Spiritual Beings

"Physical knowledge is only truth when heaven reveals it to us."

A MAN ATTENDED A COLLEGE CLASS, paid entrance, purchased books and study goods, woke early and attended as needed. But when the assignments were handed out, he did nothing. When the tests were given, he refused to take them, and for all his interest, despite what he’d spent, and though he’d learned much, he failed the class.

The Pharisees could quote the Scriptures well enough to twist them to honor themselves. The scribes knew where the Messiah would be born, when asked by King Herod. They had in the temple reams of prophecies over their nation, over their future. They had the Law written with its warnings and blessings. They knew how to behave, how not to behave, when to feast, when to sacrifice. Everything that Simeon had, who looked for Christ to come to earth, everything that the wise men somehow knew without being Jewish or from Israel, was in print for the leaders of the Jewish people to consult. Yet their reaction to Jesus was fear, anger, and hatred. They attended the classes but knew nothing but the words.

A man can quote Scriptures end-to-end. He can gain a position in the pulpit and know how to craft a fine sermon. He can string words together so that they please the ear, have an intonation that reaches out to all those listening, yet lack understanding of one word he’s said. Though he’s well-spoken, though he’s well-read, the depth of the Word of God in him is shallow and merely on the surface. People assume things all the time. We see a person dressed in a particular way and guess at their past and what they’ve been through. No one wears their entire history on their arm-sleeve. No one ought to. But somehow, we cannot stop ourselves from painting an image.

I have a habit of this where situations are concerned, from writing fiction. I often consider the plot of the scene unfolding in front of me. But though I’m good at this and could put it into print, given I had the time and inclination, the truth of it is merely a figment. One cannot live on figments, nor on incorrect assumptions, nor shallow knowledge, nor lack of understanding because what we do not understand comes out of our mouths. We will say what we believe whether it’s correct or not.

The Pharisees accused Jesus of casting out devils by Beelzebub, and Jesus took them to task over it. A kingdom divided will not stand, neither Satan’s kingdom, nor God’s. They couldn’t see the truth of this. They had with their incorrect knowledge both discarded the Holy Spirit and described Him as trafficking with demons. “Watch your words,” Jesus said to them. “For there is both good and evil in front of you, which one are you truly speaking?” They couldn’t see their words as being evil and when He drew a picture of a spiritual world, didn’t see that either. He had come to reveal the Father, who is Spirit, and the Holy Spirit whose power worked through Him. These were unseen to the physical eye but revealed in the Law they read, in the history of their people, and His actions there in front of them.

We make excuses. Jesus lives in us, and the Holy Spirit lives in us, and we are united with the Father, yet because these events in the Bible happened so long ago, we stare at a physical world and cannot see all that Jesus came to show. He told the Pharisees that day that the men of Ninevah and the queen of the south, both figures from their history who were dead and gone, would rise up against them. How could dead people accuse them of anything? An unclean spirit, He said, walks through dry places seeking rest. Here is another spiritual figure.

What would transpire to Him was at the urge of their warped minds and twisted thinking, pushed by a demonic spiritual world that led the blind into a ditch. A world they couldn’t see, the pages of the past lost to them, the parting of the Red Sea and the Jordan River, the amazing battles won without any man needing to fight, the Davids who defeated enemies far stronger than them, all of it lost along with the words of Isaiah regarding a virgin giving birth to a Son, Emmanuel, “God with us,” coming to earth, and a King who was Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace. A man doing such great signs and wonders as they had seen was reduced from their Messiah to a figure worth only a criminal’s death. “Let’s go back to what we know. We don’t get Him.”

The Sower sows the Word into the heart, which is the soil, but it is the things of the mind which keep it from sprouting. Physical knowledge is only truth when heaven reveals it to us. Though a man may speak nice things and speak them end-to-end, what of it does God give His assent to? We must be spiritual beings to know and to understand. We must lean into the Holy Spirit and see through His eyes to recognize what comes against us. Otherwise, we are at the whim of our emotions and of incorrect understanding and no better than that man who paid for a college class but failed. No more informed than the scribes and Pharisees, the Sadducees were in Jesus’ day. Growth comes at the expense of comfort. Sometimes, the Spirit asks me to do something which makes me uncomfortable, but I know that in doing it, I will be stronger and have more knowledge in me and be less caught up in the wonders of my mind. I can write the story, but I don’t wish to live it.

I can close the door on the world of the spirit and live just in what’s around me. Many do. But this doesn’t make the truth of God any less true. What we see was made of what does not appear, and we must grasp this with both hands and grow in wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him in order to become all that He has for us. What is revealed in the Word of God are the instructions for life, our physical lives. Jesus is our Healer and the Father knows all our physical needs. But our spiritual lives and the renewing of our thinking through the Holy Spirit’s guidance. We are not just bodies with minds bent on our own selfish ways, but remade in the image of God, reborn to go forth and do all that He has called us to do. With one motto: Take all of me and give me more of you. I am, personally, willing to lay down everything to follow Him. That seems extreme, and it is, but He knows me and will never ask of me what He knows I cannot do. I trust Him with that and so with “me.” Because greater is He who is within me than anything that is within the world, words which fully sum up what Jesus spoke that day. “Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.”

“But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” (John 14:26 KJV)

Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay


----------
Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com