Programme: Believers’ Convention Prayer Meeting 2021 (Week Six Day Four)
Date: 22nd July, 2021
Powered by: Eternal Glorious Fountain Ministry (EGFM)
Minister: Reverend Kayode Oyegoke
“Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts. But who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a refiner's fire, and like fullers' soap: And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness.” (Malachi 3:1-3). The sons of Levi are the sons of the Kingdom or Sanctuary. They are the ones to whom the Messenger of the covenant will appear, so that He can bring them into the Most Holy Place. The sons of Levi are Priests. A Levite who has graduated from the Inner Court is he who has entered into the Holy place.
The pattern of service was shown in the Old Testament when God chose Levi as the first born of the people, and drew them closer to Himself. The Levites came closer to God than the rest of the tribes of Israel. The house of Levi was chosen for the portion of Urim and Thummim, which are the instruments in the Holiest (Deut. 33:8). There is no way a man can function in the Holiest without the Urim and Thummim. God called the house of Levi to bear the responsibilities of the Holiest.
God called Israel out to make them an envy of all nations; and His intention was that all of Israel will eventually come into the Holiest. However, they all could not respond to God. So God took the Levites out of Israel for the purpose of service. God chose Levi to redeem the whole of Israel unto Himself.
The word “Holiest” depicts perfection and those who come here are called “comers”. “For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year.” (Heb. 10:1-3). ‘Coming to the law’ means coming to the realm of perfection. The law of the Old Testament is a kind of a perfect law. However, it could not perfect the comers because there was still a remembrance of their sins. God was remembering the sins of the people because the law could not purge their consciences.
When a man engages the actual law of God, there should be no remembrance of sins anymore. “This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them; And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.” (Heb. 10:16-17). There is a notion in Christendom that says that believers should not be sin conscious. This should not be over stretched into things that are scripturally real and true. The New Birth does not deal with sins in the soul. The spirit is quickened at New Birth; but the soul or the conscience still needs to be purged in order to offer service to God.
Serving God is beyond the conventional pattern of doing some physical assignments in Church. It is beyond gathering and participating in church routine. If a man’s conscience is not purged, he will not know how to serve God. Sin has already programmed us on how to serve God in our hearts. Sin has defined things that are sinful to us, and those that are not. We are thereby limited in discerning what sin really is, much less deal with it. The purpose of this is to cut off man’s service unto God so that he won’t be able to reach God. Satan intends that man’s conscience will not be awakened to serve God. The sin we are referring to is not fornication, stealing etc; those are obvious offences that are yet lesser in strength than sin. Sin is an order of life that men live; it is a civilisation that is against God. Sin is a blanket covering the nations (Isa. 25:7). A man can stop fornicating but this does not mean that he has stopped sinning. Sin has its righteousness; this is why it is called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. As such, we need a knowledge that will recalibrate our consciences so that we can have access to true service.
Service is God’s great expectation of an accurate response to Him. Service is how the heart is supposed to be positioned towards God. However, sin has tampered with the program of heart alignment to God such that men naturally serve sin. Sin cannot be accurately described if it is not demystified. A man cannot discern sin without the revelation of Christ. It is the light of Christ that will expose sin (1 Cor. 4:5). Christ is righteousness and not a religion. Christ is a civilisation; it is an order of life that a man can live. Sin has raised nations for himself and these nations have the covenant of sin. All nations are sinful because the law of sin has been written on the heart of men. The owner of these sinful nations is now calling for more fruits from these nations. Satan is doing this because he knows that God is coming to the earth. He wants to melt humanity away so that they will not be able to respond to God.
The ultimate purpose of New Birth is to stop men from serving sin but some people will still not be able to stop sinning. “Having eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin…” (2 Peter 2:14). This sin is a life that some Christians cannot let go of; they cannot deny worldly lusts and ungodliness (Titus 2:12). Satan has a will that he has programmed all men to carry out as against God’s will. Just like the will of God advances the Kingdom of God, the will of Satan also enforces his dominion.
The will or manifesto of a kingdom cannot be revealed to a man except his eyes is opened to it. What scripture calls “darkened understanding” is an enlightenment to make men serve sin (Eph. 4:18, John 8:34). Jesus said that men love darkness rather than light (John 3:19). This darkness is a light in men that they live by. This light does not come or appear to men as darkness, but as a light or solution to what they perceive as a need. The darkness is a shedding of light to the heart on how to use this present world. This darkness demands a commitment called ‘service’. Real service will call for your soul’s engagement or commitment. A man is only committed to something he loves to do.
