He [Jesus] took some bread and gave thanks to God for it.

Then He broke it in pieces and gave it to the disciples, saying,

“This is My body, which is given for you. Do this to remember Me.”

After supper He took another cup of wine and said,

“This cup is the New Covenant between God and His people

- an agreement confirmed with My blood,

which is poured out as a sacrifice for you.”^[1]

The first covenant

A covenant is an agreement between two people to fulfil their promise to each other. It is different from a gift because there is an exchange of benefit. A covenant is like a contract. In man’s law, a valid contract must have four distinct features. There must be an offer, an acceptance of that offer, an intention between the parties to create a relationship and mutual benefits. These four features are also present in God’s covenants. While it may seem crude to compare God’s covenant with contracts, I believe that man hijacked the concept of covenant from God and turned it into a requisite tool for commerce. God enters into covenants because He keeps His word and His word is worth keeping. Man enters into contracts because no one is trusted to fulfil their word. For in today’s world, you would be considered utterly foolish to enter into a commercial transaction without ink on paper. God’s covenant is a sign of His righteousness. Man’s contract is at best, a legitimate platform on which to litigate and seek remedy.

The first covenant God established with man was with Noah. It is the covenant of God with a righteous man. Noah found favour in God’s eyes in a generation of extreme wickedness,^[2] and the Lord saved Noah and his three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, together with their wives, from a flood that destroyed all life under the Heavens on the Earth.^[3]

God commanded Noah to build an ark according to His prescribed way, and then bring into the ark seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and female, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, male and female, and also seven pairs of every of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the Earth.^[4] Seven days after Noah had finished building the ark, the floodgates of the Heavens were opened and all the springs of the great deep burst forth. The Lord sent rain on the Earth for forty days and forty nights,^[5] and the waters flooded the Earth for a hundred and fifty days.^[6] God brought the flood on all the ungodly people and the Nephilim who had corrupted the Earth in God’s sight, and filled it with violence.^[7] No one was spared except Noah and his family.

The Nephilim

The Nephilim first appeared in Genesis 6. They were a race that resulted from the sons of God going to the daughters of men and having children by them. The sons of God here refer to the angels.^[8] The Nephilim were the heroes of old, men of renown. They were fathered by angels who rebelled, but were born in the likeness of man, in whom is the image of God. They were half-man, half angelic beings, so God sought to wipe them out in the flood because they were a race not intended by Him. Just as clones do not belong to the Lord because a soul is not given to them by God, for God said, “Every living soul belongs to Me.”^[9] A clone has life but no soul, and like the Nephilim, is an abomination to the Lord’s plans for procreation because it attempts to by-pass God to make life. It is hard to contemplate that the Nephilim existed when we look at Creation as it today, isn’t it? Just like it is hard to contemplate, and thus is easily dismissible, that it was normal for man to live to 900 years of age in the time of Genesis.

The flood was God’s first attempt to eradicate the Nephilim from His Creation. However, the Nephilim later re-surfaced in Numbers 13.33 despite the flood. It is written that the Israelites saw the Anakites, the descendants of Nephilim in the land of Canaan, also known as Rephaites. They were a people tall and strong.^[10] The only way it could have happened after the flood was if the Canaanites offered their women again to demons to produce children by them. The power of the Canaanites obviously came from the Nephilim, whose descendants were the Anakites and the Rephaites. They were also known as Emites to the Moabites,^[11] and Zamzummites to the Ammonites who lived in the region of Ar.^[12] Og King of Bashan was a Rephaite. His bed was made of iron and was more than thirteen feet long and six feet wide.^[13] The giant Goliath, whom David defeated with the stone of a sling embedded into his forehead, was a Philistine champion from Gath.^[14] It was written that no Anakites were left in Israelite territory in the days of Joshua, except in Gaza, Gath and Ashdod. Joshua totally destroyed all the Anakites in the hill country,^[15] and Caleb drove them out of their fortified cities.^[16] It was not the first time that the Lord used His people to wipe out an abominable race. The Lord also used the Ammonites, who were the descendants of Lot, the nephew of Abraham, to destroy the Rephaites, a people strong and numerous, and as tall as the Anakites. The Ammonites drove them out and settled in their place.^[17]

Noah and his family, and the animals and birds spent about twelve months in the ark. When the Lord’s fury was spent and relief washed over Him, He exhaled and sent a wind over the Earth and the waters receded.^[18] They left the ark when the Earth was completely dry.^[19] Imagine their shock when they saw that everything else on the face of the Earth was wiped out, all men and animals with the breath of life in them.^[20] (Note: The Nephilim also had the breath of life in them because they were born of female man.) After the water had completely receded, the first thing Noah did was to build an altar to the Lord. He took some of all the clean animals and clean birds, and sacrificed burnt offerings on it.^[21] The Lord then gave to Noah and his sons this decree and command, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the Earth.”^[22] He gave into their hands all the beasts of the Earth and all the birds of the air, all the creatures that move along the ground, and all the fish of the sea. All these creatures became food for them. Prior to this, God had only given Adam and Eve every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole Earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it as food.^[23] Before Adam sinned and the first animal was killed for its garments of skin to cloth Adam and Eve, God had intended Creation to be death-free. Read Genesis 1.29-30 for yourself to see that life was supposed to sustain itself by eating green plants for food.

When Noah and his family disembarked from the ark, God also said to him, “But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting.”^[24] In days to come, the Lord would bring to light the gravity and significance of the law of the blood, revealing His mastery of His word and His mercy as the Law-Giver and the Judge. God further expanded His covenant with Noah by extending it to all Noah’s descendants, and to every living creature that was with Noah (all the birds, the livestock and the wild animals that came out of the ark): “Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the Earth.”^[25] As a sign of the covenant He made between Himself and Noah and all the living creatures with him, and for all generations to come, He set His rainbow in the clouds.^[26] And whenever God sees the rainbow in His sky, He remembers the everlasting covenant between Himself and all life on Earth - never again would He bring a flood of water to destroy the Earth.^[27]

God’s covenant with Abraham

God established His second covenant with Abram. When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and gave him a new name, Abraham, the father of many nations.^[28] This was God’s covenant of blessing with a friend. The Lord confirmed an everlasting covenant of blessing between Himself and Abraham: “I will establish My covenant as an everlasting covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. The whole land of Canaan, where you are now an alien, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God.”^[29] The Lord not only gave the whole land of Canaan as an everlasting possession to Abraham and his descendants, but He also promised to make Abraham very fruitful, and make nations and kings come from him.^[30]

In return, Abraham and Isaac and his descendants were to keep the Lord’s covenant in their flesh as a sign of the everlasting covenant between God and themselves. Every male of Abraham’s household was to undergo circumcision - those born into the household when they had reached eight days old, and those bought with money from a foreigner. Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people because he had broken the Lord’s covenant.^[31]

On the mountain of Moriah, the Lord re-confirmed the covenant with Abraham when he obeyed God’s command and did not withhold the sacrifice of his only son, Isaac, from the Lord. Is God cruel in asking this of Abraham? Would the Lord ask for anything He does not expect to give Himself? Would He ask another to do unto Him, if He did not expect to do unto others first? Jesus, the Son of God, is the Lamb of God who was slain from the foundation of the world. The Lord loved Abraham and was pleased to bless him because Abraham obeyed the Lord and kept His requirements, commands, decrees and laws.^[32] The Lord was pleased with Abraham because he had not withheld his only son from God.^[33] This was part of Abraham’s righteousness that came by faith.

After Abraham, the Lord appeared to Isaac and Isaac’s son, Jacob,^[34] and He re-confirmed the oath He swore to Abraham.^[35] God promised the land of Canaan to Isaac and Jacob, and He gave them His word that their descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the sky and the dust of the Earth. All nations would be blessed through their offspring.^[36] To Jacob was given a new name, Israel,^[37] the father of the twelve patriarchs. Through Israel’s son Joseph, who was put in charge of the whole of Egypt,^[38] God preserved for Himself a remnant on Earth, and saved the lives of Jacob and his household by a great deliverance at a time of severe famine.^[39] When Israel united with Joseph, he and his eleven sons and their whole households left Canaan to settle in the land of Egypt.^[40]

In Egypt, Israel and his descendants became fruitful and exceedingly numerous and posed as a threat to that nation. Then a Pharaoh, who came into power but did not know about Joseph and his contribution to the prosperity of Egypt, rose up against Israel. He enslaved the Israelites and oppressed them with forced labour.^[41] But the more the Israelites were oppressed, the more they multiplied. To annihilate the Israelites, Pharaoh ordered that every Israelite male infant be thrown into the Nile.^[42] From the family line of Levi, Moses as a baby escaped this fate. Pharaoh’s daughter found him in his own little ark while she was bathing in the Nile. She adopted him as her son, and named him Moses, saying, “I drew him out of the water.”^[43]

For God’s purpose, Moses was spared. The Lord raised him up as a deliverer of Israel. Moses was God’s chosen vessel to free the Israelites from the yoke of slavery, and to bring them up out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand, so that the Lord would be their God as He had covenanted to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. After a magnificent display of the power of the Holy Spirit, Moses led the Israelites’ departure from Egypt with six hundred thousand men on foot, not counting women and children. Remember, Israel first arrived in Egypt as a household of seventy. At the end of 430 years, the Israelites left Egypt as a nation.^[44]

