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A good friend asked me a question about this series on prostrate worship. He wanted to know what all that pride looks like today. How do we exhibit that pride?
God says in I John 2:16, "For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world." The short answer to the question is in this verse "the pride of life." What is that?
Thayer's Lexicon defines pride here as "...an insolent and empty assurance, which trusts in its own power and resources and shamefully despises and violates divine laws and human rights; or, an impious and empty presumption which trusts in the stability of earthly things."
The Greek word for “life” is "bios" (remember biology = the study of life). Thayer further amplifies the term as "the period or course of life; or that by which life is sustained, resources, wealth.
There is nothing new under the sun. This is the sin we all deal with as it was from the beginning. Look at Genesis 3:6 for the parallel, "And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat."
She saw that the tree was good for food (lust of the flesh), pleasant to the eyes (lust of the eyes), and desired to make one wise (pride of life). If Eve had a mirror, she would have seen her golden calf in front of her. She would have seen her parallel Amon-Re and Jehovah/God.
Looking in our own mirrors, that is what we see when we see ourselves. God says in Genesis 3:22, "And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:" Having eaten the fruit in Adam, we have now become like God ("the man is become as one of us"). We are now the visible godlike manifestation of our God. We are, if you will, the Amon-Re.
Before the curse, this was not the case, even though God said in Genesis 1:26, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness...." Because Adam and Eve did not have their eyes opened and their spirits put to death, they did not know they were naked; they did not know all the power that was stored in the knowledge of good and evil; they did not know about life and death, life-giving, the power of desire.
With his sexual prowess, man believes he has the power of life. Cultures around the world celebrate this in various ways from the perversions of inappropriate contentography to the foolishness of religious fertility rites. The symbology is everywhere. Spend just a few moments in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City or any cultural art book for plenty of examples.
This is why authors like Ken Ham (of Answers in Genesis USA) and I wrote that every sin goes back to this one in Eden. Pride. Pride in oneself as god who needs no other God/god in order to live. This is why God gave His commandments in this order:
(Exodus 20:2-6) "I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments."
First commandment - I AM the LORD thy God
Second commandment - Thou shalt have no other gods before me...
The idolaters on the hillsides, beneath the trees, and in the temples were simply performing sexual acts in worship of themselves, celebrating their pride of life. God said destroy all the idols to take away the visible pictures of this wickedness.
Yet one idol still stands – us. What are we to do therefore?
Colossians 3:5 - Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry:
Romans 8:13 - For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.
---------------------------------------
Scripture answers the question of how to worship (either on your knees bowed down or prostrate in spirit and in truth and in the beauty of holiness). Scripture does not answer the question of when or where to worship. God answers that personally I believe.
He calls out to us in our "One" relationship, "Worship me." When? Where? Whenever and wherever He pleases. Ours is simply to pour it out before Him in instant obedience.
When God commands you, do you instantly obey Him? Do you ignore the circumstances, education, culture, and peers?
Here's what Oswald Chambers has to say about it in his November 11 entry for My Utmost for His Highest, "THE SUPREME CLIMB
"Take now thy son ." Genesis 22:2
God's command is - Take now, not presently. It is extraordinary how we debate! We know a thing is right, but we try to find excuses for not doing it at once. To climb to the height God shows can never be done presently, it must be done now. The sacrifice is gone through in will before it is performed actually.
"And Abraham rose up early in the morning and went unto the place of which God had told him" (v. 3). The wonderful simplicity of Abraham! When God spoke, he did not confer with flesh and blood. Beware when you want to confer with flesh and blood, i.e., your own sympathies, your own insight, anything that is not based on your personal relationship to God. These are the things that compete with and hinder obedience to God.
