New Beginnings - Passover I — George Warnock

The hunger in God's people. I think oftentimes we have that hunger and we feel we're being deprived. But it's a real blessing from God if you find it in your heart to hunger after the Lord, because there are multitudes of Christians that really don't hunger after the Lord.

Hunger for the Lord and the Beatitudes

And we're inclined to think a man is blessed if he can get up and prophesy great words of wisdom, or heal the sick, or perform a miracle. But Jesus never mentioned any of those when he uttered the Beatitudes.

He did say, blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the meek, blessed are they that hunger. Because as surely as you're hungering after God, God has that which you need, and that which you desire, and that for which you're hungering.

He has it. He has it for everybody. He has it for the world who are hungering for him. He has it for those who hunger. He has it for everybody. God had everything the church at Laodicea needed. We think of the church, it was bankrupt, it was wretched.

God had everything they needed. God's only complaint with them, as far as I could find, was that they didn't know it, didn't recognize it. They said, we are rich and increased with good and have need of nothing.

God had it all. But because they didn't know they needed God, they said, we are rich, and Jesus said, you're poor, wretched, miserable, poor, blind, naked. But he said, I've got everything I need. I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire.

The church is getting filled with counselors these days. I can't get over it. It's become another ministry in the church. They're hiring counselors now, along with pastors and assistant pastors. They're hiring counselors.

And the reason is because people want an easier way out. And God has counsel. I don't care what your need is, God has good counsel for you in his Spirit. We don't want to really come to the place of complete and total commitment, but maybe a counselor can dig up my past and tell me how I got it from my father or my grandfather or my great-grandfather.

That's where your trouble is, you know. I know our trouble is there, but it goes right back to Adam. It goes right back to Adam. God crucified it all at the cross. Before God ever made a man with an appetite, like I think a lot of us have here, in the natural, before he ever made man with an appetite, he made the fruits and the vegetables and everything else he needed to satisfy that appetite.

He made that on the third day, and the sixth day he made a man and gave him an appetite for that which he had already provided and told him, see those trees, those vegetables? I made that for you. That'll be your food.

So be assured, God has every provision for you, and that's why you're hungry, because God has it there and he wants you to partake of it. He has it. He's already provided it. So blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, they shall be filled.

It is true, of course, that is, we eat, we still hunger. We eat again and we still hunger. So the secret is in continually coming to Father's table. He that eateth of my flesh and drinketh of my blood.

It must be an ongoing thing. Then we're never in a state of famishing. I believe God is putting that hunger there in his people, and recognize God is doing it. Recognize he's doing it, because there are many who are not hungry, so he's doing it.

Manna, Spiritual Hunger, and the Word of God

We touched on it a little, how in the manna there was every provision for their need, but it didn't quench their appetite. It left them feeling, I'm not satisfied, I'm empty, I loathe this light bread, it's not substantial.

It left them that way, that they might know that man does not live by bread only. So that in eating of that manna that provided everything they needed, it didn't quench their hunger. God says, I fed you with manna and caused you to hunger, that you might know that you don't live just by this, but you live by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord.

We're going to find health in the body of Christ when we begin to depend on every word that comes from his mouth, and not just on the food we eat. We should seek to eat good food and all that, but we're coming to a time in this country and ours where the food is contaminated before we get it.

It's contaminated while it's growing. It used to be, well, get back to nature, get back there, get the stuff right from the ground. Now it's coming from the ground contaminated, coming from the oceans contaminated.

We've got to know God in this day and hour. Their life is not to depend on that food. It's poisoned already. We've got to eat of that hidden manna, which is well able to keep us healthy and strong and free from disease.

I believe that's God's purpose, that his people are healthy, physically, spiritually. But I think he's putting the emphasis on the spiritual these days. He did send a great mighty wave of healing back in the 40s and 50s.

I know he's still healing, I'm not denying that, but there was a wave of it and people were being healed freely. And that seems to have subsided. I think it's simply that God wants his people to recognize that it's the spiritual that God is concerned about.

For spirits, God brings about, brings to pass in this church, that condition where life is flowing through the body. We'll find it in our physical bodies as well. I believe the covenant of healing and of health is for God's people.

