Keys to Revelation

People often say a teacher is "gifted in revelation." Yet revelation is more a spiritually learned art than a gift: there are keys that unlock Scripture. A beautiful car won't run without its key, and a mansion stays locked without one. Without these keys, the mighty things of God remain stories in a book. With them, anyone can learn by the Spirit to read Scripture and receive revelation.

Much theology reads Scripture through doctrine, gathering verses that support a group's position and passing over the rest. But "all scripture... is profitable for doctrine," and the Bible is a picture book. "The invisible things of him... are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made." A righteous man is "like a tree planted by the rivers of water." Understand the tree and you understand the man. The kingdom itself is taught only in similes: "The kingdom of heaven is like..." God "calleth those things which be not as though they were," and because He cannot lie, what He declares becomes so.

"That Rock was Christ." A rock is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow; you can build a house on it. Christ never needs renewing. When Moses struck the rock a second time instead of speaking to it, he broke the picture, because Christ was smitten only once, and Moses could not enter the land. Water pictures the Spirit: "Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water." Water must be renewed, can evaporate or go stale, and takes the shape of its container, which is why some people have the Spirit but are still "square." The Spirit must be continually replenished.

Because God calls things that are not as though they were, He reckons small acts of obedience as complete. A tithe given in faith is "reckoned unto you, as though it were the corn of the threshingfloor": counted as 100%, with blessing based on the whole. Baptism places us "in the likeness of his death." We weren't at the cross, yet God says: when I died, you died; when I was buried, you were planted with me; when I rose, you rose. He robes us in His righteousness and views our deeds through His blood.

On one side of a great chasm is man, with need, loneliness, darkness, disease and fear. On the other is God, with light, health, deliverance and comfort. No one can cross by their own effort. So God, in grace, builds the bridge almost the whole way and stops at the point of obedience: a simple step within human ability, like repentance, baptism or the tithe. "Do this much, and I'll give you the whole bridge." Works of obedience are not works of the law. They are works of grace.

If all of Jesus' deeds were recorded, the world couldn't contain the books. So why were only a few dozen miracles preserved? Each one holds a microcosm of the whole truth. Read every story in three dimensions:

1. It really happened. These were real people, places and events.
2. He'll do it for you. The application most sermons end on.
3. Why is this story here? Its spiritual purpose in the canon, for every reader in every age.

The woman is the church. She hemorrhages at the point of intimate relationship. For twelve years she has suffered, and twelve is God's foundational number (twelve sons of Jacob, twelve apostles, twelve foundations and gates), so she has lost her foundations. The physicians who should heal her took her money, and she grew worse. Then she pressed: not straining to believe harder, but pressing in, through the veil. She touched the hem of His garment. Christ's body was the garment that made the invisible God visible, and today His body is the church. The hem is the hidden, turned-under part, the least member. Healing is present in the body when believers trust one another enough to reach out.

In the third dimension, the woman at the well pictures a harlot church system: one that enjoys the blessings of relationship but keeps no covenant. She has had five husbands, and the sixth is not her husband. The sixth dimension is a place of no commitment, where people love the feeling but resist faithfulness: hundreds on Sunday morning and a handful midweek, with constant appeals needed to sustain basic giving. Jesus is the seventh man. Her response, "Come, see a man... is not this the Christ?", is revelation in the seventh day, the third dimension of grace.

The two disciples on the Emmaus road had walked with Jesus for years, yet when "Jesus himself drew near," their "eyes were holden." The problem wasn't His appearance. It was their eyes. They had known Him in death and burial but never in resurrection, the third dimension. Two things blinded them: pain, from watching Him die, and preconceived religion, expecting a conquering king and not a suffering Savior. They should have known Him by His countenance, His conversation and the context: seven miles of Him speaking about Himself. Jesus didn't show them His wounds. He took them back to Moses and the prophets, and their hearts burned. When you don't understand everything, the best thing you can do is ask the stranger in.

At Emmaus, their eyes opened when He took bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it, the same order He used at the feeding of the five thousand and at the Last Supper. That order was being taught on the seven-mile walk, because it runs through every great life in Scripture:

• David: taken from the sheepfold; blessed with victories and favor; broken through fifteen years of being hunted; given as prophet, priest and king.
• Joseph: taken as the favored son; blessed with a coat and dreams; broken in the pit, Potiphar's house and the prison; given as the deliverer of his family.
• Moses: drawn out of the water; blessed in Pharaoh's house; broken by forty years in the desert; given to deliver Israel.
• Jesus: taken in flesh; blessed at Jordan and in miracles; broken on the cross; given. "This is my body, which is broken for you."

Many can't go on because of pain: a church that hurt them, a leader who failed them. Yet the breaking is part of the order, and Christ is walking alongside, inviting them further.