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FIRST POSTED ON 1 & 15 SEPTEMBER 2018.
Shalom Aleichem and welcome to my Shabbat blog!
If you recall, we said that what God wanted to speak to His people today - His Rhema in this Kairos - could be discerned from the Bible if we approached it through the perspective of the 7 Days of Creation. This was because through the Creation Account, God revealed to us the outworking of His eternal will on this side of time and history. Ultimately, as in the original Creation Account, there would be a future Sabbath or Shabbat when this world would enter into God’s eternal Shalom.
Let us unpack this a bit more.
First, the Creation Account gives us a framework with which to recognise when God will act in His Kairos - His appointed or opportune time. It thus gives us a unique Biblical perspective of world history. History is not just a series of accidents and coincidences or intentional or unintentional human causes and effects. It is His-story - God’s story in action, revealing His sovereign will and hand at work over everything that happens in the world. After all, God is the Creator and hence, has mastery over His creation.
But God doesn’t just want us to see Him at work. He wants to tell us what to do in light of what He is doing in the world. For this reason, the Creation Account also reveals God’s Rhema for us in view of the times that we live in. The Bible is God’s story in revelation. Through the Creation Account, each Kairos generation receives a fresh understanding of the Bible and knowledge of what to do according to His eternal will here on earth.
How God’s Rhema brings about His eternal will in His Kairos is seen in the original Creation account itself. Here, on each appointed day or Kairos, God spoke into being - in other words, He acted by releasing His Rhema to bring about an aspect of the unfolding creation according to His eternal will until all is perfect and He rested. Since then, God not only acts by direct divine intervention in the world but also through His people, by releasing His Rhema to us in His Kairos so that we join together with Him to bring about the outworking of His eternal plan and will until everything is perfect and at rest.
Ultimately though, the Creation Account tell us about Jesus Christ. It reveals how, when God created the world, He had already planned how it would progress and eventually end by bringing all things to perfect completion and rest, forever set apart for Him, in Jesus Christ.
Eph 1:9-10 tells us that “[God] made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment [meaning in His Kairos] —to bring unity [that is, Shalom] to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.”
Christ existed from the beginning, came 2,000 years ago to save us, and will return to usher in this seventh or Sabbath Day rest we spoke about earlier. This will happen during His Millennial or 1,000-year reign mentioned in many parts of the Old Testament and especially in Revelations chapter 20.
As we will learn next time, although we may not know the exact year, we do know that Jesus’ coming will take place during the annual Jewish Autumn or Fall Feasts. These Fall Feasts are part of the 7 annual High Sabbaths mentioned earlier and point to God’s Kairos or appointed time for Jesus’ return.
Before we close, I just want to emphasise at this very early stage, and in fact this will be something that will always be upfront and centre in all our sessions, that everything is - and has to be - only about Jesus. This is what the Gospel and the entire Bible, indeed all of life and creation and history including everyone and every part of us, are about. Any gospel or sermon that puts us - our prosperity, welfare or blessing - or even the Church or our nation or anything or anyone else besides Jesus as the central focus of its message, misses the point and cannot therefore be God’s Rhema for us. May we always remember this, so that Christ is always seated on the throne of our hearts.
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