The Importance of a Holy Nation
God Will Be All in All Part 2

Sam Soleyn
07/2010

“You search the scriptures because in them you think you have life. They testify of Me. You're offering lambs and you've been given the prophecies of the Scriptures but they really are meant to prepare the way for Me and you wouldn't come to Me.” If He had not given them that preceding culture, then He could not hold them accountable for the fact that they didn't receive Him. He'd be a new arrival without context, and at that point the culture that should receive Him would begin and then you hope he lives a thousand years so that the culture will finally grow up and say, “Oh, OK, we get it now.” No, the culture precedes so that when He appears… it takes a nation to bring Christ. To bring Jesus, it took a nation to bring Jesus into the world; it will take a nation to bring Christ into the world - if you understand what I mean. To put on display all that is in the earthly life of the man Jesus, requires an entire holy nation. So the natural nation of Israel is given as the type and a shadow, and the arrangement of that natural nation models, pictures for us, concepts that are designed to familiarize us with the arrangement of a holy nation. Now notice how I framed that, I'm not saying, “This is the picture in its completeness of the holy nation.” I'm saying, “This is a descriptive of the holy nation as a shadow is descriptive of a man, as a type speaks to the reality.” The reality is always going to be more, and vastly more in the way that the spirit is vastly more than the natural.

So God starts a nation by giving a man twelve sons. Now, this is the grandson of the man who had received the promise; he has twelve sons. When you see that Jacob has been given twelve sons, you understand that God is very serious about fulfilling the promise. “I will make of you a great nation and in your seed I will bring about the One for whom you exist as a nation -- you have no other purpose for existing but for the fact that you will bring the seed into the earth.” So when you have the twelve, you have the substantial investment in the result that produces a holy nation.

There's a reason why He didn't do it until the grandson of Abraham. I don't have time to get into that tonight, but it has to do with the need to separate the descendents from the culture of their father, which culture would inhibit the clarity of this thing going forward. Abraham, after all, came from a polytheistic culture and he would be circumcised himself, so that he could begin the process of producing a holy seed. The flesh was not designed to touch the holy seed, which is the principle of circumcision. He separates him from the land and culture of his father's – “Get up from among your fathers, and come to a land I will show you. And be cut off from the fleshly order of your fathers, because I'm about to make of you a different kind of people.”

So He starts with twelve. You'll notice that Jesus, who has no need to be disabused of a polytheistic culture, starts with twelve, for He is heaven itself having come to the earth. So He doesn't need three generations to get started; He goes directly to the twelve, because the intent in both cases is to start a nation. And it's understood that these nations will alternatively present the flesh and the spirit of the same one, depends on whether he comes in the flesh or he comes in the spirit.

The arrangement of Abraham's house is an arrangement designed for peace, to produce peace, because it's meant to show the kingdom of God is not food or drink but is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit, because what is it that you're about to do by offering the House of God? To produce the peace that was lost, to bring an end to enmity and to produce peace, because the sign of the kingdom's presence is peace and any representation of it or prior presentation of it is designed to produce peace. So skip the 430 years when they are in Egypt, that's part of the conditioning process, and bring them to the land subsequently, where they're full of generations. How do they settle the land that is, that they're given as their inheritance? They settle it by tribes. All of the 12 tribes with the exception of Levi is a land grant. You do not scatter Levi … you do not scatter Judah, and Issachar, Benjamin among each other. It's not a deck of cards that you shuffle together. Each tribe is given a land grant -- a grant in land. And it is a defined land.

Now, the 12 tribes have come from 12 fathers who in turn have come from one father, and another father, and another father – three of them. And they are meant to be maintained in the order that that results in. Namely, that this tribe that has its land grant, is next to this tribe that has this land grant and there should be no warrings between the tribes, because they all have a common father. So that should make for national peace, as oppose to warring tribes with each other. One of the things that was the rarest of things among Israel were uprisings among the tribes. There's almost no mention, in Israel, in its worst days, of the tribes fighting with each other. Can you think of an example in the Scriptures where the tribes fought with each other? They were divided ultimately, but it was over a king. But even at that point, they simply seceded. It's not a nation known for fightings and warrings among itself, because it was settled on the basis of being brothers from a common father.

