“And after having been baptized, Jesus went up immediately from the water, and behold, THE HEAVENS WERE OPENED, and … the Spirit of God descending as a dove UPON HIM… ” …and abiding UPON HIM. ..”                                                                                                                                      Matthew 3:16; John 1:33

“And having looked up unto the heavens He groaned, and He tells him, “Ephphatha”, that is, “Be thoroughly-opened.”  And immediately HIS HEARINGS WERE-OPENED and THE IMPRISONMENT/the bondage OF HIS TONGUE WAS-LOOSED, and he spoke straightly.”                                                                                                                                                     Mark 7:35-36

“I believed, therefore I spoke“                                                                                                                                                    II Corinthians  4:13

aaThe Bible’s documentation of Caleb is brief, yet intentionally shines out with sharp brilliancy.  His words, in the book of Numbers, are few … very few. Yet they captured the focused attention of YHVH, the God of the universe.  Caleb was despised by the whole nation, along with Joshua, for holding fast, in his heart and thus out of the bark of his mouth, to the promise of Good by the LORD for ALL of them; they had let their hearing be imprisoned to the news of the majority of broadcasters, and accordingly let all that fear pour out in the words of their meditating muttering all night, and then in the anger, that following morning, of their now unbelieving hearts … They were ready to stone Moses, Aaron, Joshua, and Caleb  (Num. 14:1-2a, 10).

“Take heed, therefore, how you hear” “… out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” “The good man OUT OF THE GOOD TREASURE brings forth the good.”                                            Luke 8:18a; Matthew 12:34b; Luke 6:45a

—That entire generation refused the voice of the bark of Caleb, (Num. 13:30-33) and thus literally unwittingly stepped out of the Grace-gifting of Divine promises, that is, an actual inheritance, of abundance and rest (Num.14:22-23).  They let their tongues come into the imprisonment of the bondage – of slavery – to unbelief.  For they submitted their hearings to a believed closed heaven – a famine, as it were, of the reality of the life-giving bread of heaven, of joyful praise – by reason of the factual news, natural understanding, present age rationale … “the giants are huge, … we can’t take this, … (did God say…?)”, a life of stress and worry, completely apart from the treasure of His glory, the good pleasure of His heart’s desire towards them, … all implying that their Awesome God didn’t really mean what He had promised them.

—There is a scripture in Jeremiah which says, “is not My Word… like a hammer which shatters, which breaks in pieces, a rock?” (Jer. 23:29).  I cannot get away from Holy Spirit has been putting on my heart, increasingly to make to hit home the point, for quite some time towards you, Beloved, because of His great love for you, because of His very heart towards you, in order that each one of you FULLY come into ALL that the Blood of Jesus purchased for you … that your heart and mouth might “Amen” each and every promise of the Awesome goodness of God.  The hammer is intentionally, by Him through the exhortation of the scriptures & from these Kairos words, being swung in order to break apart what Father wants broken off of our believing, that is, from our hearts and minds, any “littleness of faith” that keeps us from believing Him outright (Mat. 17:20).

—We have to give ourselves to pay attention, Dear One, to the bark of Caleb, to what it was that caused God to give His attention to this man so as to make Him set Himself to oath in concrete, as it were, to grace-gift Caleb that inheritance years later (Deut. 1:36; Josh. 14:6-14).  Our God and Father is NO respecter of persons; what He gave Himself to oath Caleb, He has even more, by His own Son’s shed blood, given Himself to oath to us better promises through His Son (Heb. 6:17-20; 8:6; Rom. 8:32).  God said of Caleb that he was “of a different Spirit,” that he was “FULL to follow” Him, calling him, “My Servant” (Num. 14:24).  Caleb’s servanthood towards God, Beloved, was not works of the Law, rather a childlike trust in outright believing YHVH’s word of promise, a childlike believing that naturally came out in his words.  The living, flowing, life-giving word of the LORD was the weighty Treasure intentionally being stored and guarded in Caleb’s heart, like a child who believes emphatically his father’s word and who would stand up and defend his integrity in front of any who would, in his hearing, mock his big and strong dad in whom he takes pride.