God’s covenant with Israel

After Israel left Egypt, the first thing the Father did was to carry out a major reform. During the 430 years in Egypt, the Israelites had adopted numerous detestable practices that had to be removed from the Lord’s sight. They had adopted the worship of foreign gods,^[45] and had been offering sacrifice to the goat idols, which are demons, to which they prostituted themselves.^[46] The whole nation had to be disciplined and sanctified in order to come close to the Lord as His treasured possession in worship and fellowship, for the Lord desired them to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.^[47]

The Lord began by giving Israel His regulations about the Passover. The Israelites saw with their own eyes how the ten plagues of the Holy Spirit had crippled the greatest nation of its time, yet not one fly or one drop of hail affected the land of Goshen where they lived.^[48] On the night the final plague struck Egypt, the Israelites ate their first Passover when God struck the final blow on Egypt by striking down all the male firstborn in Egypt. From the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on the throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner who was in the dungeon, and the firstborn of the livestock, no male firstborn in Egypt was spared. The Israelites first witnessed the power of the blood of the sacrificial lamb that spared them from the dreadful plague of the Lord. And they were to commemorate the Passover for the generations to come and celebrate it as a festival to the Lord.^[49]

The Father also gave Israel His laws about the Sabbath. The Sabbath is a day of rest in the Lord so that they may honour the One who created the Earth and the Heavens in their entire vast array in six days, and then rested from all His work on the seventh day.^[50] The seventh day the Father did bless and make it holy.^[51] He is the Lord who makes us holy, and our obedience to His commands makes us holy unto Him. Israel was commanded to observe His Sabbaths as an outward sign of the lasting covenant between God and the generations to come.^[52] Like the rainbow that spans across the sky, the observation of the Sabbath was purposed to be a sign between God and the Israelites forever. They were not to desecrate the Sabbath, which is holiness by separation unto God in upholding His righteousness in His word, and to refrain from defiling their relationship with the Lord founded on a lasting covenant.

Cut to Ezekiel 20.21-26 and consider why the Father said this to the second generation of Israelites who had been freed from Egypt: “But the children rebelled against Me: They did not follow My decrees, they were not careful to keep My laws - although the man who obeys them will live by them - and they desecrated My Sabbaths. So I said I would pour out My wrath on them and spend My anger against them in the desert. But I withheld My hand, and for the sake of My Name I did what would keep it from being profaned in the eyes of the nations in whose sight I had brought them out. Also with uplifted hand I swore to them in the desert that I would disperse them among the nations and scatter them through the countries, because they had not obeyed My laws but had rejected My decrees and desecrated My Sabbaths, and their eyes lusted after their father’s idols. I also gave them over to statutes that were not good and laws they could not live by; I let them become defiled through their gifts - the sacrifice of every firstborn - that I might fill them with horror so they would know that I am the Lord.”

Why did the Father say that the statutes were not good? Why couldn’t the first and second generation of Israelites live by the laws? Didn’t He give the commands to the Israelites through Moses as it is written in Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers? What happened there?

Open your Bible and read what Israel had said to Moses in Exodus 20.18-21: When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.” Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid. God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning.” The people remained at a distance, while Moses approached the thick darkness where God was.

How did the Lord respond to this? How do you read it?

It is written in Exodus 20.22: Then the Lord said to Moses, “Tell the Israelites this…” In the AMP and NASB, it is written: “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel…” The two words “Then” and “Thus” here denote God’s response to the words and action of the people. Since Israel wanted to keep their distance, it invoked God’s sternness. The Father gave the Israelites over to their desire to keep a safe distance from God. As a result, Israel received rules upon rules, laws upon laws; so that the only way Israel would come to know God was through His grace and mercy in the atonement of her sins. For where there are many laws, there are bound to be many sins, heaping sin upon sin. Since coming close to God to listen to Him personally was a burden to the Israelites, God gave them over to rules and commands that were physical burdens and laborious to do. This is known as the Law of Moses and many in the church fail to see that this body of law was not God’s original intention for His covenant with Israel. So then, how much more was the Law of Moses never intended for the church under the Covenant for the Forgiveness of Sins?

But you should ask, “Why then did the Lord say to Moses in Deuteronomy 5.28, ‘I have heard what this people said to you. Everything they said was good.’” In the NASB, it is written: “I have heard the voice of the words of this people which they have spoken to you. They have done well in all that they have spoken.” Do you read this as God approving what the Israelites said when they valued their lives more than coming closer to Him? In truth, Israel did well in openly voicing their rejection of God their Saviour, so that God in turn may do what He must in response to such rebellion. So the word of the Lord did become to Israel: ‘Do and do, do and do, rule on rule, rule on rule; a little here, a little there,’ so that they will go and fall backward, be injured and snared and captured.^[53] Then what? Then perhaps they would cry out to the Lord and He will hear them and forgive them, and love them as Israel’s Husband once more.

What then were the laws that the Israelites could live by and statutes that were good? Consider what the Lord spoke before Exodus 20.22. He gave them one set of instructions, one decree, one law and ten commandments:

· One set of instructions in Exodus 12 for their first Passover as a lasting ordinance to commemorate and celebrate it as festival to the Lord.

· One decree in Exodus 13 to consecrate every firstborn male. The first offspring of every womb among the Israelites belongs to the Lord, whether man or animal.

· One law about the Sabbath in Exodus 16 - a day of rest, a holy Sabbath to the Lord.

· Ten commandments in Exodus 20, which if you think about it, were not as hard as a tenth of the book of Leviticus to follow.

Now many would disagree, if they had missed the juncture that God faced in Exodus 20.18 when the Israelites declared their choice to stay away from God and not listen to the Lord directly. But in truth, we, the church, have missed many junctures like that, and we have taken the Lord on a course They never intended. Why? Because we also do not listen to Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Even if we listened, we did not obey fully. And if we obeyed, we did not persevere with practice. When we have tasted success in practice, we became proud and strayed. And when we strayed, did we repent?

Consider the missed opportunities when Jesus instructed the apostles to go straight to Bethsaida after the feeding of the five thousand, but they went to Capernaum instead.^[54] Consider the fact that the church had gone off on a tangent when the apostle Peter failed to give the complete command of the Father to the church when he left out “Listen to Him [Jesus]” in his letter in 2 Peter 1.17 and the command became lost to the church. And consider the error the church had fallen into when the apostles first accepted money that was placed at their feet in Acts 4.37. For the ministry of the church has nothing to do with money, but everything to do with the miraculous power of the Holy Spirit.

Just like we, the church, have made our share of mistakes and hindered the Holy Spirit in His work in preparing the house of God and the world for the arrival of our King Jesus. Each pivotal juncture brought the church further off-course from bringing our precious Jesus back to Earth. So don’t tell me that my God does not have the right to respond to us and bring the church on a course of discipline that He had not originally intended as He responds to our characters, words and desires, so that He may grow and perfect us in our continuous repentance and forgiveness of others.

God is Freedom – and there is no way that God’s original plans for Israel and the church involved rules upon rules, laws upon laws, that we could not live by, but get so choked up by their sternness. If you think about the present church age, it is the people who keep a distance from Jesus and the Holy Spirit who adopt rules upon rules, laws upon laws, in a worship of God that has nothing to do with the honour of the witness, remembrance, imitation and embrace of Jesus. As the apostle Paul wrote, “Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.”^[55] Therefore, have nothing to do with the old wine and the traditions of old wineskins, for they have nothing to with freedom and justice. Such doctrines and traditions are far from what God had intended in His exercise of kindness, justice and righteousness on Earth.

“Listen to Jesus” is the Father’s single perfect law of the New Covenant for the Forgiveness of Sins from which freedom in all its splendour stems. This is the freedom of the New Covenant that would begin to bring about untainted justice for Jesus on Earth, culminating and setting up the stage for His return to reign upon the Earth for a thousand years. Untainted justice is justice that has nothing to do with sin, but everything to do with freedom of the Alpha and the Omega. We could have achieved it except for the juncture where our freedom was taken away by James’ letter in Acts 15.24-29, when James spoke against the words of Jesus. He selected parts of the Law of Moses for the Gentile believers to follow by directing them to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, blood, the meat of strangled animals and sexual immorality. James, the younger brother of Jesus and firstborn son between Joseph and Mary, introduced the partial observance of the Law of Moses to the Gentile believers. Through time, our own ignorance and disobedience compounded the effect of James’ letter, and it led the disciples and believers of Jesus back into the dark age of rules upon rules, laws upon laws.

So the church backslid into the old covenant where the statutes were not good. We could not live by those laws anymore than Israel could. Remember, the Levitical Law was God’s response to the Israelites in rejecting the Lord. Jesus came and fulfilled the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms.^[56] He did not abolish them because they were the means by which His Father exercised kindness, justice and righteousness in His response to sin, wickedness and rebellion. If a church wants to follow the Law of Moses, then it should do so in its entirety, for old wine cannot be mixed with new wine without ruining the wineskin. All the best with all the daily sacrifices! The new wine is all the words of Jesus. One cannot pick parts of the old wine to mix with the new wine. That was exactly what James did in Acts 15 with his own judgment.

