Our Identity in Christ (04/25/2004)

Being One with Christ and the Identity of Jesus

Go into the book of Exodus this morning. We're still continuing our discussion last Sunday about being one with Christ. Being one with Christ. Let's have a word of prayer and we'll begin with our message this morning.

Father, we thank you for the beautiful music and the lyrics about your son, Jesus Christ. We thank you for the sacrifice that was planned before the foundation of the world and the great counsel, your great counsel.

We thank you that you have told us that your counsel will stand and no man can annul it. Father, we ask this morning that as you have ordained us to meet together on the Lord's day, that as we have done so, you would teach us what you want us to learn this very moment in our lives.

To make us to be more like Jesus and we pray in his name, amen. If you look at John chapter 8 verse 28 with me, it says, then said Jesus unto them, when you have lifted up the son of man, then shall you know that I am he and that I do nothing of myself.

But as my father has taught me, I speak these things and he that sent me is with me. The father hath not left me alone for I do always those things that please him. We talked about last time a little bit this concept that Jesus said in many places and we looked at quite a few scriptures last Sunday where he said that the words that I speak are the father's words.

He said I speak only the words that the father has spoken. The deeds that I do are the father's works and I do only the works that the father has done. And I asked the question, did Jesus, therefore, as a man, did he lose his identity?

And of course, the answer is no, but it's a mystery. How is it that he says I speak only what the father speaks? I do only what the what I've seen the father do, and yet he still is the man Christ Jesus who has his own identity.

How can that be? And then turn with me to John chapter 14 and verse 10. He says, believest thou not that I am in the father and the father in me? The words that I speak unto you, I speak not of myself, but the father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.

Believe me that I am in the father and the father in me, or else believe me for the very works sake. Jesus answered and said to him, if a man loved me, he will keep my words and my father will love him, and we will come unto him and make our abode with him.

That's us. We, the Godhead, will come and make our abode, will live in the Christian. He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings. So what does that tell us? It says that those who do not love the Lord don't worry about what God's words are and what God's works are.

They go about to do their own, they think. They go about to do their own selfish deeds. He that loveth me not keeps not my sayings, and the word which he hear is not mine, but the father's which sent me.

And then lastly, John chapter 17, verse 11. Now he begins very specifically to speak of us, and he begins to say that we have this same oneness with the father that he had with the father. And remember that John chapter 17 is a prayer, the entire chapter is a prayer, that Jesus is praying on our behalf.

And he says, and now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, that's us, and I come unto thee, holy father, keep through thine own name those which thou hast given me that they might be one as we are.

So if we are one with Christ and one with the father, do we lose our identity? To say that we are walking in God's will, is that to say that we have no will of our own, or that we have no identity of our own?

Of course not, but it is a great mystery. Neither pray I for these alone, but for them which shall believe on me through their word. That's us, generations and generations later, after the gospel went from one generation to the next, all the way to us, so verse 21 proves this, I'm sorry, verse 20 proves this is for us, it's not just for the apostles or the disciples of Jesus' day, it comes forward all the way to this day.

And in verse 21, that they may be one as thou, father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. Now this oneness is what we're talking about, this ability to have our spirit merge with the Holy Spirit and be one, to be so much in fellowship that we become one, which is symbolized in the Bible in the physical sense by the marriage of a man and a woman, that the two shall become one, that is the physical picture of this spiritual truth of what goes on in the heart of the believer.

The believer's heart loses its own selfishness and becomes one with very God and gains the divine nature which has no propensity to sin whatsoever. So as long as one is walking in the Spirit, filled with the Holy Spirit, which is a phrase that throws many people off, it's not so much a filling of a cup, so to speak, as it is a uniting of the spirit of the Christian and the spirit of God into one spirit, where whatever the words the Father says, we would say, whatever the deeds he would do, we would do that very moment.

