Behind the Scenes of Biblical Scenes, Pt. 4
Study Guide, September 1, 2024
Pastor Clay Olsen
There is a whole lot going on behind the scenes of even what we see. Even as we look around and see each other, over two million parts in our eyes are networking with more than 100 million light sensitive cells to help give us the images that we see. Even the images that we see first have to be manipulated by our brains before we can see things as they really are. Meaning what? For example: When we look at each other the shape of our cornea and lens first turns us, and all images, upside down. But when this image reaches our brain, or our Occipital Lobe, it turns the image right side up. And all of that happens even faster than the blink of an eye.
Plus, that means, in reality, that we actually see with our brain, not our eyes…because the eye is like a video camera that captures light and data and sends it all back to the brain, which then tells us what it is that we are seeing. Plus, the eye is a most amazing camera, because a good digital camera has resolution of about 5-20 megapixels. But the human eye has 576 megapixels! Awesome God for sure!
We could go on for the rest of our time describing the wonders of the human eye. My brother is a retired Eye Doctor, and he is still amazed at what God created in the human eye, which is second only to the brain in complexity. Even Charles Darwin stated that the chances of the complex functions of the eye developing by natural selection are, as he put it… ‘absurd to the highest degree!’ However, since he would not bow to the Creator of all things, he still held to the evolution of it someway somehow anyway! When your heart is hard toward God, your mind and even your eyes will be hard toward God as well. How sad…and utterly foolish! There are some accounts that Darwin may have repented toward the end of his life, but those accounts are conflicting. We pray he did…but the damages and destructive consequences of evolution still continue on.
But these wonders of the human eye are a clear example of how much is going on behind the scenes of what we see. And that is especially the case with what we see going on behind the scenes of our physical world in the spiritual world that surrounds it.
Let’s look together into a Biblical example of this. Let’s go back in time to around 740 B.C. and join Isaiah in the temple, for he has something to show us. Isa 6:1- “In the year of King Uzziah’s death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple. Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called out to another and said, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts, The whole earth is full of His glory.” And the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke.” NASU
What a scene! Isaiah was so excited he even called out to his horse ‘Is-me’, remember…he said, ‘Whoa! Is-me!’ No, he didn’t really say that…it was “Woe is Me”. Anyway, God pulls back the spiritual curtain here and Isaiah sees the Lord. This could have been a Theophany, or the pre-incarnate Christ. For remember, whenever God showed Himself in physical form, He did it in a preincarnation of Christ, or a Theophany. Just like with Abraham, for as Jesus told the religious leaders – “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad.” John 8:56 NASU Abraham saw the preincarnate Christ! Amazing!
But just think, even more so today, if God pulled back the curtain to the spiritual dimension and like Isaiah and we saw the Lord, it would no longer be the Pre-incarnate Christ, but the actual Incarnate Christ! For just beyond this spiritual veil Jesus Christ is enthroned in Heaven in His eternal and immortal resurrected body. And like the Angels told the Disciples in Acts 1:11- “They also said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven.” NASU This ‘same’ Jesus is returning in the ‘same’ way in the ‘same’ resurrected body in which He ascended, only Jesus will ‘descend’ back to this ‘same’ Earth to rule in glory over the Earth that even now is filled with His glory. Although this time He will take this ‘same’ Earth and completely renovate it to be His Millennial Earth before He completely resurrects it to be His Eternal Earth! Friend, this is your future!
Which brings up a couple more things to see…to spiritually see, that is. One is back to those Seraphim. ‘Seraphim?’ Here in Isaiah is the only place where this order of Angels is identified as ‘Seraphim’, which literally means ‘burning ones’! What are they burning about? These Seraphim are all about the holiness of God. Their chorus was “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts.” Holiness is the very essence of God. Holiness is what we are called to practice. Holy is what we are commanded to be – “…but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, “Be holy, for I am holy.” 1 Peter 1:15-16 NKJV For the Christian, that’s always the short answer to the question of what you should be when you grow up…or just be all the time! “Be holy, for your God is holy!” Whatever else you are or ever will be…first and foremost – ‘Be holy!’ And what is it to be holy?
Have you ever heard the saying…not so much ‘You are what you eat’…although there is something to that, but even more – “You are what you dwell upon!” And what are we called to dwell upon? “…whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.” Phil 4:8-9 NASU This is in essence a description of ‘holiness’, and a depiction of God who is the ‘summon bonum’, or highest and ultimate of all of these things; true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, good repute, excellent and worthy of praise’! And therefore, this is what we are commanded to dwell upon and commanded to seek to be, for we are commanded to ‘be holy, for our God is holy’.
Think of holiness as ‘likeness’. The degree of your likeness to God is the degree of your holiness in life. How much are you all about – ‘truth, honor, righteousness, moral purity, love, a good reputation, excellence in pursuit and praise of God’? That is how much you are like God. It is the measurement of your ‘likeness’ to God. And it is also the measurement of how ‘holy’ is your own life!