Now the tribes took their portion of land and divided that portion among clans, now this is not a clan with a “k”. So don't go squirrelly on me here, because we are speaking about an order that applies to the house of God. The clans were the sons from the father. So if you take the tribe of Judah, for example, Judah has sons. One of them is Perez, the other is Zerah -- the sons of Tamar. And he had the son who didn't die that he didn't give to Tamar. Can't remember his name. But Perez and Zerah are twins. These fathers who come out of Judah are given clans, they became the fathers of clans and they rule. Their descendants now are arranged according to their heritage in these fathers. So if you are in the clan of Zerah, you're brother to the Perezites and your father is Judah, and his father is Jacob, and his father is Isaac, and his father is the one who got the promise. And you're in the land because of the promise. All of you are in the land because of the promise. And your identity as a nation is bound up in fulfilling the promise.

There's a purpose greater than pursuing your daily bread. You exist, from the promise of your fathers, you exist to have a divine purpose that may be fulfilled 42 generations
later, but this is who you are. The clans then, settling the land of the tribes, are related to each other because the fathers are brothers, just like the tribes are related to each other because the fathers are brothers. The clans are divided into households -- a household being an arrangement of many families, many families. The households are headed by fathers who are the sons of the fathers of the clans, who in turn are sons of the fathers of the tribe, the tribes, who in turn have one common father, who is the heir of the promise that was given three generations before, from their father. So the households take their portion of land and everybody within that household have an inheritances of land that are adjacent to others of that particular line within that family. The households are comprised of families… families.

So, a simple example of this would be in the natural: when I was newly married, Lucy and I had a family, began with her and me. Then, in due course two children came along. So our family grew and became four. As the years went on, one of the two, my son, got married. In case you haven't heard, I had to work into this message, I'm a grandfather. (Laughter) Now my son has a daughter. Out of my family, another family has now come. Now, that child who was born belongs to me. I am the father of that child's father. Now, in the Old Testament you didn't have the word “grandfather”, but you had the word “fathers”. And everyone understood that the father of the father was still the father. So the child has two fathers – the one who gets up at two in the morning to change her, and the one who comes over every afternoon and holds her on his chest because the world is right in that moment but hands her back. You see the picture.

Now, out my family when another family comes, I now am the father of two families, that's the beginning of a household because my responsibilities and duties toward the next family changes but does not disappear. I now have to have a different, but continuing, relationship with my son, his wife, and their child because they're mine. Nothing happened to change the fact that he is my son. He's mine. I have to relate to him differently, and I specially have to relate to him differently when someone else calls him father, like he calls me father. The order changes but the expansion does not nullify or negate the relationship, it changes it. So I'm the father who will go over in due course, or she'll come over. And in my house all discipline is suspended. (Laughter) I think we have some grandparents here. But she ought not to think that's the normal way. If she does, she will be disabused of it by the hand of the father whose duty it is to deal with her in that direct a fashion.

Now this whole arrangement might also be described as a family, everything from the nation to the family may be described as a family. Why? Because it's portraying the heavenly family. Everything in the household may also be described as a family, just like the family may be described as a household. But there are enough clarities of distinction that we can make and set out these precise differences. So that when you're using these as pure terms of art, you may arrange them in the fashion in which I have arranged them, because each one, each division has in it the purpose of showing the family. But there are specific usages of certain things like tribe, or nation, or clan that inherently implies more than us four and no more. You see? So in the estates in land, the families, the tribes got their estate; the clans got their estates, subdividing the tribes' estates; the households got their estates, subdividing the clans' estates; and the families got their estates, subdividing the households' estates.

Why is this an arrangement for peace? Because it eliminates all of the usual divisions that arise and it brings in a form of governance that is capable of addressing any level of problems and is absolute credibility associated with the adjudication of disputes because when a dispute arises at any level, the ones who judges the disputes are the ones who have the most to lose by the fracturing remaining in place; because if the father's house is divided, if the families within his household are divided, he is diminished in his rest. He cannot ignore them because they're His; this thing is a matter of his own reputation. It's blown up in his face. And he's required to come and adjudicate the differences because it matters to him the condition of these people because they are his house.

Now, in order to maintain this order, the arrangement of identifying the person by his family is imperative; and with it, the person must be connected into the whole nation by an inheritance in land. So he has an identity from his father that is confirmed by his inheritance in land. What happens if he sells his land because some necessity arises that requires him to sell his land and move to a city? If you keep doing that enough, you will disturb the order that has been established because you have sons without inheritances. And in that way, within two or three generations the sons will not even know who their families are. So the order that he's established required that if you divest yourself of your inheritance in land, every next generation would be restored to the inheritance in land. It's called jubilee, 50 years, the next generation … the process renews itself in every generation because it is a design for peace. That's why there was jubilee; it restored the original order and perpetuated it because it's a design for peace. That's the natural order.