New Beginnings and the Unchanging Ways of God

I thought maybe for a few sessions to speak a little bit about new beginnings, because I think there's no question in our hearts and multitudes of God's people that we do stand in the threshold of a new day.

And every new day is a new beginning. I don't know how blind some people can get. I hear it said, if it's new, it's not true. If it's true, it's not new. Nice little poem, isn't it? God's always doing new things.

Every day you get up, there's a new day. New day. There's times and seasons and years. God ordained it that way in the beginning in the spiritual. There's times and there's seasons. When there's a new day, this summer is not like last one, and that one is not like the one before.

But while saying all that, we certainly recognize that there are certain principles which must remain constant for the simple reason that God is the author of the days and seasons, and God doesn't change.

And so though he has many, many new things to bring forth to his people, and will continue to bring forth new things, nevertheless, there is always the old that we must cherish. So that in the temple that Solomon built, God ordained that they would have storehouses where they would keep the spoils of battle that they had accumulated from the days of Israel's war, from the days of Samuel and on.

There were many spoils in battle that God ordained should be preserved and put there in the temple. And so we never say because it's a new day that we don't need the past. We don't need the writings of the people of the past, or the ministry of those of the past, and that forget everything you've known because now it's a new day and there's new teaching.

We're not saying that. There are many, many spoils that were won by the people of God in times past for which they laid down their lives, and they're laid up there in God's house. They're laid up there.

Some of them perhaps we have never seen or heard. That doesn't matter. According to God's plan and purpose, he has preserved a great heritage. He's brought us into a great heritage. So the psalmist would say, Tell your children about this, and let their children tell another generation, that that generation which shall arise shall tell it to their children.

The purpose being that God's people in succeeding generations would have had transmitted to them by their parents, by their fellowship in the house of God, would have had transmitted to them truths that they would need, truths that they would go by, truths that would keep them walking with God.

So seek out the old paths. We must cherish all the wonderful truths that have been restored. But in saying that, God forbid we should come to the place like generally the Church has come to in any revival as far as I know.

Finally God has done it. Now we thought that we had it all when we were a Lutheran, but now we talk in tongues, now we got it all, that thought. Because God still has many things that he has not yet revealed.

I think the most of what God would reveal is still future. The most of his treasures are still future. I have not seen nor heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man the things that God hath prepared for them that love him.

A verse I think in my generation, every young person could quote that. You learn it in Sunday school. When they would have what they called a scripture shower, someone was sure to quote that. I have not seen nor heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.

We never looked up the context, never gave it another thought. Great day, someday we'll get to heaven and then we'll have all these things. Don't misunderstand me. God has tremendous things for the next life.

He has eternal riches. I think you're speaking something that really pertains to the next life. It's not for me. It's for the next life. Don't be afraid of that, because even if it is for the next life and God gives you a hunger and desire for it, you can begin to partake of it now.

In fact, what you are partaking of, many of the things you are partaking of really pertains to another age. Paul, writing to the Hebrews, reminds them that there are those who partook of the powers of the age to come but did not go on and turn back.

If you have partaken of the powers of the age to come and then fall away, what we are really partaking of are the powers of the world to come. So don't be disturbed if I say something and you think, Oh, no, that's for the world to come.

Well, God forbid that I should come up with a lot of guesswork about those areas. I try not to do that. But if God by his anointing is bringing forth things that pertain to the world to come, he must want us to partake of it and measure.

Resurrection Hope and the Dawning of a New Day

Because the ultimate of what we are really looking for is the resurrection from the dead. As far as I know, I consider it an ultimate to rise in the likeness of our Lord Jesus Christ. It's going to happen someday.

The trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be rised and the living shall be caught up with them to be with the Lord in the air and so shall we ever be with the Lord. We anticipate that. The Saints, I believe, of all ages, many of them anticipated it.

Though in the Old Testament it wasn't real clear, but once in a while there'd come forth a clear pronouncement, I know that my Redeemer liveth and that he shall stand on the latter days upon the earth and know after.

My skin worms destroy this flesh, yet in my flesh I shall see God as a living hope. And so when Jesus came back at the request of Mary and Martha, for their brother was sick, Jesus waited till he died till he came back, deliberately waited till he died.