It is only by obeying and delighting in the Father’s command to listen to Jesus that we would begin to have a taste of the freedom of the Alpha and the Omega. Only in the freedom of the perfect command of listening to Jesus are we freed from meaningless traditions and doctrines that drown and bury alive our passion for the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Do you think the Holy Spirit has genuinely enjoyed the same rigid, lifeless, ritualistic worship service week after week for the last 2,000 years? I am talking about passion for the Lord that is beyond the service of a church, or good deeds for the poor. I am talking about passion for eternal life, which is coming to know the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom He sent.

Have you experienced the freedom in listening to Jesus? Freedom to come to know God as your Father, Brother and Lord, understanding Them as They understand you and seeing Them in the Light of Love and of the Resurrection, instead of the all too familiar light of fear. Freedom is seeing what and who is unseen; hearing what is yet spoken, and peering into what is yet to be created. Do you desire it? If so, just pick up your Bible and read the words of Jesus to listen to Him, and cry out to the Holy Spirit for understanding.

Has the church experienced such freedom? Does the Holy Spirit enjoy such freedom with the believers and disciples of Jesus Christ? God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. John 4.24 was not a new development of God’s character. If Israel had listened and paid attention to the Lord, she would have learnt to follow both the spirit of the law and the letter of the law. For the Spirit of God was in the sight of Israel during all its travels. The cloud of glory was over the tabernacle by day and the fire was in the cloud by night.^[57] But Israel went backward and not forward. Israel backslid to the point where they gave a tenth of their spices to God, but neglected the more important matters of the law – mercy, faithfulness, the love of God and a double portion of justice.^[58] The Israelites heard the voice of the Father but they hardened their hearts. They tested and tried Him even though they witnessed the power and majesty of God the Holy Spirit.

So what of the church of Jesus Christ that has not enquired nor known the ways of the Spirit of God with a heart that is soft towards the Holy Spirit?^[59] A church that rejects the Holy Spirit when He calls, ignoring all His advice and rejecting His rebukes?^[60]

Church: Obeying parts of the Law of Moses instead of only fully obeying the commands given by Jesus is like one who diligently studies the Scriptures because he thinks by them he will possess eternal life, yet he refuses to come to Jesus to have life.^[61] Coming to Jesus means to listen to Him, put all His words into practice and obey His command to receive the Holy Spirit to be counselled by Him. Following Jesus without practising all His words is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.^[62] Practising Jesus’ words without listening to the Holy Spirit is like ones who say to Jesus, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your Name, and in Your Name drive out demons and perform many miracles?” Jesus may tell you plainly, “I never knew you. Away from Me, you evildoers!”^[63] You may display signs, wonders, miracles and “super anointing”; and you can even call yourself an apostle, but these are merely outward signs of success in ministry. What makes an evildoer is when you perform signs, wonders and miracles with the things of men in mind, rather than the things of God in mind. You become a stumbling block to Jesus. If this happens, be earnest and repent.

Church: Following the world when you should be listening to Jesus and the Holy Spirit is like a dog returning to his own vomit, and a fool repeating his folly.^[64] However, mature disciples of Jesus who claim to know and fellowship with the Holy Spirit should be careful, lest they misuse His Name and speak against Him. Be careful not to blaspheme the Holy Spirit. The Father and the Son will not hold us guiltless of this eternal sin.^[65] Yet how many of us even truly know the Holy Spirit sufficiently to step into this territory? Do you know what blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is?

The writer of Hebrews defines maturity in Hebrews 6.1-6: “Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God, instruction about baptisms, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And God permitting, we will do so. It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance, because to their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting Him to public disgrace.”

Also read Hebrews 6.1-6 in the NLT: “So let us stop going over the basic teachings about Christ again and again. Let us go on instead and become mature in our understanding. Surely we don’t need to start again with the fundamental importance of repenting from evil deeds and placing our faith in God. You don’t need further instruction about baptisms, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And so, God willing, we will move forward to further understanding. For it is impossible to bring back to repentance those who were once enlightened - those who have experienced the good things of Heaven and shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the power of the age to come - and who then turn away from God. It is impossible to bring such people back to repentance; by rejecting the Son of God, they themselves are nailing Him to the cross once again and holding Him up to public shame.”

It is the increase of understanding of the word of God and God Himself that brings maturity to our understanding. If you do not listen to Jesus and to the Holy Spirit who gives growth as He takes of what belongs to Jesus and makes it known to you and guides you into ALL truth, how then would believers and disciples mature into the full stature of the Image and Likeness of Christ? The words of Jesus are spirit and they are life. We are to call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding of God’s word and ways, searching for it as for hidden treasure to receive the growth.^[66] His understanding then gives increase to your commitment and focus. Listening to men’s doctrines and following traditions does not give growth. They might even cause you to lose focus on Christ. The maturity of a church depends on the standard by which each shepherd, disciple and believer of that fellowship is listening to Jesus under the counsel of the Holy Spirit. Remember, it is your personal responsibility to listen to Jesus, and to hear and understand what the Holy Spirit is saying to the churches.^[67] No one else can listen to Jesus for you. No one else can fellowship with the Holy Spirit on your behalf.

Church: Following Mary, the mother of Jesus, without obeying Jesus’ words is like the children who gather wood, the fathers who light the fire and the women who knead the dough and make cakes of bread for the ‘queen of Heaven’. You are provoking the Father to anger and harming yourselves to your own shame.^[68] If you are worshipping Mary the mother, you are not a disciple of Jesus Christ because you do not hold on to His teachings. Jesus said that if we hold onto His teachings, we are really His disciples. Then we will know the truth and the truth will set us free.^[69] As it is, you do not hold onto His teachings because you have not listened to Jesus. Jesus never told you to worship Mary. This is why you do not enjoy the freedom that is in Christ, nor display the power of the Holy Spirit with your testimony of Jesus. The Spirit of Truth will only back you up with His power when you bear true testimony of Jesus, the Son of God.

If you had listened to Jesus, you would know the truth of your actions and the bitter poison of your deception. Mary the mother said about herself, “From now on all generations will call me blessed.”^[70] A woman in the crowd called out to Jesus, “Blessed is the mother who gave You birth and nursed You.”^[71] How did Jesus reply? He said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it.”^[72] He did not say, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of My earthly mother Mary and obey her.” And what did Jesus say about His mother and brothers? He said, “For whoever does the will of My Father in Heaven is My brother and sister and mother.”^[73] What is the will of the Father for the church? To listen to Jesus! This is the Father’s command given to Jesus’ disciples, Peter, James and John.

Mary is not the mother of the church or the mother of the body of Christ. We are the body of Christ^[74] because we who follow His word by eating His flesh and drinking His blood remain in Jesus and He in us. Our oneness with Christ does not come from the flesh of the womb of Mary, but from the Holy Spirit. He is the Spirit of Sonship and Daughtership, who is baptised by Jesus into us, the body of Christ. Jesus said, “It is the Spirit who gives life - the flesh counts for nothing.”^[75] Our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit,^[76] for we are the temple of the living God. So why do churches still prefer to worship Mary who was not sinless over the Spirit of God who is holy? Was Jesus born sinless because Mary was sinless? Or was it because God the Holy Spirit sacrificed His Holiness so that Mary would conceive Jesus for God’s master plan of salvation and resurrection to be put into motion? Do you now see the true holiness of the Holy Spirit and His love for the Father and Jesus? Or does it offend your sense of religiosity and perception of God?

Have you not read how Jesus addressed Mary as He hung on the cross? He said, “Dear woman, here is your son,” and to John, “Here is your mother.”^[77] How is this gesture interpreted as Mary being a gift to the church? This was the Lord’s way of bringing His earthly mother into the church for she had not followed Him as His disciples had. Mary and His brothers had said Jesus was out of His mind earlier on in His ministry because they did not understand His purpose.^[78] Through John, Mary would be able to receive Jesus’ teachings as he explained them to her and took care of her as if she was his mother. Just as Jesus did not leave us as orphans, He did not leave His earthly mother uncared for.

Who is the true gift sent to Jesus’ disciples in His Name?^[79]

The gift to the church is the Holy Spirit, our Counsellor,^[80] who the Father promised us.^[81] We receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on us, and we are witnesses of Jesus in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the world.^[82] We are not witnesses of Mary the mother on behalf of Jesus. We testify for Jesus on His behalf and for His benefit. Wake up! Harbouring a delusion and so-called relationship with Mary the mother will only distance you from having a personal relationship with Jesus, the Holy Spirit and the Father.

Did Jesus tell John or any of His disciples to worship Mary? Did He instruct His disciples to receive Mary the mother? Rather, did He not say, “Receive the Holy Spirit”?^[83]

Is receiving Mary the same as receiving the Holy Spirit? No, receiving the Holy Spirit means that you have to stop worshipping any other name, because the Father seeks worshippers who worship Him in spirit and in truth. Our Father is not seeking worshippers who worship Mary, thereby walking in ways in pursuit of their own vain imaginations.^[84] Church: Your religious façade is a travesty and an insult to God. Therefore, repent!