Abraham did not choose the sacrifice. Always guard against self-chosen service for God; self-sacrifice may be a disease. If God has made your cup sweet, drink it with grace; if He has made it bitter, drink it in communion with Him. If the providential order of God for you is a hard time of difficulty, go through with it, but never choose the scene of your martyrdom. God chose the crucible for Abraham, and Abraham made no demur; he went steadily through. If you are not living in touch with Him, it is easy to pass a crude verdict on God. You must go through the crucible before you have any right to pronounce a verdict, because in the crucible you learn to know God better. God is working for His highest ends until His purpose and man's purpose become one."
Entering into worship, one may come boldly. (Hebrews 10:19-20)
One must certainly enter in personal holiness. (I Chronicles 16:29-30; Matthew 5:8)
As we worship in spirit, God's Spirit joins us one with God. (John 4:23-24; John 17:22-24)
Recognize that in the Spirit (and your spirit) we sit presently in the heavenlies with Jesus, one with Him before the Father. (Ephesians 2:6)
At this point, what happens when we are on our knees or prostrate before God in worship, is really up to God. Words cannot explain what God derives from worship. It is for God and God alone. It is for His glory. The "benefit", if you will, that you come away with, is the knowledge of His present service.
God will give you some truth and some service as you commune with Him. (John 4:23-24; Romans 11:36 - 12:2)
God will teach you some truth that no man can give you. (1 John 2:27)
That service is the knowledge of His present will. Take heed that you do not delay in doing it. Once God has commanded it, filled you with His Spirit for it, and enabled you through His spiritual gift(s), go and do the thing. If you don't, you will find yourself stuck in some kind of spiritual mire.
Rejoice in the total consumption of your living sacrifice. Make it also a sacrifice of thanksgiving (Leviticus 22:29) and praise (Jeremiah 33:11; Hebrews 13:15).
After the doing of His present will, go back and worship again, for He is worthy.
I say this to your encouragement and warning. I had two things to do that God willed for me. Rather than do them immediately, I delayed for a week. It was painful. I am learning to move on, to obey God, to fear the LORD, love Him with my whole heart, and keep Him in all my thoughts. Grace be unto you saints. Awake unto righteousness and sin not. Be ready at all times for His appearing.
God says in I John 2:16, "For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world." The short answer to the question is in this verse "the pride of life." What is that?
Thayer's Lexicon defines pride here as "...an insolent and empty assurance, which trusts in its own power and resources and shamefully despises and violates divine laws and human rights; or, an impious and empty presumption which trusts in the stability of earthly things."
The Greek word for “life” is "bios" (remember biology = the study of life). Thayer further amplifies the term as "the period or course of life; or that by which life is sustained, resources, wealth.
There is nothing new under the sun. This is the sin we all deal with as it was from the beginning. Look at Genesis 3:6 for the parallel, "And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat."
She saw that the tree was good for food (lust of the flesh), pleasant to the eyes (lust of the eyes), and desired to make one wise (pride of life). If Eve had a mirror, she would have seen her golden calf in front of her. She would have seen her parallel Amon-Re and Jehovah/God.
Looking in our own mirrors, that is what we see when we see ourselves. God says in Genesis 3:22, "And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:" Having eaten the fruit in Adam, we have now become like God ("the man is become as one of us"). We are now the visible godlike manifestation of our God. We are, if you will, the Amon-Re.
Before the curse, this was not the case, even though God said in Genesis 1:26, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness...." Because Adam and Eve did not have their eyes opened and their spirits put to death, they did not know they were naked; they did not know all the power that was stored in the knowledge of good and evil; they did not know about life and death, life-giving, the power of desire.
With his sexual prowess, man believes he has the power of life. Cultures around the world celebrate this in various ways from the perversions of inappropriate contentography to the foolishness of religious fertility rites. The symbology is everywhere. Spend just a few moments in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City or any cultural art book for plenty of examples.
This is why authors like Ken Ham (of Answers in Genesis USA) and I wrote that every sin goes back to this one in Eden. Pride. Pride in oneself as god who needs no other God/god in order to live. This is why God gave His commandments in this order:
(Exodus 20:2-6) "I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments."
