Bill Johnson - A Nation of Priests - Part 2
So, seeing momentum is to give us a sense of identity in history. None of us lives unto himself. Whenever I compromise, if I say no to his purposes in my life, not only does it affect me, it affects the generations after me because I am robbing them of what God planned to give to them as a gift, through my life. So, if I say no to God, I am robbing future generations. And you can water it down and say, "God'll touch 'em, anyway". Yeah, not always. Not always. Some things are actually and seeing our place in the scope of time is vital, especially when we're facing one of two decisions. And it's a very difficult decision when you realize centuries of momentum have been created so that I could make the and when you see that, you realize you're not living unto yourself.
You're not living for immediate pleasure. You're not living for your own definition of grace. You're actually involved in this movement that started centuries ago to impact the course of history so that the verse I read this morning to open the service is that one day was coming when all the kings of the earth will rise to give him thanks. Because they have heard the word that we have heard, which means that word of the Lord that changed our life would be released into the nations of the earth and kings would actually rise from their place and acknowledge him and give thanks. Much like Nebuchadnezzar, it's before the return of the Lord. Anyone can do it after.
So, we have in this passage, all I'm trying to show you is that Jesus had purpose in himself. Okay, it's called the mystery of Christ. You guys alive? Eh, never mind. In Christ, what's happening here? As we go through the book of Ephesians, we find that one of the great mysteries that's unveiled, unpacked in the book of Ephesians is the unity of God himself. So, when we talk about the mystery of unity being hidden in God, it's literally hidden in the perSon of God. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Hebrews 1 says that Jesus is the exact representation of the Father's nature. These lights, there's a light bulb, but light comes from the light. Jesus came from the Father, manifesting the Father exactly.
And then, when Jesus left, he says: I'm going to give you another comforter. And that word "Another" actually means exactly the so, Jesus came from the Father, exactly like the Father, in no way misrepresenting him. And then, Jesus released the Holy Spirit, who exactly represented him. In no way was there any slight misrepresentation. So, in the perSon of God is this great mystery called unity. And that, then, becomes the model for what Jesus accomplished on Calvary, in his blood, destroying every legal right to separation. It's why racism is such a nauseating thing in the earth. Because Jesus paid a price that there would be no separation between the races. There, instead, would be value and celebration for the uniqueness of every tribe and every nation.
And so, racism is this actual war against the purposes of God that are being revealed through the person of Jesus, who abolished all legal reason for separation, for division. So, in his own flesh, he destroyed any legal grounds for division between Jew and gentile, which was the greatest separation imaginable. All right? You guys with me? Still all right? All right. So, Jesus, then, destroys that in his flesh and he makes it possible, now, for the two that were unjoinable to become perfectly one and united in the same way that the Father, Son, it's why we have in John 17 the prayer that Jesus prayed, "That they may be one", referring to you and me, "That they may be one, even as I am in you, Father, and you are in me: even as we are one".
So, Jesus prays this prayer: I want them to be united, reflecting our nature into the earth. So, Jesus becomes, the manifestation of chapter 3, in Ephesians, says, in verse 5, says: "In other ages this mystery was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed by the spirit to his holy apostles and prophets: that the gentiles should be fellow heirs, of the same body, and partakers of his promise", verse 10, "To the intent". You guys all right, reading and doing studying? I'm making you work tonight, but, if I gotta work, you gotta work. That's the way I look at it. Trying to be funny. Verse 10: "To the intent that now the manifold wisdom of God might be made known by the church to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places".
Okay, now stop, right there. Let's look at that verse again, "To the intent that now". This is referring to the mystery of verse 10. What is the mystery? All things become one in Christ: Jew, gentile, one in Christ, in the same way the Father, Son, Holy Spirit are one. All right? So, he's referring to this mystery. He says: "To the intent that now the manifold wisdom of God might be made known by the church to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places, according to the eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord".
