The Christ Centred Cosmic Civilisation
Rod Dreher wrote “to order the world rightly as Christians requires regarding all things as pointing to Christ”
Christ is the One in Whom in all things consist and humanity is not the measure of all things. If a defining characteristic of the modern world is disorder then the most fundamental act of resistance is to discover and life according to the deep, divine order of the heavens and the earth.
In this series we want to look at the big model of the universe that the Bible and Christian history provides.
It is a mind and heart expanding vision of reality.
It is not confined to the limits of our bodily senses - but tries to embrace levels fo reality that are not normally accessible or tangible to our exiled life on earth.
We live on this side of the cosmic curtain - and therefore the highest and greatest dimensions of reality are hidden to us… yet these dimensions exist and are the most fundamental framework for the whole of the heavens and the earth.
Throughout this series we want to pick away at all the threads of reality to see how they all join together - how they all find common meaning and reason in the great divine logic - the One who is the Logos, the LORD Jesus Christ - the greatest that both heaven and earth has to offer.
Colossians 1:15-23
The Christ Centred Cosmic Civilisation
Episode 109 - Heads Up: Exploring the Sacred Meaning of Foreheads
Your forehead reveals more than you think. Beyond housing your eyebrows and fronting your brain, this prominent feature of your anatomy holds profound theological significance. Looking deep into biblical references to the forehead unveils a rich tapestry of spiritual meaning about determination, focus, and spiritual orientation.
When Scripture speaks of "hard foreheads" and faces "set like flint," it's addressing the profound human capacity for determination and focus. The forehead serves as a visible indicator of what captures our attention and drives our actions. Just as we naturally read emotions from a person's forehead—observing furrowed brows of concentration or the smooth openness of joy—spiritual discernment allows us to recognize where someone has directed their life's focus.
The biblical commands to bind God's words on our foreheads aren't merely about physical symbols but represent a profound spiritual truth: what occupies our minds shapes our lives. When Deuteronomy instructs believers to keep Scripture "on your foreheads," it's calling for more than religious symbolism—it demands that divine truth occupy the center of our attention. This revelation challenges our modern distraction-filled lives where focus has become increasingly fragmented.
Christ himself demonstrated the ultimate example of godly determination by setting his face "like flint" toward Jerusalem and the cross. His unwavering focus on redemption models the perfect balance we're called to emulate: a hard forehead with a tender heart. This combination—unyielding determination driven by compassionate love—represents spiritual maturity at its finest.
How is your forehead oriented today? Is it directed toward temporal concerns that will soon fade, or toward eternal purposes? The invitation remains open: allow the Lord to lift your head, redirect your focus, and mark your forehead with His name rather than the distractions of this passing world.
The theme music is "Wager with Angels" by Nathan Moore
Well, welcome to the next episode of the Christ-Centered Cosmic Civilization, as we continue to meditate on the human body, and we're focusing on aspects of the human head at the moment. We started with our hair and we're now going to move down to our forehead forehead, but again I just want to flag up. We always want to remind ourselves that we are theoid in shape, our bodies. It's not that we project our shape and form upwards into heaven and onto some formless, shapeless divinity, but rather we have been projected down into the clay, but handmade by the eternal son, who formed us in his own image to look like him. And therefore we take the human body immensely seriously and there's a sacredness about it, and it is why matters of the beginning of life and the end of life, how human life is honoured, preserved, not snuffed out all of these things matter immensely to us. So let's start. We've done the hair on the top of our head and also, to a degree, beards, but uh, now let's just think about the forehead. Um, now, you might not think very much about your forehead. You might. If you're a man whose hairline is receding, you become quite aware of it and the size of your forehead in that sense. But our foreheads show what is really on our minds. It indicates what we are to do and if you notice a person's forehead, you can determine a lot about them and their attitude, really, their determination, by the positioning of their forehead, whether it is forwards or down or up, and what is occurring on that forehead. So I'll just dip into two scriptures that begin to open this up for us and then we'll return to these scriptures later in the episode as we tease away the meaning of the human forehead forehead.
