Episode 27 - The Cosmic Burden and Christ's Rest: A Study of Divine Order

Have you ever contemplated the cosmic significance of Christ's reign in your life? As we navigate through the chaotic storms of our lives, seeking to impose a semblance of order, we often find ourselves shouldering burdens much too heavy for us, not unlike the mythical Atlas. Yet, we are not alone. 

In today's episode, we uncover the profound meaning behind envisioning Christ as the divine Emperor, overseeing not just our lives, but the entire cosmos. Through an exploration of the story of Adam and Eve, we discuss the futility in attempting to create our own order, and the peace that comes from submitting to the divine order established by Christ. We tap into the liturgy of St. James, which mirrors the constant worship in the heavenly realm, highlighting the divine patterns of worship that bring harmony amidst the chaos.

As we journey further, we examine the dichotomy of personal versus divine order in our lives. Often, our quest for structure and patterns can lead us into the trap of idolatry when we lean on these instead of our divine Emperor for security and meaning. We discuss the freedom that comes from Christ's invitation to rest in His order, and how surrendering our burdens to Him leads to true peace. So, join us in this enlightening conversation as we learn to live in Christ's reign, and find rest in His divine order. This is a discourse that promises to uplift and enlighten your perspective on life and faith.

The theme music is "Wager with Angels" by Nathan Moore

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:30

Well, welcome to the Christ-Centered Cosmic Civilization Podcast and we're going to do a one-off interruption to our series because it's really wanting to think a bit more about why a Christ-Centered cosmic civilization is is so important for our daily living, and that this isn't a kind of intellectual curiosity. I mean, some of the things we deal with are intellectually curious and fascinating and over the weeks and months, if the Lord wills, where we can explore all the things or all the topics it, it is intellectually interesting. But what is motivates us to capture this vision of Christ the King, the divine Emperor, ruling over the heavens and the earth, from the right hand of the Father, filled with the spirit without measure, surrounded by angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, and that being the center of our lives and our hearts and our minds, and turning from the kingdoms of this world and all the burdens and issues and deceit and worthless treasures and pleasures of this passing age, we turn from them and constantly want to reorientate ourselves to that divine Emperor, with his father, and there he is filled with the spirit, the fountain of life flowing through him, from the Father, and we come thirsty to him, thirsty, desperate for real life, eternal life we want to just take this time to capture the or try to reach for something of why this is important. We'll probably do this again from time to time, from different angles, where we just feel it's necessary to interrupt our flow of a series of on a topic to do this so that we keep that sense of what this is all about.

Speaker 1: 3:00

And today I want to focus on why it matters so much that we come to Christ as this divine Emperor, not as if he is only relevant to spiritual in inverted commas things, or relevant only at the end of our lives or something like that, but that all the time, every moment. This is relevant because if we believe that the universe is not ruled by Christ and held together by him, and if we think that the harmony of the universe depends on us or on the universe itself or something like that, it's too heavy a burden to bear. So let's explore that, because we cannot bear the burden of ruling over our own lives. And that was the issue in the Garden of Eden, really, that we were created to be in this Garden of God that he had planted and then led by him, inspired by him, empowered by him, married to him, as we were designed to be, we were to head out into this glorious heavens and earth, ruling with him as kings and queens of the cosmos, and that he's the one who has created the heavens and the earth and given order and beauty and meaning to everything. And then our first day of existence is a day off, a day of rest, a day to enjoy it with him, not a day of responsibility. And that, capturing that sense of the rest that the Emperor, the Divine Emperor, gives to us is so important. Because when we ate the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil and we're really saying we will rule, we will make the boundaries, we will establish order by our own strength and our own wisdom. It's a crushingly heavy burden to bear and we are not designed to bear it and we cannot rule over our own lives. And whether we attempt to do it on an individual basis or we say no, it's my family or my local community or my nation or international organizations, wherever it is that we think well, that is the level at which order can be established and the problems of the world can be sorted out. They're all. All of those things are delusions and disappoint us and will unravel us because they're unnatural and unsustainable. And so when, from the time of Adam and Eve, and trying to impose order even on our own bodies, when they attempt to make clothing, to get control of their own bodies and the feeling of shame that they have about their own bodies, and then trying to find a solution to that with clothing, all of that and we'll think more about clothing in a future episode, but for now, just that sense that they're trying to fix things and bring about an order into this problem of their existence. Now, that is the problem and the creating our own order, trying to bring order into the chaos of our lives. And it's interesting.