All right, are you following? I know I'm making you work. So, here, he says we've got this mystery being unfolded. So, Ephesians, chapters 1, 2, and 3 are all doctrine. Chapter 4, 5, and 6 are all conduct. Good theology sets the stage for good conduct. If you know the why, you'll pay the price. If you know the why, you'll pay the price. 'cause he starts chapter 4 by saying: I'm a prisoner of Christ. Do everything you can to follow his example. So, he lays it out. So, here we are in chapter 3. He says: "Now the manifold wisdom of God". The word "Manifold" there actually means multicolored. It speaks to me of Joseph's coat. If you remember, Joseph was given a coat. He was one of a bunch of brothers. And his dad liked him best and gave him this beautiful coat with many, many colors to it. And this coat was the symbol of the Father's delight in the favor that his own dad had multicolored.
So, now, this multicolored coat of favor is actually seen in divine wisdom that, when you and I operate in divine wisdom, we are operating in the coat of many colors, selected by the Father to represent him well in the earth. The manifold wisdom of God would be upon his people. Now, what is he describing here in this context? He's describing the context in which the people of God will do anything necessary to protect the unity. There's something about this unity that needs to be remembered. If we have an orchestra up here, and I go over to a guitar and I start Messing with all the strings and I finally get all the strings in perfect unity together. And then, we tune every other instrument to that guitar, it would sound in unity, in harmony to those that didn't have what they call perfect pitch. Because the guitar could be completely out of tune.
But as long as all the strings of the guitar are tuned together, none of them will stand out as offensive. And then, you tune all the other instruments, the violins and the cello and all these other instruments, you tune to that one standard, it would sound unified. But it would not be divine, if I can use that context. Instead, what you do is you take one perfect note, a tuning fork. And you, ring that tuning fork. And the instruments now all begin to tune themselves to this one sound. So, unity, then, in that context is not just unity together, but unified unto the same goal. Unity in Christ is not unity together.
I see a lot of people who confess Christ that are in unity together, but they're in opposition to the purposes of God. When they're in the same room, there's the same sound. But it's a discord. Because it's not playing what Jesus, the song he was singing. It's not carrying the note he was carrying. So, when we talking about unity, we're not talking about not standing up for something. There are many who allow the greatest perversion and things work into their life and into their family and into their group in the name of "Unity". But what they're doing is they're playing the wrong song. They've tuned their hearts to the wrong note.
And Jesus rings a note that's very strong and very clear. And everyone says amen to the one sound. And everyone, all of us, as we walk in life, we constantly re-tune ourselves to this one note. And as we do, we find ourselves in harmony, in unity with other people of like heart and mind. The unity is not the striving to be together. It's the striving to be connected to his heartbeat. And in that process, we find those of like heart and like mind begin to be drawn together because we carry that same note, if you will. All right?
So, this wisdom of God is to be seen. Now, here's an important part. It's like the church is the movie screen that the spirit world is forced to watch. God says here: I want to illustrate with you something that I want the entire spirit world, because they have no clue why I would allow my son to die in place of rebellious humanity. And so, the Son of God that the angels and all the creatures and beings that have existed for millennia have worshiped and exalted, this Jesus as the Son of God, when he died, it was the greatest conflict, if you will in the mind, in the heart of the entire spirit world. And now, Jesus is being demonstrated through a body of and the Father is using the people of God to illustrate something to the entire spirit world.
And this verse 10 says that now, not someday, now, the manifold, the multicolored, highly favored wisdom of God would be made known now through his church to the principalities and powers and heavenly places. So, he's letting them see his purpose, his plan worked. Every time you yield yourself to embrace somebody that you never would have normally embraced, so, it's not just a human-level value that you have for that skill, or that talent, or the business that they're in, or whatever it might be, or that they're neighbors, it's the fact that you go out of your way. Love is measured in sacrifice. And you step out of convenience to demonstrate the love of God to somebody.
Every time that's done, that's the manifold wisdom of God being prophesied into the airwaves. And the entire spirit world, angels and demons, alike, watch and observe to see the plan of God is actually working. And, in fact, in verse 11, he calls it the eternal purpose of God, which tells us this that is being worked on in us right now is going to find its maximum expression in eternity. Eternity. Heaven is an industrious place. It's not a place where you sit on a cloud and play a harp. It's a very industrious place. It's a city that's very there's government. There's expansion. There's growth. There's development. The gifts that you and I carry here will be expressed there. It's just who God made us to be. There'll be something of the nature of what we do now that we will do in all of eternity.