Church: You even dishonour the one you claim to worship. Mary said to the servants at the wedding in Cana regarding Jesus, “Do whatever He tells you.”^[85] Have you followed the words of the one you claim to worship by listening to Jesus in the entirety of His words and doing what He told you? Turn from your idolatry of the mother and move on. You have lingered in this desert of dry bones far too long. Why have you not crossed the Jordan yet? Move forward into Jesus, the Son of God, Son of Man. He is no longer an infant in the arms of His earthly mother. Our Saviour is not a baby anymore. A child was not hung on that cross of salvation. So what sort of deception depicts Him this way? Jesus is the Son of Man who had grown in wisdom and full stature, and in favour with God and men.^[86] The birth of Jesus happened, and after that Mary was no longer a virgin. It is written, Joseph had union with Mary after the birth of Jesus, and Jesus had brothers and sisters.^[87]

Yes, we praise the Lord for His salvation, and we commemorate His miraculous birth and the vessel through whom God used to bring His Son to Earth in the flesh. Mary was God’s perfect choice in this. But why, after the Father has brought forth His Son and commanded you to listen to Him, would you turn from the Son and worship His earthly mother? You are ignoring the gift, yet admiring the ribbon-wrapped box that presented the gift but is now emptied because its purpose was fulfilled.

Which is greater: The gift of God, which is His only beloved Son, or the package that delivered the gift of God? Why are there false doctrines about Mary and the rosary? Where in the word of God does the rosary appear? Like Israel, the churches have been led astray by daughters of the people who prophesy by their own imagination and ensnare by magic charms sewn on wrists.^[88] Does this offend you? What if you see the Son of Man ascend to where He was before! Yet there are some of you in the church who do not believe.

Churches: Your focus is askew if you do not obey the Father’s command to listen to Jesus at the standard to which you are called. You will forever go backward, and not forward. Whether Mary is the heavenly mother or the mother of the church is a non-issue. But go, listen to Jesus - listen to the Holy Spirit - and form your relationship with the living God directly through the words of His Son as He so desires. There is no doubt that Jesus loved His earthly mother, Mary, very much. But His focus is always steadfastly on His Father, and so should ours be. The Father is the One Jesus honours, but you are dishonouring Him.^[89] Listen to Jesus!

Church: What are you doing worshipping idols and images within the house of God? What is canonisation? What is “Sacrifice of the Mass”? Did Jesus teach us to follow a rigid and non-changing pattern of worship that has nothing to do with listening to Him? Would the Holy Spirit choose to reveal His form in rigid structures? Who makes the wine change into blood - the Holy Spirit or man? Why is there a Catholic Encyclopaedia? These are but evidence of self-inflicted rules upon rules, laws upon laws, in the church.

The house of God remains in ruins, do you not see? Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees of the church, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice the son of Hell as you are.^[90] Woe to you experts of the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering.^[91] Is it a time for you to be busy with your own house and live in panelled houses, while the house of God remains a ruin? You have planted much, but have harvested little,^[92] for whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.^[93]

Church: What fault did you find in Jesus and His words and His deeds that you have strayed so far from the truth? You follow worthless idols and have become worthless yourselves.^[94] The idols are less than nothing, their works are utterly worthless, and you who choose them are detestable.^[95] The priests do not ask, “Where is the Holy Spirit?” Those who deal with the law do not know Jesus, the Father and the Holy Spirit; and the leaders rebel against their Counsellor.^[96] The prophets prophesy by that woman Jezebel who calls herself a prophetess and misleads the Lord’s servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols.^[97] True sexual immorality here means breaking faith with Jesus and His words and His deeds. And eating food sacrificed to idols is following men’s doctrines and traditions.

Has the church changed its gods? Yet they are not gods at all.^[98] We have exchanged the glory Jesus gave us in John 17.22 for countless worthless idols within the house of prayer. An idol within a church is still an idol - be it the worship of saints, apostles and their teachings, customs or doctrines, or prosperity teachings. As the prophet Jonah said, those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs.^[99] For what does financial prosperity have to do with the return of Jesus? Does cash replace or add to full power in the church? Do we even realise that we are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked in God’s eyes?^[100]

So justice for Jesus is driven back, and the righteousness of God is made to stand at a distance. Truth is unnoticed in the broad street that overshadows the narrow road that leads to life, and honesty cannot enter the houses we erect for God. All day long, the Name of the Father - the Name of Jesus - the Name of the Holy Spirit is being blasphemed because of us.^[101] But our God does have concern for His Holy Name, because He is God who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on Earth, for in these He delights.^[102] Our Father has been watching.^[103] And now what does He have here?^[104] A weak and powerless church that is defenceless against the weakest of its enemies because it has not repented of its disobedience against the Father’s direct command to listen to Jesus. It is also weak and powerless because we do not obey Jesus in practising and preaching forgiveness and repentance at the standard required under the Covenant for the Forgiveness of Sins.

Wake up, church, repent and realise the full length and depth and width of the forgiveness you have received through Jesus. Worship the Lord your God and serve Him only in spirit and in truth. Turn your eyes away from worthless things - from the worship of idols and the vanity of idolatry, and preserve your life according to His word and His ways.^[105] Do not do these detestable things that the Lord hates.^[106] Give careful thought to your ways.^[107]

Listen to Jesus and practise His words. Agree with the Holy Spirit and work with Him, not against Him. Focus on a monogamous relationship with the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit so that there is no room for anyone else, not even your loved ones. For the Lord said to His disciples, “Anyone who loves his father and mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me; and anyone who does not take his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me.”^[108] If you are a believer who holds on to Jesus’ teachings, you are really Jesus’ disciple. Count the cost of your discipleship and not the rewards. Such cost cannot be paid by anyone if the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit did not first pay the cost of redemption in full. This is Their grace and loving-kindness.

Will you love Jesus above all else - more than the flesh of your flesh, or fame and fortune and the creature comforts of this world?

From Exodus 20 to John 13

The way of the Lord is that He loves to reveal Himself in parables and patterns. Consider the pattern of the old and New Covenant. Israel was to the Father as the church is to Jesus, and the former covenant of the Father was to Israel as the New Covenant of the Father with Jesus is to the church. However, the glory of the New Covenant is greater than the glory of the former covenant because in this New Covenant, the Lord has granted peace. For an everlasting covenant based on love and grace and mercy is the eternal covenant of peace.

The Father re-confirmed the established covenant with Israel after Exodus 6.2-8, and He began to expound His commands and regulations about Hebrew servants, personal injuries, protection of property, laws of justice and mercy, the Sabbath laws and the three annual festivals. These laws were a prelude to the Levitical Law. They pertain to worship and fellowship with God. The laws in Exodus 20-23 relate to human interaction, not Godly interaction. The Lord laid the first foundation by teaching Israel justice and righteousness in their relationship with one another. That is why Jesus said, “So in everything, do to others what you would have them done to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.”^[109]

The Father also gave the Israelites His word to bring them into the Promised Land - a land flowing with milk and honey, and to give the land to them as a possession. He promised to bless their food and water, take away sickness and infertility from among them, and to give them a full life span. He said He would be an enemy to their enemies, and wipe out the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites and Jebusites, thereby establishing the borders of Israel. All upon this condition: If Israel would listen to the angel sent in His Name to guard and guide them, and do all that the Lord said. The Israelites were not to make a covenant with the people of those nations or their gods. They were not to bow down to foreign gods and idols, but demolish them and break their sacred stones to pieces.^[110] The Lord was to be their God, and Israel was to be a people holy to the Lord. And if they obeyed Him fully and kept His covenant, then out of all nations, Israel would be His treasured possession.^[111] It was not a bad deal, was it?

In Exodus 24.3, Moses told the Israelites what the Lord had commanded them thus far, and they said, “Everything the Lord has said we will do.” Moses then wrote down the Lord’s commands for them, and he built an altar for the Lord. He set up twelve stone pillars representing the twelve tribes of Israel. Israel then offered burnt offerings and sacrificed young bulls for fellowship offerings. Moses took half of the blood from the offerings and put it in bowls, the other half he sprinkled on the altar. He took the Book of the Covenant and read it to the Israelites. They responded again in Exodus 24.7, “We will do everything the Lord has said; we will obey.”

Then Moses took the blood, sprinkled it on the Israelites and said, “This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance to all these words.”^[112] This covenant was sealed with the blood of the atoning sin offering for the generations to come. That is, until Jesus came to do the will of His Father, offering up His body as a sin offering, a perfect and complete sacrifice for the sins of mankind once and for all.

By His own blood, Jesus paid for the wages of sin, which is death, for the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus.^[113] He freed us from the power that sin derives from the law. We are freed by the law of the Spirit of Life as we live according to the Holy Spirit and are led by what He, the Spirit of God, desires.^[114] But how would we know what the Holy Spirit desires unless we listen to Jesus and practise hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit?

The first flood was sent to inundate the world, wiping out all life from one end of the face of the Earth to the other. But the true flood is the Holy Spirit of God, who is the living water that flows from the Rock. The Rock is the Word in the flesh, Jesus Christ our Saviour. And the Father has given us to drink from the spring of the water of life without cost.^[115] This spring of satisfaction is His words, for His words are S/spirit and they are life.^[116] And His words will never pass away.^[117] For Jesus told the Samaritan woman, “If you knew the gift God has for you and who you are speaking to, you would ask Me, and I would give you living water … Those who drink the water I give will never become thirsty again. It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life.”^[118]

The gift of God that Paul spoke of in Romans 6.23 is eternal life, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Jesus poured out His blood for many for the forgiveness of sins. We do not have to do a thing to be saved, but just believe in Jesus’ Name and receive. Jesus preached at the beginning of His ministry in Mark 1.15, “The time has come. The Kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the Good News.” A gift costs the giver, but the one it is given to only has to receive it, then use it. As such, gifts do not require an exchange of benefits, but covenants do.

