The Condescension of God
LUKE 19:1-6
1 ¶ And Jesus entered and passed through Jericho. (Jericho is a city located in the Jordan valley around 258 metres (846 ft.) below sea level, which makes it the lowest geographical city in the world)
2 And, behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus, which was the chief among the publicans, and he was rich. (Zacchaeus was a rich tax collector who had gained his wealth by taxing his own people for the benefit of the Romans – So this shows us that God loves rich people just the same as he loves poor people and middle class people. God loved Abraham and he was rich, God loved Job and he was rich. God is a rich man also, so it’s not how much you have or don’t have, it’s the love of God – he loved us when we were unlovable)
3 And he sought to see Jesus who he was; and could not for the press, because he was little of stature. (Look how the bible is giving us specific details - he was the smallest man in the lowest city)
4 And he ran before, and climbed up into a sycomore tree to see him: for he was to pass that way. (Notice how that the first time when Zacchaeus saw Jesus, he didn’t have to look up, but he had to look down)
5 And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up, and saw him (Catch the picture here - Jesus had descended down into Jericho to the lowest city in the world, and then he had to place himself under this tree so that he could look up to see the smallest man of that city while the smallest man Zacchaeus was looking down on God. So we are being shown something here of how God condescends in order to win us to himself – we are saved by His condescension), and said unto him, Zacchaeus, make haste, and come down; for to day I must abide at thy house. (When we see how Jesus condescended to reveal himself to Zacchaeus, but then it was Zacchaeus turn to come down himself to meet the Lord)
6 And he made haste, and came down, and received him joyfully.
**Don’t take your time about responding to the voice of the Lord calling you – make haste and come down and receive him into your heart.
REVELATION 19:7
7 Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready.
The Condescension of God
There’s a great song that we sing…
– what condescension, bringing us redemption, that in the dead of night, not one faint hope in sight. God’s gracious tender, laid aside his splendour, stooping to woo, to win, to save my soul.
**In our story of Zacchaeus, we see the nature of God expressed by the lengths that he was willing to go through to win Zacchaeus to himself.
*We humans that are born with fallen natures, we are often so possessed with our own stubborn ways and our own self-destructive will, that most of us don’t come to God easy, we fight and resist Him. And so for God to reveal himself to us, he has to condescend to us on a personal level, and in a way so that he will actually position himself beneath us like he did with Zacchaeus in order to win us – he has to come right down and meet you at your level.
*And so for us, instead of finding the Lord by having to look up to see him in the great heavens above, many times it is when we look down among the common struggles of our lives that we see him revealing himself to us in the common and everyday things of life.
REVELATION 19:7 (opening scripture)
7 Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready.
***We want to know what this scripture look likes on an individual level in our everyday lives of how we are as believers of this end time message are to make ourselves ready.
*If we want to be a part of the marriage of the Lamb that is taking place in this day, and to see this scripture fulfilled in our lives in this hour, then we want to be sure that what is written in symbol form in the book of Revelation is being lived out and interpreted in the events of our every day lives.
*We know that relationships form by the receiving of the words of the person that you are in fellowship with - this is the natural pathway that leads to marriage.
Marriage takes place when words and vows are exchanged. So for the marriage of the Lamb to take place in this day, then it requires a voice and words to be spoken by the Bridegroom. And this is what the message of the hour is to us as believers – it is the voice of the bridegroom.
JUDGES 6:14-15
14 And the LORD looked upon him, and said, Go in this thy might, and thou shalt save Israel from the hand of the Midianites: have not I sent thee?
15 And he said unto him, Oh my Lord, wherewith shall I save Israel? behold, my family is poor in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father's house.
**We have been looking at the life of Gideon in Judges CH:6 of how God condescended down to Gideon of whom he confessed as being the least man among his father’s house.
And so we see how that God had come down to what looked like the weakest man that he could find in order to show us something of this hour that we are living in today of how that God doesn’t choose the great and strong people of the world, but many times he chooses to reveal himself to those who are weak, because His strength is actually made perfect in weakness. That is why man chose Saul to be king, but God chose David who was the least of his brothers.
