Shabbat shalom kol beit Yisra'el and Mishpachah and welcome back to the sixth part of our series on spiritual Transformation. Like much of the rest of Europe and North America we have been going through a heatwave here in Sweden and it's only the thought of fuel bills on a reduced pension that makes me not want colder weather again, though it is the cooler mornings that allows me to think and pray over what it is our Heavenly Father wants me to share with you. I guess we need to be grateful for small mercies so on with today's message.

I know some of you are, or have been, struggling with some terribly hard decisions that need to be made. Life is not made easy by the fact that our governments, who increasingly do not represent the interests and welfare of the people who elected them, become more and more totalitarian. And though spiritual transformation be able to cope with our trials, and second, actually overcome them...or at the very least if we are going to positively endure these hardships until overcoming becomes possible as Yahweh intervenes in the affairs of the world. In the meantime, while "the villain's ways are villainous and he devises infamous plans to ruin the poor with his lies and deny justice to the needy...the man of noble mind forms noble designs and stands firm in his nobility" (Is.32:8, NEB). That's pretty much what we must to while we patienty wait for our hour.

The other thought I want you to hold today, as we resume our study on what the Scriptures say about transformation, is that every single human being was originally created in the image of Elohim (God) and is precious. We must never forget that. The only incredible thing is that we are so foolish as to allow the Enemy to distort that image in ways that we no longer become recognisable as human beings. Such negative transformations - or downward transformations into darkness, distortion and (ultimately) destruction - don't take place all in one go, mind you. It takes time to willingly spiritually mutilate yourself. And societies as a whole take a lot longer to go down that path, often requiring many generations to first, wander away from the beauty of divine imaging, and then, as the destructive forces we have volunatrily admitted accelerate into an overwhelming avanlanche, totally crumble into ruin. It takes time and much effort to climb up a steep hill to reach a point of scenic beauty, but if we, like a car whose brakes have failed, come rolling down uncontrollably because we have relinquished self-restraint when facing temptation, for example, we soon discover to our dismay that the journey to the bottom can, and does, happen, oh, so terrily fast! Destruction, once underway, and beyond a certain points, becomes harder and harder to prevent. That is why early repentance is always best because then at least we can apply some brakes before being forced to leap out of the vehicle of our lives careering to its destruction.

We have thus far been looking at human transformation so let me ask you a question you might not have previously considered but which is very important nonetheless: in our relationship with Elohim (God), does He - Yahweh-Elohim - undergo (or has He already undergone) a process of transformation in order to transform us? Now don't get me wrong. I am not talking about Yahweh having a change or moral or spiritual character as that is impossible. He doesn'r change His laws, the laws that cause the universe to hold together. One small change in the laws of physics and the whole Cosmos would collapse. What He has spoken or written is unalterable.

The writer of Hebrews invites us to look at ourselves and then to compare our inner state with that of the Creator, and he does so to give us assurance that Heaven does not chop and change:

"Consider the outcome of [your] way of life...Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) is the same yesterday and today and forever" (Heb.13:7-8, NIV).

We are able to 'look' to our Creator for the kind of moral constancy we crave and so badly need (and want from others we are close to as well), and we can speak, with the apostle John, of "that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched - this we proclaim concerning the Davar Chayim (Word of Life). (Constancy in truth and righteousness is a wonderful thing. Without it, we have no security of any kind.) And (so, the apostle John would testify,) the Life (Yah'shua/Jesus) appeared; we (the apostles, he said), have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ). We write this to make our joy complete" (1 John 1:1-4, NIV with added remarks). Yah'shua (Jesus) was, John said, very real, walked among the apostles, and though we, 2,000 years later, did not have the privilege of meeting and knowing Him in the flesh, we do have exactly the same privilege of knowing Him in the Ruach (Spirit), having exactly the same assurance that He "was [out there] from the beginning". His love, His kindness, His patience, His temperence, His moral consistently, His purpose, and His plans for us have never changed.

And yet in one important respect He has changed - the Saviour of the World has been transformed. Now when I said that He was transformed in order to transform us, I do not mean, as Mormons and New Agers do, that we are to be transformed into becoming divine godlets or, if you are even more arrogant as the pantheists are, into 'God' because according to them we always were 'God' or 'Christ' but just haven't realised it yet, and so need 'awakening'. That isn't Christianity. It's paganism. And it was never what Christ taught. Our transformation into Divinity itself is not what has been promised to us, whether by gradual increments or by some tremendous, instantaneous transformation in the future. Elohim (God) has reached down through incarnation and drawn us into the protective envelope of His Family.