Speaker 1: 7:36

I've been reading the Psalms a lot and just thinking about Psalm 29 and, although we won't look into that in great depth now, just that sense of the voice of the Lord. Who is this divine Emperor, jesus Christ. He is there at the heart of the storm and it's the divine, the cosmic storm, with thunder and lightning that comes from the throne of heaven. And how is that to be controlled and mastered? That storm and the thunder and the lightning that's terrifying and can destroy all the things that seem most stable and can strip the forest bear. And if we attempt to master the storm of life, or the cosmic storm, the heavenly storm beyond all the earthly storms. If we try to master that, we're overwhelmed and crushed, broken by it. But there is this voice of the Lord that is over all of that and he alone can bring order and welcome even into such a storm.

Speaker 1: 8:53

And so what the danger is is, in life, that what we do is we attempt to bring order to our chaos with all kinds of management tools. Now I want to say, like there's a sense in which these can be good things when they're put in the correct perspective, when they are small things in life, time management, cleaning or organization systems or whatever it is, that we and we might pay lots of money to get tools to help us be organized and managed and ordered and, in a way, if we understand them to be relatively trivial, then that's good. But that isn't what happens and that we, you know, I've been listening to lots of examples of people saying how their life was utterly transformed by an organizational tool and a piece of software or a piece of or a book that would bring order into the chaos of life. And that is the great trap, because what there's a delusion about it, that we, that the chaos of creation, the cosmic chaos of living in a world that is at odds with the living God, cut off from Christ, and that sense of the darkness, the decay, the chaos, the crisis of a fallen, of this fallen present age, this passing age, to imagine that that can be solved if only we have a system for tidying our house or handling our diary or budgeting properly or things. Now, all of those things have a kind of relevance, but when we invest in them with a kind of worship or an obsession, trying to place upon them a power or a weight that only Christ, the King, the divine emperor, can bear, we are damaging ourselves, deluding ourselves and could even dam ourselves by doing it. And so we want to.

Speaker 1: 12:09

St James there's this whole idea of St James liturgy, and the idea is St James, the, who leads the church in Jerusalem in the book of Acts, and one of the old traditions is that he is taken up to the highest heaven and is able to observe and record the liturgy of the heavenly worship, to see how worship is carried out in the highest heaven, and he records that and brings that down and that you'll see. You can search for what they call the liturgy of St James, the divine liturgy of St James, and they what Chrysostom's famous divine liturgy is based on, that St James one and Chrysostom adapts it. But there's this sense that there's this original liturgy that is literally copied from what is going on constantly in the very highest heaven, and why. That's an important thing for us to contemplate, because when we look at the book of Revelation or in Daniel, or all kinds of hints in the Psalms and the prophets, this sense that there is a pattern and order of constant worship going on in the highest heaven. Things are repeated and done and structured and ordered at that highest level, and what we can be tricked by is to think, is to forget that and to imagine there isn't any patterns, there aren't any orders other than what we ourselves establish.

Speaker 1: 14:11

And so what we can do is, instead of joining in with these heavenly cosmic liturgies and patterns or resting in the heavenly cosmic patterns and orders and that sense of structure and meaning and order that is already going on and is established and is kind of pouring down from the throne of God and the highest heaven, and instead of us realizing that, essentially what we should do is join in with that and then in a sense, maybe then in sort of relatively trivial ways, reflect that order and the patterns in our daily lives in this passing moment, and what we can do is is imagine that it is what we must establish order and patterns through our own lives, and that we must build our own liturgies of daily habits and patterns.

