Eternal Glorious Fountain Ministry (EGFM)
Meeting: Anamnesis 2022 Day 1 PM
Date: Wednesday, 7th December 2022
Speaker 2: Reverend Kayode Oyegoke
Hebrews 3:1 says, “Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus”. Paul uses the word “vocation” to describe this profession in Ephesians 4:1; “I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called”. We cannot measure up to this calling without the ingredients of all lowliness, meekness with longsuffering, and forbearance of one another in love. God wants to see forbearance in us to prove to Him that we have the ability for longsuffering. If we cannot keep this instruction here, it will show in the world to come.
The purpose of the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God is to come into, firstly, the perfect man and then the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ (Eph. 4:11-13). This is the vocation. We cannot come to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ if we have not first come into the stature of a perfect man. A perfect man is one who is mature enough to go unto fullness. Christ is the perfect man, while the Son of the living God is the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.
Christ has a fullness. He is the one anointed by God to bring us into the provision of goodness and mercy. It is possible to have the knowledge of the Son of God without having the stature of the Son of God. Knowledge should lead to stature but, because of our different response levels, some people have knowledge but have not used it or obeyed it. Knowledge should be followed by practice. It is in practice that skill is acquired. Knowledge is only an exposure to the vocation.
There is a vocation that God has given to every man. This vocation is not a natural talent or a prowess that natural men, even outside the church, can practice. Carpentry was not Jesus’ vocation; He had an unseen vocation that He was measuring up to. Because He had perfect information, Jesus was empowered by God to know that the usefulness of man surpasses the natural and should not be limited to earthly professions.
We all have a spiritual vocation. A man can be useful for many things. Therefore, if a man only has the skill of an earthly profession, he is ignorant and has only used a little bit of his potential. Such a man has not checked the investment that God placed in him as a man. Evil spirits are interested in man because he is of great price. This is why Matthew 16:26 says, “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”. Gaining the whole world speaks of fulfilling earthly expectations of man or what people expect of a man. If that is all that a man puts his investment into, he has gained nothing.
If a man only desires to become a manpower on earth and he invests all of his ability into earthly profiting until he becomes a mighty tree, he has accomplished nothing. The use of man surpasses what man can comprehend. Satan knows this because he once operated a vocation in heaven. He had seen the importance of managing heaven and the only way he could gain the allegiance of man and cut him off from real destiny was to lie to him about the earth and overwhelm him with earth.
To God, the earth is very poor. Man is poor on earth. As mighty as Jesus was while He was on earth, scriptures said He was poor (2 Cor. 8:9). Presently, Jesus cannot be known by natural judgment; it takes a magnification that is through the power of eternal source to know Jesus. The earth degrades Jesus and makes Him look like a religious leader. Jesus is not one of those religious leaders but has been empowered by God to be the model man for mankind. He is God’s intent for men and is a gift to man.
Satan has been lying to men, and the day that men see that he is an outcast and has nothing to offer, they will change their search and will want to become what God wants them to be. Man can be made to ride on the wings of heaven. While on earth, a man can practice heaven and partake of things that will commandeer the attention of heaven. Such a man could have his physical existence here on earth, but his affairs are being conducted from the realm of the unseen; a realm much higher than the whole earth. Therefore, it is poverty for a man to reduce and limit himself to things that are seen on earth.
Jesus passionately desires to remove religious and traditional church veils around the vocation of Christianity. There are heavenly things a man can be doing and it is a job. A man can be admitted into a profession that has nothing to do with the earth. He could be so involved in that profession and be registered in heaven for it. It is real!
A man can be given a responsibility that is not of this earth but from an unseen world. Men would tag a man who is passionate about this heavenly responsibility as crazy because their hearts are still tied to the earth. God is finding it difficult to open men up to their real potential because of a lie the enemy told them, which can be referred to as "a morsel of bread" (Heb. 12:16), meanwhile there are vast resources God has left for us to inherit. He has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly blessings in Christ Jesus (Eph. 1:3).
