Programme: Writing the Vision (July Edition)
Date: Saturday, 20th July, 2024
Transcript Summary
1. “The elders which are among you I exhort, who am also an elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed…” (1 Pet. 5:1). Peter was an elder admonishing elders. Elder here speaks of eldership in the spirit. Another word for that is “bishop”. The second class apostles were the first flock, they were called the apostles of the Lamb. Apostleship is a calling within the five-fold, but it is much more than that. Apostles are carriers of life; they are ambassadors, as God is in them (2 Cor. 5:19).
2. Every apostle of the Lord is a lamb. This is a lamb at a very high order beyond the lamb of the Holy Ghost. The apostles of the Lord have no other content in them except the life of the Lord. It was not easy for them to follow the Lord Jesus to be led of Him. The apostles went through a lot of conversion to believe Him. In fact, they followed Him to a point where He asked them, “Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?” (Matt. 16:13-17). In essence, He was asking, “What can you discern about Me?” They kept quiet because some of them had doubts, until Peter said, “Thou hath the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16). This was a defining moment. Even after this was said, it was still not easy for them to see Jesus in the flesh, follow Him and believe Him. This is believing in Him at a time when He did not meet their expectations.
3. (1 Peter 5:1). Peter had become an elder, and a witness. He had become a carrier of the life and a witness of the sufferings. This is not just saying that Peter was physically present when Jesus was on earth and witnessed His suffering in the hands of the Roman empire, but that he had experienced the sufferings of Christ. This is not a suffering to become Christ, but a suffering that every Christ has to suffer. Becoming a flock of God does not come easy. It takes a lot of journey and leading to arrive at the place where one can be called the flock of God.
4. “As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.” (John 17:2). The Holy Ghost raises lambs and hands it over to the Son who will raise them to become sheep and hand over to the Father. This handing over are all allocations of pastures. When the Father has fully nurtured them, He will give them to Jesus to give Eternal Life to them.
5. “For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will.” (John 5:21). The Father will be giving Eternal Life to us in the Son and through the Son. Indirectly, it is the Son that will give us Eternal Life. Although Jesus has been given power over all flesh, He cannot give Eternal Life to all flesh until the Father commits those He can to Him. So it is from pasture to pasture. Eternal Life is also a pasture.
6. “Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; [9] And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him…” (Heb. 5:8-9). To obey Him means we saw how He learnt obedience. This obedience was a book or an allocation or a prescribed path for all those who want eternal salvation. There is a general obedience and there is a specific obedience which He will begin to give when we hear His voice. His voice comes with instructions. His voice can come as the unveiling of a conversation that can easily be neglected. That conversation is to download life into the soul. Only the Shepherd can give life to the soul.
7. “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. [2] He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still waters. [3] He restoreth my soul: He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.” (Ps. 23:1-3). To restore my soul is to restore the nature or the life that is in my spirit in my soul. Sufferings of Christ are leadings. There is no way to convert from being a goat to being a lamb unless you are led. Goats do not follow leading, rather they look for miracles. The people God led, like the twelve disciples, did not experience a lot of personal miracles though they watched the Lord perform miracles to others.
8. The regenerated spirit cannot give the soul life, only the Shepherd can. The spirit of a believer is Christ but the soul can be likened to a goat. The goat aspect of our being can claim to have everything that is in the spirit, in the name of new creation reality. However, the spirit would only wait for the Shepherd to lead the soul.
9. The Lord Jesus is the first Sheep of the Father. The Father led Him, spoke to Him and instructed Him to the cross and He kept on obeying. The Father said anyone who wants to be like Him should obey Him. Therefore, we must be led. We would expect a lot of subjective leading. The leading of the spirit is for salvation. It is not just to know what to do when there is a decision to make.
10. The leading that will convert the soul from being a goat to a lamb, and lamb to sheep, and sheep to sheep, and sheep to lamb, is subjective. There is a wrong programme inside us that wants us to cut short the subjective leading we are going through. Subjective leading is where the Lord subjects us to a kind of life or conversation to press out an ugly nature and infuse His nature in us. It is in that kind of leading that there is pasture. Without such leading, we will not have understanding.
11. “Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind…” (1 Pet. 5:2). In the whole congregation, some are the flock of the Holy Ghost, some are the flock of Christ, and there are the flock of God. To feed the flock of God is a labour, as it is not easy to fetch pasture for them. The instruction is to feed the flock of God that is among you (1 Pet. 5:2). This implies that among us, there are flock called the flock of God that need to be fed. Anyone who has to feed the flock of God must himself be the flock of God. He ought to have become a witness of the sufferings of Christ. Such a one is being divided as a carcass as he feeds the flock, which is what Paul referred to as, “...death worketh in us, but life in you.” (2 Cor. 4:12).
12. If we are left to navigate this path on our own, evil spirits will deal with us. This is where ministers fight spirits. The Shepherd finds the pasture, secures it and leads the sheep gradually into it. When they get there, they eat and drink. However, the sheep is unaware of the warfare involved.
13. Peter instructed the elders to feed the flock of God that is among them because it is more difficult to feed the flock of God than to feed the lambs. It is in feeding the flock of God that the minister meets the dragon because he knows what that pasture will do to him— which is to make him lose out completely.
14. Our job is to eat; we will keep eating until we are converted. Our conversion and change of nature is in our meal. We should eat and eat and grow fat, and the yoke shall be broken. Every yoke shall be broken because we would grow fat as a result of our eating. We will eat until we sit on the throne. Psalm 23 is about eating and the final eating was a table set in the presence of our enemies (Ps. 23:5). The Lord sets the table and instructs us to eat while our enemies watch, grinding their teeth. The meal is the meal to make you over the enemies.
Blessings!
Kate Richard - 3 weeks ago