“Of a truth I tell you, whoever does not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child, he cannot enter into it. ”                                                                                                                              Mark 10:15

—The bark, to shut up the evil report (Num. 13:30) of the news which was a fact, was, in truth, the LORD’s hammer to shatter the words of unbelief attaching themselves as barnacles onto the hearts of God’s people.  That sudden voice of Caleb interrupting the evil report pouring out of the ten was the Sword of God’s Spirit, yes, God’s very GOODNESS, to divide soul & Spirit, that the people might give the ears of their hearts alone to the Ruach breath of the Spirit of the LORD – YHVH, I Am that I Am – in Caleb’s words.

   As crazy as this sounds, Caleb’s words were also fountains of living Waters, through the rock of unbelief being broken, in order that the people might drink of the same Spirit that was life-ing Caleb … for that River was leading them unto inheritance.  They were thus Waters of living water to wash away the evil report, to wash refreshingly clean their thoughts from the broadcast of unbelief being whispered, in truth, by the enemy of their souls. 

…

aaBut they hardened their hearts.

—Their hearings were deafened, and their tongues bound in slavery to complaining and negativity against the One Who’d shown Himself Awesome in His deliverance of them from the slavery of Egypt.

—That “FULL to follow the LORD” Spirit of Caleb was the Spirit of Christ Jesus.  The boldness to bark out the adamant faithfulness of YHVH their God was wholly completely manifest through Jesus’s life, and accordingly out of His mouth, all the way to His final breath on the cross while hanging by three nails as His blood poured out of His body     …                                                                                                                                                                 all to cut off of us any and every breath of, “Did God say … ?”   EVEN OUT OF OUR THOUGHTS! 

    As he/He -(Caleb/Jesus) believed, therefore also he/He spoke!

   We need to allow Holy Spirit of Jesus in us, through the scriptures, to speak, to bark, as it were, if need be, so as to break off of us the stuff of life that tries to attach itself into our believing as though it (the stuff of life) is a greater truth, as though it has an authority to dictate what means, what defines, the truth of all that the finished work of Jesus’s cross has gained for us for this life. 

—We must allow the Spirit of Jesus in us to paradigm shift us, if that’s what it takes, from even doctrines taught us, if He comes to show us through the scriptures that they are not truths of the finished work of the cross. 

—Wherever we have misunderstood context which caused there to be extruded, or, pulled out, the opposite of what Holy Spirit was actually saying, or where we’ve heard teaching which sounded spiritually Biblical or theological, but is actually grounded in not having a revelation of the clear distinction between Old & New Covenant, or an understanding construed by life’s circumstances which reduces God’s Word to fit finite understanding, causing us to think and believe that now God’s promises are both a “yes” and “no” duplicity (Matt.5:37; II Cor. 1:19-20), whatever traditions of men that sound “Christian “, but which, in truth, do not even bear witness to the accomplishment of Jesus’s sacrifice for us, all of this must be utterly broken off of our believing.

—Anything, Beloved, that makes God our Savior to mean something other than what His words simply state is a starvation diet that robs us of the true bread of Life-giving life, literally, for this present life.  Moreover it also robs our Awesome God from our praising the full glory of ALL that His goodness Grace-gifted us by reason of the sufferings of His Son (Eph.  1:5-8a).  Whatever it has been that has, in truth, hardened simple childlike trust of the unfathomable riches of Grace, of clear, simple, awesome promises to us by God in the scriptures via Jesus’s cross, these things we must allow Holy Spirit, by the oil of His Grace through His Word, to break from off of our heart’s believing. 

