And I saw
thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw
the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word
of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had
received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and
reigned with Christ a thousand years. (Revelation
20:4)
I want us to
look at the starkest difference between the Old Covenant and the New. And it is
in those two little words.
What does it
mean? I know someone is wondering.
A nation has
ambassadors.
These people
represent the nation sending them.
He acts for the
entity he represents.
Touching him is
akin to touching the entity that sent him
When he
misbehaves in his host nation, the worst they can do to him is order him to
leave since they cannot arrest him, whatever he may have done. And it is to the
entity that sent him that his expulsion is given, not the offender.
But he does not
enjoy diplomatic immunity for nothing.
He is expected
to perform his duties with an excellence not expected of most people since he
is the pride of his sending entity.
He must undergo
strenuous training to understand diplomatic etiquette so that he does not
overstep his position.
Compare that
with the son of royalty. And I will give us one very sad verse.
But those
husbandmen said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and
the inheritance shall be ours. (Mark 12:7)
That son does
not represent the king. He is part of the king.
A son will, on
being sent by the king, be taking the kingdom with him.
A son reigns
with the king. An ambassador acts for the king.
An ambassador
acts with the powers vested on him. A prince not only goes in the name of the
king, he is in many ways the king since he is part of him as his son.
An ambassador
goes by the guidelines and rules set by the king. A prince goes by the
decisions he was part of, some of which originated with him.
An ambassador is
ordered. A prince goes in the name of the king.
An ambassador is
not final in his negotiations because he must get a final order from the king.
A prince’s decision carries the weight of the king.
An ambassador
must act within the bounds set for him. A prince acts as the king in all ways
since he is part of him.
I hope all these
words are leading you somewhere because that is the kind of message God wants
to get to us.
Old Testament
prophets acted on instructions they were given. Priests behaved according to
the rules set for their duties.
And look that
thou make them after their pattern, which was shewed thee in the mount. (Exodus 25:40)
There was no
room for creativity or inventiveness. It was the rule book or nothing.
Remember Uzzah
or Aaron’s sons?
Look at the New
Testament.
Verily I say
unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and
whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. (Matthew 18:18)
I hope you can
see the difference. But allow me to give an OT verse
And they
shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying,
Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the
greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will
remember their sin no more. (Jeremiah 31:34)
In the NT God
starts with the heart as opposed to the OT where He started with the rule book.
No wonder the
yardstick is way higher than it was in the OT.
Spite is akin to
murder. A look is adultery. Discontent is idolatry.
Because the
dynamic has completely changed.
And of course I
will give us the verse that gets us there.
But as many
as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them
that believe on his name: (John 1:12)
We become sons
after our salvation.
This means we
carry the Person of God by the way we live and so do not really need rules.
But as members
of the palace, we are bound by the palace etiquette because that is now my
residence.
I represent the
king not just more than an ambassador, I must be the King personified. Remember
Christ saying this?
Jesus saith
unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me,
Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then,
Shew us the Father? (John 14:9)
But this is not
a motivational message.
I do not want to
challenge you to tell your neighbour that you are now reigning with Christ.
This is a post
about maturity.
Now I say,
That the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant,
though he be lord of all; But is under tutors and governors until the time
appointed of the father. (Galatians 4: 1, 2)
A prince does
not reign just because he is a son to the king.
Let me give us a
case in point
Remember this
prince who got tired of royal constraints and opted out of being a working
royal, even moving out of royal domain?
He was not
denounced.
But his
supporters were shocked when his children were deprived of royal titles.
Being a son is
not synonymous with reigning with the king.
Only the son who
qualifies can represent the king.
The prodigal did
not go in the name of his father though he was a son.
No wonder he
came back on his knees after realising that his freedom was worse than slavery
under his father’s reign. I am sure that he ran off because he had thought that
his father’s was a reign of terror.
Reigning does
not simply mean sitting on a throne.
A throne is
weighty, too weighty even for a son
Remember that
when the reigning king was a prince he could not marry the girl he loved and
married one he had no feelings for because that is how a crown prince must
behave.
He had to wait
for that forced wife to depart before marrying the girl of his dreams – in
their old age!
Not every prince
reigns with his father. It is not even automatic for the eldest prince to occupy
his father’s throne.
A prince must be
adequately prepared to reign with his father.
It means that
for our verse to be actualised we must become princes worth that
responsibility.
We must be
thoroughly and completely polished to run errands for the King, the King of
kings nonetheless.
So, if you must
turn to your neighbour, the question I would have you ask is, can you be
entrusted with the throne of the King of kings?
