Eternal Glorious Fountain Ministry (EGFM)
Programme: Lekki Soul Centre (LSC)
Date: Wednesday, 16th Feb. 2022
Ministering: Rev. Kayode Oyegoke
God preached the gospel unto Abraham (Gen. 3:8-9). The book of Genesis is the gospel of God; its preacher was God. First, He said, "I will make thee a great nation"; then, "I will bless thee and make thy name great" (Gen 12:2). This is the gospel! The servant of God once had the thought that verse 3 of Gen 12, "...to curse him that curseth thee…", is not a New Testament statement. He later understood that one could not curse Abraham and not be cursed. Curse is not about being poor; one can be rich and still be under a curse. To be cursed is not about not having the privileges or blessings of the natural man. For the people who are under the covenant of God, to be blessed is beyond possessing natural things. If our understanding of blessing is limited to what the natural man calls blessing, then we are still in a state of being cursed.
Abraham never had the blessing until he met with God. When he met with God, he was imparted with the blessing. If God did not bless Abraham, then he would have been miserable. It would take the installation of the throne of God to deliver a man from a curse completely. No matter the laying on of hands or the blessing in the natural, a cursed state cannot be changed unless God removes it. Privileges or money do not describe a blessed person. The blessing is to break people free from the life Satan suggests for people to live by. Satan designed a curse and called it life, and men have taken it. That life contains the vocabularies for daily living, but they are languages of the curse.
"And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and His servants shall serve Him…" (Rev. 22:3). It will take the installation of God's throne for the curse to cease. The last two chapters of the book of Revelation describes an architectural city coming down from God to men, and the throne of God was seen in it. The city was called Jesus's wife or "the Lamb's bride". That description symbolises a people who have come together, a conglomeration of people who have taken from the Lamb. Such people have become a shelter for many by the life they have received, and the Lamb is at home to find expression amidst them. These people can allow the Lamb to live out Himself, fully, to His greatest capacity. The Lamb cannot live His life amidst churches right now; He needs developed Christians.
The city of God is not a natural city but people. Jesus called us a city set on a hill, which cannot be hidden (Matt. 5:14). It is that city that is free of curse. This tells us that every individual in the city no longer has a curse. It means that the city is free from what Satan offers as life. You need wisdom to be free from how Satan will tell you to live. Satan is a master; his curses are not obvious–they can remain for a million years until God appears. The devil used to be a servant of God in the heavens, highly decked with abilities beyond what man can think. He used to be holy. He used to be holier than most ministers on the earth; that's why he does not respect anyone. When Jesus came in the flesh, the devil came to tempt Him. If Jesus was not endowed and mercy was not given to Him, He would have fallen for the temptation. Satan can tempt anyone to display power. The devil does not fear anyone. But Jesus broke him.
The evil Satan does is not what people know. The word "Satan" talks about the adversary: someone who stands against you. Anytime you want to do something real in the spirit, Satan comes against it (1 Pet. 5:8). He is called Satan, the devil, that old serpent. The evil Satan is perpetuating is not yet fully understood. Satan can create extremely nice things to stop many from advancing into God's own demand. He does evil to stop a person from entering into God's life. God said that "I will bless you and make you great so that you will know how to discern between good and evil" (paraphrased, Gen. 12:2; Isa. 7:15). It would take blessings for you to see what Satan does. Satan has sent many ministers that heaven did not send into ministry.
To overcome Satan is to love not your life unto the death (Rev. 12:11). If you want to be really blessed, you will not love your life. There is something in us that makes us feel that if we are not successful on the outside, life has ended. God is not against being successful outwardly; rather, He wants us to be successful on the inside.
When a man grows and becomes great (according to the standard of truth), he will know what it means to be successful on the inside. It is a great man that will stand, and the gates of heaven will open. A time came when God wanted to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, and He visited Abraham to inform him (Gen. 18:17). Abraham was so blessed that the interface between heaven and earth became one. Angels come to his house to eat, drink and return (Gen. 18:1-8). The price Abraham paid to come into this kind of blessing was to leave his country, kindred and father's house (Gen. 12:1).
