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Chapter 8

The Star, the STAR, the Surrounding,
the Shining and the Transfiguration

Christmas is that time of the year in which it is traditional to focus on the birth of Christ. Many theories about the month or day are in vogue, and this is one of them. The point is not the month, in 4 B.C., but the recollection the celebration impels. It is not the commercialisation of Christmas which is to the point, although like much of this world's actions, it is regrettable; it is the testimony which this disadorns, but incites. To fail to focus on the FACT of the birth when all the world is talking of it becomes close to being merely at cross purposes with the testimony of the Cross, of which this is the preliminary, the prelude.

However, if anyone does not want to observe the day, that is fine, as is its observance, as Romans 14:6  makes so very clear. For our part, we merely use the fact of the day to expand the testimony of the Gospel. We should be all things to all men (I Cor. 9:22ff), and do not need the artificial stringencies of the sects to teach us to avoid what God provides, as if this were a testimony to the truth, that we bypass opportunity to impress it!

We are not to be austere and self-willed, but willing to adapt, that the message should go forth to all in as many ways as may be within the Lord. If we tried evermore to be seeing what the world is doing with this and that, in its everlasting shame, we should have no time to inject into it, now this way, now that, what it needs. Of course this world is sinful and distorts; but we inject the truth into its pathological midst, so that while it whirls, the witness may arrest it; and the word we give is that of salvation from what it foggily turns, though some now here now there, return and find the Lord. We act so that by all means within the word, we may win some.

Now let us exploit our opportunity and focus on the fact. The entire universe is so far from being a mere concourse of atoms, that you need, as even in the production of so simple a device as a fountain pen, such things as the beginnings of the materials, the point and purpose of the unit so compressed in compounded features as to be so specifically serviceable, and the result - in that case, you can write marvellously well with the thing!

Man is made the most intricate, integrated, concatenated, correlated, compounded, brilliant and serviceable design ever seen in any material thing. That is the fact. If this severely systematised thing is not a design, then since it is the utmost example of the meaning of the word, there could not be any. However we make designs all the time, and so did God when He was creating.

What He did NOT create was His everlasting word, and what He DID create was first man; and then man's remedy for exploiting that wonderful thing called freedom, by seeking other gods than the Creator. If you want that, try Romans 1 for method, and ponder its results with not only your face, but your mind and spirit turned upward to the light of reality!

Suppressing the truth, man runs amok and makes a mess which he is forever trying to cover up; but it explodes now into the very the atmosphere, and its blood soaks into the very soil, and saturates the increasingly barren earth. This is moreover a picture or even portrait of the soul of man, not missing cylinders in his performance, but missing heart to know direction, and receiving correction too late, after ruin.

If the earth suffers, how much more the spirits of those who inhabit it, in billions, without food, or clean water, or wisdom, or hope, or above all, the knowledge of the grace of God, like mice living in a household of cats, not knowing there is a friendly mastiff around, and too scurrying and hurrying to look and see, too bickering to look up to that friendly face, because of little things, and big lusts.

When however that eternal Word of God, artificer of worlds, inculcator of wisdom, record and exponent of truth,  became flesh (Proverbs 8, John 1, Ezekiel 34, Hosea 13:10, Zechariah 12:10, Philippians 2), then there was first an OVERSHADOWING of the chosen mother. A presence of peace, an intendant of power, the Holy Spirit of God working the incarnation. This you see in Luke 1:32-35. As to the one chosen to bear this child, she is no more queen of heaven than are the millions of other 'mothers' of whom Christ said: "For whoever does the will of my Father who is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother." (Matthew 12:50). When God humbles Himself to behold the things, needs, portents and provisions for man, it is not for grandeur, but by grace.

THE SURROUNDING WITH CONCEPTION

Therefore, said the Angel (Luke 1:35), that holy thing which shall be begotten from you will be called the Son of God. The Word in this way was made into fleshly format as the Son, the ONLY BEGOTTEN (John 3:16) Son of God. Always the outshining of the glory of deity (Hebrews 1:1-3), now concentrated in fleshly format, His was the position of being begotten into flesh, and so becoming the first-born of all creation (Colossians 1:15). Why first-born, since He came after several thousand years of history ?

It is because He who BECAME the FIRST-BORN of all creation has first CREATED it. On introduction INTO the world AS one in the human race, though deity as it always remained, as unchanging God, His status, He became not only an addition, but the addition of the one who PRECEDED AS CREATOR ALL who had ever been born; and so in the realm of the born as to format, His was the post, the priority and the inheritance as first-born.

