00:00 Intro music and voice over.
Welcome to jesus loves the world podcast. For more information and free resources visit our website jesuslovestheworld.info Be blessed empowered and transformed in Jesus’ name!
00:20 Speaker
All throughout God’s love story to us, the Eternal God - Father, Son and Spirit expressed their love in sound, sight, touch and taste. In last week’s jesus loves the world podcast tilted, The Sight of the Eternal God, we discovered how the Eternal God revealed Himself physically. So humanity could see the invisible God. Not only see Him, but those who choose to receive Him could stand in His presence with eyes wide open. In a covenant relationship filled with awe and wonder of Him. Where He gives us eyes to look into His regenerating fire of love unending and life everlasting. So we can gaze into the beauty of His face and see the love in His eyes. Knowing that for all eternity, we will live with the Eternal One who has overcome it all.
Today we will look at some of the many instances of the touch of the Eternal God. Where the Eternal God’s presence was tangibly felt and as a result everything changes.
So let us go back into time when the presence of God had descended upon mount Sinai. The Ancient Israelites had hearts of stone. They had rejected the Eternal God. The same one who they cried out to bring them out of slavery. The Ancient Israelites had knowingly falsely testified against the Eternal God. They knew the Eternal God had delivered them, yet they attributed their deliverance to a golden calf. A golden calf they made with their own hands.
Whilst the Ancient Israelites were down in the valley worshipping the golden calf, Moses on behalf of the people, was communing with the Eternal God on the mountain.
The Eternal God reached down personally and intimately. He wrote of tablets of stone the true testimony of who He is and humanity’s need for His salvation. With His finger, the Eternal God of everywhere, wrote on the tablets of stone. He gave them to Moses to give to the Ancient Israelites.
Exodus 31:18 And when He had made an end of speaking with him on Mount Sinai, He gave Moses two tablets of the Testimony, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God.
The finger of God is a beautiful depiction of the touch of the Eternal God. With His touch the Eternal God wrote on both sides of the two tablets of stone.
Many years later the Eternal God promised the Ancient Israelites that He would personally and intimately transform their hearts of stone. They simply needed to be willing. To choose to give their allegiance and worship to the eternal God who delivered them out from the bondage of slavery to the Egyptians.
Upon accepting the Eternal God’s right to rule and reign, they would receive the life transforming touch of the Eternal God. With the touch of the Eternal God their hearts of stone will become a heart of flesh. They would be transformed and given a teachable heart that will be a true witness. The heart of the Eternal God Himself. Being empowered to testify of His truth and receive His eternal salvation and deliverance.
Ezekiel 11:17-21 Therefore say, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD: “I will gather you from the peoples, assemble you from the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel.” ’ And they will go there, and they will take away all its detestable things and all its abominations from there. Then I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within them, and take the stony heart out of their flesh, and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in My statutes and keep My judgments and do them; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God. But as for those whose hearts follow the desire for their detestable things and their abominations, I will recompense their deeds on their own heads,” says the Lord GOD.
Centuries later the finger of the Eternal God came down into our our finite world and brought His salvation deliverance for all people.
The Eternal God in Jesus came from eternity into our finite world. It was a moment in human history. Jesus had grown to be a man and started His healing mission. He had just cast out a demon form a man.
Certain scribes and Pharisees, who pride themselves in their keeping of the law, yet in their heart they do not, were also there.
They knowingly falsely accused Jesus of casting out the demon in the power and authority of the supreme deity of evil. In response to their false witness of God, Jesus reveals their heart of stone and exposes their lies. Ironically bearing false witness is breaking one of the laws that the scribes and Pharisees hypocritically say they uphold.
So let us go to that exact moment in time and listen to Jesus’ response.
Luke 11:20-23 But if I cast out demons with the finger of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you. When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own palace, his goods are in peace. But when a stronger than he comes upon him and overcomes him, he takes from him all his armor in which he trusted, and divides his spoils. He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters.
Jesus declares the truth. That He cast out demons with the finger of the Eternal God. Testifying that in His coming the kingdom of God had come on earth. The kingdom of God brings deliverance and healing, salvation and victory and equality and freedom. Where the Eternal God’s rule and reign on earth is the present reality and the powers of evil have no place. Simply put, God’s kingdom on earth is realised in Jesus.