*God had to wait 25 years for Abraham to become weak enough, because as long as Abraham thought he had strength within himself to do the job, then God had to just keep waiting. And so it wasn’t that God made Abraham wait for 25 years just to be mean to him, but that he had to wait until Abraham came to a revelation that it is not by might nor by power of human ability, but by the spirit and power of God – and that is the same lesson that we have to learn also.
REVELATION 10:1-3
1 ¶ And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud: and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire:
2 And he had in his hand a little book open (The book that was sealed closed in Revelation CH:5 is now opened in CH:10 – this opening of the book is a major event foretold of in the bible): and he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the earth,
3 And cried with a loud voice, as when a lion roareth: and when he had cried, seven thunders uttered their voices.
***Brother Branham tells us that Revelation 10 is the seventh seal, and we know that Revelation 10 is the descending of Christ to earth in the form of the revealing of the son of man ministry in order to unit with His bride in the marriage of the Lamb (Revelation 19:7) – The marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife hath made herself ready by an invisible union by receiving the revealed word seed of the end time message, that was the secret coming of the Lord to be united with his earthly bride.
*He had foretold of this event in the bible of how he would come again in these last days to be united with his bride by the revealing of Himself by the opening of the word through a prophetic ministry – it is the event of God and man becoming one again just as God and Adam were one at the beginning – and that is what the denominations have completely missed, they are still looking for Christ to come when the event of his second coming has already commenced and is still going on right now. The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, (1st Thessalonians 4:16) and the shout was the message of the hour, but that is sometimes even too hard for message believers to accept even though it is what the bible tells us.
*If the religious public missed the first coming of Christ in Jesus day that wasn’t foretold to be a secret, then what about his second coming that is foretold to be a secret coming like a thief in the night.
LUKE 17:22-24
22 And he said unto the disciples, The days will come, when ye shall desire to see one of the days of the Son of man, and ye shall not see it. (In other words, his second coming won’t be like his first coming when Jesus walked the shores of Galilee and you could go to a location and see him in that form)
23 And they shall say to you, See here; or, see there: go not after them, nor follow them.
24 For as the lightning, that lighteneth out of the one part under heaven, shineth unto the other part under heaven; so shall also the Son of man be in his day.
He is speaking of a future revealing of the Son of man in that his coming would be like light shining from east to west, and light is what reveals things, and the evening time light is the message of the hour that has shone the light of the truth of the word all over the world from eastern countries to western countries.
As message believers, this is what we believe.
CHRIST.IS.THE.MYSTERY.OF.GOD.REVEALED_ JEFF.IN V-3 N-7 SUNDAY_ 63-0728
106 God's great mystery of how, it's a secret. He kept it a secret. Nobody knowed nothing about it. Even the Angels didn't understand it. See, He didn't reveal it. That's the reason, under our seventh mystery, when the seventh seal was opened, there was silence. Jesus, when He was on earth, they wanted to know when He would come. He said, "It's not... Even the Son Himself don't know when it's going to happen." See, God has this all to Himself. It's a secret. And that's the reason there was silence in Heaven for a space of a half hour, and seven thunders utter their voices, and John was even forbidden to write it, see, the Coming of the Lord. That's one thing He hasn't revealed yet, of how He will come, and when He will come. It's a good thing that He doesn't. No.
107 He has showed or revealed it in every type that's in the Bible. (He has showed it in the story of Ruth uniting with Boaz, He has showed it in the story of Abraham and Sarah being turned back young again. He has showed it with Rahab at judgement time being saved and coming into a marriage union with Salmon. He has showed it with Abigale’s rich husband dying and her being united with her new husband David who was a type of Christ. He has showed it with Rebeca at the evening time well with the Eleazar call and her following a man to meet her unseen bridegroom Isaac – on and on and on we could go throughout the entire bible – so that is your seventh seal revealed in every type all the way from Genesis to Revelation) Therefore, the entire Bible is the revelation of God's mystery in Christ. Hum! The entire Bible is an expression of one goal that God had, one purpose He wanted to achieve in the entire Bible. And all the acts of the--of the believers in the Bible has been in type, and expressing what God's great goal is, and now in this last day He has revealed it and shows it.
