Copyright © 1997 Warren Litzman (Christ-Life Fellowship). From the booklet This Then is The Message Which We Have Heard of Him. Used by permission.
You can save this page as a text file from your browser (File / Save As) and read it off-line. It is about 10K. | |
This is The Message Which We Have Heard of Him Point Three: The Creation
We are going to talk of creation in this way. If God already has the plan in mind -- if He's completely worked it out by choosing the Son, killing the Lamb who will redeem the sons, and bringing about a perfect union between the Son and the creature -- then what is left to do? One great area that has not been touched is the mind. The spirit part of man is taken care of, for it is Christ's spirit in us, the hope of glory. The body part of man is never to be redeemed -- always to be corruptible (I Corinthians 15:53; Romans 6:6), though it will put on incorruption on the resurrection morning. But there was one part of the tripartite being left. God said, "I can do all of this and still not have love. I can put Christ in them, and they'll still not come to love me. There's one more thing that must happen. I must make a training ground for them. Somehow, I've got to fix it so that even though I've done this great and tremendous work, they'll come to understand what I've done." So God, in creating the world, simply made His schoolhouse. That's all this world is -- just a schoolhouse made for people.
Notice that the first thing God said not to do was eat of the tree of the "knowledge of good and evil." The process of the schoolhouse was underway. This is how we're going to know Him -- by our circumstances and situations -- and that brings up a second point. Every schoolhouse has classrooms. What are the classrooms in our schoolhouse? They are our distinctive and personal circumstances and situations of life. Have you ever noticed how you go into one situation and out into another? Did you ever notice how that as sure as you think you have one classroom finished, another one starts? Now, you can have ostrich religion, and stick your head in the sand like a lot of people do, and say that you have no problems, but you are still being beaten about because the circumstances are there. Your whole body is being beaten by everything that blows against it. What we are doing in this message, for the first time, is taking our heads out of the sand and saying, "God, we are your children. You have already done the work. We would like to learn about you, and come to understand you," instead of going through life saying, "He's God; He'll get rid of my circumstances, and He'll get rid of my situations." Most often, it never happens. You finally have a situation you cannot control, and that's when the neighbors and relatives take care of you at the graveyard.
| |
| | |
Our lives are filled with circumstances and situations. That is a part of God's training. That is what creation is all about. He could have saved us from the beginning. He chose us before the foundation of the world was laid. He could have brought us on up to His house. Then why are we here? Well, some people think that we are here to make the world better. Others think that we are here to put our feet on Satan's neck and that we are going to turn the earth into heaven.
The best way to look at this world is as though it is a plastic world and is going to be thrown away, for the Father told us that the day would come when both heaven and earth would pass away. Earth is just a training ground for the sons of God. You ask, "What about all the other people who are here?" If they do not come to know God, they have an awful life, because the purpose of the world is to bring men to Christ. Colossians 1 tells us that all things were made by Christ, and all things were made for Christ, and all things subsist because of Christ. John 1 says that all things were made by Him, and aside from Him (Christ) nothing is in existence. That's very important.
You may have thought it was Satan's world. It is so, only if you give it to him. You may have thought that Satan was out to destroy you. That can only happen if you see him more than you see Jesus. This is bad, because what you see is what you get. But this is not Satan's world. It was made by Christ, and for Christ, and subsists (continues) because of Christ, and when you come to the knowledge that Christ is your only life, you fit into this world. As long as we live, we don't get rid of this classroom.
We also do not get rid of the teachers. Teachers are the third thing He gave us. Every classroom has some teachers. They are our own personal troubles and trials. It's bad enough to have a situation -- to live in a place you don't like, or to be married to someone you don't like. It's bad enough to have circumstances and situations, but on top of it, you get troubles and trials. I mean, you think that you have all you can bear, just in your circumstances, when suddenly, some trouble steps in which has nothing to do with your circumstances. That is just for your training. You can blame it on Satan if you want to.
I used to blame teachers when I first went to public schools. "The teacher is after me. She doesn't like me. She's going to fail me anyway, whether I try or not, so why try?" That was stupid, because that only meant that I went through the classroom again. That is the way it is with life, and some people never get out of their circumstances and situations, because they don't know how to handle them. Only by seeing the purpose of creation can we come to this awesome knowledge of why the world is here.
Copyright © 1997 Warren Litzman; used by permission. The Bible text in this publication, except where otherwise indicated, is from the King James Version. This article appears on the site: http://www.peterwade.com/.
Check out our Catalog of books and CDs. | |
|