One difference between us and Jesus of many, but one is that we only know the very next step, we don't know any further than that, and we really don't know that step until we take it. But the desire to be one with the Holy Spirit is what ensures that we're taking the step that God wants us to take in Christ, and yet we do that without losing our identity.

We're still men and women, boys and girls, and young people, and yet we're one with Him. In fact, this very prayer Jesus was praying, that the same, he says, just as, just like you, Father, are in me and I am in you, I want them to be that way, I pray that they would be this way, that they also may be one in us, and then he goes on and says, and the glory which thou gavest me, I have given them.

That's only when we're one with the Spirit, though, we don't have that glory in the flesh. Even as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may be made perfect and one, that doesn't mean, it's not really talking about perfection like we use the word today, what it is talking about is a true man as God intended a man to be, one with God, not just a man walking on his own in the flesh, not just a man fulfilling the desires of his own flesh in the negative sense, but at one with God, walking in Jesus Christ, who is in the Father, therefore we are one with the Godhead.

That was God's desire for the man, the perfection he is speaking of is the maturity of a man where he has that void filled with the unity of the Holy Spirit that he ought to have every step of the way.

Now the problem with us is that we can come in and go out of that fellowship. We have the ability, as Satan came to Eve and showed her something, he has many more things than that one fruit to show us today, doesn't he?

Many more things he can show us and tempt us with, and his whole desire is to bring us out of this state of oneness with the Holy Spirit, because as long as we are in that state, 1 John chapter 5 says, we cannot sin, it is impossible for the new man to sin.

So as long as you are in that oneness with the Holy Spirit, where you are brought into a unity with God himself and with the Lord Jesus Christ, you cannot sin, and Satan is going to show you things and try to bring you out of that mode and bring you down into the flesh, bring you down into that earthy state, and Satan will work at that, and if he can succeed, he brings you down into that state and now you are walking in the flesh as the Apostle Paul described it, and he said it is impossible to please God in the flesh.

Nothing you can do through character of the flesh or through any good deed you can think of in the flesh that will ever please God. The only thing that pleases God is that oneness, that unity. That is what he is pleased with, and that is what this chapter prays, that Jesus prays for us that we would have that.

I in them and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them as thou loved me. Now I go to Exodus chapter 25, please, and verse 10, and we are going to look into the Old Testament.

I have believed for many, many years that the principles that we learn in the New Testament, if we will go into the Old Testament, all of a sudden we will find types and symbols and shadows that will give us even more detail to the truth that we learn in the New Testament.

There are two verses in the New Testament that tell us that the Old Testament was given for those of us who live in the last times as examples or in samples, that means a physical picture of a spiritual truth.

It is very much like a parable that Jesus would tell. So the Old Testament is filled with detail as much as you would want to learn in a lifetime that colors, adds colors to the words, it adds details to the meanings of the spiritual truths that we learn in the New Testament.

So we have been discussing from the New Testament this spiritual truth that there is a oneness between our spirit and God, just as with the man Jesus Christ in his humanity, I believe everything that he did on this earth in his ministry, he was done as a man who was filled with the fullness of the Holy Spirit without measure.

So he walked as a man, but totally in that oneness with the Holy Spirit without measure. He was shown some things by Satan just as Eve was and Adam were, but he did not come down out of that oneness ever one time.

The Bible says he was tempted in all points even as we and yet without sin. So he stayed in that unity his entire life and thus the power that we observe when we see his life. We come in and go out of it and we need to learn to stay in the oneness.

Well how can this work? If Jesus said that I never say a word that is my own word, I only say the words that the Father has said to me. And he says I never do a deed or a work that is my own invention, I only do the works that I have seen my Father do.

He has shown them to me and I do them. How can he be that way and still have his self? How can he have his own identity? Well what we learn is we can have our own identity without having to have self, the self life.

In fact Jesus taught very clearly, he said that if you seek the self life you shall lose your life. But if you deny self you shall have abundant life. So how is it that we can still have this identity if we want to be shown the next step by the Lord before we take it so that we are taking his step really.

