"Partakers of the Divine"

Preached by Rev. Ed Brouwer at The Gathering Place
Pulpit Series Volume 17 Issue 16 04/29/2007

We at the Gathering Place have been asking God for an understanding of what Peter meant when he said, we might be partakers of the divine nature… II Peter 1:3-4

However, in the natural we can’t receive these things. They are spiritually discerned. yet, if we are willing and hungry to experience the deeper things of God, the Spirit will not fail us.

The Truth Jesus said would set us free, will be revealed to us. Not only will we see and understand, but those truths will be woven into the very fabric of our being. (partakers of divine)

You can’t possess truth apart from Him, who is the Truth.

Will you continue to pamper self and crucify Christ afresh, or will you die to the self-life (flesh-life, the old life, the carnal), and rise up out of the grave to live in the power of Christ's resurrection, complete in the will of God?

Here in lies the Key - The Church must not only teach death to self it must also teach living the Christ Life! This my friends this is of absolute necessity! Make no mistake in your decision, stand with God and break with self! This is why Jesus came.

His death was no mere accident. He was slain front the foundation of the world. His death was not simply that of a martyr. I lay down my life that I may take it again. No man takes it from me but I lay it down of myself John 10:17-18

A crucified Christ so He might have crucified followers. We must choose to identify with the Cross of Christ. Then we must not only refuse the "old life", we must refuse it consistently, every time our old nature would reinstate itself.

You have this divine nature once and for all when you are grafted into the True Vine. Held in Divine trust so you may choose, again, and again, and continue to choose.

Do you desire Divine Life which flows as a great river from the Lamb? Then you must refuse your own life. Do this, and you’ll be more than a conqueror. Do this, and you’ll no longer agonize over a role, trying to imitate the Christ; you’ll unconsciously, spontaneously walk as Jesus walked.

It’ll be an easy thing, a joyous thing. It’ll be natural for you to be Christian - you’ve been made partakers of His Divine nature. Brothers and sisters up to now we’ve been enjoying a 50% redemption…. We either hear too much about dieing or we hear too much about living. We need 100% both dieing and living!

It is useless to talk of revival apart from a deep participation in the Cross. They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. We read in Exodus that the oil was not applied until first the blood had been sprinkled. The oil (Holy Spirit) after the blood (Cross) Exodus 31:32 To share the Christ-life, we must partake of Christ death!

Nature teaches this same lesson. Not a tree, not a blossom, not a shrub, not a fruit, but what cost the death of a seed. Clearly through Old Testament type and symbol the Holy Spirit flashes light on this mystery of our co-crucifixion…..

Abraham must sacrifice his Isaac. YES Isaac was spared, yet, in spirit, Abraham offered him up, that is why the promise was made: I’ll bless you and multiply your seed as the stars of Heaven, and as the sand on the seashore.

Joseph is buried in an Egyptian prison before he rises to power which he seemed to share with the mighty Pharaoh.

40 years on the lonely slopes of Midian Moses is schooled. There were graves, scattered all over the mountainside where hope after hope was buried until at last self goes down in utter annihilation. But for those graves, the Man of God who spoke face to face with Jehovah, could not have been used.

The Israelites must go down into the valley of the Jordan, leaving in the bed of the stream twelve stones, in order to enter the land of milk and honey. The waters return as Israel passes, burying the twelve stones, symbolic of Israel's twelve tribes. Israel can’t dwell in the promised land without a constant abiding in death through the 12 symbolic stones, buried in the stream Joshua 4:9

David does not come to the throne until in the caves of the Philistines, he was hunted down like a dog by the infuriated Saul, he dies-deaths innumerable.

Jeremiah dies a thousand deaths as he weeps over the chosen people. Jonah is pitched into the sea and is swallowed by a whale-even then he does not come forth wholly purged from self.

God's people have never in any age come to the mountain-peak of glorious unbroken communion with the Most High, without having the "self-life," the "flesh-life," brought again and again to the dust of death.

Our fretful, greedy, self-centered, fussy, lustful, hateful "flesh-life" must die. absolutely and mercilessly terminated. By an act of faith you must lay hold of Christ’s death as your death; you must place Christ's Cross between yourself and "the body of sin." You must take your stand with Christ on Calvary ground and each time that the "self-life" tries to assert itself, say: "In Christ I died. In His name, I refuse my old nature."

This done, the Holy Spirit will bear witness to your faith and set you free, and keep you free.