Programme: Writing the Vision (October Edition)
Date: Saturday, 21st October 2023
Transcript Excerpt
1. God’s servant started to minister on a key subject in the New Testament from 2 Corinthians 3. He ministered how death has been made a scapegoat and was dismembered in our Lord Jesus. This same work would also be accomplished in our lives. The activity of death is prevailing within us as long as we have not come into a season where we are able to see all that Jesus saw. Jesus was inspired by the Spirit to live the way He did; that was how the activity of the Spirit of God opened to Him every precept and line around the word of God.
2. “I and my Father are one. [31] Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him. [32] Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shewed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me?” (John 10:30-32). This is when our Lord Jesus had come into oneness with the Father – He embodied the image and likeness of the Father. It took good works to raise Him to that place where He was one with the Father, and those good works were as a result of His alignment with the precepts and lines of the word of God. He journeyed around the lines of the word of God. Before we can relate with the word of God, we must first relate with the word of Christ and let it dwell richly in us (Coloss. 3:16).
3. Beauty has been brought to the weightiness of precepts because in it we find activities of the Spirit of the Lord, especially the spirit of wisdom and revelation. There are warfares that can be carried out with revelation but many times the revelation has not found its place through to our flesh and has not yet mixed with blood in us. The seasons when the word mixes with faith in us are those seasons when we are able to see the ways of precepts, with which we war.
4. Our Lord Jesus said, “I and my Father are one” (Jn. 10:30). This is instructive for us because what God set out in Genesis to achieve, and was achieved in the days of the early church would also be achieved in our day. God has begun a move that would bring us back to that pedestal in the spirit where Adam erred. The teachings we have received this week are to fortify us to respond like Jesus did in the area where Adam fell.
5. Death came from heaven (through Lucifer) and it came when a man chose not to prefer another. Adam could have preferred posterity and done otherwise. Lucifer could have preferred the angel Michael in heaven, and by so doing, would have kept his estate. Preferring another is a common denominator for everyone who would overcome in this day we live in. Most of the epistles of Paul were to empower the saints to prefer the other. Preferring one another is a commandment in the epistles (Rom. 12:10). It is a counsel we ought to keep until we come into the honor of everlasting life. Death works in a way that it always makes us seek our own.
6. “Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves.” (Philip. 2:3). It will take the cross to deal with the formation in us that limits us from obeying this instruction. The cross comprises the wisdom and power of God – the two things that make us wise, weak and foolish. All the dealings we go through are meant to make us weaker and more foolish-looking because that is how we would be made strong and wise. It is the cross that makes us not to seek our own things, but rather, the things of others, and we ought to keep doing so until we become professionals at it.
7. The threshold called sin and death, which separated us from God, is a measure of life that has its own precepts and ways; and this birthed the old man in every man. Every man has an image and likeness. We have profited from measures of the precepts of sin. The formation of the old man was gained when we took the offerings of sin concerning ourselves, and used it to express the ways of sin. To crucify the old man, one has to bring him to a terrain where he is not functional.
8. (Gen. 3:4-6). The serpent told Eve, “Ye shall not surely die”, implying that they would live – referring to living another life which in itself is death. Death is a glorious life. Without righteous judgments, we cannot surmount death. Satan promised Adam and Eve that they would be independent of God, being gods. God has created every man with the potential of being a god, but one birthed by His word.
9. There is the propensity to judge is in every man, that was why Jesus said to “judge not” (Matt. 7:1). “Judge not” means, do not assume a seat or conclude. One of the ways that we can do well is to respond in mercy. James also warned, “Do not err, my beloved brethren. [17] Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” (Jam. 1:16-17). There was the possibility for the saints here to be exalted by virtue of the use of good and perfect gifts, because they were elect, however, they could err because they had not yet journeyed from the “virtue” of the good and perfect gift to the “ways” of it.
10. One proof of someone who has ways is that such is not quick to judge. We ought to be quick to hear, but slow to speak and slow to wrath (Jam. 1:19). The Lord does not expect us to judge outside what we have heard. If we use our own judgment, we will err. There are some judgments that are available to us and there are some to come. Our judgment will come short of giving the Lord praise when we judge without having God’s ways in us.
11. Eve lacked judgment, that is why she was deceived (1 Tim. 2:14), but Adam had a measure of judgment. Death is good for food and pleasant to the eyes, if one has not been exposed to the way of salvation. Death can also make a man to reign. While Jesus was on earth, He was nullifying all the judgment of the Pharisees because they did not have the way of Moses, required to sit in his seat.
12. Jesus taught us that how to ascend is to descend (Jn. 3:13). Jesus preferred all of us by going to the cross, that is why He is the greatest. The ranking in the city of God is according to how we did likewise. God is empowering us to make decisions that will cost us our lives. These are decisions that will help us inspire men to see Christ. The ability to descend is a secret that we need a kind of flesh to run with.
13. We know many things but we do not yet own them. The secret lies in service (Luke 22:25-26). Serving others is something we are all tempted to despise, but that is how we would come to judgment. That is where the Holy Ghost will make us owners of what we have known. It does not yet look glorious as what Satan painted to Adam, but it still looks grievous. It seems not to tell us things about ourselves, but that is the way to be dismembered of self until Christ is formed in us.
14. The ways of Christ are the ways of charity. A man of charity is the man that can take commandments from the Father, one that can become one with the Father. The word of the Lord is coming to us so we can have the image and the likeness of God. By God’s grace, we would become children of the Most High in our day. To be a god is to have the image and likeness of God, it is to be a child of God as we move from being poor to being needy of the Father in our souls.
15.Death, which is Satan’s boast, is being made a scapegoat in our days. By God’s grace, we will not repeat the history of the devil. We will prefer others, and keep the commandment until we become everlasting men. The earth will not lack judges. God wants to raise judges; those who are not ignorant of death. We will not be ignorant of death.
Blessings!