Speaker 1:So in Ezekiel 3, verses 7 to 9, it says the Lord is speaking to Ezekiel about the mission that he's got in his life. It says this the house of Israel will are not willing to listen to me, because all the house of Israel have a hard forehead and a stubborn heart. Behold, ezekiel, I've made your face as hard as their faces and your forehead as hard as their foreheads. Harder than flint have I made your forehead? And then we get a similar notion or image of the forehead, and it's in Isaiah 48, verse 4. The Lord cries out to Israel I know that you are stubborn or you are obstinate, and your neck is an iron sinew and your forehead? So in those examples.
Speaker 1:This idea of a hard forehead, unyielding, reveals this obstinacy, selects your forehead as the body part that summarizes you or captures where you're at. It's capturing something like stubbornness. Positive, in a positive way. It could be determination and also so a kind of uh, going head first into what lies ahead, with no, no sense of deviation, no backing down, just going head first into what you've purposed to do. But, um, now we'll come back to that.
Speaker 1:But our eyebrows are on our forehead and they reveal so much about our emotions they give this screen that is our forehead, that is our forehead. The eyebrows, especially, are the kind of projector onto the forehead screen of emotion, whether we are surprised or angry. This especially with our dog Murdoch, who we've had two or three years now and I was never really a dog person, but then he's sort of as always happens that you kind of get won over. But what always I'm marvelled by is the movement of his eyebrows. I sometimes wonder if I read even more emotion onto him than he really has, but I'm convinced it's all about his forehead and the movement of the bushy hair above his eyes that create In my mind. I perceive very complex emotions going on and I don't know, maybe that's true, and I do think animals have deeply spiritual inner lives. So it may be that I'm not even perceiving the depths of his emotions, but something of it. But it's the forehead and the eyebrows working the forehead, um, and we just naturally make these determinations about a person by looking at the forehead. And we in, in english culture I don't know whether there's a lot of vocabulary around the forehead as much as there is in the Bible. In the Bible, it's very self-conscious to look at a person's forehead to determine what they are thinking, what they are feeling, what is on their mind, what are they determined to do. Because we can tell so much about what a person is thinking, feeling, determining, simply by looking at their forehead. And once you probably this week after this episode you'll be going around staring at people's foreheads more than you would normally do. Try not to try not to do that too much, because it may be quite unnerving for people, but you just just notice it. Notice it that it's a screen displaying their mind and their intentions.
Speaker 1:One of the strange things that is a modern thing is that people have Botox injections into their forehead and they'll do that because it makes their skin smoother and stretches away. It incapacitates the muscles really in the forehead but because of that it makes them appear unemotional or even unreal or impersonal, robotic almost. It sometimes can appear that a person almost seems to have a mask upon them on their face, because our foreheads are so important in showing how we feel. And if there is no movement at all in the forehead it has a tremendously dehumanizing impact on our appearance. Impact on our appearance. Our forehead expresses what's really on our mind, whether it is shame, or it can light up in surprise or joy or if we're depressed. So I notice a boxer. If a boxer's about to fight, or a person, particularly a boxer, who knows what they're doing in a fight, it's interesting to see how they set their forehead and how they put their forehead forward to absorb impact and they, they prepare their forehead for the fight as well as their fists, for the fight as well as their fists. And it captures what we saw in Ezekiel and Isaiah, as in many other parts of the Bible, where the forehead is about this determination to face what is ahead and to get into it.
