Stumbled across this wonderfully inspiring post. Enjoy.
Behind Closed Doors
“…who shut in the sea with doors, when it burst forth and issued from the womb?”Job 38:8
As with all good government, important kingdom decisions are carried out in private. This is pictured in many ways, not least in God’s design of our everyday lives.
Living things have brains, guts and outsides. This is Word, Sacrament and Government. Word is intangible, but our emotions are communicated symbolically through our bodies. Facial expressions and body language are the response of the “Holy Place” to the “Most Holy” of our inner soul. Eyes are organs of judgment.[1] Eyes are also the windows to the soul. The crystal sea is a window to heaven.[2] The “outer court” interacts with the world and needs cleaning. Only clean stuff is allowed inside the “Holy Place.”
The prayer closet is the place where we meet with God in secret, and He rewards us openly, publicly. This applies to us as individuals and also corporately as a church.[3] What happens here affects the history of the community and the world.
Marital relations happen behind closed doors. Everyone knows what happens in there, but sharing the details, or having sex in public, is taboo for all but the most reprobate. It is a private time where, among other things, Covenantal, governmental decisions are made, and God rewards us openly with offspring.
Gestation happens behind the “doors” of the womb. We are knit together in secret by God’s miraculous government process. When the time comes, we pass from “death” to “life” through water and blood into a new world. Jesus referred to the last days as “birth pangs.” The head was delivered at His ascension, and the body delivered in AD70 (the first resurrection). The complete “son of man” is Jesus and the church. Revelation presents two women, the bride and the harlot. One delivers the man of sin (Cain) and the other, faithful Israel, finally delivers the Totus Christus. [4] This public vindication (the “revelation of the sons of God”) was the outcome of the very private resurrection in the tomb, behind closed doors, upon the cherubim-flanked “lid of the Ark.”
James Jordan speaks about the Ark as God’s treasure chest, locked up until the coming of the Messiah. It contained Word, Sacrament and Government. When the Jews chose Barabbas over Jesus, they unwittingly opened the Ark, and blood and water flowed out. They exposed themselves to the realities behind the Old Covenant curses and blessings. They also spilled out the hidden treasures of wisdom and knowledge for the life of the whole world.
The account in Kings of the Temple’s construction follows the feasts pattern, and the blood on the olivewood doors is the finest gold. Passover is about doors being covered. Atonement is about doors being opened. The golden doors are opened towards the end of the ceremony and the Shekinah glory fills the house.
No one but the priests were allowed to see inside the Tabernacle, or even to see the furniture when it was on the move. But they all knew what went on in there! The true religion is not a mystery religion. Many things are private, but there are no “secret rites.” There are no Masons or Mormons in the true faith. The privacy is the wisdom of the head, and what goes on in there always flows out into the world, whether it is answers to prayer, godly offspring, or a stable nation.
Men are structure (Word – singular). Women are glory (Government – plural). A man’s glory is secret. A woman’s glory, in every way, is public. A husband is exposed by the smile—or the scowl or black eye—on his wife. A pregnant tum is a glory or a shame depending on the man.[5]
Sometimes the revelation of what has gone on in secret is a sudden one. When a crisis comes, even in an unforeseen irritation, like a naptha flash, our inward lack of faith and peace is exposed in half a second of rage, and burnt forever into someone’s retinas. Are we those whose years of secret sin can be suddenly exposed in a swift and very public fall? Will the adult lives of our children be a public testimony to a lack of tenderness and guidance in the privacy of the home? Or will we be those whose years of godly self-discipline and self-sacrifice will be abruptly allowed to shine when the crisis comes? Doctor Jesus’ Xrays can be a midlife crisis or a call to martyrdom.
For churches, the end of a denomination can come suddenly, but only after years of inward compromise. God always gets an Ezekiel to dig through the wall. What will the son of man find we have been constructing when the harsh light is allowed in? The day will always declare it.
A bankrupt business or global financial crisis also issues from the secret places. Even secret abortions leave their mark on an individual, and then on a culture. Word becomes deed. Sex begets seed. Fruit is inescapable, even if that fruit is barrenness.
One of my old Bible teachers said, “Back of every tragedy in human character is a slow process of wicked thinking.” I’ve seen this in my life. Thank God for the washing of the water of the Word.
What goes on in secret always ends up shouted from the housetops. Unless of course there is blood on the door already, in which case your household is passed over when the destroyer comes and the firstborn “issues forth” alive in the morning. The Herodian “man of sin” Temple was a stillborn. The son of man, Totus Christus, now has family all over the world.
It seems the Lord isn’t that good at keeping secrets. The Bible is big on mysteries, but there are no eternal secrets. Every mystery, like the second tree, is only hidden from us by God until we are ready. He keeps the best till last. After a long obedience, water suddenly becomes wine.
In hindsight, we can see that throughout the Old Testament there were many things the Lord was busting to tell us that we weren’t ready for. So He just prefigured them a thousand times to get us ready for the One Who called Himself the Open Door.[6] He calls us not merely to salvation, but to wise government from the secret places, the places from where new life issues like pure water from the creative Word.
“Keep thy heart above all keeping; for out of it are the issues of life.” Proverbs 4:23
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[1] See Eye Spy – 1.
[2] I’ll never forget Gordon Cheng’s idiotic comment about “Windows in Genesis” as he made fun of the flood narrative during the infamous Creation/Evolution debate on the Sydney Anglicans forum. Some Christians have no imagination. The Lord was conveying more than a weather forecast. The world is a tabernacle and the sky was a laver. Open doors in the firmament bring us face to face with the Law of God.
[3] See Liturgy as Prophecy.
[4] See Ish and Isha.
[5] A friend of mine said she never had children because she never met a man she wanted to reproduce.
[6] Even the mystery of the union of Jew and Gentile has types stretching back to the animals and men in the ark.
Or here…