The manpower God is building is for a vocation that is not of this present order. God wants us to have a practice and be recruited into a place where we will be involved in heavenly things. Satan is lying to us; he does not want us to be heavenly relevant and involved. For example, Satan is the one who has branded women as creatures who are only kitchen useful. However, a woman can be awakened to realities in heaven. “Awake oh Zion, put on thy strength and thy beautiful garment” (Isa. 52:1). If scripture is telling us to awake out of sleep, then it means we were all sleeping. The whole world is a matrix, and all men are connected in a spiritual rabbit hole. Men think they are busy or involved in something real but what they are doing actually translates to nothing in the spirit.
The moment a man begins to question the already programmed arrangement on earth, spirits will know that something has happened to that man. The day a believer begins to ask the question, “why am I a Christian?”, such a man is about to wake up from his spiritual sleep. Satan will begin to find a way to inject such a man again to make sure he goes back to sleep.
“Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus…” (Heb. 3:1). This calling is not an earthly calling, it is heavenly. Our heavenly calling is our vocation. Having done an earthly vocation (which is Christ), there is still a heavenly calling. There is also such kind of calling in this present heaven, a bar that our adversary has once attended.
The word “Satan” speaks of the opposite of an advocate, so he can argue a case in heaven against men who should have an inheritance in heaven. He brings charges against men. In the days of Job, Job called for an advocate but there was no one. God was both the Judge and the Advocate, and that was not easy. However, we now have an advocate who can stand against the accussations of Satan. The job is a war of words.
The things of God are not taking the earth over because Satan is stopping that. Satan understands legal terms. He understands that the heaven is guided by laws, so also God. Satan presented himself when the sons of God gathered because he knew that it was time for Job to be adopted into the beloved. The word “Satan” means hinderer or someone who stands against.
“Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them to present himself before the LORD. And the LORD said unto Satan, From whence comest thou? And Satan answered the LORD, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.” (Job 2:1-2). This movement of Satan is not ordinary; it is a cross-movement. By this movement, Satan is measuring those who are ascending to God and cutting them off horizontally. Satan is a real enemy, and he is the one who tells men that there is no God or that God is not real.
“And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, Doth Job fear God for nought?...” (Job 1: 8 – 9). Satan discredited all of God’s boast on Job to say that no man serves God for nothing. This was Satan’s argument, that Job only feared God because He had secured him in the natural. However, Satan was later proven wrong by Job’s wisdom in the face of the temptations he brought his way.
The world of heaven is a legal world and Satan presses charges. Jesus suffered so much, and He did that for our sake, to prepare for man this call. The call is not just for Christendom but for mankind as a whole. Every man out there is a useful tool in God’s scheme. God wants to use man and the use is not to preach. There is a relevance or importance in the scheme of the things of heaven that man is not aware of.
Our calling and profession is heavenly and we should consider the High Priest of this calling or profession. Our profession is what we are called into. Jesus was raised by God to train us into the profession. He was appointed as the High Priest to make man heavenly fit even while on earth, not just to make man go to heaven after he dies. Man should have the ability to manage heavenly things, he should become one with all that the calling is about.
“who was faithful to him that appointed him, as also Moses was faithful in all his house. For this man was counted worthy of more glory than Moses, inasmuch as he who hath builded the house hath more honour than the house. For every house is builded by some man; but he that built all things is God.” (Heb. 3:2-4). Jesus is more in honour than Moses because of His kind of building. Jesus was raised from the dead to build all things God. He was raised to build a house whose materials are all things of God. These things are not what God created with His hands but extractions of God’s person. The person who has the honour to do that is Jesus Christ.
Our Lord Jesus is the one who has the honour of taking God’s things (or things exclusive to God that He does not share) in order to build man. God’s things are not things from creation. Jesus Himself is a house and the person who built Him was God. God built Him on earth and scattered the house (via His physical death) in order to move the house into a high-powered dimension. Jesus had to physically die to come into that high-powered house.
Jesus was raised on earth but He later began to ask God for a higher glory (John 17:5). However, the Father said that He would have to be rebuilt to come into that glory. The Father demanded that His body must fall to the ground and be raised a different body (John 12:24). While Jesus was being raised on earth, He was cooperating with God. But a time came when the Father demanded that Jesus dies and becomes unaware of another resurrection into a higher stature.