The spiritual order is of households, is of families that are not related by blood; they're related by spirit. It's a greater arrangement, a more pervasive arrangement, a more peaceful arrangement, than blood relationships because the father receives the sons not on the basis of duty, but on the basis of love, because there is no compulsion that arranges this house. It's done because you recognize God has given you a son -- the son being a spirit – because he's not your flesh -- that which is born of flesh is flesh; that which is born of spirit is spirit. The son, being spirit is therefore not described by any incident of his or her humanity. So the son is not a male. The son is not a female. The son is not known by race -- neither a Jew nor a Greek. The son is not defined and the status of the house is not determined by social class -- neither bond nor free. Why? Because this is the prevailing, in the earth, of the heavenly order; for God is not the father of our flesh, He's the father of our spirit.

And how is the love of God shown? His affinity with us, His identification with us, is Spirit to spirit. We know that we didn't choose Him, but He chose us. And we know He has given us His estate and His estate is not just gifts -- His estate, meaning material gifts. His estate is gifts of His Spirit, because the gifts of His Spirit are endowments of
His authority to act in the earth because He intends to act through us as a down payment until all of who He is, is available corporately through all of us. That's why the Holy Spirit is described as a down payment guaranteeing what is to come.

What is to come? What is to come is when God is all in all – all of who He is in all of us. What is the down payment that tells us that? He allows us to act by the authority of Himself in the measure of that grace that appears to us now. It's a down payment. It's not the full measure because the full measure would require the proliferation to its fullness of a culture that permits the transformation of the individual parts into the full expression of the whole, permitting the one who built this arrangement to come in and be all in all. The Holy Spirit is the taste of this reality. That He will do such things as He would do, through you. He lives in you to will and to do His pleasure, but now that is in the form of gifts of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit himself being the down payment to be revealed in the fullness of that, when the age has reached its fullness.

So the arrangement of God's house then is going from the concept that we are spiritual sons to a spiritual father, to being arranged into spiritual families, to being further assembled into spiritual houses, to being assembled even further than that, into clans, to tribes, and into a holy nation. I do not have time here to explain the value of each level of this arrangement, but you may be sure that each level of this arrangement is designed to present the corporate Christ in a fashion that the preceding, and low order of it, could not do. There are things you may do in a household, that you cannot accomplish in a family; there are things you may do in a clan, that you cannot accomplish it in a household; there are things that you may do in a tribe, that individual clans cannot accomplish; and there're things that can be done in a holy nation, that can only be done at the level of a holy nation.

Let me focus on that for just a moment and I'll conclude the message. I'm just giving you that each gradation represents a broader order of the same thing. So let's focus for a moment on the holy nation, because that's where all of these are going forward to. And then I'll be done. Jesus said in John 17, “This is eternal life: that they may know You.” We read that earlier, John 17:3, “and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” In the same John 17, He says this, verse 20. By the way, it's a continuing thought; He's just fleshing out the thought as they go, or showing what He means as He goes. He says, “My prayer,” He's talking to the Father, “My prayer is not for them alone,” the ones He began to pray for, the twelve, “I pray also for those who will believe in Me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as You are in Me and I am in You.” Just pause there. He's praying for the many to be one, “Let them all be one.” He's asking for the manifestation of the corporate because that's the only way in which the many may be one. Do you understand?

The form that assembles many members into one corpus is the English word for the Latin word “corpus”, which is “body.” The only way you can assemble many things together -- things that are different by nature, and have them function as one is in something that by definition, corporate. Example… and you shouldn't look at me as if to say, “That's new. I didn't … that's a real revelation.” No! How on earth you're going to have one out of many? You're having, you must create a corporate form. That is what the many as one is, it can't be anything else. He gave us the human body to understand this principle. And so, numerous times in I Corinthians 12, he says things like, “Now the body, though it is comprised of many members, is one body.” And he flips it around and he says, “And though the parts are many, they form one body.” What do you get? Many parts described corporately are presented as one body. The thing is called a body. And then he says, “And so it is with Christ.” So he applies the analogy of the natural to explain the spiritual. So there is a Body of Christ – many members, one body.