Speaker 1: 15:28

Can you imagine that there's so many books about establishing habits and patterns and orders and systems in our lives, and it is no accident that there is such a proliferation of that kind of material in those tools and lectures and systems and things right now, because there is such a sense of disorder and chaos and meaninglessness throughout life and the world and the sense that the center is gone and everything's falling apart. And so we think, right, I need to establish, like it's almost as if we feel like there needs to be order, a cosmic order, and at least what I should do is establish a liturgy of daily life that makes sense of things, and I must have a pattern of life that makes sense and I need to establish that as if it's down to me to make order in my life and there, in a way, sure, there are little things that can be done, but we cannot ever invest our meaning, our security, our identity in these little patterns and liturgies that we can establish in life. We have to ask the question do we build our own order and liturgies of life or do we ultimately depend on those made by God or designed by the great worship leader, the choir master of the cosmos, christ, the divine emperor? Are we satisfied with his ordering, the boundaries he's made, or, and is that the real heart of what gives our life structure? And when we set our goals and work out small habits and do journaling every day and figure out how to delegate responsibilities and structure things, if we're doing that in order to find life and order and structure in the chaos of life, we're doing something wicked. Really, that's an idolatrous thing to do. We can't do that. We can't do that. Like all those habits of goal setting and journaling and all that structural stuff can be like a false religion, like literally a religion. The word religion means a rule, an established rule, and it's like if it means to us more than it should.

Speaker 1: 18:39

That's deeply wrong and that instead, going back to Genesis 1, noting on the very first page of the Bible, we are shown the divine emperor sent by the father in the power of the spirit, creating the boundaries, the order, and seeing that life and order is given to us, already established the order of day and night, land and sea, light and darkness, solid and fluid, all these fundamental structure and order is already given. And to acknowledge that. And there is something quite peaceful about being beside the sea and on a sea side, standing on a beach and watching the chaos of the waters come up against the solidity of the land, and although it tries to overwhelm the land, it cannot do it and must retreat. And that is soothing to us because it is preaching to us that the chaos is already controlled by the divine emperor. And whether we are especially good at goal setting, habit setting, organizing our lives and things, all of that is only safe when it's really flowing out of a deep rest, a deep rest in the true bringer of order, the true sovereign over the chaos, the lord of the storm, as Psalm 29 would say. So our basic patterns of life, then, are to be reflections, or just echoes, or inspired by this deep rest that we have in the cosmic patterns and order of the highest heaven.

Speaker 1: 20:44

And I want to conclude this time by just reminding us of Matthew 11, 25 to 30, where Jesus is noting how little children get it and but how, in our sophistication and cleverness, we do not, and that the Father enjoys, is pleased to hide the truth of the cosmos from those who believe that they can uncover it or establish it. But to little children it's given, it's given to understand these things. So Matthew 11, 25 to 30 at that time, jesus said I praise you, father, lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned and revealed them to little children. Yes, father, for this is what you were pleased to do. All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father. No one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

Speaker 1: 22:29

Now, by contrast, let's think about Atlas, the Greek myth of Atlas. Atlas was a Titan. In that Greek mythology, the Titans were these like extremely powerful creatures that rose up to overthrow the gods. And because they attempted to do this and overthrow the gods, this Atlas, titan, is punished and he's condemned to hold up the heavens for all eternity. And so Atlas is there, crushed beneath the weight of the heavens, forever. He has to support this enormous weight of the heavens and in that mythology, atlas is considered to be skilled in philosophy, that's the love of wisdom. He's skilled in mathematics, which is to do with number and order, and he's skilled in astronomy, that is, the study of and ordering of the stars and cosmology, and sometimes Atlas is considered to be the inventor of astronomy.

Speaker 1: 23:53

Now, think about that, then. As a punishment for rebellion, he has to hold up the heavens and he is the source of wisdom, number and order and cosmology, and it's as if he, as a punishment, is sustaining the heavens and this one, who is the rebel, who is being punished and trying to hold it up, he's the one who is the source of thinking about it and structure and number and order, and he's trying, crushed under it, burdened by it, overwhelmed by it, punished by it, the idea of trying to give order and structure and wisdom to the cosmos. It's a horrible picture that it's a terrible burden and that this order and structure and understanding is comes from a bad thing and is overwhelming. Now, the name of Atlas, of course, even if we don't know all the mythology about him, is forever part of our daily life because maps if we have a book of maps, that's called an Atlas, because it's the idea that to have an organized view of geography and the world and to know where things belong and where to go and have directions and all that sense of geographical order, we name it after him.