Speaker 1:In school sometimes well, not just in school, in general actually we may be told to get our heads down, get your head down, and when it's time to concentrate and work, it's time. I've said that. Even this morning I was saying to somebody I need to get my head down to get stuff done. And the idea to get my head down what do I mean by that? And it's kind of to do with my forehead it must be turned down to the task and I express this kind of direction of determination to the work that is before me, whereas the idea, I guess, is if my head is up and looking about, I have no determination and focus. It's what is my focus? My stubborn determination and I need to give myself stubborn determination to get my work done or to concentrate on the task, or as if my forehead is moving around from one thing to another and around and about, it displays no determination and focus.
Speaker 1:Again, a thing that I notice in sport, and particularly in football if there's a team and they were upbeat, but then the opponent has, say, scored two or three goals that were quite easy to score, or they came at tense moments of the game, or the opponent scores just before halftime or something like that, the commentator might say something like ah, they've let their heads drop now. Or sometimes fans might shout don't let your heads drop. And again that idea is the forehead becomes pointed down and then the feeling then is there isn't a determination to go forward and to face the challenge that's ahead. There isn't that obstinacy that's useful, the toughness to be determined to win and so on, so they let their heads drop. The forehead reveals the state of mind, their emotion, even if we experience despair or depression or overwhelm.
Speaker 1:What we can do is we put our head in our hands and put my head in my hands, and if you might do that now, what you're doing is you're covering up your forehead, right your palms against your forehead. It's as if you can't face what's ahead. It's the almost protecting of the forehead or hiding of the forehead, because there is so little energy or will to face what's ahead or get going that's ahead or that. What we've just experienced has this crushing effect upon us and we almost need to regroup head in the hands, despair, a loss of determination and focus, and if your forehead is really down, and particularly if you've got your head in your hands, you can't see your face. It's a hiding of your face. Of course, in this series we're going to look at all the elements of our face and how our face is so important to behold someone's face and what that means, to see face to face.
Speaker 1:But if our forehead is down particularly if I, if our, if we, our head is in our hands the face is completely hidden and it's a disengagement from others. We're not wishing to be seen. We're not wishing to see others' faces. We don't want that encounter. Why? Maybe we feel ashamed, maybe we feel defeated, maybe it's just a total lack of confidence and that we are closing in on ourselves.
Speaker 1:The, the forehead, is the key to all of this and we often don't know how we should feel or what we are really feeling. Sometimes I don't know what. I feel like that and our emotions are so confused and our minds get drawn into all kinds of distractions and obsessions, so our emotions can become out of control. And this ability to control what we're feeling and to channel our determination to go? No, like our emotions, we can't just fall apart. We need to have a sort of self-control and a focus. We have to have a focus, have to have a focus.
Speaker 1:In Jesus, in the parable of the sower, the bit that always haunts me is those that are overwhelmed with weeds. Those seeds represent those who, the cares and concerns of this life, swallow up the seed of God's word and it never it to anything. And it's that idea that so many are lost, not for great and obvious wickedness and godlessness, deliberate, intentional, huge acts of wickedness, but the simple underlying wickedness and godlessness of just not focusing on what is important, to just not set our foreheads towards the living god, away from sin, away from selfish desires, and towards the living God, to put our foreheads, you know, to get our heads up and faced in the way that they should face, and instead we just leave our forehead, our heads, down to the grindstone of the cares and concerns and the urgent demands of the moment. And then we're always thinking oh, some other time, some other time I'll get around to my eternal soul, to the living God. One day I will turn my forehead to that. And then that day never comes. We're so used to giving our little determination. Whatever little amount of determination and focus we have, goes on things that have no future. And that says so I love.
Speaker 1:Therefore, in Deuteronomy 6, 5 to 8, it says love the Lord, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and then, with the scriptures, tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. So that section of Deuteronomy Deuteronomy 6, 5 to 8, very, very powerful on this concept of the forehead and how to take control of our forehead and what to do with the forehead. I know it sounds strange, but it's important because you know, love the Lord, your God, with all your attention, all your focus. And then Deuteronomy 6, 6, you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I'm giving you today, repeat them again and again to your children, Talk about them when you're at home, when you're on the road, when you're going to bed, when you're getting up, and then it ends with that verse 8. Tie them to your hands. We'll come to hands at a much later episode. But here, tie them to your hands will come to hands at a much later episode. But here, wear them on your forehead as reminders. And it doesn't like.