Now the fashion of their arrangement is that “they may be one in the fashion in which You and I are One.” So for example, that would not include ecumenism because the Father and the Son were not one on the basis of an ecumenical arrangement. Why is that so? Because an ecumenical arrangement is an agreement to perform a common function and to have certain common beliefs while you are doing it, you maintain your separateness. So we do projects to tell ourselves: we are one. That's not like how the Father and Son are one. The manner in which the Father and the Son are one is that the Son operates to show the glory of His Father, and the Son operates to be the exact representation of His Father. The Son lives and portrays a humility of representing another that reminds us of who the heavenly Father is, because the model is to get us to the place where God is all that He is, in all. He's going to come as all that He is and submit Himself to the container of all that He has made us into. That is why what He's working on is to produce a thing that in its existence in no way impedes God from being who God is.

You see? The many as one is a body, even in the natural like the human body. When you talk about it a spirit, it is the Body of Christ. And the fashion of their arrangement is the one is in the other and the other permits the one to be who he is. That's the manner of their union, not just, “Hey guys, let's all agree on this thing.” “Unity before truth” is what some say. That's rubbish. There can never be, in the representation of God, there can never be a dichotomy between unity and truth. That whole arrangement presupposes that there is a dichotomy between unity and truth. No! That's rubbish. That's political, because eventually the unity of the Spirit in which you abide will bring you to the unity of the faith. You are to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace until you are brought to the unity of the faith. A unity of the faith will be greater when it's revealed - when Christ is revealed in its fullness - be greater than all of us know, because each part will supply the understanding, but we must live in it with the anticipation that what the other is is, is not in consistent with the truth. So it's not a compromise. It's living in the vibrate hope that who the other is also fits with Christ when Christ is revealed. That is why our arrangement doesn't begin by a political agreement. It begins because we're assembled by the Spirit, so we have the same spirit. I don't want to do any more with that.

Now in John 17 then in verse 20, He says, “Let them be one, Father,” the many as one is corporate. “The manner of the oneness is in the fashion in which we are one. They will model, in that corporeity, what we already are – You in Me, I in You.” To what end? What is the purpose of that? “That the world might believe that You've sent Me.” That's the next line. “So that the world --” what does it say? Let's re-read it, “My prayer is not for them alone,” verse 20, “I pray also for those who will believe in Me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as You are in Me and I am in You. May they also be in Us so that,” – this is the purpose – “So that the world may believe that You sent Me.” You've read that at the beginning of the chapter. It's described this way, “Now this is eternal life: that they may know You and Me.”

The value of the corporate Christ is that the world may see - in the corporate Christ, through the corporate Christ - the world might see the reality of heaven on display in the earth. But there's a problem with that, because I said that the corporate man, the spiritual man, is invisible. How do the nations of the earth understand the many as one? What is their model for many people living together as one people? What is their comprehension of that? A nation, a nation. 'Ethnos' is the term that describes it, an ethnic. The many as one visibly among them, is understood as a nation.

We are an in invisible reality because we're a spirit being, the Body of Christ. But when we are put on display among them, we are revealed in the order of a holy nation. Now what exactly is visible to them? If they are going to see us and understand that we're a holy nation, what aspect of our existence shows them that we are a nation? Our unity, which is rooted in our love. How is that shown? That we hug and kiss each other every time we see each other? They do that too. What exactly distinguishes us from them so that they will see the order of love?

What did I tell you was the order of Israel? There was a culture that carried a promise, and it was arranged according to an order. You're all right in what you've said but your answers reflected the portions that we have seen before. Now we are meant to see a holy nation operating by a divine order that shows how the parts are arranged and how they function. When the world sees that, it manifests itself among them in the form of a distinct culture – the same culture that is in heaven is on the earth.

One, one final cut of this, and we'll be done.

Let me show you a little bit further about culture, how it is the result of order. In every nation - since we're talking about a holy nation - in every nation, what is manifested as the culture of the nation is formed by the law or the order that shapes that nation. That law or that order that shapes the nation comes out of the sovereign – the one who rules the nation. Every nation puts on display the nature of its sovereign and the way it does that is through its order.

Example, in the United States of America, we have a sovereign. Who is the sovereign? We the people. It says so in the preamble. You have to reach for that, that's a low-hanging fruit. We the people. I know we've shuffled that deck and we call it whatever is convenient. But at the end of the day, the sovereign of this nation is the people. What is the goal of the sovereign? What does it want to be the preeminent result of its sovereignty? How should the people be if the sovereign's desire is fulfilled? What are our imperatives as a nation? By the way, this is what constitutional preamble is about: it identifies the sovereign, tells you what the sovereign wants. We have three fundamental imperatives – life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. How do we arrive at both what these things mean in the society as well as giving them the optimum opportunity to function? By the laws that we arrange in the society. The sovereign accomplishes the goal of the society being like that through its order. So that's why we have debates over: when does life begin. Why? Because the laws are designed to determine life in its abundance.

