03 December 2019
Dear Phyllis,
Continuing my little thesis on the Beauty of Christ,
the first physical feature is His head. In response to the question “What makes
Jesus so special?” the Bride first began by saying He is both God and man – He
is white and yet ruddy. Then she said He stands alone – He is the
fairest among ten thousand, or He is the flag bearer (S of S 5:10).
Now she comes to His head, and says, “His head is as the most fine gold”
(S of S 5:11).
When we say head, that is self-explanatory. If I say
“someone has a good head”, you know I am not talking about the bone. Head, has
the singular meaning of thoughts. The thoughts of God; oh my goodness, what an
enormous topic this opens up! How can I discuss it? We know that the heart is
consists of three components – the intellect, the emotions, and the will (Gen.
6:5,6; 8:21). When we talk about the thoughts of Jesus we are considering what
is in His heart. Who can measure that?
By way of brief divergence we must first discuss
gold. In scripture there are several symbolic teachers. One is numerology.
Numbers have meaning. One means unity; two, witness; three, trinity; four,
earth; five, grace; six, man; seven, completeness, perfection; eight, new
beginning; etc. Metals also have meaning. Nebuchadnezar's image in Daniel 2
give us the clearest singular presentation, with gold, silver, brass, iron,
etc. If we let these four different metals stand by themselves the first thing
that comes to mind is value; gold being the highest value, then silver, then
brass. Or in other words, gold is the highest metal and gold in scripture
invariably stands for God. When we say that the head of Jesus is gold, that
means He has the thoughts of God.
When we talk about the thoughts of God we just
opened a bottomless box. If we just dust off the top layer, the first thing and
most obvious thing we can say is, that the thoughts of God are slam different
than ours. There is a verse in Jeremiah 29:11 that is one of my favorites in
KJV, but is translated different in nearly every other Bible. The Holy Bible
says, “For I know the THOUGHTS that I think toward you...”. Nearly every
other translation has that as, “I know the PLANS that I have for you”. I don't
know, but I like thoughts. But leaving that aside, it is safe to say that His
thoughts are higher than ours (Isa. 55:8,9). Please look that up. There
is an encyclopedic message there that I can't go into. But if I might just
suggest two adjectives - they are different and they are higher.
To say they are higher is a wee bit of an understatement. And to say they are
different tells us that we are on two different planets. That causes us a great
deal of difficulty. The problem is that we thinks God thinks like we do. Ugh,
ugh – His ways are backwards. That is where we get the Inverted Kingdom. If we
would only get that straight that would save us a lot of sorrow. To go up you
have to go down. To live you have to die. To get you have to give. Etc. Enough
said.
Proverbs 3:5 has a good suggestion when it says, “Trust
in the Lord with all your heart and lean not unto your own understanding”.
Any freshman in Bible school should know that verse, but there isn't 1 preacher
in 100 that does it. I heard a message that Jim Cymbala gave to 900 pastors in
Japan and I was stunned. It was awful! It was so dumb it was insulting. I
thought, “I have never heard such a stupid message in my life” - until he got
to the bottom line. His whole message was “Ask the Lord”. For texts he
turned, time after time, to “David enquired of the Lord” - 1&2
Samuel – about twenty places. When I heard Cymbala's message I thought, “My
goodness, I would give this message to a 7th grade Sunday school
class, but not to a pastors conference of 900 pastors”. Then Jim said, “This
is almost an unknown practice among pastors in America today.” Gong! I
never knew that. He said 99% of the pastors in America today are so computer
possessed that being Spirit led is almost an unheard of practice. He
said that the vast majority of pastors get their messages from their computers
and have their preaching schedule laid out months in advance.
Jim Cymbala told of one Sunday in his church a man
in the choir gave a moving testimony at the beginning of the service. It was so
powerful that the idiot gave an invitation for salvation before the message.
How dumb can you get? Then the next week he had a phone call from Dallas,
Texas. A couple from Texas were in New York for several days and wanted to
visit his Brooklyn Tabernacle, but then they realized that their flight home
was early afternoon and they couldn't stay for the entire service. They would
have to leave early. They heard that testimony and responded to the invitation.
They got saved at 11:15 and were in a taxi cab headed for the airport at 12:00
o'clock. Oh, praise the Lord!
Jim said, one time he was invited to be the main
speaker at the Urbana Missionary Conference. That conference is one of the most
major Christian events in America each year. He realized the importance of that
conference where over 300,000 young people gather. Needless to say he prayed a
great deal about his message and was well prepared when he left home. But the
night before he was to speak he was terrified. He got stripped of his message.
He called his wife and pleaded, “Please pray. I've got to speak tomorrow and I
haven't the faintest idea what to say.” The next day he stood up utterly
speechless, then he began to extemporaneously speak from his heart. That was
the top message of the entire conference. Thousands of young people were moved
for the Lord.
Several years ago I was invited to speak at the main
Sunday service during the missionary summer season in karuizawa. I knew that
was a very key time. I wanted to give it my best shot and arrived in Karuizawa
confident that I knew the Lord's message. Steig Anderson was leading the
service and I gave Steig the passage I wanted him to read for the scripture
reading. But as I sat there on the platform I got stripped. During the offering
I spoke to Steig and said, “Forget the Bible reading. I have no idea what to
say.” Steig introduced me and I stood up as empty as a bucket upside down. While
I was mouthing the usual remarks, “It's good to be here this morning...” I was
desperately pleading, “Lord, give me something to say!”. Just as I ran out of
words, a verse came to mind. Later, the man who was responsible for audio and
recording told me he had more requests for that message than any message given
in Karuizawa that summer.
Another time, my niece Pam and her friend were
staying with us in Karuizawa. Saturday afternoon we had one of the most
devastating discussions of my life. I was supposed to speak at the winter
church the next day. I went to church so low I could look up to see worms
crawling overhead. When I got to church the brother leading the service asked
me what I was going to speak on. I said, “I don't know if I am going to speak.
Have your song service and look at me. If I stand up I will speak, if I don't,
that is it.” He did very well. When we finished the song service he looked at
me and said, “How about it?” I stood up and spoke out of my heart about the
darkness I was in and sat down. We were supposed to have communion, but Carol
Ahola spoke up and said, “Brother Mann, I can't take communion today. Brother
Bill is hurting”. Warren Christianson was the most unspiritual man in town and
was the first one on his feet. With that, all the ladies stood up and gathered
around Pam and the girls, and all the men gathered around me, and began to
pray. We never had a time like that in Karuizawa. Oh my goodness, did God come
down!
What I'm trying to say is that His thoughts are far
above our thoughts, and His ways are far above our ways. It might be to our
advantage if we enquired a little more of the Lord and not lean so heavily upon
our own understanding. As for Jesus, His head is as fine gold and my
head is as pig iron.
bill
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