Speaker 1:Of course, some characters, religious characters down through history, have said okay, so I'll just bundle them up in a little box and then kind of wear a band around my head like a sort of what was that? A sweatband, like from tennis or something, and then put a little box against the forehead that contains scriptures. Now, as odd as that might seem, that is not what Deuteronomy is about. What it's saying is keep these scriptures as the focus of your attention. When we said, put your head down to the task, get your head focused on these scriptures, talk about it. And then it explains what it means to have them on your forehead. It means have them as your attention, at the centre of your attention.
Speaker 1:Make yourself determined about these scriptures. And so to do that, you talk about them every spare minute, you get getting up, going out, work, rest, play, family life, friends. This is your determination to know these commands of the living god and to do them, to love the lord with all your heart, mind, soul and strength, and that that will be represented by this forehead orientation. Your determination is towards it. But, uh, you know, the lord knows us. We don't do that, we just get lost in the cares and concerns.
Speaker 1:So, in a way, if a person felt well, the only way I can be constantly reminded to take the word of god seriously is by literally putting some scriptures into a box and attaching it to my literal forehead and putting it literally in the center of my face, like on the on my forehead, between my eyes. Um, I'm like, okay, if that really is genuinely going to translate to you, giving it genuine focus in life and thought and love, okay, why not? But to me, I that feels like you'll be wasting a lot of emotional energy with a box on your head, rather than the energy required to actually learn these words and implement them. But there it so. The scriptures must be on our minds, at the forefront of our minds, on our foreheads, all day and all night. There's also that in Deuteronomy 11, 18 to 19,. The same thing Deuteronomy 11, 18 to 19.
Speaker 1:Fix these words of mine, says the Lord, in your hearts and mind. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads, teach them to your children, talk about them at home, on the road, when you lie down, when you get up. It's that same idea, and the idea that it and, and and the idea that they're on your forehead. I think it's that. It's that if you, if we, if the lord is saying if you make this the center of your life, you're, you're the thing you are obstinate about to talk about in all places, in all situations. You are obstinate in your determination to keep this obsession with his, the, with the commands and the words of the Lord, then it will be obvious, looking into a person's face, that that is what has happened to them. You will look at their forehead and see this godly determination about them. To look at the face of such a person, it will be apparent where their focus, where their emotions, where their mind, where their heart is what they have determined for their life. Our faces will shine because our foreheads are submitted in line with his word. It's about having the mind of Christ determined to have his mind and not these other minds, and I think about some foreheads that I've seen recently that are utterly filled with frowns and worry and concern. You know, like the foreheads I'm thinking in preparation for this, I've been examining foreheads as I've walked around and there are some foreheads and you can see that is a person who is not, does not have the joy of the Lord, does not have peace that this world cannot give.
Speaker 1:They do not have that underlying security and joy in the Lord that exists under the most extreme pressure and darkness and yet that such a person who has set their forehead to the word of the Lord, they can have. Underneath all of it. There is that peace and joy and security in him. And when a person does not have that and their forehead shows that the word of God is not binding their forehead. But I do like we started with the Ezekiel passage, because we might feel in life that we're struggling to be like that, to have that determination to focus on the word of the Lord, obeying his commands and to carry that with us out into work and life and school and social meetings and so on.
Speaker 1:We might say I'm not determined enough for that. Okay, well, I do think what I get from the Ezekiel 3 passages we know the Lord can give us a harder forehead. He gave Ezekiel a hard forehead and his was made to be like flint, like really harder than flint, the hardest stone. It says the hardest stone, harder than flint. So he can do that. And I think if we really say I really want this, lord, please help me, give me a harder forehead, give me like uh, you know, and that we could, because he will, he will hear our prayer, he will hear our prayer. We can't pray that prayer, of course, in just a spirit of laziness, like I can't be bothered. I'll just ask the lord to bother for me. No, those sort of prayers are just ludicrous, they're just pagan prayers. That that's insulting. No, what it is.