—What you will find afterwards, Precious Saint, is a renewed crazy love for tasting and seeing just how good is the simplicity of God’s Word, of the fullness and the greatness of our Savior’s Grace and Truth towards us.  You will find that the pages of scripture that were once dull, insubstantial almost, are suddenly life-giving Bread to your faith.  The Treasure now being made to shine again from within you will come out in that childlike trust, even in praise, of Jesus, our crazy Awesome Savior and God!  Your ears will have been opened to the glory of the already opened heavens which were made so at your Savior’s last breath from the cross.

“Because God, the One having spoken out of darkness ‘Light’ to shine, (is the One) Who shined in our hearts towards the radiancy of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”  (Let these words sink into your hearts, Beloved.  Don’t rush past)

           “WE, then, HAVE THIS TREASURE in earthen vessels.”                                                                                                          II Corinthians 4:6-7a

aaaaaaa … Selah …

—Not being able to move away from the account of Jesus taking that deaf man apart to a private place where He restored both his hearing and his speech, there are some nuggets that come to light.  I love seeing each time Jesus does something privately with people. It brings out God’s heart for private time with individuals.  It’s so amazing to me that He speaks specific individual stuff and works a transformation by the Spirit of His word, even healing, or a miracle, or whatever it is that causes the Glory of His Resurrection nature to be manifested, the wealth of His grace, to individual people.  He is so after personal relationship with each one of you.

“And He took him aside from the multitude by himself (lit. privately), and put His fingers into his ears, and after spitting, He touched his tongue with the saliva. And looking up to heaven with a deep sigh, He said to him,“Ephphatha!” that is, “Be opened!” “                                                                                                                                                                              Mark 7:33-34 (NASB)

—It is as though Jesus undoes, in private, what this man’s forefathers had done some 1500 years earlier in their tents; He first puts His fingers into the man’s ears, exactly what the people had done to themselves back in Caleb’s day.  The groan that then comes out of Jesus’s heart, is this the groan of His Father, that this people had put their fingers into their ears to His living life-giving Words to them?  The bread of heaven given to them day after day, year after year, was always called, “manna”, or, “What is it?”  (Ex. 16:15a; Josh. 5:11-12a).  They never gave themselves to shut off the noise of life, to turn their hearts to find out exactly what (Who) it was (Jhn. 6:31-35).  Had they pursued hearing as did Joshua (Ex. 33:11), the bread of heaven would have been life to them, instead of “contemptible/insubstantial”, as they would call it (Num. 21:5).  The reality of ‘pouring-out-of-them-mucky-waters’ of every day negative complaining caused the ears and eyes of their hearts to never hear & never see the reality of the open heaven hovering over the tabernacle.  And so, consequently, they never received the “by-faith” grace-gifting liberty to agree with the Good news of God’s good to them; they just would not “yes” & “Amen” Him (Num. 14:11).  Their fingers remained stuck in their ears.  And their tongues were held in bondage from being able to freely from their hearts pour out praise to their Awesome, really-good-to-them God.

—Jesus’s longing was not for an open heaven, Beloved, rather for open ears and loosed tongues, to hear from and to give joyful praise & thanksgiving to His Father, YHVH, the only true God Who’d been pursuing man for THIS since the day He was asking him, “Where are you? “ ( Gen. 3:9/ Matt. 16:15-17).  Adam had traded the glory – God’s weighty estimation, the very TREASURE of the image of his Creator that had been glowing from out of him – for the ichabod temporal knowledge of good and evil.  Are you listening, Beloved?  Man had rejected the very rhema Word of God, indeed, had plugged his ears from giving heart’s attention to Life.

—Even so, our awesome God did not throw in the towel on man.