Speaker 1: 25:54

Atlas because, again, this idea that it's this figure, this Titanic figure, being crushed under the weight of the cosmos, and it's he's the one who is, who is trying to give order to things and make sense of it, it's a terrible view of the universe and, in a way, atlas is then symbolic of the way we can all feel that we're cast into this world and it's a terrible, crushing burden to hold things together and how hard we must work at getting our habits right and diaries right and journals right and goals right and all the effort to be fruitful and ordered and successful and make the most of it. We've only one life to live and there's the crushing responsibility of it all. And yet into that we have this Matthew 11, 25 to 30, where the one who actually bears the weight of the heavens and the earth speaks to us. It's not a rebel Titan figure who has to hold the universe together, it's Jesus. And he says. He doesn't say, oh, I'm cursed with the weight of the universe or I'm punished with the weight of the universe, I'm crushed by the weight of the universe. It rather Matthew 11, 25.

Speaker 1: 27:24

At that time Jesus said I praise you, father, lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things. And then verse 27,. All things have been committed to me by my father. So the father, who is the Lord of heaven and earth, has committed everything in heaven and earth on to Jesus. And Jesus is just pleased about it, and pleased that the way the father organizes this universe around him and that this isn't about the clever and the wise and the strong, but it's about the little children. And that means that all the weight of it sits upon Jesus. The whole weight of the cosmos is on the cosmic sun who, whose shoulders are more than capable of holding it all together.

Speaker 1: 28:23

He doesn't regard it as a burden, but as a joy, a source of pleasure, to do this, to do the will of his father he has. He's filled with the spirit without measure and therefore can hold all these things together, even there on earth. Even there as he's on earth and in that ministry of living our flesh life on earth, he's still filled with the spirit, holds all things together in this tremendous mystery of who he is. And who he is is right there in verse 27. Who he is so mysterious and no one can handle who he is and know who he is, except the father. Because how can he be all these things and yet hold all things together so so wonderfully and with such pleasure and joy in the power of the spirit? And we can't make sense of that. And we have theories and we come up with doctrines and philosophical ideas to try to make sense of him, but we can't do it because he is more than we can ever think or imagine and he's joyful in his work and for him he bears all that weight of the universe upon him and he does. Why does he do it? He does it to serve us. He does it, bears the weight of it all so that he can save us.

Speaker 1: 30:03

28. Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Don't take the weight of the universe upon your shoulders. Let me do that. Come to me and throw that burden onto me, and then you can just rest. You rest and we're reminded how, how birds.

Speaker 1: 30:33

Jesus says look at birds and flowers. They rest in the order and structure that's given to them. They don't strive to achieve what they were designed for. They're content to accept the givenness of the divine cosmic civilization and and and not, and not worry about it, not try to define an order of their own. They're happy to rest in the order given to them.

Speaker 1: 31:08

They already have come to Jesus, as Psalm 104 tells us.

Speaker 1: 31:14

The animals already do that, and so he asks us to come to him and receive rest from him.

Speaker 1: 31:22

And then the burden that he will give to us is not the weight of the universe resting on us. It's this, it's this yoke that he gives, and he's gentle and humble. Humble, because this is this sense that the living God doesn't ask us to serve him. Rather, in his humility, he serves us. He carries the weight of the world for us. He is the ladder between heaven and earth, carrying all the business between heaven and earth on himself so that he can carry us on his shoulders and over his heart up to the heavens to reign with him.

Speaker 1: 32:07

We don't have to find the way to climb up to bring the answers down. We don't have to find the way to get down into death to overcome it, to bring him up. He does all of that the coming down, the bringing up all of that for us. Why, why would he do that? Why would he serve us when he's the cosmic emperor? Because he's gentle and humble in heart and he wants to give rest for our souls. He doesn't care about rest for himself, he cares about rest for us. And so that's the that's the thought for this week that he wants to teach us how to live, not as a crushing burden, not as all these goals and standards that must be achieved and order that must be imposed by us. Rather, at the fundamental level, he wants to rest in the fact of what he has done and his order, his reign. He doesn't want life to be a burden for us, but a joyful gift of rest.