TD Jakes - The Timeless Thesis of God - Part 3
There are many today that would have us to think that we cannot speak ethnically and be a part of a church which is unity. But the church is comprised of great diversity. It does not hide nor shy away that every tongue and kindred shall be gathered together in that day. God celebrates it and he knows how to speak on many different dimensions. He is linguistical enough to speak truth in your language and literacy, making it accessible to the intellectual and the illiterate because to God they are the same because your wisdom is foolishness compared to his. "As high as the heavens are above the earth, so are my thoughts above your thoughts and my ways above your ways".
So, we are talking today in the book of Hebrews and understand that Hebrews is designed to reach a particular group of people who have a shared set of experiences. It does not distinct itself as set itself apart to the exclusion of others, but it is spoken in a language that they can relate to using principles that embrace the historicity of the culture of the Hebrews. When you look at the book of Hebrews, you will hear a completely different tone and texture than you do when you read the book of Romans. Why does God speak to us through ethnicity? He speaks to us through ethnicity because it gives him relativity to be able to communicate intellectually to all types of people.
Not only does he speak to all of humans in a language that we can embrace that reflects the sensitivity of our background, highlighting it to use it to hold us into unity. He respects diversity, bringing us into unity in the same way that the Bible has different components to which it speaks to different cultures and kinds and yet is one book. The very notion that we have a book of Hebrews suggests that God does acknowledge distinctions while he demands unity. Our God is so linguistically endowed that he speaks to frogs and lice and flies and serpents. I don't think there's anyone in here that took serpent in school. But he speaks to cockatrice. He speaks to winds and waves and weather in such a way that the people on the boat said, "What manner of man is it that even the winds and the waves obey his will"?
Anyone speak weather? God speaks weather. God speaks woman. After all, he is El Shaddai. He is the Breasted One. God speaks man. He is the Father of Creation. God speaks to us in a language that causes us to galvanize in one place. Five generations are in this room right now, all huddled up under the banner and the canopy of one glory. Multiple ethnicities and cultures have all come together and done what the nation cannot do, found a place of unity because God can speak to us all individually and bring us into collectivity and then into unity and not disrespect anybody reaching everybody because he is ambidextrous enough to be able to comprehend with all saints what is the height, the depth, and the breadth of the love of God.
We are in the book of Hebrews. Somebody say, "The book of Hebrews". So, when we come to the book of Hebrews, we are coming into a rich tapestry of history with God, acknowledging the fact that he has created a people out of a people and brought them into a place of understanding where they have history with him. The question, then, is not do they have history with him but will they have destiny with him? Because sometimes we fall in love with where God was at the expense of where God is. So, then, when we talk about this book, I called it the thesis, the timeless thesis of God, and I called it a thesis as opposed to an epistle because all of the other New Testament epistles are addressed to individuals and epistles, in essence, are letters. Unto the saints of Ephesus, write.
To Timothy, my beloved, he writes, those are letters. But Hebrews has a different tenor. It is not addressed to anyone specifically. It starts out, "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners, have spoken unto us by the prophets". God has spoken. We have a speaking God. If you don't understand that about him, you won't understand anything. You won't understand worship. You'll think worship is dancing. Worship is not dancing. Dancing is praise. Worship is verbal. You have a verbal God. God speaks and it becomes whatever he said. He speaks, he creates out of his mouth. The womb of his mouth is the birth canal that said, "Let there be light and it became light and it was good," and it came out of his mouth. It came out of his mouth as Word and became sun and stars and moon and galaxies and hemispheres and atmospheres because God creates out of the spoken Word. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God".
And so, God wants people that speak. "By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise from the fruit of our lips continually with thanksgiving giving praise unto God". God wants you to talk to him. Wants you to say something to him because he's a talking God. He's a communicating God. And the assumption in the text is that you understand that God is Word, that God is both logos and rhema, that God is Word. "In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God. All things were made by him; without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men". The assumption is that you understand. "Speak the word only, and thy servant shall be healed".