The Covenant for the Forgiveness of Sins is forged between the Father and the Son. It enables salvation through faith in Jesus Christ who is the only begotten Son of God, and it calls for repentance of sins and baptism of the Holy Ghost in Jesus our Saviour’s Name. That is each person’s part to do, just as it was Noah’s part to build the ark so that he and his family may be saved. The gift of God came through the New Covenant for the Forgiveness of Sins because we are beneficiaries of this covenant when we believe in Him. And as beneficiaries of this covenant, we receive eternal life. The Father gave His only begotten Son to the world without cost to us, and it is up to us to come to Jesus to have life and have it to the full. If you do not recognise yourself as a sinner, you would not think that you need salvation from the consequences of sin. If you think that you do not need salvation, you would not repent. Faith in Jesus and repentance of sins in His Name is the first proof of your belief in the Good News of the kingdom: God the Father has a Son and His Name is Jesus Christ.

The Father first introduced to Israel the power of His Word when He asked Moses to go to Mount Sinai where Moses sat in the presence of God for forty days and forty nights. There Moses received the entire statute of the covenant with Israel.^[119] God gave Moses His laws for the tabernacle and the design of the tabernacle, regulations about conduct, commands in the Levitical Law about the priesthood, and the prescribed way of worshipping and fellowshipping with the Lord.^[120] These commands relate to the relationship each Israelite was to have with the Lord their God and with each other. He also gave them instructions about the destruction of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites and Jebusites and their idols, so that Israel would not be ensnared by them and led astray.^[121]

Yet before the Lord had even completed the enactment of the entire Levitical Law, which is a preach by the Father that flows with the intensity of a waterfall, the Israelites broke the promise they made to God in Exodus 24.3 and 24.7. The Israelites ate and drank, and indulged in revelry.^[122] They turned away from the Lord and worshipped a calf fashioned from melted gold earrings.

It is written in Psalm 106.19-22: “At Horeb they made a calf and worshipped an idol cast from metal. They exchanged their Glory for an image of a bull, which eats grass. They forgot the God who saved them, who had done great things in Egypt, miracles in the land of Ham and awesome deeds by the Red Sea.”

The ingratitude and gracelessness of men, especially anointed men of God, saw Moses’ brother, Aaron, leading the rebellion against the Lord. Aaron not only condoned the actions of the Israelite by casting an idol in the form of a calf, saying, “There are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt,” but he also led the people in worship by building an altar for the calf.^[123] They celebrated a festival to a cow when the Lord had said to them earlier in Exodus 20.4-5, “Do not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in Heaven above or on the Earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down and worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God.”

Was Aaron not on Mount Sinai when God gave the Ten Commandments to Moses? Did Aaron not hear God speak with his own ears?^[124] Aaron’s position was second to Moses. Joshua was only Moses’ assistant at the time of Exodus. The Lord used Aaron as well as Moses to bring the people out of Egypt. The Lord spoke to both Aaron and Moses, and Aaron spoke to the people for Moses. The Lord purposed Aaron as Moses’ mouth and Moses as God to Aaron.^[125] Aaron performed just as many miracles with the staff as Moses did. Did you know that it was Aaron, not Moses, who stretched out his hand and brought forth the plagues of blood, frogs, gnats and boils?^[126]

Yet Aaron rebelled so swiftly. When confronted, he even lied to the Lord and Moses. He said, “Then they [the Israelites] gave me the gold, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!”^[127] This is not true because Exodus 32.4 testifies that Aaron took the earrings from the Israelites and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Aaron did this with the gold that the Lord had commanded Israel to take from the Egyptians as their wages, showing them to be servants and not slaves.

Aaron not only personally knew the power of the Lord God Almighty that went forth from him. He also saw God and worshipped Him at a distance on Mount Sinai.^[128] Aaron witnessed the God of Israel - the pavement of sapphire under His feet, as clear as the sky itself.^[129] He ate and drank with God that day together with Moses, Nadab, Abihu and the seventy elders of Israel, and God did not raise His hand against them.

How could this experience not change you for life? How could the sight of God not be emblazoned in your memory in everlasting fondness? How could Aaron meet with his God and then turn so quickly? How easily we do miss it. Be it a subtle sign from the Lord, a small prayer answered or an extraordinary event that should change our outlook and actions forever. The mistake of Aaron could easily be made by anyone. Therefore consider carefully how you listen to Jesus and treasure His words in your heart.

At the time when Aaron was knee deep in rebellion, the Lord was speaking to Moses about giving the priesthood to Aaron and his sons by a lasting ordinance.^[130] Aaron was being set apart by the Lord, he and his descendants forever, to consecrate the most holy things, to offer sacrifices before the Lord, to minister before Him and to pronounce blessings in His Name forever.^[131]

Note that the Lord did not give the priesthood to Moses, or to his sons Gershom and Eliezer, despite the fact that the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, and he was faithful in all God’s house and saw the form of the Lord. The descendants of Moses did not receive the priesthood. They were however, counted as part of the tribe of Levi,^[132] which was set apart from the other Israelites.^[133]

Why and when were the Levites set apart? They were set apart for the Lord the day Moses returned to camp and found the Israelites worshipping the golden calf. The Levites obeyed God’s command, “Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbour.”^[134] That day, three thousand Israelites died for the terrible sin they committed against the Lord. And because the Levites were more zealous for the word of the Lord and were not afraid to go against their own brothers, the Lord blessed the Levites with the priesthood, for they showed that they had the things of God in mind, and not the things of men.

Phinehas of Israel - Phinehas of the church

If the Levites being commended by God for killing their brothers does not make you query the world’s presumptions of right and wrong, and compare it with God’s perspective (for often there is a grave error in thinking they are one and the same), what will? If it doesn’t cause you to cry out to the Holy Spirit for understanding of God, how will you reconcile the fact that God does kill? If you do not reconcile this, how then will you understand the justice and righteousness of God?

Read Numbers 25 where Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron, turned the anger of the Lord away from Israel when the Israelites engaged in Baal worship with the Moabite women.^[135] The Lord’s anger burned against Israel, and He said to Moses, “Take all the leaders of these people, kill them and expose them in broad daylight before the Lord, so that the Lord’s fierce anger may turn away from Israel.”^[136]

When Moses and all of Israel were gathered in repentance before the Lord at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting, an Israelite man brought a Midianite woman right into the camp. When Phinehas saw them go into a tent, he left the assembly, took a spear in his hand and drove the spear through them, killing them both. Phinehas’ actions caused the plague against the Israelites to cease, but the rebels who were killed numbered 24,000.^[137] The action of one man saving tens of thousands of lives - does it remind you of anyone?

That day, the Lord said to Moses, “Phinehas son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the priest, has turned My anger from the Israelites; for he is as zealous as I am for My honour among them, so that in My zeal I did not put an end to them. Therefore tell him that I am making My covenant of peace with him. He and his descendants will have a covenant of a lasting priesthood, because he was zealous for the honour of his God and made atonement for the Israelites.”^[138]

But how did a murderer make atonement for the Israelites? Doesn’t the sixth commandment forbid murder? Why didn’t God order against Phinehas his due punishment according to the law, but granted him a covenant of peace instead? What did Phinehas achieve that the Lord said he was jealous with God’s jealousy?^[139]

Unlike the other Israelites, Phinehas had understood the significance of the higher command of the Lord to the judges of Israel. And though the command to kill his rebellious brothers was not directed to priests but to the judges of Israel, Phinehas was prepared to suffer the consequence of disobedience. Is not the first commandment: “You shall have no other gods besides Me”?^[140] And did not Jesus teach us that the first and greatest commandment of the old covenant is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength?^[141] Phinehas was jealous for his God and he had God’s jealousy in him. He was jealous for the things of God, and not the things of men. And this jealousy is not the worldly one that stems from possessiveness and fear. Godly jealousy is a consuming zeal for God’s honour, which includes jealousy for those He loves to come into their full inheritance in Him, for this brings Him honour.

Our Lord is a God who, for His own Name’s sake, cannot let Himself be defamed, so He will not yield His glory to another.^[142] In Phinehas was a Godly jealousy that was so similar to the Lord’s jealousy for His own honour, that the Lord commended him and set him apart from the lineage of Aaron. Remember God said in Exodus 34.14, “Do not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose Name is Jealous, is a jealous God.” What is the Lord’s jealousy, and what or who are They jealous for?

In truth, Phinehas not only disobeyed the sixth commandment, “You shall not murder.”^[143] He also contravened the Lord’s requirement that His priests are not to be defiled by a dead body.^[144] Even though the Lord had given the order to the judges to kill the men who joined in worshipping the Baal of Peor, Phinehas technically broke two commands and his punishment was death. For the Lord said, “Anyone who kills a person is to be put to death as a murderer only on the testimony of witnesses”^[145]; and “The priests are to keep My requirements so that they do not become guilty and die for treating them with contempt. I am the Lord, who makes them holy.”^[146]

So isn’t a person who kills another man unholy in the sight of God? Apparently not in the case of Phinehas. For God also kills; and He is not unholy. He is the only One who, after killing you, can raise you back to life; and He is the only One who, after destroying you, can restore and resurrect you. God testifies about Himself in Isaiah 45.7, “I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things.” And Jesus said in Luke 12.5, “Fear Him who, after killing the body, has power to throw you into Hell.”