Satan wrote the codes of darkness in such a way that men will love it and be committed to it. This writing is diabolical, lustful, and attractive. Souls are usually attracted to profit or gain. When darkness presents itself as a gain or profit, some pastors would be enticed by it. Many pastors will rather reject anything that will be financially unprofitable, even when it will bless the flock of God spiritually.
Darkness is a kind of light and solution for living that a man can hardly reject. The profitability of darkness is all around us; it is tied to things that we can see. Darkness does not promise man the unseen, neither does the use guarantee the preservation of the soul. Darkness only promises things that are ephemeral.
There will still be a remembrance of sin when men do not engage the will of God. This is because they will still be responding to sin the way it has been programmed in them. A man with a conscience for sin is a man who still has the program of how sin operates in his heart. The law of sin and death is the life of sin. It is the way sin runs which is opposite God’s way.
“How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” (Hebrews 9:14). The conscience of sin is the carrier of sin. Having a “conscience for sin” means having a wrong judgement for living. The conscience of sin is the conscience of a dark and wicked judgement. It is called an evil conscience.
“Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.” (Hebrews 10:19, 22). The essence of drawing near is for the Sanctuary brethren to come into Most Holy Place. A man cannot enter into the Holiest without the blood of Jesus. Sin taught our so-called “holy men”, so they still teach the bible from a conscience of sin. However, God wants us to have a conscience of righteousness and there is a way this conscience operates.
Everlasting righteousness is a program of judgement to make a man do that which is right at the pedestal of perfection. Everlasting righteousness births perfect holiness (2 Cor. 7:1). Perfect holiness is our consecration. When the conscience is trained with everlasting righteousness, iniquity is demystified. Iniquity is a high wrong sense of righteousness. It is not easy to reject the offer of iniquity because the heart is already aligned to receive it. Iniquity is something that can still tempt people who are sanctified because iniquity can still look righteous to such if care is not taken.
“Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.” (Malachi 3:10). For meat to be in the house of God, tithes and offering must be brought. The meat speaks of the will of God. This means that nations that will not bring tithe to God will be in darkness. There must be people who will be engaged in the Sanctuary and in the Holiest, so that the will of God would be done and pressed out. God will not give His will to a nation or people when there are no Priests.
A soul becomes committed to God when it is exposed to the will of God. A committed soul is a soul that is reaped from earth to do the will of God; such are priests. A healthy nation is one that will embrace God’s will when it is revealed. God can easily reap those who will do His will from some Churches, even though they don’t have enough light. However, there are some Churches where one cannot find willdoers because they have been taught to serve earth. Some people have been further programmed to be servants of sin through churches more than they were before they joined the churches.
Some people believe that a thing is not from God as long as it cannot put food on their table; this is a statement of an infidel. Some people say they know “their God”, but they really do not know the true God. Satan has given “another god” to most men. Satan is a god-giver; he gives false gods to men. When you are given a false god, you are being given a wrong end, hope or destination. A false god comes from painting a false or fallen hope that looks right.
Any ministry that lifts earthly promises as a standard of hope is failing. Many ministers want to use the Church to beat the unbelieving world using a worldly thing or tool. Some pastors want to be better than academic professors; so, they use the Church to secretly drive that agenda.
There is no man who truly seeks righteousness that will be poor (Psa. 37:25, Matt. 6:33). Some believers claim to be seeking righteousness but have their eyes on other things as well. Righteousness must be sought with the goal of finding it, not for glory in the sight of other men. The Kingdom of God or Eternal Life must be real to us; we must seek it till we find it.
The world still has a place in the Church and on pulpits because it seems to be the only hope that believers and even pastors know. The Lord told Rev. Kenneth E. Hagin that He is not opposed to His children being rich, but He is against us being covetous. Some believers have taken this statement and carved out a hope for earthly riches. Our desire to be rich is mostly covetous; it is not pure. Every man grew up with the trait of covetousness and we must be cleansed from such.
It is important that we groom our children with a pure disposition towards the wealth of the world, such that they do not have a feeling of inferiority complex when they see that their families do not possess certain worldly goods; or even superiority complex when they possess them. Children of rich men can be trained to love and respect others. Education and worldly attainment do not translate to the ranking of our souls in the spirit. There is nothing on earth or a worldly standard that is our home. Therefore, we must not take refuge in them.