And of course when he came back they said, sorry Lord, you should have been here a couple of days ago. Four days, I guess, wasn't it? If you'd have been here, he'd have got better. Jesus said he'll rise again.

Oh yeah, we know. We know he'll rise in the resurrection. He'll rise in the resurrection, we know that. But Jesus says, I am the resurrection. So true, that's great, that resurrection day, but Jesus says, I'm the resurrection.

Not just an event, it's him, it's a person. I believe it's a new day. I really do. I believe it's the dawning of a new day. Let's not consider it's going to be the same as yesterday. Principles are the same, it'll be the same son of righteousness.

But he rises with healing in his wings. Same son, yes, the same Christ, the same living Christ coming forth in a new day. I felt greatly encouraged, helped, edified with what became known as the latter rain revival.

I believe it was a great move of God. And I know sometimes a younger generation sort of, we've missed out on the good things of this century. And I used to think that concerning the Pentecostal revival.

I wasn't around when the Pentecostal revival had started in its purity. It didn't take long to go the way of man. And I was close to it, and so I knew the power of it and I knew the glory of it just by hearsay.

And you sort of feel, you know, I sort of missed it there. But I've come to recognize that if we truly believe that the path of the just is as a shining light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day, that you don't miss out on anything.

Because then there's hope for another day. There's hope for still another day. And so that hope keeps you expectant, keeps you in a state of anticipation and expectation. And that will be the preparation that you will need for any new day.

Preparation for Encountering God's Light

Remember that? What are the preparations that we're going to need? We sometimes say we've got to be prepared for what God is going to do. That's something very individual, I believe, that as you walk with the Lord, be diligent.

Perhaps the Lord will appear today. Perhaps he'll appear in our midst here, or where you are. Be expecting him, be anticipating confrontation, a meeting, or a confrontation. And I believe it's bound to be both.

Because though we anticipate his glory, it's a very awesome thing for his glory to be revealed. For then it reveals all areas of darkness within you, for he is light, brilliant, shining light. And you can't come into the presence of that brilliant, shining light and not have that light expose all areas of darkness.

But isn't that what we want? And so we don't shrink from the light like the children of Israel did when Moses came down, radiating the glory of God. We must not shrink from it, come to it. You say, it'll slay me.

That's right. Let's come to the light. Remember that. Never run from the light, come to the light. For God intends his light to sweep away all the darkness, to reveal all those areas of darkness, that in revealing it, he might sweep it away.

That's the purpose of the light, not to destroy us, but to sweep away the darkness. But it will do one or the other. That's why in the coming of the day of the Lord, a lot of Christians can't understand when they read of the wrath and the judgment and the desolation, thank God he's going to take us out of here.

Oh, no. Because the day of the Lord is God's day, it's not God's night. And I never saw that until a few months ago, maybe a year or two ago. You say, you never saw it? Well, have you? It's the day of the Lord.

We're not looking for a dark night that's coming. Paul says the darkness is passing away. The night is far spent. The night is far spent. The day is at hand. Let us therefore put on the armor of light, because the day is at hand.

Put on, and did you ever notice that? That when the day of the Lord comes, instead of God taking us away, he clothes you with armor? Put on the armor of light, because you're not children of the night, you're children of the day.

And that's how it was with the children of Israel. I said we're going to talk a little about new beginnings. If you want to open up there, I might not deal at length with it, but Exodus 12. God said, This month shall be unto you the beginning of months, that shall be the first month of the year to you.

God said, This is to be a new day for you, to be a new day. God has many new days, and Lord willing, we want to go into some of God's new beginnings in the scripture to give us confidence and hope. See, truth is not really complicated.

Receiving Truth as Spiritual Food

I think it seems that way because by nature we are very complicated in so many areas of darkness and ignorance within us that it seems complicated to us. But wisdom speaking in the book of Proverbs says, All my ways are plain to him that hath understanding.

So truth becomes very simple, as we let the Lord work it in our lives. But as long as it's out there for you and I to struggle with and try to comprehend with our natural minds, of course it's complicated.