Now if God were the sovereign, how would you describe life? When would life be? Now that's what the “right to life” people want. They want to define it by a different sovereignty. Simple, this stuff is simple. This is jurisprudence 101. What is the battle? The rest of the society believes that the sovereign is not God, but we the people. So the conflict is between the attempt to impose a different sovereign and the resistance of that sovereign. So the discussion that comes out down here about the right to life, you understand, cannot be conducted on the basis of what the sovereign God wants, because the laws do not account for the sovereign God. It's we the people. It's 51%. It's what the legal system permits, because that's how you squeeze the society into compliance with the sovereign's view of what the society should be about. So the discussions about life have to do with that.

Liberty, as between doing whatever I want to, whenever I want to, at any time, with whomever I want to, and some measures of restraint, you discuss liberty. The fourth amendment is about framing how you define liberty.And happiness, that illusive butterfly comes to be whatever makes me happy. “So, if same sex marriage is what makes me happy, then I have the right to pursue that,” the argument goes, “within the framework of the sovereignty of the people.” And as the argument goes, someone who believes in that, I'm using extremes now, someone who believes in that perspective says, “If the laws restrict me to monogamous relationships as that protected by the definition of marriage, then I must change the laws to define the possibility of a different outcome by changing the laws.” So California and all the different states that have this, they have that. Why? Why? Because everybody understands that whatever the sovereign wants the society to be, the way it is accomplished is by the order of the society as defined by the laws of the society. Everyone understands that.

Now what if the sovereign is Christ? He actually claims He has all authority in heaven and on earth, but nobody elected Him to that. He is king because God appointed Him King. So His kingdom then cannot possibly be by force. His kingdom is not of this world, in the sense that the divine authority by which He establishes the order of those who have come to put their trust in Him, comes from heaven. “I say also onto you, Peter … I say also onto you, that upon this truth that I am the Son of God, that you've just announced, I will establish those whom I've called out of the world and assembled into My spiritual house.” That's what He's saying.

So His rule is not, at this time, over anyone who rejects His rule. In fact His rule will never be over anyone who rejects His rule. His rule is an invitation to a different way of being which if you perpetually reject, eventually you will not meet the design for your creation and you will be expunged from creation, as being without a purpose. Well, all of what is expunged, is expunged.

Now, if Jesus is the King, what societal result will come from Him? What does His rule produce? It produces a vision of the Father, “I have come to show you the Father.” When did He stop doing that? Everything that is His successor in interest, in the earth, is designed to show the Father. Now showing the Father produces certain results, like righteousness, peace, joy in the Holy Spirit but He came to show the Father. Everything He's about is to show the nature of the Father. Why? Because what He is training us against? The day when everything we are shows the Father, for God is all in all.

These things have been mysteries but they're now being revealed. So the rule of the sovereign as King will show the Father, the same as He himself showed the Father. What did He say in the second Psalm when He was coroneted? He said, “I will obey the decrees of the LORD.” What was God's response to Him? “Well, then You are My Son. This day have I begotten You. Ask of Me, and I'll give You the nations.” For what purpose? To be formed into those who obeyed the decrees of the LORD. Why? Because the grand payoff is that God will be all in all and against that reality, everything is measured. That's the template. That survives time and space. That survives human civilization. That survives the vagaries of present order of things. That is what the Kingdom of heaven, which is the order that produces that, exists to do.

So God is rolling out to us now, in this time, an order of arrangement that will cause the orderly functioning of the corporate man, presented in reality as the spiritual Body of Christ, presented visibly to the world as a holy nation being visible through its order of arrangement. And when this happens, not if, but when it happens at the level of a nation, its order will be so peaceful it will result in such peace, that the nations of the earth will come to this nation that has been elevated above all the nations because of divine order, and they will say, “Teach us your ways because it's working among you. Therefore, there's a chance that it'll transform us. Show us your ways.”

I've given you, tonight, a very, very, broad-based, skeletal view with enough details to announce a new investiture in the earth, another incremental step forward of the progressive revelation of the intent of God, the end from the beginning. Grace and peace be multiplied to you. Amen.