**When the seven seals opened, it showed all of the mysteries of what was sealed up in the entire bible to the end time bride of this hour.
*So we know that Revelation 10 is also the book of Ruth, because Revelation 10:1 is Boaz, and Revelation 10:7 is the head reaper (Brother Branham) that introduces Boaz (Revelation 10:1) to Ruth who is Revelation 10:8-11 who is the bride of this hour.
**And Revelation 10:8-11 tells us how the bride units with her husband of Revelation 10:1 by an invisible union of her communing with Boaz at the midnight hour, and that communion is by the message of the seventh angel of Revelation 10:7 that she is instructed to eat that message, to eat the book, because it was a woman that ate from the wrong tree that took us out of Eden, and so it will take a woman in this end time hour to eat from the right tree (Christ) to take us back to Eden again in the Millennium.
**So this is what the marriage of the Lamb looks like in our everyday lives – it is going on every time you listen to the voice of the message of this day. We have been trying to see the Lord by looking up somewhere in the sky, but he is right beneath us in the humble position of the message of the hour that he has sent to us in this day.
379-1 A.RESUME.OF.THE.AGES - CHURCH.AGE.BOOK CPT.10
But what about the true seed? It will happen just as we have said. The people of God are being made ready by the Word of Truth from the messenger to this age.
***So the book of Ruth is the seventh seal in story form.
So then the seventh seal was being lived out in Ruth’s own personal life without her even knowing it.
And the visitation of the Angel to Abraham and Sarah (just before the destruction of Sodom) was the seventh seal being lived out in that portion of the word in the story of their lives.
***And so is the seventh seal being lived out in your own life in this day also, because you have also been introduced to the Lord of the harvest like Ruth, and you have also seen God come down in human flesh and reveal the secrets of the heart like he did with Abraham and Sarah just before Sodom was destroyed, and so that same seventh seal that lived itself out itself in the stories of their lives unconsciously is also living itself out in the story of your life in this day, and that is what the marriage of the Lamb looks like in this day for you personally, and yet it has mostly been a secret to you just as it was to all those character in the bible.
***So the entire bible has been the revelation of one goal of the marriage of the Lamb to his wife, and so the mystery of your life is revealing that event in this hour because of the condescension of God to you in this age by the revelation of the message of the hour.
*God had to condescend to you in this age in order to win you to himself in order for you to become a part of His bride for this hour.
***He had to came down to the lowest age there has ever been, and then he finds the lowest people he could ever find, and then he condescends to them in such a way so that they don’t even have to look up to see him, but they actually have to look down to see him because of how humble He has made himself to them.
**In our study of Gideon’s life, we saw how that this Angel that came down to him was actually the LORD Himself – Brother Branham tells us that. And so it was the Lord himself that had condescended to Gideon who was by his own confession the lowest man of his own household just like we find with our story of Zacchaeus.
And so the first thing that the Lord had to deal with Gideon was to get him to come out of his self-doubt and into union with the thoughts of God concerning himself of what the Angel said that he was.
**We find the same thing with Moses, God didn’t use Moses when he was strong; he waited until he was weak so that he couldn’t even talk properly, but when Moses came into union with God, then Moses in his own weakness was the most powerful man in the world.
**The secret with Gideon was that there was an invisible union that took place between the Lord Himself and Gideon, and we know that Gideon is a type of the end time bride of this day because as he had 3 powers that had gathered in that day, we also have 3 powers gathered against us in this day.
*God also sent a prophet in Gideon’s day, and God has also sent a prophet in this day, and so what is happening in Judges 6 is showing us what is happening to us in this day also.
**And so we find that once Gideon’s thoughts came into agreement with the thoughts of God, then it wasn’t just Gideon working in his own strength, but it was the Sword of the LORD and of Gideon, and that was because of an invisible union that had taken place by agreement and oneness.
***God and Gideon had become one by Gideon coming into agreement with the angel’s message, and so there is your seventh seal again – God and man united as one again as it was in Eden.