But God intends it to be simple. He intends us to digest it, to partake of it that it might be food for us, eat it, drink it, let it become food for us. And then you don't worry about the theology of it.

You sit down at a table, and if we sat at our tables like they sit around arguing about theology, you'd hesitate to drink that water because the scientists would say, Do you know what that is? That's hydrogen and oxygen.

They're both a gaseous thing. Oxygen, we breathe it, and hydrogen is very inflammable. It'll burn. Should I drink that or not? I don't know. Then you grab the salt, you know, and you go, Oh, wait a minute.

That's composed of sodium and chlorine. Chlorine is a very poisonous gas. And some soldiers in World War I were afflicted with it until the day of their death. Well, I remember once in a laboratory at school, I think it was sodium he took out of some solution that began to burn right there in the air.

Is that right? I think it does. And that's all salt is. But somehow God had a way of putting it together. So it was something that Jesus said was good. So you know you can be like a scientist. He dare not eat anything because he knows there's poison in that and that, and this would consume you, and this would, I don't know what all.

But those who aren't scientifically minded take the water and drink it, take the milk and drink it, take that vegetable, drink it. So the truth, if you dissect it too much, can become poisonous. You just take one doctrine there that you like, you know, and feed on that, and it could poison you.

But you say that's contradictory to this other doctrine. Well, I know it seems that way, but not if the Spirit puts it together. As an example, I like the doctrine of election and protestation. I do. I really like it.

But if you just hang on to that and don't accept your responsibility in the things of God, it can make you sick. It can make you high-minded, conceited. It can cause you really to just die spiritually.

But somehow God mingles it up with a doctrine that says, Whosoever will, let him come unto me and drink. Whosoever will, let him come. And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And whosoever hear us say, Come.

Come, drink of the waters of life. A young man stood up in one of these Calvinist churches years ago and started to preach something like this. An elder came up and tapped him in the shoulder, My son, you're not preaching election.

He says, If you'll go and put a cross on the backs of all the elect, I'll just preach to them. But he didn't know who was elect, so he said, Whosoever will, may come. And the elect would come. For Jesus said, You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.

And it's something you can rest on in times of trouble and difficulty. God chose me, so if I'm a brand put out of the fire, God, all I can say is, I thank you for it. But if I study up in the doctrine of election and know it so thoroughly that I say I'm elect because it says here, ye are elect, I'll have to say to you, it says it there in the book, but are you doing what the Apostle Peter said to make sure that you're one of the elect?

He says, As your faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge temperance, to temperance patience, to patience godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, to brotherly kindness love, for if these things are in you and abound, they make you that you shall neither be idle nor unfruitful in any good work, but he that lacketh these things is blind and short-sighted, is forgotten, he was purged from his old sins.

Therefore, be diligent to make your calling and election sure. So you see, God speaks to the elect, make your election sure. If you have faith, become steadfast in it, know about God and his word, and your faith, virtue, to virtue, knowledge, knowledge, self-control, come to the place where you keep your body under by the power of the spirit, that you do not let the lust of the flesh destroy that life you have, patience.

Adding all these virtues, that's the only way we can know if we're the elect. God knows, of course. God says, The foundation of the Lord standeth sure, having this seal, the Lord knoweth them that are his, and let everyone that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.

But you say, can you then reconcile the two doctrines? No. No, I can't reconcile the two doctrines. I've tried for years. One man decided, well, I'll get this book, this man's got a book on Romans and Romans 8, predestination.

I'm going to get that book, and he found one, an old writing, I guess it was, and he bought it and took it home so he could somehow, by the writing of this great theologian, he would be able to reconcile in his thinking this doctrine of predestination with the rest of the Bible.

And so he hurriedly gets home and opens up to Romans 8 and someone had torn the page out. Someone else had the same thought. But God has purposes that we'll not miscarry. He's got purposes that we'll not miscarry.

We rest in that. We've got to rest in the sovereign God. You can't figure it all out before you can rest in God and his truth. Never figure his truth out. It's intended to be food for our daily bread, water for our thirsty souls.

That's what it's intended to be. Not just so understand it all that we can argue with people about it, because you won't be able. I've discovered, and you can spare yourself a lot of that frustration in trying to reconcile aspects of truth.

