The Western Church is so used to being hunkered down inside it’s four walls that this lockdown is not so different than what it’s become accustomed to.
(Apart from the tithes of course.)
In fact, it comes as a mild relief to have the excuse not to evangelize or minister at all. “Well what can we do, we are in lockdown??”
Cosy and comfy in our Christian bubbles we console ourselves that we can’t do anything anyway so why not turn on Netflix?
I had a fellow minister say to me today “Belinda, why are we the only ones who will still minister to people?”
And I’m sure we aren’t actually the only ones, but it kinda feels like it sometimes. I guess this is what we already knew – the church isn’t the buildings, it’s the living, mystical Body of Christ.
He’s also asked people to help him feed the baby Christians that had recently come to Christ in his ministry, but they’d also said no. No to bible study…because of the pandemic.
Listen, I’m not advocating for unwisely putting people in harm’s way at this time. I also understand that some people are genuinely fearful of the virus and of copping a fine for being out, and the fines are huge. But also- what the heck?? I can’t help comparing us with the apostles in Acts…what would those who “turned the world upside down” do right now?
“So one came and told them, [f]saying, “Look, the men whom you put in prison are standing in the temple and teaching the people!”
Then the captain went with the officers and brought them without violence, for they feared the people, lest they should be stoned. And when they had brought them, they set them before the council. And the high priest asked them, 28 saying, “Did we not strictly command you not to teach in this name? And look, you have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and intend to bring this Man’s blood on us!”
But Peter and the other apostles answered and said: “We ought to obey God rather than men.” ….
And they agreed with him, and when they had called for the apostles and beaten them, they commanded that they should not speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go. So they departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for [j]His name. And daily in the temple, and in every house, they did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ.” Acts 5
Tonight we sneaked out of lockdown to lead a man to Christ. Ssshhh don’t tell anyone…
This poor guy had been heavily involved in the occult and New Age practices. And as is the always the case with the occult, he was suffering greatly because of it.
If you fool around with the devil he will surely make you pay. Oppression, depression, anxiety, demonic presences and attacks. This guy had literally almost died from an attack.
People coming out of the occult recognize they’ve been deceived and because of the heavy deception they find it difficult to trust what you tell them is not just another deception.
You have to show them who the real Jesus Christ is- born of a Virgin, God in human flesh, lived a sinless life, died on the cross , was buried, rose again 3 days later BODILY. This is important because there are many many false Christ’s and false Jesus’ out there, especially in the New Age, and they always spiritualize Jesus and His resurrection.
There is often fear even to pray in Jesus’ Name because they don’t know which Jesus they are “invoking”. It’s a good idea to tell them at the beginning to pray in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. If they’re still unsure, like someone else I led to Christ had to do for a while, they can pray in the “Name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth who died on the cross and rose again 3 days later.”
This is important to them because there is a lot of fear attached to pray to the wrong spirit.
You also need to show them the Ten Commandments, the first two especially, but all of them, and Deuteronomy 18 to expose the awfulness of sin and especially the sins of the occult, sorcery, witchcraft, necromancy, divination, idolatry etc.
I also show them the serpent’s lie in Genesis 3 that man can be as God. This lie is still relevant as most of the new age is seeking to attain to some sort of divinity/enlightenment/godhood.
Tonight this man knew he was a Sinner. He knew he had accessed the spiritual realm illegitimately. He knows he has demons. The demons are messing with him constantly.
But Praise be to God who always leads us in victory in Christ Jesus, once he saw who Jesus was he was willing to repent of his sins.! He came to the only true altar – the cross- and found salvation.
And I tell you as we knelt on the floor with him social-distancing was the last thing on anyone’s minds.
Then he was willing to renounce his occult activities, praise God. And the list was extensive. I know a little of occult activities but I’m always amazed at the stuff that people get involved in, stuff I’ve never heard of. The amount of occult stuff out there is unbelievable.
And Yoga and/or meditation is always involved , usually at the beginning of their dabbling because it’s considered neutral. But Yoga and meditation are not neutral. They are dangerous practices and are often gateways into serious occult practices. For example, every Yoga pose is a specific act of worship to a different “god“.
But how good is God my friends! He is mighty to save! His mercy is so great that He can reach down to save someone’s life , even someone who’d given himself to Satan , and bring him back from the point of almost death to save his soul.
God is truly loving , gracious and GREAT beyond words. And He is still moving right now even in lockdown.