If a person kills men in God’s Name to offer a service to God, and wants to be declared innocent by God who is Justice, he better learn to kill as God kills, and to raise men back to life as God raises back to life. Otherwise he is no different from Satan whom the Father declared a murderer from the beginning. He had better learn the difference between God who kills but takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, and Satan who murders, for Satan takes no pleasure in mercy.

Phinehas followed an order from God at the risk of his own life, and the Lord commended him for it. He put his neck on the line when he threw the spear into two fellow human beings because God’s honour was more important to him. In truth, Phinehas had displayed the qualities of Jesus, because the Son was so jealous and full of zeal for the honour of His Father’s house that He laid down His life for His Father’s world. Jesus did so with perfect knowledge of God and His Father’s plans for Creation. This command He received from the Father directly.

Phinehas reminded the Father of His Son that day, and God loved him for it. Perhaps Phinehas even surprised himself, or it was an act of impulsive zealousness for God. He may have even been fully prepared to accept the consequences of his actions in standing up for His God. But God knew what was in Phinehas’ heart, because He judges us from the heart and not by mere appearance. Suffice to say, God liked what He saw in Phinehas. He was pleased to see Jesus in Phinehas. The lesson to be learnt here is zeal for God’s honour. This is Godly jealousy.

Only the Lord can thoroughly examine the heart of a man and make the light shine out of the darkness. The impurities of our thoughts and motives cannot be hidden from Him, for there is nowhere to run and hide from God. The prophet Elijah would know. He ran away from Jezebel in fearfulness and hid from the Lord in a cave in Horeb, the mountain of God. But he was found by the Lord, the Lord and the Lord.^[147] The deepest caves cannot hide you and the highest mountain cannot cover you because the Lord will always find you to correct you in His love, no matter how soft or stern, so that you may turn and repent and be saved. This is His love and grace for you and He does not change through all the ages. Where is there to hide when the Holy Spirit has been poured on all flesh and lives in those who have received Him through Christ Jesus?

For the church, following God’s orders is a strict liability. In legal terms, this means that you are held responsible for your actions even if you did not intend to commit the crime. It is a duty of care that must be exercised with precision and due diligence in the prescribed way, but we have deviated from listening to Jesus carefully and exclusively like a runaway train. The higher command from God the Father to the disciples of Jesus Christ is “Listen to Him!” Instead, the church commits sexual immorality and listens to everyone else except Jesus first and foremost, dividing Jesus’ words by the words of men, and making our Father a laughingstock to His enemies. Do not be surprised if the church does not even know this command, for many shepherds have failed to feed the flock properly.

True sexual immorality in the church is not about sex outside of marriage. Sexual immorality is unfaithfulness in your heart and actions to all the words, deeds and Person of Jesus. Our true motivation should be doing everything as Jesus did. He always did what pleases the Father,^[148] because therein lies your relationship with your Father. And relationship with the Father never comes from men’s doctrines of rules upon rules.

Did not Moses teach the Israelites this principle: “Do not plant two kinds of seed in your vineyard; if you do, not only the crops you plant but also the fruit of the vineyard will be defiled”?^[149] Jesus sowed into our hearts the seed, which is the word of God,^[150] and the message about the Kingdom of Heaven and the Kingdom of God. He is the True Vine and His Father is the Gardener.^[151]

The vineyard of Jesus is His church, just like the house of Israel and the men of Judah were the Father’s vineyard, the garden of His delight.^[152] The Lord hired men to work in His vineyard, from the first hour to the eleventh hour, instructing them to sow the good seed by spreading His Gospel to the world. Instead, the workers, who are those who believe in Him, have sowed bad seed by diluting the truth of Jesus Christ, deserting the power of the Holy Spirit, and mixing the word of God with their own common doctrines consisting of lifeless rules and customs and boringly pompous ceremonies. (Not to say that God is not glamorous and splendorous, but pomp is about elevating one’s importance whilst disguising one’s lack.)

The church has done this because we failed to listen to Jesus and to practise ALL of His words, so full power to testify for Jesus was lost to the church. The church could no longer be trusted by the Holy Spirit who was sent to raise up mature sons and daughters of God for the purpose of entrusting them with His full power. So, it had to rely on financial, political and intellectual power, and it exchanged the glory of God for something disgraceful. The church has fallen into the trappings of the enemy who sows weeds among the good seeds.^[153] When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, the weeds also appeared in the church. This is the church in its present state. So what do you think the Father will do to the poisonous works and the weeds, and the sons of the devil who are working doing their father’s biddings in the church, the vineyard of Jesus?

In God’s infinite wisdom and grace, the Father has let both the wheat and the weeds grow together so as not to disturb the harvest.^[154] And for a long time the Holy Spirit has kept silent. He has kept quiet and held Himself back.^[155] Night and day, whether the owner of the vineyard sleeps or get up, the seed sprouts and grows. As soon as the grain is ripe, He will put the sickle to it, because the harvest time has come. I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest.^[156] See, it stands written in His word: He will not keep silent but will pay back in full.^[157] The Father will avenge the blood of His only begotten Son Jesus Christ that has been trampled underfoot. And judgment always begins in His own household.

Those within the church who trust in idols and who say to their images, “You are our gods,” will be turned back in utter shame.^[158] They will bear the shame of their harvest because of the Lord’s fierce anger against them.^[159] This is what the Sovereign Lord said, “Whom have you so dreaded and feared that you have been false to Me, and have neither remembered Me nor pondered this in your hearts? Is it not because I have long been silent that you do not fear Me? I will expose your righteousness and your works, and they will not benefit you. When you cry out for help, let your collection of idols save you!”^[160]

Soon the Father will release this command to His holy angels: “First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring them into My barn.”^[161] The vineyards that have been defiled by the planting of good and bad seeds will be ravaged.^[162] They will not be destroyed completely, but their branches will be stripped. Even though Jesus said to them, “I am the Vine and you are the branches,”^[163] they are ones who did not remain in Jesus and His words did not remain in them, so they bore only fruits of bitter poison from unrepentance and unforgiveness. The fruits that they display are defiled because a tree cannot bear good fruit if it does not remain in Jesus.^[164]

Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.^[165] But every good tree bearing the complete set of twelve fruits of the Holy Spirit will display His strength in the coming days and be raised up in the stature of Jesus. For the Kingdom of God will be taken from the fruitless ones and be given to those who will produce its fruit.^[166] Has God ever taken a kingdom away from someone who was weighed and found wanting? Read 1 Kings 11 when God took ten tribes of the kingdom of Israel from Solomon and gave them to Jeroboam, because Solomon had forsaken the Lord and led Israel astray with the worship of false gods.

And so by their fruit you will recognise the brothers, sisters and mothers of Christ.^[167] They are the ones who hold onto Jesus’ teachings even if it costs them everything.^[168] Their fruits feature the fragrance of the Son of Man, which is sacrificial love, and a sweetness that is better than honey. It is the sweetness of a son or daughter of God, brother or sister of Christ and most loyal servant of the Holy Spirit. And its aroma and exquisite taste cannot be counterfeited because it is only meant for their Father. From their hearts, sweetness flows from their mouths and into the ears of their Father, yet it is private. Their fruits only respond to the touch and voice of their God. They bear fruit in season according to His wishes for they know, understand and love their Gardener and the True Vine, which makes them flourish in everlasting fruitfulness. With gratitude, they know that it was the Father who drew them and the power of the Holy Spirit that grafted them into the Vine. They know which covenant they live by because of the blood of the Lamb that was poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. And they delight in unceasing repentance and forgiveness, for they know they were bought at a price not paid by their own lives.

Without the Spirit of Life who draws the living waters from the throne of God and of the Lamb to nourish us, His living temple, we cannot even retain God’s breath of life in us. For no one is able to say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit.^[169] If the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil,^[170] then the love of God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, is the root of all kinds of truthfulness. God’s truth exists within and beyond this Creation. His truth exists with or without us, for before we were born, He IS the great “I AM.”

Consider how the Holy Spirit will reveal the disciples of Jesus who have listened to and understood the higher command. They are the ‘Phinehas’ of the church who are faithful in drawing near to Jesus and in practising His words, and they are loyal to the counsel of the Holy Spirit. Disciples who are prepared to wait night and day for the return of Jesus. Their lives are not complete until they are with Jesus in the flesh. Disciples who feel the pain of separation, and whose desire for the nearness of God is more than the flesh can bear. Their spirits hunger to grow and reach out to touch God, not just His hem, but His face.

Disciples who burn with such holy passion in their aloneness with God that a thousand nights enduring the loneliness of separation from Jesus is ill-spent in crowded rooms with familiar faces speaking words about nothing. Disciples who are as jealous and zealous for God’s Son as the Father and the Holy Spirit are. Disciples who are frustrated with their own shortcomings and are in constant repentance for being a stumbling block to the Holy Spirit. Disciples who enjoy forgiving sins and debts just like God. Disciples who are filled with Godly jealousy, which is righteous, and not worldly jealousy, which is selfish.