What is true is this: in the mighty act of the Incarnation, Elohim (God) became like us in the Person of Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) in order that we might become like Him. And this is one of those magnificent truths that we proclaim as loudly and and urgently as the resurrection itself: is there anything more stupendous in the annals of history - and we are talking about history, not some mere myth or legend - than Elohim (God) being transformed into our image in order that we might be transformed into His? Don't miss the profundity of this: our 'ascent' depends 100 per cent on His descent into matter and human form - our upward ascent or transformation is not possible...not remotely...without His downward descent into humanity. And it is in the process of being transformed back into His ascended place of glory as the Man-God do we have any possibility of joining with Him and accompanying Him there. Simply living a 'good' life won't cut it. We have to travel with Him or remain exactly as we were before, striving to be something beyond ourselves.

We sometimes underplay the importance of the Incarnation - the taking on by Elohim (God) of human form and substance in addition to His own Divinity. It is the miracle of miracles and once we see it in this light then all other miracles in the Messianic Scriptures (New Testament) become convincing and credible, including the resurrection. The fact is described for us in these immortal words, so hard to translate to get over the text's full meaning, so let's have a look at two or three translations which between them will give us the sense of the original:

"Though He was divine by nature, He did not set store upon equality with Elohim (God) [1] but emptied Himself..." (Phil.2:6, Moffat).

"...though He was in the form of Elohim (God) (Rom.9:5), did not regard equality with Elohim (God) as something to be exploited, but emptied Himself" (NRSV)

"Let your attitude toward one another be governed by your being in union with the Messiah Yah'shua (Jesus): Though He was in the form of Elohim (God), He did not regard equality with Elohim (God) something to be possessed by force. On the contrary, He emptied Himself, in that He took the form of a slave by becoming like human beings are. And when He appeared as a human being, he humbled Himself still more by becoming obedient even to death - death on a stake (cross) as a criminal. Therefore Elohim (God) raised Him to the highest place and gave Him the name above every name; that in honour of the name given Yah'shua (Jesus), every knee will bow - in heaven, on earth and under the earth - and every tongue will acknowledge (confess) (Is.45:23) that Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) is Master (Lord, Adonai) - to the glory of Elohim (God) the Father (Yahweh)" (Phil.2:5-11, JNT/CJB).

Our whole nature, character and therefore conduct centres upon this vital truth of the incarnation and what it means practically. This is absolutely not about man becoming Elohim (God) or 'realising' that he already is (and acting accordingly one belonging to a family of godlets [2]), which is the satanic counterfeit that tickles human pride and cultivates arrogance; rather, it's about Elohim (God) becoming man and - importantly - becoming man at the point of our deepest need. As Alan W.Watts puts it in his book, Behold the Spirit:

"The meaning of the Incarnation, therefore, is simply that we do not have to attain union with Elohim (God). Man does not have to climb to the infinite and become Elohim (God), because, out of love, the infinite Elohim (God) descends to the finite and becomes man...Once we realise the futility of our pride, that we can neither ascend to Elohim (God), nor prevent His descent to us, the proud core of egoism is simply dissolved."

This puts us on the right way, the right road, the right Derech of He who is that very Derech (Way) (Jn.14:6). We do not have to lift ourselves into transformation by laborious methods - we simply consent to be found. Thus in order to be found, we do not reach out into infinity for the Infinite One and were we to try, we would reach too far. Instead He has already reached down here, and is here with us - Emmanuel (Mt.1:23) - and is here for the taking. Amen.

Endnotes

[1] 'Equality with Elohim' (God) refers to the status and privileges that inevitably follow from being in the very nature of Elohim (God)
[2] The science fiction series of movies, Star Wars, promoted this pagan pantheism with 'The Force' being the collective soul of all living things, with a 'dark' side and a 'light' side (typical occultic imagery) in a perverse kind of harmonic combattiveness.

Acknowledgments

[1] Selwyn Hughes, Every Day With Jesus: The Transformed Life (Crusade for World Revival, Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, UK: 1979)
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