Paul was under house-arrest in Rome for two years. Chained to a prison guard, he couldn’t leave his own home.
“The Rise of A.I.” acrylic and gouache
Sound familiar…?
During his home-imprisonment he asked the Church to pray for him :
“and for me, that utterance may be given to me, that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that in it I may speak boldly as I ought to speak” Ephesians 6:19, 20 (emphasis mine)
Paul couldn’t go to church, he couldn’t street-preach, he couldn’t go to Synagogue. Paul was physically restricted as soon as he arrived in Rome, and that’s how he stayed for two whole years. But in it, in this very situation Paul was asking for prayer to be able to speak forth the gospel boldly.
Do we think Paul’s situation caught God by surprise? Do we think He did not know that Paul’s arrival in Rome would be under hard circumstances? That His man would not be free to move about as previously? No – it was in to this very situation that God brought Paul, and thus the gospel, to Rome.
At that time Rome was becoming the centre of the world’s wealth. The art, the artists, the architects were moving there as it became recognised as the world’s most cosmopolitan city. This place was of diverse culture, containing many different beliefs and ideas. In some ways it was advanced, as in the case of women’s rights. It was to this worldly city that God chose to send His man, chained and bound to one small house.
God’s strategy to evangelise a whole city was through a man bound to his own home.
Paul may have been restricted, but never is the Gospel of Jesus Christ restricted!
Never will it be restrained.
God still used Paul, even chained to a prison-guard, unable to leave his own home. One man, in one house, but in that one house God brought revival to Rome.
“So when they had appointed him a day, many came to him at his lodging, to whom he explained and solemnly testified of the kingdom of God, persuading them concerning Jesus from both the Law of Moses and the Prophets, from morning till evening.” Acts 28:23
Do we think this Covid-19 pandemic has caught God by surprise? Do we think He had no idea all the churches would be shutdown and outlawed? Of course He knew. And it is into this very situation that He has called us.
The gospel of Jesus Christ cannot be stopped, no matter if our church buildings are shut. The gospel will go forth.
The gates of hell will never prevail against His Church! It’s time to recognise that this is how God has chosen to use us for this season. God’s plans are not being stymied by the enemy, God is still Sovereign and from the Throne He has decreed that right now this is how His church will go forth.
Without high-tech sound systems, church buildings and programs, once again from the simplicity of our homes! Prayer with our families, Bible studies online, prayer in the closet. Could this be God’s plan…?
We have the internet, social media, telephones. We can walk around our neighbourhoods, dropping leaflets in letterboxes. We have many ways we can answer God’s call from our homes:
““Whom shall I send,
And who will go for Us?”
Who will join me in saying “Here I am Lord, send me!”
“Then Paul dwelt two whole years in his own rented house, and received all who came to him, preaching the kingdom of God and teaching the things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ with all confidence, no one forbidding him.” Acts 28:30,31
My husband was on a business trip in the
USA when the World Health Organisation declared the coronavirus a Pandemic.
Things had already started to become strange up until that point but on that day everything turned and people went crazy here in Australia.
Just like that, toilet paper, pasta, hand sanitizer was stripped from the shelves and by the time I got there I couldn’t find any. I remember the anxiety as I walked into the shops to find bare shelves, three children to look after and my husband far away.
The burden of responsibility to look after my family lay heavily on my shoulders. At heart I am a homemaker, and when I couldn’t get the basics for my family it struck me much more forcibly than anything else. I wasn’t afraid of the actual virus, I still am not. But those bare shelves brought some fear up in me I never expected.
The Lord was so very kind to me. He began to wake me up every night in the middle of the night, in fact He is still doing it to this day. I would get up and go into my prayer closet.
just me and Him.
I would cry, sometimes just sob at His feet. It wasn’t just about the toilet paper. I felt something had shifted in the spiritual realm. I felt everything was different now. And boy did I want my husband home.
I’ve always been a pray-er but those times with the Lord at night became my lifeline, literally. Without them I would not have coped. He gave me the strength to meet each day. He taught me to trust Him in a way I never have before and He turned my mourning in to dancing.
I would go in with a heavy and burdened heart. And I would come out of my prayer closet rejoicing.
Truly in the presence of the Lord there is fullness of joy. Really .
The joy that Christ gave me in those times became my strength for the day ahead.
Now we are in lockdown here in Australia, have been for two weeks. All the churches are shut, even the small ones. We are not allowed to meet in groups of more than 2, apart from our own household.