So remember, those who are closest to God, like these Seraphim, are all about ‘holiness’. If you want to get closer to God, and in order to get closer to God, you must become more committed to being more holy unto God.
And even here these Seraphim help us out in doing just that! For what they did there is an illustration of what we should be doing all the time. What do we mean? Look again: “…each having six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.” Covering their faces with two wings indicates their humility before God. Covering their feet with two other wings denotes their service to God. And their flying speaks of their ongoing activity in proclaiming God’s holiness and His glory.
So there we go…thank you very much Sir Seraphims! To be useful to God we must be humble before God and humble before each other. Humility always comes before honor in God’s family. And to be helpful to God we must be active in service to God. For he who is great in God’s world is the servant of all. And to be honorable and loyal and obedient to God we are to be proclaiming God’s words of holiness and God’s place of glory wherever we live and go. And although we decide how faithfully we will practice these things, the consequences of how faithfully we did them will follow us throughout God’s Kingdom forever and ever. So choose wisely in how you live! Live humbly, live as a servant to God, and live proclaiming God’s glory and God’s truths however and wherever you can.
Now then, speaking of God’s glory…the other thing these Seraphim declared and revealed when this spiritual curtain was pulled back on this world was this: “The whole earth is full of His glory!” Is that what you see when you look at this world? Do you see a world full of the glory of God, or do you just see a world full of the bleakness and desolation of man? Well, yes, this world really is bleak and vile and profane. It surely is really messed up! Remember how Jude describes our world in these last days? “The Lord is coming with countless thousands of His holy ones to execute judgment on the people of the world. He will convict every person of all the ungodly things they have done and for all the insults that ungodly sinners have spoken against Him. These people are grumblers and complainers, living only to satisfy their desires. They brag loudly about themselves, and they flatter others to get what they want. But you, my dear friends, must remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ said. They told you that in the last times there would be scoffers whose purpose in life is to satisfy their ungodly desires. These people are the ones who are creating divisions among you. They follow their natural instincts because they do not have God’s Spirit in them.” Jude 14-19 NLT
Yes, what a mess this world is in for sure! It looks about as bleak as it can get! And yet, as Warren Wiersbe often said: “When the outlook is bleak, try the up look!” Our ‘outlook’ is not to be the only thing that we see. We’re actually supposed to, daily, be superimposing our ‘up look’ over our ‘outlook’ in order to rightly look at whatever we are looking at through eyes of faith.
Now, that rings a Scriptural bell, doesn’t it? Check this out: Col 3:1-4- “Therefore, if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.” NASU
Much of what we are seeing in this life depends upon what we are seeking in this life…or seeking first we should say. As is, “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” Matt. 6:33 KJV Now, be careful here…for if you are seeking first the things below rather than the things above, then most of what you will be seeing will be the problems of the things below. But if you are seeking first the things above, especially seeking first the things of God’s kingdom and seeking first to live righteously in this kingdom as you look forward to God’s coming kingdom, then much of what you will be seeing will be the promises of the things above. And remember: It’s the promises of the things above that will give us victories over the problems of the things below.
But back to the ‘glory factor’ that we are to also factor into this life. For behind the scenes of this messed up world is the glory of God’s majestic world! Even though this world is full of sin and full of sinners, in a very real sense, this world is still filled with the glory of God. Even the Stars are declaring…are yelling out God’s handiwork! Ps 19:1-2- “The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display his craftsmanship. Day after day they continue to speak; night after night they make Him known.” NLT
Although we live in a world of rebellion, God is still on His throne. Amen? We may not get to have Isaiah’s vision, but we sure ought to get the fact that God is still on the throne! We ought to clearly be seeing through our eyes of faith that our God is still the one true God and the one rightful owner of all the Earth and everything it contains. As Abraham Kuyper put it: “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!” The Earth is the Lord’s, and all it contains! Oh yes, the glory of God fills the heavens and the earth! But you can only hear it being declared IF you have ears to hear! And you can only see the amazing reality of it all IF you have eyes to see!
The Psalmist said: “Open my eyes to see the wonderful truths in Your instructions.” Ps 119:18 NLT God’s word is not only the truth about life and this world…it is also the lenses through which we are to look in order to see the truth and in order to see this world as it really is, as well as to see the world the way it is soon to be when the King comes back! But without the lenses of the Scriptures everything people see is a distorted picture of reality and a darkened understanding of everything in life. Again, only when we set our minds on the things above, and look through the lenses of the Scriptures at the things below, can we see life as it really is, see our life as it really is, see other’s lives as they really are, and most importantly, to see God as God really is!
We’ll continue this look behind the scenes of seeing the unseen, but we’ll close with this. Let’s read it together: 2 Cor 4:17-18- “For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” NASU