That is what Colossians 1 dictates. It declares this: that it is BECAUSE He is the Creator of all (John 1:3), that He becomes the first-born when He appears WITHIN that creation. How some intemperate and confused, can decide that since the STATED GROUND of His being first-born was the FACT that He was the creator of all (and so could not logically even be IN the realm of what was created, this being entirely dependent on His prior act of creating it), indeed that since He was creator of whatever is, ALL THINGS "whether in heaven or on earth" His status was to BE one of the things He created, is beyond rational comprehension. Neither are there any exceptions, nor any exemptions.

As inventor, procurer, creator of the category of all things, obviously only He, that Being called God in His own mode of being as a Trinity, is outside it; for otherwise it would not be 'all things' but all except Himself that He made: for the all things is the question, and He is the answer. Again, if He were not outside it, it could not be created. Making Himself from nothing when He is not there is neither rational nor revealed; but being there in the beginning, as the Word of God, it is He who with and as God acts (John 1:1, 8:58).

Hence on the one hand, He must be before and over and beyond it, and it must all be separable in ontology, differentiable in being, dependent in dealing, derivative in quality, the result of His first being and so resolving to create "all things".

This is precisely what John 1:1-3 states: that ALL THINGS were made by Him, even everything that was made. If then it is a made thing, He made it. Since He made all in that category, He is not in it. What could be simpler, even to a child! There is creator and creation; and the latter being a non-independent and instituted sort of thing, not making itself or showing any power to do so, including man, then man ought to look to his Creator to find his place. In doing so, the Bible instructs us, it must look to the artificer, the image of the invisible God, in whom dwells all the fulness of the deity (Colossians 2:9, 1:19), and thus His increate, omnipotent and omniscient nature, character and eternity. It is HE, writes the apostle, who made peace by the blood of the Cross, that all things might be reconciled. There is the Awesome Agent, and there is the awful mess. The former is God; the latter is man.

As "the image of the invisible God", He created all, and this He did, not IN it, but AS it! God has no beginning, nor end, nor change. Let us reiterate: John 1:1-3 even declares not least for the unwise also, that by Him were made all things that were made. If you are a made thing, indeed if anything is, then HE made it. That is the realm of the Creator, and it is imperative for anyone who wants to know God, to come to Christ AS GOD, eternal, omniscient, to be worshipped and without limit to His power, stop to His peace or break to His wisdom. Only then is the blood meaningful, the purity adequate, the power sufficient, the cleansing divine (Hebrews 1-10).

In other words, appearing like an author in His own novel, when He came to this earth of His own manufacture, He thus took the pre-eminence over all its denizens: before them in time (He made our time - Romans 8:36ff.), in power, in being as God, as man He became in pre-eminence the first. The inheritance is therefore His.

We are His due inheritance, and as to divorce in spirit from Him, this is so categorical for those so created, that there is no end to the profusion of confusion to be found in a world turning on untruth. History declares it, war shouts it, inward wars that psychiatrists seek to treat and that increasingly with pills, not the peace of reality, these attest it, hatred among man and littlenesses of spirit, competitive envies, disruptive dynamics, dispersive delusions, these all writhe on the basis of this one fact.

God is necessary; Christ is deity; His salvation is not a sop to the explorers, but the basis for life. It is not something performed by an agent, but by God Himself, than whom there is no other Saviour (Isaiah 43:10-11), neither in power, in purity, in wisdom, in willingness, in competence or in love adequate for the task.

This is our Christ, the Lord's Christ (Luke 2:28), the One who was so to act that He would become, as He now has become,  the salvation of God to all peoples. Note this carefully, that ONLY GOD is the saviour of men (Isaiah 43:10-11), so that the ONLY SAVIOUR is the ONLY God. He is the Father who sends, the Son who is sent to redeem and pay for salvation, and the Spirit who surrounds as He did Mary. In that case, the Lord even brought about the conception, thus as one Being in three persons, doing all.

Always social in Himself, God knows man in all his ways.

THE SURROUNDING WITH GLORY AND GO!

Thus having surrounded Mary in the conception of the Christ into human format, He also through the Angel making the announcement to the shepherds, surrounded them with the glow of glory, making them marvel and instructing them where to go. God surrounds us all who believe, with grace, saying to those who know Him, as to Paul:  "My grace is sufficient for you; for my strength is made perfect in weakness" (II Cor. 12). You will notice that Paul sought the removal of some difficulty, but in this case it was denied, for it had a purpose, to stop the amazing scope of power  and wisdom given by God in His grace to him, becoming a road to pride. Therefore Paul rejoiced in such a limitation. Better a governor on the accelerator than an accident!