What do we do in such a situation? How do we get through with faith intact, with hope and peace?
It’s only in the Lords presence – and I can testify to it.
Every night He, in His grace, wakes me up still. It’s the only time I am alone now with a husband working from home and 3 kids locked out of school.
”where else would I go but to the Lord”
He is our strength, He is our hope and deliverer. Our shield and the horn of our salvation. Trust in Him, He never fails.
Bless you my brothers and sisters in this difficult season.
It is the feast of Purim today. Purim is from the book of Esther.
In the book of Esther, Haman (the enemy of Gods people) made gallows to hang Mordecai, but because of Esther’s intercession, he was hanged on his own gallows. So we see the plans of the enemy were the cause of his own downfall.
So now,as the people of God, as we rise up in intercession, the plans the enemy tries to use against us will be the cause of his ultimate defeat! Hallelujah to the Lamb!
”So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai…” Esther 7:10
Ultimately this is a picture that points to Christ. For where else is it so powerfully displayed that the means the enemy, Satan, tried to use to destroy the Son of God at the cross, was the place of his ultimate defeat, and of Christ’s complete victory over the powers of darkness?
We have nothing to fear brothers and sisters, even from the Coronavirus, for the Lord knows the way , even if we don’t. And as we stay close to Him we are safe and in the place of victory.
Most Christians are aware that we are justified only by grace through faith, yet a lot tend to mix Law and Grace in sanctification.
That is, they believe that once they are saved by grace, they then need to keep to some sort of code of conduct to remain saved, be it the Ten Commandments, their own set of rules or their church’s. The church where I grew up had written rules and regulations for everything under the sun. There were also unspoken rules that everybody knew, such as, getting to both services on a Sunday was a must, otherwise you would be considered weak in the faith by everybody else.
Thus often a Christian is still under the Law even though he can easily quote “I’m not under law but under grace”.
We need to understand that Law and Grace are two complete systems in themselves, and they are mutually exclusive of each other. You cannot be under both Law and Grace at the same time, neither can you mix Grace with Law. This was the error of the Galatians. But what did Paul say to them :
”O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified? 2 This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? 3 Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?” Galations 3:1-3
Under grace our acceptance with God is based on the fact that we are in Christ by faith and He is acceptable to God. How we live after being saved is also by grace. He saves us and He sanctifies us, there is nothing we can do to save ourselves. We live now not by rules and regulations but by a new principle : the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. (Romans 8:2)
That means that Christ lives His life through us. It is His righteousness , not ours.
”and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness , which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith” Philippians 3:9
There were three errors in Paul’s day concerning Law and Grace and these three persist until today.
LEGALISM
the teaching that we are saved by keeping the Law, by observing days, rituals, ceremonies and the Ten Commandments.
This is the false doctrine of WORKS.
“…knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ…for by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified” Galations 2:16.
The book of Romans counteracts this false teaching.
ANTI-NOMIANISM
the teaching that because we are saved by GRACE we can live however we want and it makes no difference how we behave.
“Even so Faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone” James 2:17
The book of James counteracts this false teaching.
GALATIONISM
the teaching that we are saved by GRACE but are kept by the WORKS of the LAW afterwards. This makes our salvation dependent on our WORKS rather than the GRACE of God.
”And if by grace then it is no longer of works: otherwise grace is no longer grace. But if it is of works, it is no longer grace; otherwise work is no longer work” Romans 11:6
The book of Galations counteracts this false teaching.
”Salvation is not a matter of LAW and GRACE, but it is a matter of LAW or GRACE, for it cannot be both” M.R De Haan
“Since that day I have spent thirty-two years, a changeable man, in a changing world, but John 3:16 has never changed and never will. All those years have only served to endear to me my blessed Saviour and His Holy Word. His unchanging LOVE, unchanging WORD and all-atoning BLOOD is where I rest today”.
from the book ‘Seen and Heard’
(which I miraculously found on my own bookcase, having no idea of how it came to be there)
“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.And one cried to another and said:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
The whole earth is full of His glory!”
And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke.” Isaiah 6:1-3
In the presence of the awesome holiness of God, Isaiah’s sinfulness was utterly exposed. He stood naked before a Holy God.
“ So I said: “Woe is me, for I am undone!