Speaker 1:If we, if we're really genuinely seeking to set our foreheads to the way of the lord and to take his word into us and make that the center of our attention and to love him with all our heart, mind, soul and strength, it would be, in that context, legitimate to say, lord, make my forehead harder. May I be more determined, more obstinate in walking in your ways and keeping that determination and focus. Focus because of the alternative is a hard. See, we want a hard for a forehead in that way, because there's a kind of hard forehead that's a godly hard forehead it's. It's a forehead that's that's, uh, determined to love more deeply, to, to feel that, to be more passionate to love the Lord, god, with more intensity. So that kind of a hard forehead is determined to have a heart that is living and and tender, a tender heart with a hard forehead. That's what we want, that a determination in life that's driven by a tender heart. But because the alternative and we get that in Jeremiah, chapter three and verse three is the word, there's that phrase, let me just find it here. Yeah, he accuses.
Speaker 1:The condemnation is to the people is that they have a kind of defiant attitude and a shamelessness. So at times, like when we thought, there are times when we put our head in our hands because of our of shame or despair, and our forehead goes down and we want to hide our face because maybe we've been found out, our sins have come out into the open with, and then the shame and we can't hold up our heads. But what if, even when our sins are brought out into the open, we don't put our heads down, we don't hide our face, but we lift up our forehead and double down in defiance and say, no, I've nothing to be ashamed of, I'm not going to be ashamed of my mess and evil and corruption, I'm going to shake my fist at almighty God. That attitude is also possible. And Jeremiah 3.3, he says you have the forehead of a prostitute. You refuse to be ashamed. So there's that, there's those that you know.
Speaker 1:That is a hard forehead with a hard heart. Hard forehead, hard heart, that's the worst combination. To have a heart that doesn't even care about sin and evil, doesn't feel shame anymore. That's the worst thing. When a person says, oh yeah, I don't, I don't feel any guilt and shame and they sometimes I've heard people say that as if that's a good thing. I have no guilt and shame, I have no regrets in life, no, no shame for anything. And I'm like, wow, that's a sign, that's a a declaration that a person is is so spiritually corrupt and rotten. The worst that's like advanced terminal illness, when a person can, if they genuinely feel no shame. Uh, because that's that's a sign of of absolute rottenness inside, absolute destruction of moral life and meaning. So we can ask for a hard forehead, but only if we also have a tender heart. The worst thing to have is a hard forehead and a hard heart heart. The worst thing to have is a hard forehead and a hard heart.
Speaker 1:But just as we go on and I know we're coming to the end of the time in a way but Psalm 3 has this lovely idea that the Lord can lift up our heads. So if our heads have gone down and there's the sense of despair and exhaustion or shame and guilt, but the Lord, if we look to him, he will lift up. He can lift up our heads and give us hope and take away our shame and forgive our guilt and cleanse us and so on. So that lovely image of he could we put our head in our hands. But he can come and hold our head and lift us up and show us a different way to look and think. But we must just touch on Revelation 14. And even yeah, we'll just leave it at Revelation 14, really from verses 1 down to verse 11.
Speaker 1:Because this idea that we to be marked with a, a name or a number on our foreheads and there's a whole subculture of modern Christianity that perceives that, the idea of being marked with the number of the beast on our forehead, is not actually about the focus of our attention, but it's really just a matter, say, of having a barcode tattooed onto our foreheads or a chip implanted into our foreheads or something like that. But, as we saw with Deuteronomy, it's not so much to do. There may be many reasons to resist having barcodes and chips put into our foreheads or hands, and I imagine that a government that said everyone has to be chipped in their forehead and hands, I mean, could only be doing that for demonic reasons, given what the scriptures say. But I don't think that's really the case. It's not speaking about. This is something that will only happen at the very, very end of the world. But Revelation 14 is speaking about the way that humanity is all through between the ascension of Jesus and his return, for all this period of the last days that has lasted 2,000 years.