Jesus’ reference to the finger of God is reminiscent of a time in the days of old. In what was one of the most significant times in the history of the scribes and Pharisees. In fact anyone from the line of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
It was before the Ancient Israelites were delivered from the bondage of slavery to the Egyptians. Who were the most powerful human empire of the time. It was when the Eternal God demonstrated His supreme power over the empires of humanity and the powers of evil. The Eternal God made His mighty power known to the Egyptians and all those of Abraham’s lineage through Moses.
It was then when these power encounters occurred. The Egyptian magicians could not replicate certain signs of power of the Eternal God. All the deceptions and lies of the powers of darkness were revealed.
Form out of the mouths of the Egyptian magicians, the truth was spoken. They testified to Pharaoh that the signs of power declared through Moses, were the finger of the Eternal God.
So many centuries later, in the presence of the scribes and Pharisees, Jesus not only refers to the time when the touch of the Eternal God brought deliverance, but exposes the false witness of the scribes and Pharisees.
Again in response to the scribes and Pharisees’ false witness of the Eternal God, Jesus reveals the truth and exposes their lies.
John 8:14-19 Jesus answered and said to them, “Even if I bear witness of Myself, My witness is true, for I know where I came from and where I am going; but you do not know where I come from and where I am going. You judge according to the flesh; I judge no one. And yet if I do judge, My judgment is true; for I am not alone, but I am with the Father who sent Me. It is also written in your law that the testimony of two men is true. I am One who bears witness of Myself, and the Father who sent Me bears witness of Me.” Then they said to Him, “Where is Your Father?” Jesus answered, “You know neither Me nor My Father. If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also.”
Again Jesus refers to being a true witness of the Eternal God. For the Eternal God - Father, Son and Spirit, the three are one are truth itself. There is no deception, lies or falsehood in them. Jesus again exposes their hypocrisy and false witness.
The touch of the Eternal God is His power of testimony and liberating deliverance.
When the Eternal God touches the heart of a person everything changes. The touch of the Eternal God is to be known and experienced daily. For it is in the daily journey together though this life that God is writing His love story on our hearts. As we are His living letters, being transformed into the glory of the Lord.
The Apostle Paul wrote this very truth to the disciples of Jesus at the church at Corinth and throughout the surrounding region.
2 Corinthians 3:2-18 You are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read by all men; clearly you are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart.
And we have such trust through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, who also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
But if the ministry of death, written and engraved on stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of the glory of his countenance, which glory was passing away, how will the ministry of the Spirit not be more glorious? For if the ministry of condemnation had glory, the ministry of righteousness exceeds much more in glory. For even what was made glorious had no glory in this respect, because of the glory that excels. For if what is passing away was glorious, what remains is much more glorious.
Therefore, since we have such hope, we use great boldness of speech— unlike Moses, who put a veil over his face so that the children of Israel could not look steadily at the end of what was passing away. But their minds were blinded. For until this day the same veil remains unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament, because the veil is taken away in Christ. But even to this day, when Moses is read, a veil lies on their heart. Nevertheless when one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.
Together with the Son, the Father and the Spirit we are living testimonies of the living God. For it is His Spirit within that transforms and sustains. Unlike the two tablets of testimony of the old covenant that have faded away, the Spirit sustains our testimony of Jesus for all eternity. Having received the Eternal God and His eternal inheritance we are transformed into His eternal glory. The fulfilment of the new covenant of life and liberty eternal occurs when Jesus returns for us in all His glory.
The touch of the Eternal God is a deep divine romance that is daily experienced and eternally sustained. His love perfected and His gentleness embraced.
As we journey together with the living God, daily surrendered to His will, His touch of love goes deep. A love so pure, so glorious, so divine. Everything changes with the gentle, sustained touch of the Eternal God. Not just each individual and the entire community of disciples of Jesus but the entire world.
For it is through our transformed hearts, which is a work of the living God, where we are daily filled with His love, that the world will know Him. Where the entire community of Jesus’ disciples throughout the ages are a true witness of Him. All this to the praise of His glory.
The touch of the Eternal God is His power of testimony and liberating deliverance. A deep divine romance that is daily experienced and eternally sustained. His love perfected and His gentleness embraced.
19:40 Outro music and voice over.
For more information and free resources visit our website jesuslovestheworld.info Be blessed empowered and transformed in Jesus’ name!