“Then the LORD … will have pity on His people, And the LORD will answer and say to His people, “Behold, I am going to send you grain, new wine, and oil, And you will be satisfied in full with them. … And it will come about… I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh. … I will pour out My Spirit in those days. ” ”                                                                                                                                                          Excrpt frm Joel 2:18, 19, 28a, 29b (NASB)

—God would speak yet again … and His Word became flesh.  He alas had on earth a Man Who believed outright His Word … because He was His Word outright  (John 1:1; 7:16; 8:26, 28; 14:10).  Yet this Man,  the “Last Adam”, as He would have Paul to call Him (ICor. 15:45b), had emptied Himself, to become dependant, utterly, on His Father’s voice, the torn open heaven Ruach breath of Holy Spirit poured out upon Him at His Jordan River baptism.  As a son of man Jesus gave His ears fully to every word proceeding from the mouth of God; Jesus was, therefore, the FULL weighty estimation of God, the Treasure of heaven, the glory of God manifested before the eyes of the seed of Adam, that weighty Glory which the first Adam had lightly esteemed and consequently forfeited … from himself and thus from ALL his seed.  Jesus Christ came to be – the exact expression of YHVH, with the added Shua, that is, our YHVH-Shua (Yeshua) – the LORD Our Open Heaven Salvation …  through Whom is our promised possession, our Divine inheritance (Rom.  8:17a, 32b, et al).  For God our Creator is also a Redeemer Restorer, with a never-having-faded laser vision purpose to restore back to us, through this last Adam, His Son Jesus our Savior, that forfeited treasure of His Glory! (Eph. 1:3-9; Rom. 5:2b).  This fully entails restoring our … Hearing!  (I do not think we have even comprehended the magnitude of this purpose in God).  And as a consequence of restored hearing to an opened heaven, restoring our tongues, our speech, where we never again have any longer, ever, from out of the abundance of our hearts, from any fiber of our heart, “Did God say?…”

—This, Dear Precious Saint, is the place from where God’s very Spirit has longed to abide in us, in each of us, and thus so fully in all of us …  as one single body of Christ on earth, literally to dwell as a resting place, a home (Eph.2:21-22).  Because from this dwelling place is that Bethlehem, that House of Bread, to feed the world around us from of the Grain & New Wine & Oil, of Jesus, of YHVH-SHUA,  of the exact image and substance of Who really is the LORD (YHVH) God.  That dwelling place is also fountains of living Waters to a thirsty world.  Beloved, the words of Rahab the harlot in Joshua 2:9-13 testify to this very thing!  She testified to the two spies that all her people knew of the power of their LORD’s hand … from the 40 year old account of their crossing the Red Sea.  She was desperate to leave her Adamic/Canaanite corrupt life to be in the fold of God’s people.  Her heart had already determined to believe outright based on the news of this powerful and great God, Whom the spies’ parents had determined not to believe based on the news of the greatness of her city’s walls and the size of her land’s people.  Not too many years later another pagan woman, too, would leave her people and her gods to cross the Jordan from east to west to feed off the abundance of the House of Bread dwelling place of the LORD, YHVH, of her Jewish mother-in-law Naomi (Ruth 1:16-17) .

—Abba Father God has been pursuing a dwelling place from within man’s heart, to overflow as fountains of Living Water, that flow of the River of Life that comes in private “Presence ” time with our Open Heaven  (Jhn. 7:38-39; Rev. 22:1).  Jesus Christ came to be, in flesh and blood reality, and before the eyes of the seed of Adam and seed of Abraham, the manifest truth of that Divine purpose.  Jesus Christ came to be also for us the Grain, the New Wine, and the Oil, by which we are to be satisfied to the full.  Our eating the Bread of Heaven everyday is the key to our conscience awareness of His abiding-in-us Holy Spirit.  Where Christ Jesus is not being unveiled, where the inexhaustible wealth of the finished work of His Cross, of what is True Grace, is not being fed upon as our daily bread, we find ourselves coming into a famine.  We find our praise diminished, because our tongues are tied in forgotten grace-gifted liberty of our Salvation, for our hearing has been stopped …

—The man’s inability to speak rightly, in Mark7:32, was directly connected to his shut ears.  But the “open heaven”, from where he needed restoration, was now privately standing right before this precious seed of Abraham … there along the border of Decapolis, EAST of the Jordan.   When the exact representation of God decreed in another tongue what at first His groan could not even articulate, the glory of God became a reality through the complete healing of this man.  And the praise due his Awesome God poured out of many voices, as renewed faith and hope and love burst out in their hearts at the testimony of manifested Glory.