How do we still have our identity? Well Exodus chapter 25 gives us some details. Start with verse 10. And they shall make an ark of shittum wood, two cubits and a half shall be the length thereof, and a cubit and a half the breadth thereof, and a cubit and a half the height thereof.

Now we talked about this last time. Verse 11 says you shall overlay it with pure gold. Every scholar that I've ever read, every commentary that I've ever read, I've never seen anyone that disagreed with the fact that this shittum wood pictured the humanity of Jesus Christ and the gold that it was overlaid with pictured the deity of Jesus Christ or the presence of God on his life and in his life.

And so here we have this ark which if you don't remember the history of it, God instructed them on how to build this wilderness tabernacle which was where they came to worship God. And it was very specific in its detail.

It was built out of tents and later they built Solomon's temple that was patterned after the wilderness tabernacle. But it had several features that are very important. One is it had this outer court and then it had a place called the holy place and then it had a curtain that separated everything from this place called the holiest place, the holy of holies.

And inside this holiest place where God instructed them no man can come in this place at all except one time a year and only the high priest can do that one time a year. Inside this place was this thing called the ark.

It was called the ark of the covenant. And this ark was built of chitum wood which was a wood from a little plant, not really even a big tree, a little scraggly plant that grows out in the desert, very earthy, very rough.

And that wood was taken and this box was built and then they overlaid it with pure gold. And so here we had a box that was earthy, rough wood overlaid with fine, pure gold and it is a perfect picture in the Old Testament of the Lord Jesus Christ in his earthly ministry especially.

And this ark was placed inside that holy of holies room where no man could come except the high priest once a year and the curtain separated it from everything else. Now what we're going to find out as we study this is the entire tabernacle is a picture of you.

It's a picture of your body. The Bible says your body is the temple of the living God. And deep in the inside areas of your life is a place that is symbolized by this holy of holies where this ark is and that's the Lord Jesus Christ in your life.

Well, what's interesting as we study the wilderness tabernacle which pictures us, we're going to see some interesting things as well. So let's look at this where it pictures Jesus for a few moments and then we're going to look at the part that pictures us.

This ark is a picture of Jesus Christ. The wood pictures his humanity, the gold his deity. I'm going to drop down to chapter 25 verse 14 and now shall put the staves into the rings by the sides of the ark that the ark may be born with them.

Human hands were not supposed to ever touch this, ever. They never took those staves. They were like long sticks that were placed through these hoops that were built into the side of the ark and they put the sticks through them and men carried the sticks on their shoulder but they never were able to touch the ark that way.

In fact, one man touched it. I think his name was Uzzah and one time he touched it and it killed him. He died instantly because this picture is the very holiness of God, the place where the holiness of God dwells and you weren't supposed to touch it.

So they carried it on these staves and it gives specific instructions on exactly how to carry this. When they moved, they had to move this whole thing and then they would place it back down in its right place as they came to a place to camp.

Verse 15, the staves shall be in the rings of the ark. They shall not be taken from it. They never took these poles out of there because there was a chance you might touch the ark if you did that. So the poles stayed there the entire time.

Now when we get down into verse 16, we begin to see something interesting. It says, and thou shalt put into the ark the testimony which I shall give thee and thou shalt make a mercy seat. Now in verse 16, this testimony is a picture of the word of God, but it specifically is the Ten Commandments were placed within the Ark of the Covenant.

That pictures the word of God and the law of God and it was placed inside this box that was built of rough wood and pure gold, which pictures Jesus. Therefore he is called the word of God with a capital W.

John says of him in John chapter one in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. And this is a picture of Jesus and here we have the word of God placed inside him. He never said anything that was not God's words.

Therefore John pens him the word of God. So we see that this testimony is placed within this and in verse 17, and thou shalt make a mercy seat of pure gold. And this was a thing that was set on top of the Ark of the Covenant.

