Well, if you’ve been tapped into this series, as I believe many of you have, and if you haven’t connected with this series on the evidence of God, I would strongly encourage you to go back and look at the three previous weeks or the podcast made available to you. God is building something within us, and ultimately what He’s doing is making us evidence. Because at the end of the day, what God wants more than anything is to be known. He doesn’t want to be known because He is sitting around in heaven with low self-esteem, struggling and wanting someone to call His name. It’s not about that; it’s about the fact that to know God is to love God. There’s an element—well, let me put it this way: there’s a passage that says, «Thou shalt know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.» God knows that in knowing Him and entering into a relationship with Him, there is a freedom that will come to you.
Well, what do you mean by freedom? Freedom to be wild and do everything? No, no—freedom to be everything that God has created you to be. You and I are more than we think we are, and so when we have an encounter with God, He erects a divine mirror so we can actually see who we truly are. There is someone on the other end of this moment, the other end of this conversation, and the only issue you have in life is that you don’t know who you are yet. Because if you knew who you were, you would not tolerate some of the things that you do. If you knew who you were, you would not sit back in seasons where it’s time to move forward. If you knew who you were, you would accept the grace some of you are pushing away because you don’t believe you’re worthy of it.
Knowing God liberates us from all of those things. Ultimately, at the end of the day, our God wants to be known. Watch this—not for God, but for us. He loves people. God is radically into people. He is fascinated by His creation. Can’t you see God in the beginning saying, «Let us make mankind»? Watch this—in our image. That’s deep. I don’t want to get into how or whatever, you know, and we call God «Him.» This is going to freak somebody out, but God is really not limited to sex. He says, «Let us make man in our image,» and then He makes them male and female. The fullness of God, the full expression of God, is not just Him in the sense we think of as masculine. The full expression of God embodies both masculinity and femininity. It takes all of that to encapsulate God.
So can’t you see God creating humankind in His image, in Her image? You’re not ready for that. That’s okay; I’ll just keep it at «Him» for now. Okay, creating God in God’s image, right? And He’s blown; there we go. I’m going to say «They.» I might start saying «They» when I’m talking about God. But anyway, this could give me so much trouble. Let me just stay focused on what I’m talking about. I’m going to say «Him,» with the understanding—with the caveat—that we’re not talking about a singular «He»; we’re talking about a «They.» «Let us make man in Our image.» Now, I have digressed entirely, and I do that, but I’ve got the microphone, and that’s what I can do. And I will tie it back in.
What I’m getting at is that God is in love with God’s creation, and He wants His creation to be known by Him. To know God is to recognize how God feels about you, and He is passionate about it. So He wants to be known, and what is truly mind-blowing for me is that God makes Himself known through us—through people. That’s the role and function of the Church: the function of the Church is to become the evidence of God, to make God known until the whole world comes into the consciousness that they have an amazing source, an amazing Father, an amazing Creator, and redemption from everything that keeps us from being like God through His glorious Son, Jesus Christ. That’s His passion, and He uses us to do it.
So how does He use us to do it? What are the things He did? There are certain things connected to us, our essence, our lives, and our presentations that make us the evidence of God. We’ve been talking about some of those things and will continue to discuss them. But one of the things that makes you and me the evidence of God—watch this—is our unusual wisdom. The tapped-in believer has access, whether we use it or not, to unusual wisdom. This brings me to the text. When we look at the text, we catch Moses speaking to the children of Israel as they’re preparing to enter the Promised Land.
Now, remember that God’s intention from the very beginning was not to create the nation of Israel, the Jewish people, as some exclusive group for the sake of their own exclusivity regarding the blessing and wisdom of God. From the onset, they became a people so that they could be a blessing. We trace that all the way back.