When Jesus said He had finished the work the Father gave Him, He was not talking about the work of raising the dead or healing the sick but the work of being raised as God’s building (John 17:4). In some level or dimension of building, there is the awareness and corporation of the person who is being built. However, in some, the person has to be dead and unaware when God would be raising Him.
“We then, as workers together with him, beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain.” (2 Corinth. 6:1). There is a time when we co-work with God in being built, just like Jesus was hearing and obeying the words of the Father on earth until He became the work of God. However, a time came when He was not involved in the resurrection (at His death). The work of God is the building of the Son of God (John 6:28-29). To build a man like Jesus was a great success. Jesus is a building that can address heaven. Moses and Elijah were buildings but not the kind that Jesus was; they came to witness to Him on the Mount of Transfiguration.
Jesus allowed God to raise Him as a high-powered work on earth, then the Father demanded that He lays Himself to rest and allow God to raise Him into a higher work. The Father said He should cease from working, like He Himself also rested after working in Genesis. The most difficult thing is for a being who has been raised as a work to stop working. The ability to stop or cease from working is an entrance into a higher dimension of work. What God did in Genesis by ceasing from work is the preaching of the gospel to man, that we will all cease from our own work someday. God’s intention was for Adam to cease from his work and then, God will work.
The whole of Hebrews 3 will lead to rest. If a man is not empowered by God, he will never rest. Man has been trained by Satan not to rest. God has been trying to make men rest but they are not cooperating with Him. God is trying to build us a house that can rest when that season comes. The building has the capacity to rest. It is when we are resting that God will build His eternal home. When a man is still alive, God won’t come.
When man rests, Satan will be demobilized. The adversary cannot manage or handle the principle of rest, because he is a being of unrest. Satan does not like men who are resting, he is happy when men are busy for nothing. When a man is hasty about life, he is a prey to Satan.
God has a spiritual pill that can make a man to start learning how to rest (Matt. 11:28-30). Many men have lived many years on earth, but they have never rested. God gives His beloved sleep; beloved here are the building of God. They are those who have learnt everlasting life. To rest in peace is a commandment to hands off from our cares or from our life and let God handle it. What we should be seeking is the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. Our hearts should be trusting in God instead of fear. We should ask God to help us but not take thoughts about our future.
Summary
1. (Hebrews 3:1). We have been called to a heavenly vocation. This profession/vocation is two-sided —the first which is becoming a perfect man, and then secondly, coming to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ (Eph. 4:13).
2. As a vocation, it comprises both knowledge and practice. After acquiring knowledge, it is important to put it into practice. The knowledge of the Son of God gives us the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. One can have the knowledge of the Son of God and not have His stature. Knowledge should lead to stature.
3. (Hebrews 3:1). We are admonished to consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus, because we have an adversary who also has a vocation. He goes to and fro in the earth and walks up and down in it, with the purpose of cutting down all who try to ascend.
4. Jesus was raised by God to train us in the profession. Jesus was appointed as the High Priest to make man heavenly fit, not just to make a man go to heaven. Being heavenly fit means having the ability to manage heavenly things.
5. Jesus is a house built by God. There was a segment of His raising that needed His cooperation for thirty-three and half years. This first stage is the program of salvation. Jesus heard and aligned in obedience until He became the work of God (Jn. 6:29). But there was another stage when God was to raise Him from the dead. At this point, His cooperation was not needed; all He had to do was cease from His work, and enter rest, just as God did (Heb. 4:10). This is God's intention from the beginning. It is in this state of rest that God can build His Eternal home in a man.
6. The whole of Hebrews 3 will lead to rest. If a man is not empowered by God, he will never rest. Man has been trained by Satan not to rest. God has been trying to make men rest but they are not cooperating with Him. God is trying to build us a house that can rest when that season comes. The building has the capacity to rest. It is when we are resting that God will build His eternal home. When a man is still alive, God won’t come.
7. When man rests, Satan will be demobilized. The adversary cannot manage or handle the principle of rest because he is a being of unrest. Satan does not like men who are resting. He is happy when men are busy for nothing. When a man is hasty about life, he is a prey to Satan.
Blessings!
Abiola - 1 year ago