And then verse 18 talks about two cherubims made of gold, beaten work shall they make them in the two ends of the mercy seat. So now you have this box, which pictures Jesus and upon the top of this is a seat that really was a judgment seat and you have to read on in the Leviticus, Exodus Leviticus to figure out that only when the priest sprinkled the blood of the sacrificial animals on that place did it become a mercy seat.

Prior to that it is a judgment seat. The way we know that is that if the priest, even though he's the only man that could walk in this place one time a year, had he chosen to walk in there without the blood of the sacrifice he would have been obliterated.

He would have been destroyed. Tradition tells us they used to walk in there with a crimson rope tied around their ankle with the thought that if they didn't present the blood properly, they'd be destroyed and they'd pull that out.

You know, all they'd pull out would be a nub, there wouldn't be anything left. Because if man attempts to enter the very presence of holy God, he'd be destroyed instantly. That's why the Bible says no man hath seen God at any time except the one who came from him, which is Jesus Christ.

So this high priest walks in only with the blood and he sprinkles that blood on this place and it becomes called a mercy seat. Then you have the cherubim and then look at verse 22, and there God says, there, I will meet with thee and I will commune with thee from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubims.

The duty of the cherubims, by the way, is to protect the holiness of God. And in the heavenlies where there really are cherubim, they are there. They're angelic beings that God created to protect his holiness, to keep sin totally out of his place, to keep him separate and holy.

Holy meaning separate, exactly what it means. Sometimes we think the word holy means pure. But the true meaning of it is to be separate. So God is kept separate from sin always and from sinful man. And these cherubim that were placed on this model that was given to them on the earth pictured the protection of God's holiness, and then God said, I will come and meet with you.

Now this was not all of God. This was, no man has seen the father, not even that high priest saw the father. What he saw was a bit of his glory that dwelt and hovered above this mercy seat between these cherubs that looked down upon that place probably with a fierce look on their face.

And that priest would walk in there probably trembling with the blood and sprinkle it on that blood. And then he would survive this event, but he would be pictured as being in the very presence of God.

And he was in the presence of the Shekinah glory, this part of God that he would allow them to see in this place. Now all of this has amazing typology and pictures for us. He says, there I will meet with thee and I will commune with thee from above the mercy seat from between the two cherubims, which are upon the arc of the testimony of all things which I will give thee in commandment unto the children of Israel.

Now let's begin to look around this place a little bit. Let's move outside of that Holy of Holies into the room that came right before it. It's called the Holy Place. It had three objects that we need to study just for a moment and try to begin to build in your minds the fact that this entire building, including what we just studied, pictures your body.

It pictures you, for you are the temple of the living God. And let's begin to see what these things symbolize, because they symbolize true spiritual things that are within us and that are happening in our lives.

The table of showbread is found in verse 23. Now this was over, if you were walking in towards the curtain that separated you from the Holy of Holies, it would be over on your right. And it's a place where they place the showbread, which was a picture of Jesus Christ, the bread of life, as he discussed in the New Testament.

He said, no man can come to the Father unless he eats this bread, which pictured his flesh, and drinks this wine, which pictured his blood. In other words, you have to become one with Christ. The reason he used that symbolism is because when you eat something, it becomes one with you.

You've heard the phrase, you are what you eat, right? It becomes one with you. So it is a picture, a physical picture of the spiritual truth that when you are born again, Jesus Christ becomes one with you.

He literally becomes a part of you, in a sense, and it's a great picture of that. So this table of showbread was over on the right, and the ancient Jews had this as a symbol and as a picture, but they couldn't fully understand it.

But we, looking back from our time, where we know the spiritual truths about salvation that God's given us, we can look back and look at that table and learn from it far more than the Jew could ever learn from it.