If you can receive this, you won't be able to reconcile many aspects of truth. And God never intended it that way. But in giving bread, he mingles them together in such a way that even though by itself that salt could kill you and that sodium could kill you and many of those ingredients could kill you by themselves, nevertheless coming forth from the heart of God and intermingled by the process of creation and life that is in God, he makes it to be health for our souls and spirits.

The Living Bread and the Spirit's Work

Living bread, eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you. They couldn't make any sense in their thinking. It sounded awful, it sounded gruesome. Jesus deliberately said that to people whom he knew would not receive it, except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.

He knew it would cause them to stumble. His own disciples were bothered with it. But he knew also that those whom the Father had given to him, those they couldn't understand it, would rejoice in the Spirit that came from the lips of Jesus, and they knew it was right.

Like someone said this morning at the breakfast table, he just knew it was right, but he couldn't understand it. That's good. In the process of time, God will give us a little more understanding in all these areas, as we need it.

Not just as we ask him for it, but as we need it. So God does have new things. I was greatly blessed, illuminated. I know God did something in my life that was different, though it wasn't a sudden thing, but I just recognized within a few months after I had partaken of the benefits of what became known as latter rain, which we never called it that.

Up our way it got that name, down here in the States some months or a year or two later, because they did not believe the brethren whom God used to bring forth that move. They did not believe that was the ultimate latter rain.

They believed it was just the foretaste of it. Nevertheless, it was a great blessing. It was showers of God's rain about his inheritance, and I found great benefit from it, with help by it. But within about three years, I realized I had to step out of it.

Not out of the rain, I hope, but out of that particular structure that grew up around it. And it bothered me, because I thought we were there in 1950 where I think we are now. I don't know, but it does seem to me that we've come to end time.

And I thought we were there then, and so it seemed so devastating that God would have started this thing. And suddenly, two or three years, it just seemed to peter out. I suppose I mourned over it a little.

One time I think the Lord quickened to me that passage. Isaiah 43, or in there, Remember ye not the former things, or consider the things of old? Behold, I will do a new thing, and now it shall spring forth.

Shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness and streams in the desert. God does new things. He's always been doing new things. I believe he always will be doing new things. I can't help but believe that in eternity he'll be doing new things, because he's eternal.

And in him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. And I can hardly imagine that after a few millennia, that finally all God's riches of wisdom and knowledge have been exhausted. Paul talks about declaring the unsearchable riches of Christ.

They're unsearchable. Nevertheless, the Spirit searches them out, and you and I search them out. And if the Spirit is searching, and we have the Spirit and we're listening to the Spirit, the searching in our heart is good.

But if we're searching out those hidden treasures in God without the Spirit, it will end us up in a lot of confusion. That's why God gave us his Spirit, that he might search out the deeps in God while at the same time searching out our hearts, that as he finds a place in our hearts for this truth that he's searched out in God's heart, he can join them together.

And so the deep in our hearts, that hunger, that desire, that longing, the Spirit knows it. He's found. Here is a searching heart. So he searches out of God's heart, joins it to our spirit, that we might partake of it.

Which things also we speak, not in words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth, combining spiritual truths with spiritual words, imparting spiritual realities to spiritual people.

However we might take it, and some translators bring out both those thoughts, that the Spirit of God takes from God and finds that spiritual quality entity in us, and he's able to join it so that there's a conception, there's a birth, there's an importation of that which is in Christ into our hearts by his Spirit.

And so God says, New things do I declare. The former things have happened, and new things do I declare. And in the other verse, remember not the former things. We thank him for the past and all that, but we cannot recall the past, and he doesn't want us to linger around the past, whether it be in areas of beauty and success or areas of tragedy and desolation, forgetting those things which are behind and pressing forward to those things which are before.

Ephraim, Fruitfulness, and God's Preparation

That's why Ephraim must take precedence over Manasseh. Though they were sons of Joseph, and though Manasseh was first born, it was upon Ephraim that the blessing was pronounced, because if God is going to bring forth fruitfulness in your life and mine, he has to make the sign of the cross upon us, so that when Joseph brought Ephraim and Manasseh to his father Jacob for the blessing, he brought Manasseh in his left hand so that Jacob, all he had to do was reach out his hand and lay his hand on little Manasseh.