You understand that he doesn't have to touch you to heal you. He can heal you through the Word. You understand that, "While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Ghost fell on all of them which heard the word. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost". Paul laid hands, but Peter preached and the Word filled them with the Holy Ghost. There is nothing stopping you from being filled with the Holy Ghost. If you can hear this Word, I don't have to touch you. I can speak because God is a speaking God. I can speak wealth. I can speak healing. I can speak deliverance. I can speak. Anybody in here that's ever heard God speak to you in the middle of the night, you were worried at 11:30 and God spoke at 11:31 and at 11:32, you had a feeling everything was gonna be all right. God!
So, then, he delivers this like a lawyer would deliver a closing statement to a jury to convince him of the authenticity and the relevancy of the Son of God. But he does not introduce the Son of God without starting with the Father. "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners have spoken unto us by the prophets". He starts with what they can eat and then brings them into a truth that they are debating over. "Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son". Several things I want you to notice. I want you to notice that he has determined that God hath spoken unto us by the prophets, but hath, past tense, in these last days. So, if you're wondering if we're in the last days, we were in the last days when the text was written. We are coming down to the last day, not days. If it was the last days then, we might be down to the last minutes. "Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son".
Now, he tells us that God... and it's God speaking through his prophets in diverse ways. "Hath in these last days spoken unto us through his Son". Now, that's where the rub comes in because now they're trying to wrestle with, was it God speaking through him? Because he has now said the same God who spoke in divers ways and many manners has in his sundry times in divers places has spoken unto us by the prophets. Hath in these last days, same God, different vehicle, spoken unto us by his Son. So, he now identifies, now, you have to get into the folds of the fabric to catch the manifold wisdom of this text because I'm in the folds. I'm not in the surface. My mother taught me when I was a little boy that you could judge the quality of the drape by the depth of the pleat. So, when Paul talks about the manifold wisdoms of God, while you look at the outer facing of the drape, the wisdom is in the pleat.
So, though the text does not specifically teach prophet, priest, and king, that's in the folds. It is in the folds that we find that God is speaking to us, first, through the prophets, and now he's speaking through his Son, who is also a prophet. He is a prophet, he is a priest, and he is the king and all three of them are in this text. Can I go deeper? You must understand of all God prepared and spoke to Moses and said, "I will raise them up a prophet from among their brethren, like unto you". I will raise from among their brethren. "He came unto his own, his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name". He said, "I will raise up a prophet from among their brethren, like unto you, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him".
God had said that about Moses in Deuteronomy 18:18 through 19. He says, "And it shall come to pass, that whoever will not hearken unto my words, my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him". All the way back in Deuteronomy they were prophesying a messianic declaration that God was going to move from speaking through prophets to speaking through his Son. This is why Jesus came and said, "Thou who killest the prophets and think you do God's service".
A certain man sent the prophets and you destroyed them and finally he sent his Son and you killed him. Jesus is talking about himself. He's talking about himself. He is the prophet. This is one of the great messianic predictions about what God is going to do through the supreme spokesman of God. What he will do through the supreme spokesman of God is so amazing that it is staggering according to the flesh. That he would be like unto Moses, the typical mediator, that he would deliver the whole message of God completely and succinctly and that those who despise him would do so at their imminent peril. Follow me, Let's go into this.
In all things Christ has supereminence as prophet, he far exceeds all the other prophets. Remember the woman at the well? Remember how Jesus sat by the well? Remember how Jesus challenged the woman at the well and asked her, "Where is your husband"? Remember how the woman at the well, though she was a Samaritan, had enough perception to recognize? She said, "I perceive that thou art a prophet". Come see a man who has told me all things I have ever done and you think he's not a prophet? Don't you remember when he told his disciples? He said there's a cult over in the next village. He's tied up telling the master has to... how did he know there was a cult if he were not a prophet? Jesus is a prophet. The same God that spoke through sundry times in divers manners through the prophets of old is now speaking through the eminent prophet, his Son.
