A NEW ORDER notesWhen God created the Universe he began with an order of material being or existence, and then created human life with a much higher order of life with moral responsibility for relationships and loving responses. We are going to look a the ongoing work of God in the reordering of that relational order of our lives to bring us closer and closer to him.We start with God as Uncreated Being creating the material universe in the presence of his already created angelic spirit...
A NEW ORDER notes
When God created the Universe he began with an order of material being or existence, and then created human life with a much higher order of life with moral responsibility for relationships and loving responses. We are going to look a the ongoing work of God in the reordering of that relational order of our lives to bring us closer and closer to him.
We start with God as Uncreated Being creating the material universe in the presence of his already created angelic spirit beings. The material universe was an order of created being which reflected his creative genius of design in observable Laws, such as the laws of mathematics and physics and chemistry, and the observable beauty of light and colour and the harmony of movement and sound and the forms of life and energy and growth. All of these laws and forms of the new order of created being were created out of emptiness and darkness and chaos and disorder.
Genesis 1:1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters and God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.
A new order – a new Law of life
When God created humanity, the being that was to reflect the image of his own nature and being, he recreated within that being his own order of life of love and trust. The first of these beings, Adam, broke the law of love and trust when he was deceived into a mistrust of God by another created spirit being, Lucifer, who had desecrated that law of love and trust through the darkness of his pride and deception.
A new order – a new Law of life (and death)
Adam had allowed darkness into the being of humanity and a new order of human life came into being – the law of sin and death. Adam was no longer innocent, and his disobedience estranged him from the life of God - separation and death entered humanity from that time on. Nevertheless, God gave humanity a conscience concerning good and evil which was not perfect because it was self-centred, but people could still choose to honour God. Many offered sacrifices to God out of a good heart like Abel, while many others became corrupt and lived selfishly for themselves like Cain.
A new order – a good conscience toward God.
Then came the time of Noah, and darkness had established a firm foothold in the human heart. God saw that the heart of mankind had become corrupt and the whole earth was filled with violence and estrangement from God. God observed all this corruption in the world and he said to Noah, who had a good conscience towards God “I have decided to destroy all living creatures, for they have filled the earth with violence. Yes, I will wipe them all out along with the earth! God told Noah he would send a flood to cover the whole earth (Genesis 6:11) and he told Noah to build an ark, and God saved Noah and his family from the flood. After the rains and the flood had subsided Noah was told to send out a dove, representing God’s Spirit to fly freely out over the earth as a sign of the new order of humanity being given a fresh start. From the time of Noah a new order of mankind that descended from Noah began to live in the order of a good conscience toward God which guided them within the integrity of their own hearts.
A new order – a new Law of life (the Law of Moses)
Then God told a man called Abraham that he would become the father of the Hebrew nation. And through Abraham there came forth the twelve tribes of Israel and they lived in the new order of God’s wisdom through the Law of Moses which was a new and higher order than the human conscience alone. They became the light of God and his Word in the midst of the darkness in the nations round about them.
Once again, the order of darkness began to demand its place to rule in the midst of this new nation and they became like the nations around them. The order of darkness took the form of their wanting to be ruled by an earthly king rather than by God, because all the other ungodly nations were ruled by kings. The prophet Samuel spoke to God with a heavy heart about what the people had demanded, and God said to him ‘I am the one they are rejecting, not you—they don’t want me to be their king any longer. Ever since I brought them from Egypt they have continually forsaken me and followed other gods. (1Samuel 8:5). So Samuel told the people what the Lord had said. ‘You will shed bitter tears because of this king you are demanding, but the Lord will not help you.”
‘Even so, we still want a king,’ they said, ‘for we want to be like the nations around us.’
The attack of darkness upon the hearts of God’s people has now become set in the desire to want to be like the nations around them.
After the death of King Solomon two distinct kingdoms were established. The kingdom of the ten northern tribes settled in Samaria and the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin settled in Jerusalem in the south. The northern kingdom afterwards made ungodly alliances with the other nations and fell into idolatry and were finally dispersed and mysteriously disappeared even though there were anointed prophets in both these kingdoms who faithfully set God’s Word and purpose before them and called them to repentance.
Jeremiah was the prophet to the southern kingdom of Judah and Benjamin, and he became grieved about their corruption and idolatry under their mostly, ungodly kings. God told Jeremiah that because of their disobedience they would go into captivity in Babylon, but at the same time he tells Jeremiah to buy a plot of land from his cousin in Ananoth near Jerusalem.
Jeremiah is perplexed by this directive from God that seems like a contradiction of purpose, but then he realizes that he is not just doing a favour for his cousin, but that this purchase signifies that the land transaction is a symbol of the promised return of Israel one day back to their land. Jeremiah understands God's plan and promise, and he designates his trusted scribe Baruch to settle the sale and keep the deeds in safety.