The Leading of the Spirit of God
A man is fortunate when God leads him. If leading stops in our lives, then we are dead (spiritually). Leading is not the same as hearing from God. God can speak to a man, but He is not leading such. Leading is throwing a man into a challenge of life and experiences. At times, those who are being led are not being spoken to, which is part of the training. Some are being led, and they do not know. When God is training someone for the sake of the blessing, He will starve the person of the evidence of flesh in every way possible. When God is leading you, He is about to bless you.
"The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still waters." (Ps. 23:1-2). Most times, when God makes us lie down (when we are being led), we do not know it. To be led by the Spirit of God is our heritage as children of God. God leads people in different ways, but it is towards the same goal; Salvation. There is a leading for each of us wherever we find ourselves. Though leading is common to all, it varies from person to person. What the Lord is doing by leading is to make men appreciate a kind of life. As long as we keep hearing the gospel, we cannot escape leading. Leading goes along with the gospel. The power of the gospel is leading. God blesses a man by His word through the gospel. Then He impacts and makes the gospel tangible through His ways.
The Holy Ghost knows how to interpret the preaching. Some people are admitted into the word of righteousness first through leading before the word comes to them. In contrast, others receive the word first, and then leading begins. Ultimately, everyone who partakes of the word must be led. The pathway might be confusing, and people around you may not understand it, but God does. What God preached to Abraham was a life that he needed to walk in (Gen. 17:1), and he believed God.
The Path of Life
Faith is the path. We need the word for that path. What we call path or way is 'spirit'. When spirit is being given, path is being given; and if a man walk in that path, he becomes spiritual. 'Death' as seen in the law of sin and death (Rm. 8:1-2), symbolises a path; another way of life. Death means separation from God. Satan can teach someone a kind of life that will take such a person away from God. This is why it is necessary and essential that when people are born again, they should be taught the path of life (Ps. 16:11).
It is possible for a person to be born again and not know the path of life. A man can live years on earth without knowing the path of life. It is not prayers that bring presence. Instead, it is path that brings it. When we are shown the path of life, and we walk in it, we break through into presence. When God met Abraham, what He wanted to do was to bring him into presence. God wanted to bring him near. This nearness is not a religious posture as it is assumed. A person may not appear to be near in the outward, but within, he has broken through the earth into God's presence. The real breakthrough is when people are taught how to use spirit on earth to get into God's presence. In the end, everyone needs God.
The Making of God’s People
"For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put My laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to Me a people…" (Heb. 8:10). Everything we are doing on earth ends in the promise of becoming God's people; this is everlasting life. When God met Abraham, He told him that he would be made a people, a great nation (Gen. 12:2). That phrase "great nation" will be better understood spiritually. When God sees a man, He sees a nation standing before Him. Nation does not necessarily mean a mass of people as in numbers because the greatness of a nation is not necessarily measured in numbers. In the same vein, the greatness of a ministry is not determined by the number of people in it.
Abraham conquered five great kings with just three hundred and eighteen men (Gen 14:14). Immediately after Abraham slew the nations, Melchizedek, the king of Salem brought bread and wine to him (Gen 14:18). Bread and wine are the foods of great men. By this food, Abraham was welcomed into the fold of great beings, a fold which Melchizedek already belonged to (Heb. 7:4). Abraham went to war with the kings because of Lot, not because they were his enemies. However, God wanted Abraham to kill those kings, and He used this opportunity to do so. Those kings were no ordinary kings. The kings overcame Sodom and took all their goods (Gen. 14:10-11).
A person can help his brother overcome some natures, not knowing that he has also helped himself. What took Lot was ready to take Abraham (Gen. 14:12). Abraham’s helping Lot from the hands of the five kings was Abraham helping himself. The kings would have disturbed Abraham later on, but God helped Abraham kill them while they were weak. After this, Melchizedek was joyful because he saw that the program of God was prospering.
The children of Israel were delivered from Egypt as they journeyed into the wilderness. Moses went up to God on Sinai, and God spoke His intent for Israel to him (Ex. 19:3-5). If they were "children of Israel", it means they were not yet Israel. Israel is not just a number of people. Israel is a stature before God. The name was gotten from their father, who wrestled with an angel till daybreak (Gen. 32:24). The angel put his finger in the hollow of Jacob's thigh, and Jacob's joint went out of place. He became a limper, yet, he did not let the angel go (Gen. 32:25-26). He was able to hold the angel down because he wanted to be blessed. He wrestled till he was blessed.