Grace is assuredly and wonderfully sufficient for those who, pardoned by redemption, purchased by power, led by love, are resigned from princely strutting as from devious snivelling, and want God on His own terms! It moves like the trickling waters seeping through rock on mossy slopes, and it soars like the effortless birds, like aspirations on wings, it covers the depths like a vast bore, and knows who are His; and knowing them, He leads them with His beautiful holiness and His endless love. We who are His, are disciples, not directors!

We must realise this and WAIT upon Him, as one waits for an express train. You have at times to be patient, until the moment comes when the light shines from its front, and shows its presence. Then you hop aboard, and with what grace and speed you are taken to your place, as was the case with Philip, when he left the vast evangelisation program in staggeringly available Samaria and being constrained, went into the desert, dramatically to meet in his travels, a high court official from Ethiopia, returning from his religious visit.

Won by Phillip, and already probing Isaiah when the deacon found him, this official was perhaps the one to found what would become the work in Africa, a major mover in what was then a more flourishing kingdom than now.

Again, take the case of  Paul when he was called to Macedonia (Acts 16). Do not leave it to the 'saints' (for all Christians are called saints as in Romans 1:7, Ephesians 1:1, Philippians 1:1, Colossians 1:2). It is even a form of address to the faithful; and note this, that he who is born of God does not MAKE A PRACTICE OF SIN (I John 3:9). Not sinless by any means, the saint is at the same time not a two-timer saying one thing and doing another, by nature! It is not some edifice to be clambered up, though effort is certainly to be seen as you put on the whole armour of God (Ephesians 6).

Yet intrinsically, the one who is born of God has by nature already put on the new man, who is being renewed in Christ (Colossians 3:10). He has put off the 'old man', the fallacious nature, stricken with the insidious seepage of sin, resembling that awful cup of polonium tea, imbibed it seems, by the former KGB officer, Litvinenko. The man, the woman, the child of God has tipped out the fatal brew, and looks up to the Source of man's spirit, the healing of his mind, the peace of his heart where it is to be found, in the Lord Himself, the eye set there, as that of a dog, who awaits his master's next hunting move. Let us however return to the horse figure.

I will guide you with My eye, the Lord says (Psalm 32), as if we were horses; and those who understand horses know that the rider looks where he is going MEANINGFULLY, with balance, eye and weight all giving notice,  and the horse responds, if it is of a temper of responsiveness! A good horse normally is. Thus the Lord in this Psalm declares not only that He will guide His people with His eye, but pursuing the theme, the imagery, He proceeds at once to advise us that we should not be like the horse that lacking wisdom, needs bridle, and must be harnessed or else it will not come NEAR you.

In coming near to God (Ephesians 2:22), we have access, by one Spirit to the Father. Nearness is then not only formal, but functional!

THE Star THAT SPOKE, and the STAR WHO YET SPEAKS

Then came the STAR, which judging from Herod's work in slaughtering children in the mad hope of killing the new KING which he did not want as opposition to his debased regime, would have shone perhaps a year or more before the birth. Astronomical records in China and Korea, set at 5 B.C. and 4 B.C.,  show that this appears to have been the case, and so the wise men from the East arrived on time because before that time, God acted and scheduled it all.

So do we who wait on the Lord find that whatever the sufferings as solid and spiritual people in Christ, we may be appointed to have (cf. Philippians 1:28-30), there is a place and a plan, a program and and provision. Again, WAIT on the Lord and trust in Him, wait patiently and He will give you the desire of your heart; and indeed, AS you wait upon Him (Psalm 34, 27), you are being changed so that your mind becomes spiritual and your heart tender.

Next we turn to that immeasurable grant of grace which went with the Saviour in whom, at some thirty years of age, the age required for the priestly work (Luke 3:23), that required for the priestly work, even His multi-pronged Messianic ministry, was caused to flourish like Spring, with its inimitable perfumes and staggering growth. This, it was not the profusion of nature, but the effusion of super-nature, and supernatural power was to this as natural as natural power to things natural!

That was always the enigma of Christ to the ungodly, religious or not. How COULD some one in such a profundity of power proceed with such a naturalness of continuity, in word and deed, in healing and holiness, at levels to the uttermost height and with triumph at the greatest depth, without rufflement, bewilderment, misstep in phase or failure in recess! It was because it was His NATURE so to do.