The world’s jealousy is one that looks out for its own glory and gain. God’s jealousy is based on the truth that only He can give us anything worthwhile, because apart from Him we have no good thing. God is never jealous of us or the images we put on a pedestal at the expense of our closeness with Him. No, He has always been jealous for us. He is the Parent who is jealous for the well-being of His children and wants the best for them. God’s jealousy for us is holy, and it bears fruit from love and patience, not envy or malice. God is so jealous for you that He gave you His Son, so that all that you were destined to be, you will be in Christ Jesus. For in this, you are the image and likeness of God.

Can you see yourself as the younger brother or sister who is more jealous for Jesus than your Father? Is it possible to be more determined than God Himself to procure justice for Jesus? When you start to see God in “family mode”, you will begin to understand how the passion of Jesus Christ can tie in with your purpose in life. When you can view your ministry from this perspective, however great or small it is in the eyes of men, your ministry will be put in priority mode on the Father’s list. How such ascension will change your relationship with God, only God knows, and it is for you to find out.

Live justice for Jesus and see if the Father will not open the floodgates of Heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will be successful in your mission to procure justice for Jesus and His reign on Earth. For how else will this word of Jesus be fulfilled: “In that day you will ask in My Name. I am not saying that I will ask the Father on your behalf. No, the Father Himself loves you because you have loved Me and have believed that I came from God”?^[171] If you love someone, would you not cry out for justice for him? I have seen the world cry out for justice for convicted drug traffickers. Why have there been no consistent reports of churches crying out for justice for Jesus night and day before our Heavenly Father?

Where do you stop yourself saying to Jesus, “This far I will come with You and no farther”? Do you ask the Lord, “This is a hard teaching, who can accept it?” Is it easier to chase the perishable things of this world? Is there no need for you to go further with Jesus? Do you put God in a box and leave Him in the closet, tucked away for your time of need?

Or are you too busy? If you had understood the Father’s purpose for the church and for you, would you make time?

Do you shy away when God challenges you with His word? Are you offended by the convictions of the Holy Spirit in regard to sin, righteousness and judgment? Can you handle the searing heat of the truth that forces you out of stiff-neck complacency and religious hypocrisy, to bring you to a place of repentance before the throne of grace? He who gives His Spirit without limit would not cease the outpouring of revelations of Himself, if only you would cry out for understanding without judgment of God. Most of the Jews in Jesus’ time, who had believed Him, did not remain His disciples. When He gave the Jews this teaching in John 6.53, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you,” many of His disciples ran the other way. They turned back and no longer followed Him because the Law of Moses forbade them to drink blood. But in truth, what did they have to turn back to except the desert of the old covenant with its stringent rules and regulations?

This zeal for the Mosaic Law afforded an opportunity for James, the brother of Jesus, to lead the church back into Judaism when he wrote the letter in Acts 15 to the Gentiles believers. James re-introduced selective parts of the Mosaic Law and mixed them into the New Covenant.^[172] Was this sect not the first denomination in the church of Jesus Christ? A denomination is just a fancy word for division within the church, because we did not achieve unity by listening to Jesus and the Holy Spirit, and loving our fellow disciples as Jesus has loved us. Denominations exist because of disunity and unforgiveness within the church.

Do you know the commands of Jesus’ New Covenant? Do you suppose Jesus gave us new commands that are exactly like those of the old covenant? What would be the point then? Can you tell the difference between the commands of the old covenant and of the new? Or are you one who, after drinking the old wine, does not want the new wine, saying, “The old is better”?^[173]

Are you an old wineskin who cannot accept new wine, because you fear that the new wine will burst your skin, the wine will run out and you will be ruined? How extreme was it in those days for a man to drink blood and eat the flesh of a man by faith? Do not take the repercussions lightly, but think it through. For if you gloss over it, you will miss the impact of the first strike of the sword of the Lord and the explicit details of the Creator’s master plan for the salvation of His Creation. God wields His word as a skilful Warrior. He knows exactly where to strike at the heart of men to set His measuring line and to bring them to a place of repentance. He is the Master of His word. He uses His word to resurrect, restore and redeem all according to His original purpose and status. Do not be fooled, God is indeed as shrewd as a serpent and innocent as a dove.

Church: If you do not listen to Jesus, you will not know the commands of the New Covenant. In truth, you are a garment torn between the new patch and the old. You have one foot in the old covenant and the other foot in the New Covenant. You are not a complete listener of Jesus, or of the Spirit, or of the Father. Or even of Moses and the prophets for that matter. You are neither here nor there, and you will be split in two when God sends His earthquakes to shake the nations and to break the gates that bar the way to His return on Earth. You will fall between the jagged cracks of an Earth that is passing away, because your foothold is not placed firmly on the Rock and the solid foundation of the New Covenant.

This Rock is not carved by human hands out of the imposing mountain of God.^[174] For Christ did not enter a man-made sanctuary. He entered Heaven itself, and by one sacrifice, He has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.^[175] It is no longer water that is poured out from the rock as in the days under Moses’ leadership,^[176] but it is the blood of the Lamb that flows freely from the Rock. He is the Overcomer. The forgiveness that pours from the Rock breaks down all substances that men use to build a towering wall between God and themselves thinking that they will reach the Heavens and make a name for themselves. The Rock will break the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold to pieces, who are those who fall upon it, and those upon whom it falls will be crushed.^[177] It will humble man to the dust from which he was first formed, and the wind of the Holy Spirit will sweep him away without leaving a trace.^[178]

It is written: In the last days, the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established as chief among the mountains; it will be raised up and all nations will stream to it.^[179]

What is this chief of mountains? Is it Mount Sinai or Mount Zion? Is it the hilly outcrop of Golgotha? Or is it the Mount of Olives, where the Lord’s feet will touch down east of Jerusalem?^[180]

Look no further than the area from the hilly outcrop of Golgotha through to the Mount of Olives as the chief among the mountains that will be raised up.^[181] The Lord’s new temple will be established there for His millennial reign because there is no other place like it.

Why? Because it is the only place in all the universes where the Lord poured out His precious blood unto death into the dust of the Earth. Golgotha, the Place of the Skull, will be the place for the house of the first resurrection. It is the place where Jesus’ blood marked the spot of the New Covenant. For the Lord said, “I am returning to Mount Zion, and I will live in Jerusalem. Then Jerusalem will be called the Faithful City, the mountain of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies will be called the Holy Mountain.”^[182] “This entire area - including the sacred lands and the city - is a square that measures 25,000 cubits on each side. The entire area will be holy. And a section of this land, measuring 500 cubits by 500 cubits will be set aside for the temple.”^[183]

His kingdom endures forever. Amen.

A new offering - a New Covenant

In Hebrews 10.1-4, the writer wrote that the same sacrifices of the old covenant, repeated endlessly year after year, could never make perfect those who draw near to worship, as it is impossible for the blood of the bulls and goats to take away sins. It is indeed impossible because the blood of the animals is tainted with sin. Everything on the whole planet is affected by the sin of mankind. And, what is with sin cannot take away sin, except as an annual reminder of sin and a means of temporary atonement.

It is therefore disturbing and deceiving that studies on the homosexual behaviour of monkeys conclude that God condones homosexuality. Did He not command Noah to bring in pairs of animals into the ark, male and female?^[184] Did not God say, “You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female, it is an abomination”?^[185]

I am not saying that a gay person is a “bigger” sinner than a straight person. All men have fallen short of the glory of God. We all need to come into complete repentance and change our ways. We are each like the Israelites who adopted all sorts of detestable practices from our time in Egypt. My point is: Look at what man has achieved with the dominion of the Earth given to Adam by God. We were deceived and we sinned. We then continued in our sin, wickedness and rebellion. And in our refusal to repent and return to God in all fullness, sin in the world turned the monkeys gay. We cannot look at the animal kingdom to make a judgment about mankind, because God gave man authority and dominion over all the living creatures. That is backwards thinking. If there ever was a correct theory of evolution, it would be the evolution of sin that occurred when we forsook our Father the Creator and joined in the rebellion with the devil, thereby defiling and corrupting the Earth with our wickedness.

The world is so contaminated by sin that all of Creation finds it hard to breathe and it groans in suffocation. It is a totally inaccurate perspective to look at the living creatures of the sinful world today, and then make a reverse judgment about God’s plan for this Creation and man’s original role in it. We have fallen from such a great height that our minds are closed to what was intended by the Lord. Our flesh lives amongst a concrete jungle that masks the true beauty of our God. And our eyes are blinded by an intelligence lifeline called logic, which leaves no room in our hearts for faith in Jesus Christ.

It is written that Adam lived to be 930 years old.^[186] How do you explain that with logic or scientific theory? But the world prefers its deceptions so that it may sleep soundly at night. Yet there is no rest for the wicked.

People say God is nature. He is in the trees and the fishes of the sea and so on. So if the monkeys engage in homosexual behaviour, then didn’t God create this?

No, He did not. God is the Creator, but He did not create sin. So how did sin come about? From our choice in forsaking the Lord by disobeying Him and refusing to believe and repent that we are sinners who need salvation. We refuse to acknowledge that we are powerless to save ourselves in any way that lasts, and we have a fine way of building fortresses to keep God Almighty out of our lives. This Creation had been marred by sin. But God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son to save it through Him, and then there will come that day when everything will be made new.^[187] Do you understand? You cannot judge the Creator by His Creation when it has been ruined by the people He created for its inhabitation.