First commandment - I AM the LORD thy God
Second commandment - Thou shalt have no other gods before me...
The idolaters on the hillsides, beneath the trees, and in the temples were simply performing sexual acts in worship of themselves, celebrating their pride of life. God said destroy all the idols to take away the visible pictures of this wickedness.
Yet one idol still stands – us. What are we to do therefore?
Colossians 3:5 - Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry:
Romans 8:13 - For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.
---------------------------------------
Scripture answers the question of how to worship (either on your knees bowed down or prostrate in spirit and in truth and in the beauty of holiness). Scripture does not answer the question of when or where to worship. God answers that personally I believe.
He calls out to us in our "One" relationship, "Worship me." When? Where? Whenever and wherever He pleases. Ours is simply to pour it out before Him in instant obedience.
When God commands you, do you instantly obey Him? Do you ignore the circumstances, education, culture, and peers?
Here's what Oswald Chambers has to say about it in his November 11 entry for My Utmost for His Highest, "THE SUPREME CLIMB
"Take now thy son ." Genesis 22:2
God's command is - Take now, not presently. It is extraordinary how we debate! We know a thing is right, but we try to find excuses for not doing it at once. To climb to the height God shows can never be done presently, it must be done now. The sacrifice is gone through in will before it is performed actually.
"And Abraham rose up early in the morning and went unto the place of which God had told him" (v. 3). The wonderful simplicity of Abraham! When God spoke, he did not confer with flesh and blood. Beware when you want to confer with flesh and blood, i.e., your own sympathies, your own insight, anything that is not based on your personal relationship to God. These are the things that compete with and hinder obedience to God.
Abraham did not choose the sacrifice. Always guard against self-chosen service for God; self-sacrifice may be a disease. If God has made your cup sweet, drink it with grace; if He has made it bitter, drink it in communion with Him. If the providential order of God for you is a hard time of difficulty, go through with it, but never choose the scene of your martyrdom. God chose the crucible for Abraham, and Abraham made no demur; he went steadily through. If you are not living in touch with Him, it is easy to pass a crude verdict on God. You must go through the crucible before you have any right to pronounce a verdict, because in the crucible you learn to know God better. God is working for His highest ends until His purpose and man's purpose become one."
Entering into worship, one may come boldly. (Hebrews 10:19-20)
One must certainly enter in personal holiness. (I Chronicles 16:29-30; Matthew 5:8)
As we worship in spirit, God's Spirit joins us one with God. (John 4:23-24; John 17:22-24)
Recognize that in the Spirit (and your spirit) we sit presently in the heavenlies with Jesus, one with Him before the Father. (Ephesians 2:6)
At this point, what happens when we are on our knees or prostrate before God in worship, is really up to God. Words cannot explain what God derives from worship. It is for God and God alone. It is for His glory. The "benefit", if you will, that you come away with, is the knowledge of His present service.
God will give you some truth and some service as you commune with Him. (John 4:23-24; Romans 11:36 - 12:2)
God will teach you some truth that no man can give you. (1 John 2:27)
That service is the knowledge of His present will. Take heed that you do not delay in doing it. Once God has commanded it, filled you with His Spirit for it, and enabled you through His spiritual gift(s), go and do the thing. If you don't, you will find yourself stuck in some kind of spiritual mire.
Rejoice in the total consumption of your living sacrifice. Make it also a sacrifice of thanksgiving (Leviticus 22:29) and praise (Jeremiah 33:11; Hebrews 13:15).
After the doing of His present will, go back and worship again, for He is worthy.
I say this to your encouragement and warning. I had two things to do that God willed for me. Rather than do them immediately, I delayed for a week. It was painful. I am learning to move on, to obey God, to fear the LORD, love Him with my whole heart, and keep Him in all my thoughts. Grace be unto you saints. Awake unto righteousness and sin not. Be ready at all times for His appearing.