Because I am a man of unclean lips,
And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips;
For my eyes have seen the King,
The Lord of hosts.” Isaiah 6:5
In the presence of God, our true state is exposed, just as Hebrews 4:13 says:
“And no creature is hidden from His sight but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give an account.”
Where we once considered ourselves as pretty ok or good enough, in the light of the glory of God, we see ourselves as we really are: sinful, sinners and deserving of hell. I had this experience myself when I met the Lord. For six months afterwards I felt the weight of my sin and sinfulness. No matter how often I repented I couldn’t get rid of it.
In this place Death is certain, there is no way we can stand before a holy God. Yet it is here that the Altar comes into operation.
“Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal which he had taken with the tongs
source. kenraggio.com
from the altar. And he touched my mouth with it, and said:
“Behold, this has touched your lips;
Your iniquity is taken away,
And your sin purged.” Isaiah 6:6, 7
The Throne of God in His holiness does not operate apart from the Altar. It is by the Altar that we can make our approach to God, and it is by the Altar that His Throne reaches out to us in grace.
“The throne, in all its wonderful power, moves by way of the altar”. T Austin Sparks
Grace works only through the shed blood of the cross (ie. altar)
“But Christ came as High Priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation. Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” Hebrews 9:11-14
It is on the basis of the shed blood of Christ that we can now come in to God’s presence, and there is no other way. After carrying my guilt for six months the Holy Spirit showed me that it is through the shed blood of Christ that my sins are forgiven and my guilt removed. Once I received that revelation I knew I was forgiven and ‘the burden of my heart rolled away’.
Because of the shed blood of our Saviour, the throne of judgement becomes the throne of grace to all who believe on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
“ Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need” Hebrews 4:16
The Contents of the Ark & How They Reveal Christ
There were three items contained in the Ark: the golden pot of manna, Aaron’s rod that budded and the unbroken tables of the Law.
These items reveal not only Christ’s work, but also His very Personhood.
The Golden Pot of Manna: reveals Christ as Prophet
The Manna in the wilderness was sent from heaven to feed God’s people. Christ Himself is the true Bread of heaven, sent to feed the world.
Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” John 6:32, 33
He not only is the Bread of Life, but He also gives bread ie. The Word of God, to others as Prophet.
Aaron’s Rod that Budded: reveals Christ as Priest
As Aaron went in before God on behalf of the people, so too Christ our Great High Priest, goes before the Father on our behalf.
“Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.” Hebrews 4:14
Just as Aaron presented the blood of the atonement before God and sprinkled it on the Mercy Seat in the Tabernacle of Moses, so too has Christ, as our Priest, presented His blood before the Father in heaven and sprinkled it on the mercy seat there before God. (see John 20:17 & Revelation 11:19)
Aaron’s rod budded and blossomed as proof that God had chosen him as High Priest in Israel (see Numbers 17). The life which sprang from his dead rod is a picture of the resurrected Christ Himself. Christ’s resurrection proves He is God’s chosen priest on behalf of sinful humanity.
The Tables of Law: reveal Christ as King
These were the two unbroken tables of Law. The first two were broken by Moses when he found the people in the sin of idolatry. These are a picture of humanity’s constant breaking of God’s law.
However the second set of tables were not broken, representing the one Man who never broke God’s law – Christ. These tables of law were constantly in the midst of Israel as the standard God required. This is a picture of Christ as the holy standard. He is the law-giver and the law-keeper. He is King of kings and Lord of lords.
Yet these tables of Law were under the blood. The blood-stained mercy seat was above the Law and it was through the blood that God beheld the Law.
As we consider the timeless truths contained in the Tabernacle of Moses, let us be reminded that the way is open now in to the Holy of Holies for every believer in Christ. No longer do we have to stay outside in the outer court, we are welcome to enter into the place of fellowship and commune with God around His table. But let’s not stop even there, let us go on into that most intimate place with the Lord, the place of worship in the Holy of Holies.
“ Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, …” Hebrews 4:16
Because of the blood of the Lamb, Jesus Christ, we are able to approach a high and holy God, the God of Israel and know that He is delighted with us when we come to worship Him. Let us look unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, let us seek Him and spend time with Him, because the way through the Veil has been made at the expense of the Son of God’s life. This is no trifling matter, but one of great importance and privilege. Let us not squander so great a privilege but go in to the presence of the King and meet with Him there at the Mercy Seat.
Hosea 6:5: "Therefore have I hewed them by the prophets; I have slain them by the words of my mouth: and thy judgments are as the light that goeth forth."
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