So, he extended himself to all the nations of the world, and they rejected him, so he chose Israel. And they raised him up to illustrate what he wanted from everyone. And, now, we see Jesus has abolished in his flesh the separation between these two. And he destroyed the enmity, the hostility. All the logic, all the reason for conflict between the two groups, he destroyed in his own flesh. There is, now, no legal reason for strife be gentile and Jew. You can have it, but you have to step outside of his purposes and outside of his reasoning. 'cause he destroyed the reasoning.
So, now, he has one more thing to destroy. And that's the separation that still exists in many hearts between those who are in full-time employment ministry and I'm thankful that I don't know anybody around here that believes that paid church people are supposed to do all the work and everyone else just pays their tithes so they can observe. But if you remember the passage I read to you out of Exodus, chapter 19, he said: you shall be a kingdom of priests. In Isaiah 61, I think it's verse 6, he did something very similar. He said, "You shall be". In both occasions, he's pointed to the future and he declared that the people of God, all the people of God, would be priests unto the Lord.
Now, we come to 1 Peter 2, if you'd turn there. It's on page 1910. Verse 9. 1 Peter 2:9. "But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, his own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light", New American Standard says, "That you may proclaim the excellencies of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light". Look at it, again. Verse 9. "But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, his own special people, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light".
So, what do we have in the Old Testament? We have them looking into the Peter comes and he makes this incredibly bold announcement. It's no longer, "You shall be". It's, "You are". This is the moment of fulfillment of what has been building for centuries. Again, I remind you: there is a divine momentum written into the history of humanity on planet earth that unveils the purposes of God. I liken momentum, sometimes, to, like, a swinging of a tennis racket or a golf swing. The golf is, I'm not a great golfer. I haven't played in years. In my mind, boy, am I good. Yeeees, I am.
I remember, and this is a true story, I was playing in Weaverville once and the golf pro was on the course. And, he was Messing around with some equipment and stuff. And so, I took a practice swing, and I knew him, he says, "You're gonna slice it," which means it's gonna go that way. And I took another swing, and he said, "You're gonna hook it". And I took another practice swing. He said, "Aw, you're gonna hook it". I took another practice swing. He says, "I don't know where you're gonna hit it". And then, I hit the ball, absolutely killed it right down the middle, just, as far as you possibly would wanna hit on that golf course.
And I turned it... sorry. What do you call it? No, it was a fairway. Fairway. It was not a driving range. This is golf, I was playing! The green is right there. And I killed it! And I turned to him and I said: "I do it all the time. That's what I do. I do that all the time". You know. All right. In a golf swing, if you can just picture this, you've got the ball. You can always tell where you're going, if you can find out where you've been. You're not gonna have a golf club go like this after it hits the ball. Because the momentum is created by its history. Right?
And so, when your history has been redeemed, and you've been brought into the purposes of God, you suddenly are brought into something that's much bigger than you. Much bigger than all of our achievements put together. Bigger than our faith. Bigger than everything. It's been written into centuries and centuries of divine momentum, of the manifold wisdom of God. The multicolored, highly favored coat of divine favor, resting upon a people who have chosen to tune their hearts with God and protect the relational unity they have at all cost, because, there is a momentum of the Revelation of the God's nature that's being released over a planet. And it's being done through a people that realize God has actually made us a holy but not only did he make us a holy nation, now, it's no longer, the summons of priestly ministry to 12 tribe or to one tribe, to Levi.
Now, it's to the entire nation. As Peter in this passage says: you are a holy nation. You are a royal priesthood. It's no longer the special group. Everyone gets to play, as John Wimber would say. Everyone gets to play. Everyone gets to do this. And the summons that you and I have on our lives is to protect what's valuable to him. It's not complicated. The moment you get complicated is the moment, you are prone to make foolish decisions. Because, you'll disqualify yourself. "And I'm just not smart enough". "I'm not whatever".
Keeping it simple, it's: everything belongs to Jesus and I protect my relationships here. I do everything for him and I do all to protect what God's given me, here. It's just very simple. Love the Lord God with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my mind, with all my strength. Love my neighbor as myself. It's just simple. It's actually what he told us to do. But, tonight, what I wanted you to see is that, hundreds of years ago, a golf swing started, and he's, right now, making contact because he wants something of his nature revealed into the earth that's never been seen before. And you are the generation that gets to carry this. Let's go 'head and stand.