Tag Archives: God hides His face

The Secret Message of the 5th word of the Bible

The fifth word in the English version of the bible is the word “created”. If you do a deep dive into meaning of the word in the Hebrew, it gives a treasure trove about creation which I will discuss below.

The word created has many words associated with that can be joined together to form three sentences as follows: The first is to ‘signal creation‘. The second is to ‘miraculously dispatch‘. The third is a ‘token of what is to be shaped or molded

Without going into exhaustive detail (I will if enough people ask), it is God the Father that signaled for creation to begin. It is God the Son that miraculously dispatched the Holy Spirit. It is God the Holy Spirit who shaped the universe. Hence, we see that the first time the concept of the Trinity shows up is in the very first sentence of the bible.

Now, the final sentence is especially important. A token is a representation, a part, or skeleton. When we plug this third sentence into the words, In the beginning God created, we get the following: In the beginning, God (the Holy Spirit) made a token of that which is to be shaped.

This helps us to understand that when the Holy Spirit started the process of creation, neither the earth nor the heavens were made perfectly. It was simply an outline that was made. This should not be shocking to anyone as the bible itself says ‘the earth was without form and void’ (Genesis 1:2).

With this understanding, we no longer have to go with the thesis that the earth was without form and void (Genesis 1:2) only because the perfect earth God had previously made (Genesis 1:1) was destroyed (there is no evidence of this in the bible). We don’t have to believe that the earth was being re-made and that this is the 2nd iteration of the creation of man.

We can simply admit creation was a process. God speaking things into existence does not mean those things happen in a split second. Speaking things into existence simply means that the irreversible process was simply set into motion.

In reality, we know this in our hearts. If everything was instantaneous, then why did creation take 6 ‘days’?

Spoiler alert: The days here does not mean the 24-hour day. You will have to stay tuned for another blog for me to explain.

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Fact or Myth: Sin Keeps God From Responding to Us

What goes through your mind when it seems that God is not responding to you? In this time of spiritual vulnerability, the enemy of our soul wastes little time concocting all sorts of fascinating tales such as ‘God doesn’t love you’ or ‘Its your fault, for you have been living in sin’.

Because I am sure that most of you reading this post are way too spiritual to ever believe that God doesn’t love you (tongue in cheek), I wont address that here. This short post is aimed at looking into the school of thought that believes that God hides his face away from us because of our sin –  something I feel compelled to address again because it keeps on coming up.

Just a few weeks ago I had a dialogue with a fellow believer about this. He opened up to the scripture in Isaiah 58:1-2, read it with much emphasis and then asked quite contently, ‘What do you say to that?’

Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save, nor His ear too dull to hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear – Isaiah 58:1-2 (NIV)

I responded by opening up my bible to Ezekiel 39:29 and asked him to read.

And I will not hide My face from them anymore; for I shall have poured out My Spirit on the house of Israel,’ says the Lord God.” – Ezekiel 39:26

His expression changed after reading this passage for he knew from the scripture that God has already poured out his Spirit (Read Acts 2 if you in doubt).

Since God has already poured out his Spirit, He no longer hides His face from us. While it is true that when we were living under the law, and righteousness was based on our ability to adhere to the law, lawlessness would indeed hide God’s face from us; It is also true that now that Jesus has sacrificed himself once and for all for our sins, and our righteousness is based on His finished work, God sees us through the lens of the perfect finished work of Christ and so our ability to adhere to the law no longer has anything to do with it.

Point to Consider: Jesus moved with sinners, He did not move away from them.

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