A recurring theme of God’s reordering
Jeremiah 45:1 The word that Jeremiah the prophet spoke: “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, to you, O Baruch (blessed one): … Behold, what I have built I am breaking down, and what I have planted I am plucking up—that is, the whole land. And seek not great things for yourself, for I am bringing affliction upon all flesh, says the LORD. But I will give you life as a gift in all places that you may go.”
Baruch (whose name means ‘blessed one’) was protected and blessed with life. The southern kingdom was taken into Babylon and after seventy years they returned to Jerusalem and inherited all the land, but some years later darkness again prevailed and there was another falling away. God’s people received no more prophetic comfort or guidance for over four hundred years from the time of their final prophet Malachi until the time of John the Baptist who prepared the way for the Messiah Jesus.
Before that southern kingdom went into captivity God also promised a new order of life called The New Covenant (The Law of God’s wisdom written upon the heart - Jeremiah 31:31) that would be ordained upon God’s people at a future time.
A new order – a new Law of life (The Law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus)
God created that new order of life promised to Jeremiah in the incarnation of God in the person of Jesus Christ. God and humanity joining together in one Spirit, the greatest order of life for humanity to experience in the earth. This Gift of the Father, The Law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus through his Son Jesus, who put to death the old order of life, The Law of sin and death when Jesus died on the cross, then rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, bringing us into that new order of the Spirit of Life through the presence of the Holy Spirit within us. Jesus sowed his life into death and reaped new life in resurrection so that we could inherit this new order of life in the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus.
Our global society has become so disordered in recent times that we seem to be seeing the replay of the theme that we saw in God’s word through Jeremiah to Baruch ‘Behold, what I have built I am breaking down, and what I have planted I am plucking up—that is, the whole land. And seek not great things for yourself, for I am bringing affliction upon all flesh, says the LORD. But I will give you life as a gift in all places that you may go.
In the days in which we live there is the breaking down of things that God has built, and there is the pulling up of things he has planted. We are seeing the breaking down of once reliable democratic systems of government based on Godly morals, and the pulling up of deeply rooted traditions in a new cultural order that replaces the Godly foundations with shallow ideologies of special interest groups that are pitched one against the other. This causes disdain and resentment from zealots to be aimed against people who don’t always agree with the new order virtues or ideologies. Their demand often is. ’We want to do as we please and we would like a law framed for us to have the freedom to do it, and the power to punish anyone who wants to stop us or attempts to criticise us. We are also seeing violence and human suffering in the violent aggression of Russia against Ukraine and against the values of the freedom of western democracy.
We also see personal affliction everywhere and the disruption of health and safety and the pressure on financial systems caused by the global pandemic and natural disasters like fires and floods. This is the time to pray for God’s reordering of his Kingdom values to challenge today’s disordered culture and bring his order of life once more into this world.
God also wants to restore the order of his new Law of life in his Church and is saying to the Church to ‘seek not great things for yourself ‘. He has had to tear down and pluck up what may have become worldly and superficial practices in the Church in recent times concerning celebrity leadership styles and the love of money. God says to us as he did to Baruch (the blessed one) I will give you life as a gift in all places that you may go. We receive his life that we may give it to his world, wherever we may go.
Paul writes about this experience of being given a new order of life and he shares it with all who desire to live with a true heart of a good conscience towards God. An order of life is a Law of life because it means to regulate how that life is lived to its highest order, so as I read the following Scripture from Romans Chapter 7 I am going to be using the word ‘order of life’ in the context of a ’ law of life’.
Romans 7:21 I delight in the law of God (order of God’s wisdom), in my inner being, but I see in my members (outer being) another law (order of life) waging war against the law (order of life) of my mind (in the knowledge of God) and making me captive to the law (order of life) of sin (independent self-interest) that dwells in my members (outer being). Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death (sense of miserable estrangement from God)? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself (my inner being joined with God’s Being) serve the law of God (order of God’s wisdom) with my mind (in the knowledge of God), but with my flesh (outer being) I serve the law (order if life) of sin (independent self-interest)…but there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus for the Law of the Spirit of life has set me free from the Law of sin and death…
Contending for the new order of life
The Law of sin and death still resides in our mortal being and it contends with the Spirit of Life in Christ in our spiritual being at every turn in our lives as darkness seeks to extinguish that light and that life, but it can be overcome by our faith because the Holy Spirit is always awakening us to the ongoing mission of God for mankind in the earth, which is for us to be transformed into the image and likeness of God in Jesus Christ. Our faith in God’s divine action upon the human heart and mind by the Holy Spirit empowers us with his grace to reorder the reasoning of our minds and to love mercy and to release his wisdom and justice into our personal world. The Holy Spirit will empower us to make commitments and to control our actions and enable us to fulfill God's will for our lives.