And so Joseph made it convenient for Jacob to pronounce the blessing on the right son, because Manasseh was first born, and that was very important in Israel, that the firstborn would receive the preeminent blessing.

So he's making it easy for Jacob and Ephraim in his right hand. But Jacob ignored it all, and in his blindness crossed his hands. Joseph said, Not so, Father. I brought him here in my left hand so your right hand would touch him.

I know it, I know all about it, but upon Ephraim shall be the blessing. God crossed his hands over you? Those things that you present to God, that you want him to bless, has he put the sign of the cross there yet?

Forgetting those things which are behind and pressing forward to those things which are before. Oh, you say that's easy. My past has been a desolation. Oh yeah, but you remember that still? Is it still a thorn?

Is it still bitter in your mouth? And now they say, Well, I've had a very... Ephraim means fruitfulness, but more than fruitfulness, double fruitfulness. We talk about the double portion. We want the double blessing.

That's for Ephraim. But God must cross his hands upon us to cause us to forget the past. Though the past was essential, it was first. It had to be there to make way for the future, to make way for that which God would do in the future.

You had to go through those areas in the past to make way and to prepare for the work that God would do in the future. You say, I don't know that there's much preparation in my life. Well, if there's been disappointment, if there's been perplexity, if there's been trial, if there's been trouble, that's the preparation.

If there's been unfruitfulness, if there's been barrenness, that's the preparation. Because I'm sure that what God will do in these days, in the days to come, he's going to do it through a weak people, a barren people, a people of known devastation, a people of known trouble, sorrow, disappointment, trial, whatever.

That's why he says, Rejoice, thou barren, that beareth not. Break forth into singing, thou that revealest not. For more are the children of the desolate than have heard that hath a husband. And particularly in times when God would bring forth something special, does God use the barren and the helpless and the weak, that no flesh should go in his presence.

When God would bring forth the promised seed, Sarah was barren. And the older she got, the more hopeless it became for God to fulfill the promise. When God would bring forth a Joseph, preceding that, Joseph, who was to be a great deliverer, not only for his own family, but for Egypt, his mother was barren.

Rebecca was barren. Elizabeth was barren. And so when God promised him a son, he said, Can't, Lord, now. Too late now. Jesus, to encourage young and old alike, because the older inclined to think, Well, you know, I've done my best.

I'm getting up there now. And time for the younger ones to take over. That's often the attitude. God is going to use some old men in this day and hour. He's going to use some young ones. And the young ones will have to learn these things that we're talking about.

You say, Well, I haven't got time. You mean to say I've got to wait 40 years like you did? I don't think we've got time for that. But infants went into the land of Canaan and grew up not having known the wards of Canaan and the turmoil that their fathers went through to come into that land.

And so God left some enemies there to prove them in the land of Canaan. So if you get into the land of Canaan without too much warfare, don't think you've missed it all. Because God will have some enemies there too, that you might learn war too.

Those who had not known the wards of Canaan. Oh, the new thing I will do. Now it shall spring forth, shall ye not know it. Israel had come to a place where God has got to do a new thing. And God revealed himself to Moses at the burning bush and told him, Go back and deliver my people.

Moses and the Preparation of Deliverers

Which was his vision 40 years before, but not now. God might bring things to pass in your life that you feel, Well, yeah, I did have this vision, but it's a thing of the past. In order to clarify it, to purify it, to purge it, to make it to be his vision.

Because God was not able to use that strong and mighty prince in Egypt, Moses, son of Pharaoh, to all appearances, son of Pharaoh, in his own way of life, son of Pharaoh. Designated by Pharaoh to do many great projects, we're told, in history.

Pharaoh appointed him to go and build cities and look after various things of the empire. And he was in a key position to bring deliverance to the people. Right there, right at the top, politically speaking.

And so, some are encouraged today to get in there, become a senator, become a mayor maybe first, and then a senator maybe, and get into Congress. And first thing you know, you might be president. You'll have a Christian president right there in the key position.