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The Coming Increase of Christ in His House
“In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.”
God has determined to reveal His glory throughout the whole Earth. Even though the defeated enemy of our souls keeps up his war of attrition and desperately tries to change the subject, the Lord will not be deterred. He keeps arising among unworthy people and calling forth from the nations both vessels of honor and dishonor. To one group He will continue to reveal His power in the demonstration of His wrath because of their ongoing obstinate opposition to Him. To the other, He is mercifully giving insight into His own heart and purpose for the nations. But through it all, God himself and His activity lie at the heart of the great spiritual conflict of the ages continuing to unfold before our eyes. The Lord, not man is at the center of world history.
But how will all this end? And to what degree will God’s glory and beauty be made known among men before He comes in final devastating and eternal judgments at the end of history?
Notice Paul’s thoughts concerning the vessels of mercy called by God from among both the Jews and the Gentiles.
As He says also in Hosea: I will call them My people, who were not My people, and her beloved, who was not beloved. And it shall come to pass in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not My people,’ there they shall be called sons of the living God.
The Lord would call His own those who were never known as His people and He would do so right in the nations where they lived. Instead of people having to make pilgrimage to a holy temple in Jerusalem in order to meet with God, He intended to arise and reveal His glory simply everywhere. Vessels of mercy would be found in the remotest parts of the Earth.
This display of Heaven’s mercy is occurring today not because people deserve salvation. Rather, God is making himself known among men to fulfill His own promise to fill the Earth with the knowledge of His glory. As surely as He lives, He is keeping His promise.
But has he fully achieved what He set out to do? Or are there yet many millions of people, called by God from the foundation of the world to be vessels of mercy, but who have not yet come to know Him? I submit to you that indeed many will be turning to the Lord in the years ahead; there is yet a fullness to come from among the Gentile nations of the Earth.
Such fullness has to do with more than simply the numbers of people involved. Rather, what God wants to make known are the various insights into His own heart and purpose that He will be revealing to each one.
God has much to say yet about himself. Even though the canon of Scripture has been completed, the Lord continues to reveal himself during the Church age by the power of the Holy Spirit. What He unveils of himself is always in harmony with the Bible; He never contradicts His Word. But the days of heavenly revelation are far from over.
For example, if the believers in first century Ephesus needed among them not only the spirit of wisdom, but also of revelation in the knowledge of God (Ephesians 1:17), then certainly we do today as well. God has made and continues to make available to us the greatest source of eternal wealth. That limitless well of living water is none other than God himself. If the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in the person of Christ, should we not be spending time with Him, searching the recesses of His heart? (Colossians 2:2-3) Has He not given us His Holy Spirit whose nature it is to plumb the depths of God? “But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God” (1 Corinthians 2:10).
If we are responding appropriately to His Spirit, we will be moving with Him into those depths. This brings us to the greatest question facing our generation. Is the God of Heaven and Earth coming into greater clarity among us? Is He making known and are we learning His motives, desires, and priorities? Remember, Moses was not content to only see His power and to experience His presence. Rather, when given the opportunity, he wanted to see God’s glory as well.
Simply stated, the glory of God made known is the God of glory as He really is, coming into greater clarity to us as we stand in His presence. As He does so, our misconceptions of Him are exposed and adjusted.
This is the message that the nations desperately need to hear; we must preach Him (Galatians 1:16). Paul didn’t simply preach about Christ; his words carried the presence of the One to whom he was referring. God made himself known through Paul’s words. Likewise, the Lord’s Word today must bring an impartation of God through us to others. But apart from sovereign intervention, He can only accomplish the accurate, though partial, revelation of himself to the nations through those to whom He has revealed His glory.
The glory of God made known through a people! God, coming into clarity before the nations! Such a theme stuns us. But has not the Lord called us to follow in the footsteps of Jesus? God’s purpose in sending His Son among us was to make himself known. And Christ revealed the Father perfectly. Since Jesus was God put into human terms, no one other than He could have accomplished such a mission.
Yet, we find before us the impossible task of making known to the nations the glory of the One who has sent us. Has God indeed called us to such a work? Yes. The reason He prepares vessels of mercy is to make known the riches of His glory upon them to the nations (Romans 9:23).
But what is His glory upon us? It is His love, His forgiveness, His compassion, His hatred of sin, etc. (Exodus 34:6-7). It can be so easy to get the message mixed up and begin to think that it is about us. God takes what we see as we stand before Him and begins to work it into the fiber of our beings. We literally partake of His divine nature (2 Peter1:4), and start experiencing what He feels about the poor, the lost, the subject of abortion, how His house should be built, etc.
As a result, His burdens become ours. Others will hear what we say and watch how we live and identify the burden of the Lord as ours. We then become known as that person who has a heart for Israel, or who has a desire to minister to the poor in the Philippines, or who is always talking about the centrality of Christ in the Church, etc. But if we are ministering accurately, what we are expressing is actually the contents of His heart.
Then as we each live in harmony with His unique calling on our lives, those around us will see in some measure the glory of God upon us. And it is all because He has had mercy on us.
The result is that the nations begin experiencing God as He really is, slowly coming into view. Notice, it is not our glory and fame that is the message. God’s theme is not about us, about our successes in ministry, or about our wisdom in building something for Him.
We are not vessels of excellence, or of intellectual greatness, or of philosophical sophistication. We are vessels of mercy. God has brought us all forth from the dust of the ground, and we all deserve His wrath. But for the sake of the Earth and for fulfilling His own promise, He has had mercy on many and revealed himself to them in some measure.
The question now before us is whether or not He is content with the measure of His glory now made known to the nations. Or is there more to be revealed?
I submit that there is a degree of fullness yet to be unveiled among the nations. The reason is because Israel continues on in her existence without an intimate knowledge of her Messiah. And the apostle clearly stated that:
…blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved.
Lord, arise and reveal your glory in greater and clearer ways to us and through us. Arise and bring to fullness the unveiling of your beauty among the nations in these days. And bring Israel to the knowledge of her Messiah. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
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