And what we see is this very table, look at verse 23, this very table is made of Shittam wood. It pictures the earthy nature of our existence, and it gives the dimensions of it, and then verse 24 says, it will be overlaid with pure gold, and it will have a crown of gold, and now shall set upon the table showbread before me always.

This priest could not get into that Holy of Holies where the box was that pictured Jesus himself and where God dwelt. Now notice this, here you have the Ark of the Covenant overlaid with gold, which pictures Jesus Christ himself, and hovering all around this and above it, in a sense, one with it is a picture of the Father.

This glory of God is there. This priest cannot come into the presence of the Father except by first passing this table of showbread, which pictures that he has to partake of the bread of life. He has to partake of Jesus Christ.

And then when he comes into that room, he could not have ever possibly seen what pictured the glory of God if Jesus Christ had not been in that place, because Jesus is pictured by the Ark of the Covenant, and the glory of God only dwells above it, between the cherubim.

So it is impossible for this priest to approach God except by Jesus Christ. Now next, verse 31 and following, we see another object in this room. Now we're in the little outer room where the curtain is that separates us from the Holy of Holies at this point.

On the right is this table of showbread. On the left, we're going to see this candlestick of pure gold, and it's really not a candlestick, it's a lampstand, because it was oil in these lamps that burned them.

And so it says, and thou shalt make a candlestick of pure gold. Notice that this one is not wood overlaying with gold, it is pure gold. It pictures the light, that God is light, Jesus Christ is the light that lights our understanding and makes it possible for us to even know God.

Now there's one other object, and then we'll kind of step back and look at the whole picture. The other object is called the altar of incense, and you go to Exodus chapter 30 and verse 1 and you'll see this.

What's interesting about the altar of incense is it is made of chitim wood overlaid with pure gold as well. All of these things are picturing the humanity and the deity of Jesus Christ, the man Jesus Christ who was also the God-man.

But this particular part in Exodus 30 verse 1, and thou shalt make an altar to burn incense upon of chitim wood shalt thou make it. A cubit shalt be the length of it, it gives all of the dimensions, but look at verse 3, and you shall overlay it with pure gold.

So and then it had the staves where you're not supposed to carry it or touch it and so forth. This is a picture of Jesus Christ once again, and the altar of incense, later in the book of Revelation we find out that as the smoke proceeds up towards the heavenlies it pictures the prayers of the saints, but it also shows us that none of our prayers ever get to the Father unless they go by the Holy Spirit, by the Spirit of Jesus Christ.

So now let's go back and look at this. We walk into the holy place, on our right we see the bread, the show bread, which is Jesus Christ, the bread of life. On the left we see the candle, the lamp stand, which is pure gold, which is the truth and the knowledge and the wisdom and the understanding, the light of understanding that Jesus gives us so that we might know the Father.

We could not know him without Jesus because Jesus is the revelation of God, that's why he's called the Word. What is a word by the way? Who can tell me what a word is? It's a truck. It's a truck that carries information from my mind to your mind.

No way that our minds could be one without me saying a word that goes through the airwaves and hits your ear and goes into your brain and then you and I can begin to become one in thought. It is a transport of what's in my heart and mind to your heart and mind, that's what a word is.

And that's who Jesus was. Jesus Christ, the Word of God, is that which transports information that we could have never had from the natural world about God to us. He is the revelation of God. He is all of the fullness of the Godhead bodily, in a body.

He is the express image of God. We cannot see God except through Jesus Christ's eyes. We cannot know God except by knowing Jesus. He said, if you've known me, you've known the Father. If you've seen me, you've seen the Father.

And so as we walk into this room, we see the bread of life, we see the candle that gives us the understanding and the knowledge, and we see the incense, which is Jesus' prayer, I believe, specifically pictured John chapter 17.

The entire chapter is a prayer of Jesus going up to the Father on our behalf. You cannot get further without walking right past that. So there's no way that you and I would have ever come into the knowledge of God or the presence of God had Jesus Christ not prayed that prayer on our behalf in chapter 17.