Speaker 1:The danger is that people have the mark of the beast on their forehead. Well, let me just read Revelation, chapter 14, verse 1 says I looked and there before me was the Lamb standing on Mount Zion and with them 144,000. Remember that is not a limited crowd of 144,000. Because, remember, the crowd is actually a multitude that nobody can number, from every nation in the world, that it's a representative, meaning the entirety of God's people from the Old Testament and the New Testament, a whole lot of their. And they had the Lamb's name and his Father's name written on their foreheads, meaning the focus of their attention. They have set their foreheads like the determination, the focus, the purpose in life is Jesus and the Father, the Lamb and the Ancient of Days. That is what determines the life, the direction, the love, the focus. And so it is obvious on their foreheads, where they are pointing towards their faces, their foreheads are set towards the lamb standing on Mount Zion and the father seated on the throne, and that should be apparent on the face of any Christian we meet. Where are they headed? Where is their focus? 20, verse 4 oh no, let well look that we must.
Speaker 1:Let me instead, um, just note what happens in revelation, 14, verses 9 to 11, because there, if we do not have that focus on the jesus and the father, what the? The alternative is that we are taken up with the cares and concerns of humanity and the number of the beast. Six is the number of humanity, and if we are not preoccupied with Jesus and through Jesus, we are brought to the Father in the power of the Spirit. If that's not what controls our forehead, our determination, as Jesus warned, he said no, if you don't have that, what will happen is the cares and concerns of day-to-day human life will occupy you and take you down to hell, and the pleasures and treasures of this passing age will be treasured as if they last forever. But they don't. They're here today and gone tomorrow, and so that is the mark of humanity.
Speaker 1:Six is the number of humanity, and it means those that have the mark of the beast on their forehead. It means their determination in life, their focus in life. They've set themselves towards to achieve nothing but human things, human things, just human things. It's just humanity as the center of attention, over and over and over that threefold repetition human, human, human no real focus. Human, human no, no real focus, no focus. No. Liberating, set freeing of the mind and heart to look at it, to see christ. Uh, you know, set your hearts on things above, where christ is only those whose minds and hearts have been set free, whose foreheads are liberated to be determined in the right way.
Speaker 1:And so it says in revelation 14, from verse 9 if anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or his hand, he will drink the wine of god's wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and such a person will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the lamb, and the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever. They have no rest, day or night, these worshippers of the beast and its image, whoever receives the mark of its name. Such sobering, intense words, really, about warning us what? How is our forehead marked and claimed? What is the determination and focus of our lives? And as we close, it's just that notion of the determination, the forehead of Jesus himself.
Speaker 1:In Isaiah 50, verse 7, it says he was not ashamed. And remember, shame would make your head drop down, unable to push forward with confidence. But it said he was not ashamed. But his forehead was set like flint in one direction to the cross. He set his face like flint To the cross. He set his face like flint, that flint image that's in the prophets as well.
Speaker 1:To have a forehead that's hard, determined, cannot be deviated, cannot be distracted. And his focus was the cross and he set his forehead To focus on that and to get through that To achieve the work that he was sent to do. And just as the ancient priests had holy to the Lord on their foreheads, so they, when they did that, dedicated to the Lord on their foreheads, they were kind of embodying the meaning of the forehead. We're kind of embodying the meaning of the forehead there Our foreheads are to be. It's our minds, revealing that our minds are holy to the Lord. All of us need to be like that focused, dedicated, holy. And so the Lord Jesus, holy to the Lord. He is the priest, the great high priest, utterly dedicated, single-minded in completing his work, as number 623 tells us.