a servant, one who serves another. Take that place. And that will determine the measure of glory that he has for us. That will determine it. Not necessarily the apostles, or the prophets, or the teachers, or the evangelists.

Not necessarily them. But that humble man, woman, child of God who has become a true doulos to the Lord Jesus. And we're going to be amazed in the day of Christ when we stand before him and to see the weak and the poor and the impoverished, not only in the natural but in spirit, people whose names we know nothing about even in church history.

Stand there. Rewarded with the highest reward that God could give in becoming a habitation of God. The place, the one that God wanted, the one that he desired. Many apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers, elders, deacons, priests, healers, workers of miracles will be looking around to see where they are and what kind of honor they're receiving.

I believe that's true. So sometimes, you know, it bothers me when sometimes women whom God has placed in subjection to man become irksome over it. Don't you, man or woman, long to be in subjection to the Lord Jesus?

And so, a godly woman who is married, she loves that relationship. She loves to be under the headship of her husband just as we love to be under the headship of Christ. And some of them feel, you can't deprive me of ministry.

I can be a minister just as much as a man and quote scripture for it. Well, I'm not denying that. I'm just saying, just becoming a great minister doesn't mean that you're in a superior position. To become a bond slave is the highest position for man or woman.