And that prayer goes up before the Father, and then that priest can walk through that curtain into the next room, which is the Holy of Holies, and that's in the very presence of God. But you're only in the presence of God because Jesus is there.

That is the only reason. If that little ark made out of that rough-hewn wood and that gold which was overlaid on top of it weren't there, there would be no place for God to dwell and commune with man whatsoever.

Now, all of that has been done for us, and now we have seen the humanity of Jesus and the deity of Jesus Christ. And we see how, if we can have our understanding and lighten just a little bit about how it is that he can be truly man, which is pictured by the wood, and yet only do the works of God and say the words that God said, which is pictured by the gold, that as in, I don't know how they applied this, I wish I had studied that a little bit more, but my vision of it is that they put molten gold over that, and it becomes one with the molecules of the wood.

And there's a place where the two literally become one. They don't interfere with each other, the wood is still there, but I'll tell you what, if you ever looked at that ark, you would never see the wood.

All you would see is the gold. That is a picture of God's viewpoint from the heavenlies looking down upon even us, which we'll see here in a moment. But on the Lord Jesus Christ, what the Father sees when he looks at one of you that belongs to Jesus, he sees the gold.

That's why you can go to heaven. The gold pictures the purity and holiness of God. And if he saw the wood, you'd go to hell. But he doesn't see that. Now let's look at this and see if there is a place in here that says that perhaps we have some of this gold upon our earthy wood.

Look back to chapter 26 and go to verse 1. Moreover, thou shalt make the tabernacle, now we're going to start talking about the tent itself, this whole place, and as I said, it pictures you, it pictures your body, pictures all of you.

First you have these curtains. And I believe that these curtains that are along the outside, which is what you would see if you were on the outside looking at the tabernacle, you would see the skin, you would see the flesh.

Look what it's made out of. It's made in verse 1 of fine linen. Verse 7, it's made of goat's hair. Verse 14, of ram's skins dyed red. And then verse 14 at the end, badger's skin. Isn't it interesting that in the middle of all this that pictures our flesh or our bodies, I should say, the outer part, is you see ram's skin dyed red.

That pictures that as the Father looks at us, he sees the blood of Jesus. He does not, he does not choose to look at the earthiness. He looks at the blood of Jesus and it's pictured by this ram's skins dyed red and all of this part of the covering, the outside covering, pictures our flesh, that part of us which we call the flesh.

Now verse 15, and thou shalt make boards of the tabernacle of Shittim wood standing up. And it gives the dimensions and the lengths. And then verse 29, you will overlay the boards with gold. Now isn't this interesting?

Now all of a sudden we see the framework of this object which pictures our body. And also we know that the inner most holy place, it has these boards holding it up and then it has the curtains around there and then the curtain that separates it from the other parts of the tabernacle.

All of this is held up by boards that are rough wood overlaid with fine gold. And so the same process that Jesus was has happened to you at the point of salvation. And what I'm saying is when Jesus prayed, let them be one with us as I am one with you.

It shows here that the very tabernacle, that which holds it up is rough wood with gold overlaying it. And it pictures the same idea that when you would desire to be in the direct will of God, when you want your next step not to be your step, but you want it to be God's step, but you have to be shown that before you can do it.

Jesus said, I don't do anything that God has, that the Father has not shown me, that which he showeth me that I do. Then later he says, the works that I do are the works of the Father. I don't do any works of my own.

The words that I speak are not my words, they are the Father's words. This is the wood covered with the deity. And when we look at our lives and we can just only contemplate the very next step we're going to take, the very next step we're going to take, do I want that step to be my self step or do I want that to be the Lord living his life in me, the church on this earth today, which do I desire?

And if I desire my next step to be the Lord's step, does that then mean I lose my identity? No, the wood is still under there. That's me. I was born into this world a natural man and you were born a natural man or a natural woman.