The Key to Intimacy

 

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Emet is the Hebrew word for truth. Yeshua tells us that we shall “know” the truth and that knowing shall make us free. The opposite of knowing the truth is believing in lies. This chapter I want to begin a deeper dive into the word for “knowing” the truth. The word translated as “know” is the Hebrew word yada.

It is composed of three letters. The first is the yod, which is the picture of a hand. Hands are called yadaim, which is the Hebrew word construct that speaks of a pair. The yod is the ancient Hebrew word picture of an arm with an extended hand. This will make sense as we complete the picture. The next character is the dalet, which is the word picture of a door. Finally, the root completes with the ayin, the word picture of an eye which means a shift in perspective. The composite picture is a hand opening a door into a new way of seeing.

From this perspective we see that “knowing someone” or something is a process of discovery. Our opening text tells us that as we “know” the truth, we come into freedom. Our “knowing is progressive releasing the power of revelation. It is the “aha” moment that transforms when we see things or someone in a different way.

We have all had those moments of surprise when we discover something new about someone, we thought we knew well. This is the depth of mystery in the human spirit and in God’s reality. Paul tells us:

“For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God.” (1 Corinthians 2:11, NKJV)

We are truly not a mystery to others but even to ourselves. Life is a great adventure of discovery, which is contained in the word “yada”. Life demands of us that we stay open to seeing things brand new.

Yeshua told us that our seeing of the kingdom of heaven, our true power source, requires an entirely new birth experience.

“Jesus responded and said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”” (John 3:3)

What did He mean by that? Nicodemus a religious scholar is puzzled: “Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a person be born when he is old? He cannot enter his mother’s womb a second time and be born, can he?”” (John 3:4)

Yeshua responds by pointing to the source of this new birth:

“Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. “That which has been born of the flesh is flesh, and that which has been born of the Spirit is spirit. “Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it is coming from and where it is going; so is everyone who has been born of the Spirit.”” (John 3:5-8)

Notice the shift from seeing the kingdom to opening a door and entering in. This is a move from having a perspective, an “aha” and the coming into the full “knowing” of the truth that sets us free. The pathway to this transformation is the birth process of the Spirit. There is a contrast between the natural flesh birth and the transformational Spirit-birth. Spirit-children come from a Spirit-birth. Yeshua parallels the Spirit-birth to the Ruach, the wind.

This is a Hebraic play on words. The Holy Spirit is called the Ruach Hakodesh. The wind is called the Ruach. So, another translation for the Holy Spirit is the Holy Wind. There is a birthing process that is birthed by the wind that yields children of the kingdom, spirit-children. There is no more intimate knowing of another than the knowing that produces new life.

“Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, and said, "I have acquired a man from the LORD."” (Genesis 4:1)

The “knowing of Eve by Adam, was the intimacy that produced new life. Nicodemus struggles this idea of Spirit-children:

“Nicodemus answered and said to Him, "How can these things be?"” (John 3:9)

“Jesus answered and said to him, "Are you the teacher of Israel, and do not know these things? Most assuredly, I say to you, we speak what We know and testify what We have seen, and you do not receive Our witness.” (John 3:10-11)

Yeshua is unlocking the door for Nicodemus. He is telling him the key is “knowing” and speaking from that knowing. Nicodemus is a teacher, a rabbi in Israel and he can only speak from what he knows, what he has proven to be true in his own experience. He is desperate for a breakthrough, but he is totally floored about the idea that true spiritual knowing comes from spiritual intimacy. Yeshua clues him in by the pronoun “we” and “our”. He is speaking of oneness between Himself, the Father and the Spirit. Together these form the witness of the truth, that sets us free.

Nicodemus cannot “know” this reality unless he learns to receive the witness by dying to himself and being reborn into a new man. You must understand that until Yeshua, knowing came by study and the formulation of a world view. Yeshua calls this kind of knowing, gaining the world.

“Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew 16:24-26)

Like Nicodemus, most of us try desperately to hold onto what we have built our lives upon, what we “know”, our understanding of our world. We claim not to be under the law but we have our own internal conclusions and rules of life that form our “reality”. The challenge is that we want a transformation, which we require to “know” life differently. We need to “know” the truth to be truly free.

To “know”, yadah life differently we need to be born again by the Ruach, the wind.

Let’s look at the wind a bit. What is the role of the wind in the birthing process? If we think of life agriculturally, the wind scatters the seed. The wind blows the seed into different fields. Isn’t that the way of the kingdom? Many of us are growing in a different field than the one prepared for us by our natural heritage. We are being “known” differently than our natural parenting knows us.

This is a different way of knowing ourselves and knowing others. It is the knowing that comes by transformation. It is the yadah, the opening of a new doorway of spiritual reality that is an exhilaration into freedom!

Paul spoke of this in 2 Corinthians 3: 17-18

“Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.” (2 Corinthians 3:17-18)

We can see that this verse is about liberty, freedom. We can also see that the liberty has something to do with how we see ourselves. He references a mirror. Paul tells us that we behold with an unveiled face the glory of the Lord. We should ask, what is an unveiled face. He tells us that Moses wore a veil to keep Israel from seeing the glory of God on him and that this veil keeps us from the spiritual reality of the kingdom.

“We are not like Moses, who used a veil to hide the glory to keep the Israelites from staring at him as it faded away. Their minds were closed and hardened, for even to this day that same veil comes over their minds when they hear the words of the former covenant. The veil has not yet been lifted from them, for it is only eliminated when one is joined to the Messiah. So until now, whenever the Old Testament is being read, the same blinding comes over their hearts.” (2 Corinthians 3:13-15)

This veil keeps the word from penetrating the heart and bringing about a new birth, a new reality.The veil is the flesh and it’s natural inheritance.

by a new and living way which He consecrated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh. Heb 10:20

He takes us through the veil. It is torn and discarded.

When we are born again by the Ruach, we are scattered across the earth and “know” the Lord in a way that religion never can. This is the yadah of the Spirit. It requires us to lose our life, our history and embrace a new beginning. Only by this embracing can we dance that He has for us, a freedom celebration.

So, it is the Spirit, the Ruach that blows and the seasons of our lives change, if we can flow and adapt to Him which causes the way we “know” things to change.

One more passage to clarify this a bit more:

““But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. “He will glorify Me, for He will take from Mine and will disclose it to you. “All things that the Father has are Mine; this is why I said that He takes from Mine and will disclose it to you.” (John 16:13-15)

You see there is no way to know the things of the Spirit except by the Spirit. Even Yeshua who was demonstrating the Spirit, knew that He couldn’t teach what had to be experienced, the “yada” that leads to freedom.

““But I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I am leaving; for if I do not leave, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you. “And He, when He comes, will convict the world regarding sin, and righteousness, and judgment: regarding sin, because they do not believe in Me; and regarding righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you no longer are going to see Me; and regarding judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged. “I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them at the present time.” (John 16:7-12)

To walk free in this hour is less about what we know and more about who we know, yada, the doorway that we open into the realms of the Spirit. Yeshua went away to send the Helper, the Holy Spirit. We likewise must “go away”, leaving our known patterns and life to which we cling, in order to walk into our destiny in Messiah.

God has always taken people out of a situation to bring them into their inheritance, the life of the Spirit. Whether it was Abraham from Ur, or Moses from Egypt, or Paul from Jerusalem, the Scriptures are full of stories of leaving and cleaving.

Activation: Leaving and cleaving, loosening ourselves from our personal narrative and binding ourselves to the living epistle of the Spirit! As we spoke about last week, binding and loosening, is really about covenant. We are instructed to loosen ourselves from the chains of this world and bind ourselves to the Spirit of the Lord. Ask the Lord what ways you have “known” yourself that He wants to transform.