Through this encounter, Jacob came into Abrahamic blessing: having power with God and with men (Gen. 32:28). He had prevailed unto God. God wanted to bring the children of Israel into the fullness of Jacob's new name -- Israel. God took them out of Egypt and into the wilderness to train them so that they could come into the fullness of the name (Israel) from being children. The name of the father is a different experience. When God met Moses, He said, "I am the God of your father—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob" (Exo. 3:6). God implied that He does not deal with children directly; instead, He deals with fathers to become their God. Because of Abraham's obedience, God heard the cry of the children of Israel in Egypt.
Although God had made His name known to the fathers by the covenant name God Almighty (Exo. 6:3), but to the children of Israel He revealed Himself as Jehovah. They will have to first know Him by the name Jehovah before, they will come to know Him by the fathers' name. So, when God speaks of revealing His name, He is revealing Himself or showing His secrets.
Jacob came into the blessing just as Abraham came into the blessing. Afterwards, the twelve children of Israel were brought into the wilderness to be blessed too. The wilderness was not a place to curse them but to bless them. God can use any location to bless a man. The environment does not limit him. God taught and showed the children of Israel His works so that they might know how strong God was. He fed them each day without planting; they drank water daily without boreholes. If we do things that will import God, He will come and show us that He is God.
"Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love His appearing" (2 Tim. 4:8). To love His appearing is to live according to the dictates of what will bring Him down. Jesus said, "When I come, will I find faith?" (Luke 18:8). This implies there will be a coming of Jesus. Jesus will not rapture the church in its present state; He will need to culture the Church by teachings. He will come Himself, though not physically. He will take over things, pulpit and ministries, to train the church so He can rapture it. He will do to us as He did in the wilderness where He was training Israel for forty years to be like their three fathers (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob). But the training was not easy as many fell, except a few. This reveals to us that to be a father is not by the ability to procreate. It is only God who can make a father in the spirit. A father is he who has received life from God and has lived by it.
Israel at Mount Sinai had not become a peculiar treasure unto God (Ex. 19:5-6). Peculiar treasures are peculiar people. To be peculiar is not new for Christians; it is an ancient promise. This is the gospel. The gospel is to make us a peculiar being. Treasures are the kind of people God keeps secrets with. It is a result of this keeping that the children of Israel are blessed thus: "The LORD bless thee, and keep thee: The LORD make His face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: The LORD lift up His countenance upon thee, and give thee peace." (Num. 6:24-26). When God keeps a man, nobody can find that man. As we are in perilous times, we need to be kept.
"Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine: 19:6 And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation." (Ex. 19:5-6). The greatest of all the promises is the first promise God spoke -- "you shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me". God declared His intent that to get to Him, one must first be a holy nation, then a kingdom of priests or royal priesthood before one can become a peculiar people (1 Pet. 2:9). So, when God said to Abraham that He would make him a great nation, He was not saying He would make a great nation out of Abraham, but that He would make him a great nation, even as a man. This is the biblical way of blessing men. God blessed men like Job in this manner. After Job's trial, God asked him questions about the heavens. Job responded that he had heard of Him, but now his eyes have seen (Job 42:5). Therefore, God renewed his flesh as a baby (Job 33:25). When a man meets with God, things will change.
Jesus will not come until these things spoken of -- holy nation, royal priesthood and peculiar people -- come to pass in the church. These promises are not cliché, which we sing or quote to arrive at. There is a path to them. The least is to be a holy nation, and the church can become it. Jesus purchased us with His blood for us to come into this state, to be a holy nation. Then we can move to become a royal priesthood, and finally, a peculiar people. Israel was God's people but was not yet a holy nation. He said if they would hear His voice and keep His covenant, then they would become (Exo. 19:5-6). We cannot become without keeping commandments. The door to the promises of God is keeping covenant or commandments, and there are lots of commandments in the New Testament. The Old Testament promise is an inferior picture to the reality in the New Testament.
Only Jesus has been kept away from the earth after resurrection. He became a peculiar treasure; so, God could not leave Him on earth (Acts 3:21). Jesus is an embodiment of treasure (Col. 2:3, Col. 2:9). We should not look different from Him. However, we are still different from Him. He will keep sending things to us to make us look exactly like Him. The church is a collecting point where people will be taught and then brought into God–a place where men will be trained, raised, empowered till they become exactly like Jesus.