With or For?

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?