For supernature, the supernatural is the natural. It is the nature of the case, it is the functioning of the Eternal One. In Christ, the envelope of flesh did not hide this; but it merely brought to manifest brilliance, the love which was willing to know its demands! Humbling always has appeal, because of empathy and sympathy, and tends towards reality. He became man so that as man He might bear what was coming to man, so that those coming to Him, might become free men, without the burden He bore, the guilt He took or the severance He restored to faith in Himself.

There, in that fleshly garment,  came the service to many, in many dimensions, the saving, the shattering of the power of Satan and the sundering of the program of pollution of the false shepherds. This was then;  just as now, alas, in this determinate and prophesied decadence before the Lord's return, so many churches now have their own false programs of prosperity Christianity, or austerity Christianity where the Bible is emasculated and what pleases man is substituted, as with so much condemned in Ezekiel 14, 34 and Jeremiah 23.

If it is hard to have to challenge so that many might awake, is it easy for a doctor to announce the presence of a cancer ? Would he not be cardinally remiss to keep it to himself lest it should disturb the patient. It is more than disturbance that cancer brings! But many refuse to awake, and seek to silence those who warn; they live in their 'old man' condition.

Here, the aim is self and more self, at the expense of truth, whether one's own proud version of 'moral self', or immoral; and the means is not being crucified with Christ, but using Him as a stepping stone, the philosopher's stone, a spiritual way to gold, or in some other spurious mode. Some use Him as a papal stone, where some man or other replaces the Christ by circumventing His words (Matthew 23:8-10), and being indeed a teacher and master, and not simply one of the brethren, as the Saviour required of all (cf. I Peter 5). The more the human exaltation, the more the loss (Matthew 16). 

Then, in the teeming tininess of self-exultant sin, even GOD has to be harnessed to this conquering name, other than that of Christ, or to this commercialisation not just of a season, but of the soul! It is this which must be rejected, rather than some evangelical use of the day to  rescue some from the fray. If some want it differently, the day is theirs, but not the authority to deprive others of a chosen tool.

As the mighty work of the Saviour brought whole battalions to His side, not to slaughter or substitute,  but to be serviced by His power or healed by His grace (Matthew ), so the time came for another outshining, another surrounding by the power of God.

This occurred at the TRANSFIGURATION. As we read in Matthew 17, this special event was like an aircraft landing at night in a vast aerodrome. Selecting just three of His intimates, Christ went up on a mountain, and there the glory of God once more surrounded Him, shone upon Him, encompassed Him.

In this case, it was not angels revealed as with the Shepherds, like pointer stars to the Southern Cross, though here it was to the Northern One. Rather it was Moses and Elijah, shown speaking with the Lord, very much alive, alert and readily discussing the outcome of the babe, the coming brutal assassination of the King, Christ Himself.  It was He who, as by program, was in this way to bring the gift which we focus especially at Christmas to the world, to the point where it could be accessed, the Cross. They in fact were reviewing the death WHICH CHRIST WOULD ACCOMPLISH.

This is one of my favourite scriptures, this record of the conversation of those prophets with Christ, shown in Matthew 17, after the demolition of Peter's all but farcical endeavour to give advice to Christ (Matthew 16), not to die! That was so central a failure that it would resemble wanting to buy a car without an engine.

Indeed, with Christ, death was not to be an occurrence, but an accomplishment. It was not a happening, but a holy personal holocaust, in which the greatest height was touched by the greatest depth, God by sin; and in the obliteration and cancellation which resulted, there came the fountain for sin which is for all people; but you DO have to WASH! (Isaiah 1:18).

His whole being shone, His clothes whiter than anything man could make, just as the heart which He services in salvation is made whiter than anything man could of himself achieve, being the reconstitution wrought by the Creator here appearing as divine Saviour, sustained by spiritual power.

THE SHINING THAT IS FROM WITHIN,
AS THE LORD SHATTERS DARKNESS

Seek therefore meekness, seek righteousness, His, and wear it with nobility and freshness of heart, fearing none, focussing Christ, and receiving the due outcome, the salvation of your souls. Of this, you read in I Peter 1:3-15. With this, we conclude, as it is so comprehensive, and has such salient elements, as always follow from the Gospel of Divine Grace in the Face of the Assassinated Saviour.

^"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

^"In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ, whom having not seen you love.

"Though now you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith—the salvation of your souls. Of this salvation the prophets have inquired and searched carefully, who prophesied of the grace that would come to you, searching what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating when He testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow.

"To them it was revealed that, not to themselves, but to us they were ministering the things which now have been reported to you through those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven—things which angels desire to look into.

"Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; as obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the former lusts, as in your ignorance; but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct..."