Blog In Audio:
Greetings,
We had a great service yesterday at Alife in Bellingham. The presence of God was strong, and Pastor Jonathan gave a great message on hope. God is doing good things, and it is a season of God’s goodness seen in new measures.
Jesus made a way for all to be a dwelling place of God in this world. God doesn’t live in temples made by human hands, not even temples such as the tabernacle of Moses, the tabernacle of David as a tent in the city of Jerusalem, the temple of Solomon, or any structure of church or synagogue today. These were only a shadow of what God desired to be made real in the lives of sons and daughters of God. The fox lives in a hole in the ground, the bird lives in a nest in the air, but Jesus put His head upon a body. The body of Christ and members of the body of Christ are the dwelling place of God. Holy Spirit in us is the testimony of the true temple of God in the earth.
Ephesians 2:19 Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, 20 having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, 21 in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, 22 in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.
We are a holy temple of the Lord because the Spirit of God dwells within us. Holy Spirit is the lamp of life bringing about increasing realities of God’s perfecting presence in our world. He is the Spirit of the Lord, Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Might, Knowledge, and the Fear of the Lord (Isa. 11:2; Zech. 4:10). Holy Spirit has been sent in Jesus’ name to empower us to be witnesses of Him in our world. Holy Spirit is the ultimate ‘sent one’ (angel) to cause us to be ‘sent members’ of the body of Christ for the testimony of Christ in and to our world.
Revelation 1:20 The mystery of the seven stars which you saw in My right hand, and the seven golden lampstands: The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands which you saw are the seven churches.
The lampstands of the church contain the fire of God’s presence. They are the testimony of the consuming fire of God in our lives that empowers and motivates us to overcome by the Spirit of the Lord, Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Might, Knowledge (as in Intimacy), and the Fear of the Lord. These seven things are seven fires in the lamp of our lives as believers in Christ. In this past year I have begun to pray for these fires to burn in the lives of those I love.
The first fire is revealed in the first letter to the Church of Ephesus (Rev. 2:1-7). The word Ephesus means, “pleasure” or “delight” – the same meaning as Eden in the creation of Adam and Eve in the earth. Jesus is seen as “the one who holds the seven stars in His right hand”. He is seen as Lord. I believe the angel of the Church of Ephesus refers to the Spirit of the Lord. Like all seven churches, the angel is an aspect of the Holy Spirit, but the message of the angel is to each aspect of the Church that is, that was, and that will be. This first angel carries the message that is the antidote to the dry places of our hearts that had us bound to the spiritual warfare of the temptation to seek other life sources. Humanity was bound to the curse of looking for love in all the wrong places! That quest for love was constantly disrupted by what seemed like lifeless dead-end alleys bound to the knowledge of good and evil. Offenses and judgments were obstacles in the dimly lit passages of our search.
The language of this letter to the Church of Ephesus is that of the Garden of Eden with terms like “works”, “labor”, “patience”, and the knowledge of hating “evil”. These are garden tending terms. In this letter Jesus comes as the one “who walks in the midst”, as He walked in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 3:8). Those in Ephesus had done well at knowing who were true apostles and who were false. They had the knowledge of good and evil, but they had left their first love. They knew how to work in a garden, but they were missing the purpose of the garden. The garden is a place to know the love of God.
Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Lord. He is the fire of desire in our hearts. I believe this is the fire of being loved by God. When we know the fire of being loved by God, our attention is captured by His love. We were not born for the work of the garden of our lives, we were born to be loved by God in the garden of our lives. When the fire of the Spirit of the Lord captures our hearts, we are no longer motivated to seek other lords (other desires) in our lives. We are loved by God!
The overcoming promise of this letter to Ephesus was a restoration of the Paradise of God through the eating of the tree of life. The antidote to the dry places in which the false lords of the world live is found in knowing one Lord through intimacy with God in Christ. When God grants us repentance unto life the dry areas of our hearts become watered gardens of His love and presence. What a wonderful letter revealing an exegetical truth for the first century, a syntactical witness of the past, and a living principle by which we can all live in Christ in the generations to come. All New Covenant believers have been born again! We are granted the fire of being loved by God!
Blessings,
Ted J. Hanson
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House of Bread Ministry
3210 Meridian St.
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