    And having looked up unto heaven He groaned; and He tell him, “Ephphatha!”, that is, “Be opened!”  And his ears [lit.  his HEARINGS] were opened, and the impediment of his tongue was removed, and he began speaking plainly.  …                 And they were utterly astonished, saying, “He has done all things well.  He makes even the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak.””                                                                                                                                                                                 Mark 7:34-35, 37

    Let this amazing day, Beloved, the day we celebrate Christ Jesus our LORD’s resurrection, that through His death and resurrection we’ve been grace-gifted an open heaven to our Awesome God, let this day be the renewed beginning place of child-like bold confidence in Him, where you believe your heavenly Father, and therefore you speak.  Jesus, by His cross, has unstopped our ears to fully hear from that opened heaven, and has loosed our tongues to give praise and glory and honor to God our Savior, to eat of the abundance of the Tree of Life, the Bread of Heaven, to drink and drink of the New Wine of His Spirit, and to be joyful in the oil, of His healing, literally, and of His anointing, the Treasure of His Glory being stored increasingly in our earthen vessels.  Let your heart and mouth be freely given over to that Caleb Spirit of Jesus that had captured the attention of the God of the Universe, and that still captures His attention (II Chron. 16:9a) … for you have His oath, His sworn oath, because of Speaking Blood on heaven’s throne called the ‘Mercy Seat’, an inheritance of Divine promises already spoken over your lives. 

—There is a waiting hungry and thirsty world who have lived all their lives with stopped up ears and impediments on their tongues to the Awesome Good God inside of us.  They are waiting for a personal encounter with the power and the glory of our Resurrected Savior.  For the sacrifice of Himself was as fully for them as it has been for us.  That tearing of the veil, between Holy God and sinful man, was done in the eyes and ears of both Jew and Gentile.  The opened heaven was a grace gift to every single seed of Adam. 

You are so Greatly loved, Beloved.

Mark D.

——————————————–

    If you have never believed into Jesus Christ, you can do so now, from your own heart and words.  If you wish help to pray, pray, “LORD Jesus, I believe You died for me and as me because You love me.  I receive Your Forgiveness for my sin.  Thank You for shedding Your blood to cleanse me, for making me clean, for breaking the power of sin in my life, for transforming me as a gift of Your Grace to me.  I ask You to live inside of me.  I thank You, Jesus, for giving me eternal life, that I might know You and Your Father, as my God, forever.  In Your Name, LORD Jesus.  Amen!”

kairos – (Kahee-ros’) – Strong’s concordance defines this word: “an occasion, I.e. set or proper  time.”  The Hebrew-Greek Key Study Bible (NASB) defines this word; “season, time, but not merely as a succession of moments, which is chronos,” [from which we derive the English word ‘chronology’].  “Kairos, however, implies not the convenience of the season, but the necessity of the task at hand, whether the time provides a good, convenient opportunity or not.”  This must be understood.  Strategic times of the Lord do not necessarily imply good or convenient times.  We are in Kairos times.  Maybe not good or convenient times, but definitely strategic, opportune times because of the season we are in.  We must have “ears to hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches,” (Rev. 2:29), so as to respond correctly to the Kairos time.
* Some Scripture for this letter is taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE, (c) 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, by The  Lockman Foundation.  Used by permission.  Other references translated from Grk. Txt as presented in T. Newberry’s Englishman’s Greek New Testament, Zondervan Publishing – 1982- originally published in London, Eng. 1877                                                                                                                                                           Scripture references not showing a Translation in Brackets are this writer’s translation from the Hebrew Massoretic Text as it appears on the web-site “qbible.com”.  Some definitions given to Hebrew words are also referenced from this website, as well as from Gesenius’ Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament, Baker Book House Company, (C) 1979

Several Translations and study guides to which this author refers are taken from biblehub.com website