Jesus Christ has come to declare the prophetic Word of God. "And the Word was made flesh," as a prophet, "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us". "Woe unto thee, Chorazin! Woe unto thee, Bethsaida! For you none of them would have repented over more than you repent over and you still will not repent". That's a prophet. "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered you as a hen does her chicks, but ye would not. Behold, your house shall be left desolate". That's a prophet. A prophet isn't, "Your mama's name is Helen. Come and stand up front and give me a thousand dollars and I'm gonna give you a blessing". That ain't a prophet. That's some foolishness we got going on today. That's a gig. That's a job. That's a gig. That's a gig and a game and a game and a gig.
A prophet declares and decrees...whoa! Prophets were feared. Prophets were revered. If a prophet got in your midst, they were careful about Samuel coming into their midst, says, "Don't come unto me," because if a prophet comes into your midst, he comes to either pronounce judgment or declare blessings. A prophet came to David and said, there was a man who had one lamb and the other man had many and he took the one lamb for him. What ought to be done to him? And David said he ought to be killed and a prophet said, "Thou art the man". That's a prophet. Jesus was a prophet. Jesus said, "Not one stone shall be left standing upon another".
They thought he was a madman, but he was a prophet. But it was not long after his crucifixion before the whole temple came tumbling down. The Wailing Wall is what's left of the debris of what he crashed with his mouth. You think the Word of God has no power? You think it's about whooping? You think it's about titillating your emotions and making you shout? Are you crazy? God spoke the universe into existence by the power of his Word. God speaks words that heal tumors and cancers and kidneys. God speaks words that causes the infertile to become fertile. God speaks words that opens up doors. God speaks words that gives you the ability to retain while you're in school. God speaks words that predestines you and ordains you to accomplish things that you wouldn't be you if God hadn't spoke a word over you. You've been begotten by the Word. You've been created by the Word. You've been gifted by the Word. You've been called by the Word. Do you hear what I'm saying?
And so, this text identifies Jesus to the Hebrews as the Messiah. The woman at the well said, "I know that there's going to be one that comes. He shall be the Christ and he shall be the Messiah," John 4:19. She declares it and she wasn't even a Hebrew. She was a Samaritan. But the news of him coming as a prophet had traveled to the heathens. One of the things wrong with the church today, we're only church people on Sunday. So the people who work with you don't know you're a believer, and the people who live next to you don't know you're a believer, and the people down the street don't know you're a believer because you're an undercover agent for Jesus. But when you really get filled with the Holy Ghost, you can't know me and not know that I'm a child of the King.
If you're gonna get to know me, baby, if we gonna go on a date, if we gonna have a fling, go out on a Friday night, if we're gonna court, if we gonna sing, if we gonna ride together to work, you're gonna find out that I'm a child of God because I can't hide it. I can't hide it. If you hit a bump, I'm gonna holler, "Jesus". If we have a car wreck, I'm gonna holler, "Jesus".
If a rock breaks a windshield, I might start speaking in tongues. Oh, God, deliver me from church members. I need some Christians. I need some saints. I need some prayer warriors. I need some blood-washed, redeemed people. I am sick to death of church members. They gotta be coddled and funneled and hugged and massaged to get you to do anything. I am tired. You put all the weight of the glory on the stage and if the choir doesn't sing it, and if the praise team doesn't praise it down, and if the preacher don't preach it down, it don't come. But I come from the old school church. You started church in your car. Just like sinners start getting high while they getting dressed to go out to the club and they...oh, you ain't that saved that you don't remember.
You know, you was already lit when you got there so you didn't have to spend so much money on the drink. You ought to be lit when you get here. You ought to, "Enter into his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise: be thankful unto him". Tell your neighbor, "He's my prophet. He speaks to me. He speaks for me. He's my prophet. Don't mess with me. He's my prophet. I almost fell in love with you, but my prophet told me you was dangerous. I broke up with you because of my prophet. I moved because of my prophet. I left the city because of my prophet. You fooled me but my prophet came to me at 3 o'clock in the morning and said, 'Watch out!' That girl ain't your friend! He's my prophet"!