And it came
to pass, that at midnight the LORD smote all the firstborn in the land of
Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto
the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of
cattle. (Exodus 12:29)
This son was
more like Joseph, subject to the king only as far as the name (throne) was
concerned.
Remember that
with Joseph the king was more or less subject to him since he basically put all
Egypt at his service?
But what trust
necessitates that?
Pharaoh had
realised that Joseph possessed something his whole kingdom lacked.
Incidentally,
that is how believers reign.
Our anointing
(forget the motivators) gives us tools that nobody else has and solutions
nobody else can access.
I should in
passing mention something so distinct between the OT and New; the casting of
lots, Urim and Thummim.
Lots were cast
as a way to know God’s will.
Do you realise
that you will never find that in the NT except at the Upper Room prior to
Pentecost?
And why so?
The residence of
the Holy Spirit had shifted from structures to living beings, believers in
Christ.
He could then
direct with greater precision that all those OT tools.
Then God would
not need His people to make a choice between one against the other but clearly
speak His will to His children.
And Moses was a
type who had God speaking to him mouth to mouth. He had access most are
even unable to dream of.
That is the
dynamic you see when you read the New Testament.
But why does He
seem to speak to one and not another? You may be asking.
Not all the sons
have an equal access to their father. Not all the sons can be entrusted with their
father’s errands.
It is the mature
sons, sons who understand and value their positions and responsibilities, who
are groomed for the crown.
Many people
approach me to ask how they can hear from God and are shocked when I do not
give them a 1, 2, 3 step plan.
And it is
because listening to God is not a skill one acquires or is trained for.
Hearing God is
the product of great obedience and surrender to God’s revelation.
In simple terms,
God speaks to people who are ready to do His bidding at all times.
For all those
things hath mine hand made, and all those things have been, saith the LORD: but
to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and
trembleth at my word. (Isaiah 66:2)
To understand
this word trembleth, I want you to look at an athlete at the start of a race
waiting for the starting gun to go off.
It is a
trembling with anticipation, with expectation, with a longing to blast off the
blocks.
That person will
never struggle to hear God’s voice or know God’s will. Because God will never
want to lengthen that anticipation, that tension.
So when people
ask me how they can know God’s will, I will only ask them one simple question,
how ready are you to run off in the direction God shows you? How ready are you
to do what He orders you?
Therein is the ‘short
cut’ to hearing God and knowing His will.
God will never
speak for the simple purpose of someone hearing His voice.
Israel heard Him
at Sinai and still perished in the wilderness for rebellion.
But I never
heard of one who was seeking obedience fumbling around unable to know exactly
what God wanted with him.
God simply
speaks to the ears of those whose hands and feet are set to move on hearing.
And that is the
point at which we can then start reigning with Him because we will have
absorbed His nature through our unbridled obedience and surrender.
However, that
reigning does not raise us to His level.
Remember that
even the twenty-four elders who were reigning with God would all the time be
throwing their thrones in surrender under the One they were reigning with?
Let us look at a
few scriptural examples.
The first is
David.
His introduction
is sobering because God Himself says that he is a man after His own heart.
That becomes
clearer when we see how he operates.
Imagine someone
whose worship on the harp exorcises demons and heals!
In short, the
worship of his fingers did not need any verbal accompaniment to perform.
One thing we see
with him is the constant seeking to have God’s word on his situations, however
urgent or desperate they were like when his army wanted to stone him.
He was reigning
with God because he always sought to establish God’s position and orders on his
circumstances.
No wonder he was
always told that he was fighting God’s wars; that his army was God’s army.
The other is
Elisha.
This old man (or
who becomes bald in teenage?) was content to wash Elijah’s hands after leaving
a wealthy farming concern.
He was an errand
boy for this eccentric prophet.
No wonder he was
able to inherit that prophetic mantle.
Our prime
example is Jesus and Philippians 2 describes Him.
Moses is another
great example.
The long and
short of what I am saying is that for someone to reign with Christ, he must be
in a proper relationship of trust and submission to the one he will reign with.
Christ was equal
to God in essence but submitted Himself lower than His creation to effectively
reign with Hia Father.
Remember Him
saying that He only does what He sees His Father doing?
Do you remember
that this was one of the reasons He was crucified?
The reality is
that God wills that we reign with Him.
But like Gehazi
and Judas we have some hidden self propelling instincts that we strive to satisfy.
Our submission
is therefore subject more to our self interest than to the One we seek to reign
with.
That immediately
and permanently disqualifies us.
Can you be
entrusted to reign with Christ?