God gave dominion over the creatures of this world to man twice. The dominion is power and authority to rule on Earth. The first time was in Genesis 1.28 when God said to man, male and female, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the Earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” The second occasion was His reaffirmation to Noah after the flood in Genesis 9.1-3: “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the Earth. The fear and dread of you will fall upon the all the beasts of the Earth and all the birds of the air, upon every creature that moves along the ground, and upon all the fish of the sea; they are given into your hands. Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.”

But what did we do with the dominion and power given by the Lord to us? Did we treasure and protect it by His word, and use it according to His purpose? Rather, have we not, time and time again, joined in the rebellion of the devil and his demon hordes, as we use it to test the Lord in our attempt to overthrow God’s throne and make a name for ourselves? Freewill on one hand and God’s dominion on the other - we did not use both our hands to exalt and lift up the Name of our God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but we used them to push God away. In the days of Noah before the flood, we pushed God so far from us that His Spirit could not contend with man for more than 120 years.^[188]

When we joined in the rebellion of the devil with his suitcase of sin crouching at our door and Death, the “surprise” package, close behind him, we allowed sin to have mastery over us, instead of the other way round. Remember, it was not Satan who had the power over death, but by God’s own word to Adam, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”^[189] The crafty serpent used the word of God against us. He deceived us, and we were deceived because we did not know the word of God. We let ourselves be deceived, and we let the dominion and authority slip from our hands. Can we blame anyone but ourselves?

What if Eve had said to the serpent, “No, God definitely said that if we ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we will surely die. Who are you to speak against the word of God? Away from me, you evildoer!”?

Or what if Adam refrained from eating the fruit, and got on his knees before God to intercede for Eve? Did Adam not say Eve was the “bone of my bones and the flesh of my flesh”?^[190] He was quick to claim her as his own, so shouldn’t he have taken better care of her? Shouldn’t he have gone to find that crafty serpent, confronted him, and stood up to protect his wife from evil?

For it is when we do not seek to know the full counsel of the word of God and keep it in our hearts through daily practice, that Satan may sneak in with his words of lies, doubt and flattery. Before we know it, with a dash of ignorance, an ounce of arrogance and a dollop of envy, we are sinning right alongside the original sinner, Satan, who is filled with pride.^[191] Don’t blame Satan or his deception. Just like you cannot blame a thief from entering your house when you left the door wide open. We should have known better.

What does Satan have that he did not acquire by means of cheating, lying and scheming? Would the father of lies build his kingdom legitimately? The legions of fallen angels only succumbed to him through his dishonest trade and lies about ascension.^[192] And now the fallen angels are trapped between their judgment and their fears. But the Son’s love for redemption of what belongs to His Father goes beyond the depths of this Earth into its darkest dungeons. For Jesus was made alive in the spirit by the Spirit, through whom He went to preach to the spirits in prison who disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built.^[193] Glory be to the Holy Spirit who led the Lord to the most unlikely places to do the will of the Father. And blessed be the Holy Spirit who guides the sons and daughters of God along the narrow path trodden only by the feet of Jesus as He fulfilled the work of redemption.

That was how Satan, the liar and father of lies acquired the kingdoms of this world.^[194] The so-called splendour of this world comes from a system of widespread trade. It is where the ancient serpent has his power and his throne and great authority over every tribe, people, language and nation.^[195] The system of trade is loved by those who spread a table for Fortune and fill bowls of mixed wine for Destiny, but have forsaken the Lord and forgotten His temple on His holy mountain.^[196] But God’s wrath is coming, and such trade of riches and wealth will vanish in one hour when doom comes to Babylon, the city of power, when all her riches and splendour vanish, never to be recovered.^[197] Their cargoes of gold, silver, precious stones, pearls and fine linen had been traded for her favours as she prostituted the things of God and desecrated the sanctuary,^[198] for even bodies and souls of men were sold for gain under a deceptive magic spell that led the nations astray.^[199]

For it did not advance God’s interest and purpose when we inadvertently turned the Kingdom of the Earth over to a murderer and the father of lies. Jesus testified that the devil was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him.^[200] But now we must learn from our errors and the errors of past generations because Jesus Christ our Lord came to show us the way and gave us eternal life through faith in Him. He opened our eyes and turned us from darkness to light; and from the power of Satan to God, so that we may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in Him. “Now this is eternal life,” said Jesus, “that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You sent.”^[201]

Now that we can see with unveiled faces, know that we are to be armoured in the full armour of our God. “Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”^[202]

Let us fight with the Lord in His battle for God to win His war, for victory only comes through our Lord Jesus Christ. “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the Heavenly realms.”^[203] We attack our enemies to take back the kingdom of the Earth, and reinstate it to the dominion of the iron sceptre of Jesus and the kingdom of our Father, a kingdom that Jesus has conferred on us.^[204] The Lord will reign until He destroys His last enemy, Death, and He will hand over the kingdom to the Father after He has destroyed all dominion, authority and power.^[205] When He has done this, the Son Himself will be made subject to Him who put everything under Him, so that God may be all in all.^[206]

He who is seated on the throne will make everything new,^[207] for Heaven and Earth will pass away, but it will not do so by the word or the false authority of the enemy of Truth. It will only happen when God is truly ready and satisfied, so that the new may come forth in holy perfection. Satan is only the condemned prince of this world. He will be driven out and defeated by the sword of the Lord. A prince has no real authority or lasting power because there is One above him: The King of kings.

Are we not children of God who have been brought into the glorious freedom of the Spirit of Life?^[208] The Spirit Himself testified that we are God’s children. Paul writes that if we are children, then we are also heirs of God and co-heirs of Christ.^[209]

Repeat this confession to yourself: “I am the co-heir of Christ - with Christ.” Do you know what this means? Do you know what it means to be a son or daughter to your Father in Heaven? Look to the Rock from which you were cut and to the quarry from which you were hewn.^[210] Look to Jesus Christ the Son of Man, the Son of God. For your Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in Him shall have eternal life, and He will raise us up at the last day.^[211] For it was in Jesus that all things were created, both in Heaven and on Earth, things seen and things unseen, whether thrones, dominions, rulers, or authorities; all things were created and exist through Him and in Him and for Him.^[212]

Say it again and again, in word and in tongues, until the reality and the enormity of this truth sinks into your spirit. We are not subjects of the kingdom of the Earth even though we live on it, because we are called to be citizens of New Jerusalem. God’s dominion endures through all generations.^[213] To Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, be blessing and honour, glory and majesty and splendour, dominion and power and might forever and ever, through the eternities of the eternities!^[214] The devil has put on a bedazzling show for far too long. It is time to put Satan in his place, which is the footstool of the Lord. Enough is enough.

He is from above

In Isaiah 1.11-14, the Father said to Israel, “The multitude of your sacrifices - what are they to Me? I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fattened animals; I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. When you come to appear before Me, who has asked this of you, this trampling of My courts? Stop bringing meaningless offerings! Your incense is detestable to Me. New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations - I cannot bear your evil assemblies. Your New Moon festivals and your appointed feasts My soul hates. They have become a burden to Me; I am weary of bearing them.”

You ask, “But wasn’t it God’s requirements for Israel to bring Him offerings according to His law? Why would He be tired and burdened by them? How can a nation weary God Almighty?”

A nation wearies God Almighty, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on Earth, by doing the opposite of what He delights in. Remember the Father’s words in Jeremiah 9.24: “Let not the wise man boast about his wisdom or the strong man boast about his strength or the rich man boast about his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on Earth, for in these in I delight.” What delights the Lord does not burden or trouble Him.

However, Israel wearied the Lord by their evil deeds, injustice and unrighteousness, and also because they refused to hear the word of the Lord and obey the law of their God.^[215] In the same way, the church has wearied God the Holy Spirit since the days of the eleven through the dishonouring of the Father’s one command, which is injustice to Jesus and His words, and hostility and indifference towards the Holy Spirit. We weary the Lord by works that seem holy and upright but have nothing to do with the righteousness of God. The righteousness of God is His goodness and perfection in doing whatever He pleases. Yet how many of His churches let the Holy Spirit do what He pleases with His people - some of whom He has been baptised into?

And so, without repenting, we continue to rebel against the word of God and despise the counsel of the Most High,^[216] the Lord Almighty, wonderful in counsel and magnificent in wisdom,^[217] and His Spirit of Counsel and of Power.^[218] In this, the church has blasphemed Jesus by forsaking the Holy Spirit, just as the Father said that Israel had blasphemed Him by forsaking Him and provoking Him to anger when they ran after their idols under every high hill and leafy tree.^[219]

When we do not exercise kindness, justice and righteousness on Earth as God does, we distress and weigh the Lord down with religious events that leave His Holy Spirit standing at the door. He is invited by Name, but rejected in reality. Do you think we please the Father when we use our mouths to boast about the wisdom, strength and riches of the church, and then use the same mouths to sing praises of Jesus, not even knowing or understanding what brings His Father delight? Why do preachers spend more time talking about tithes and money than feeding the flock with the words of Jesus and revelations from the Holy Spirit regarding the words of Jesus?

At Sunday services, how many churches allow time for the Holy Spirit to minister to His people and have them speak in tongues with Him? How many of us are taught to savour the wine because it is the precious blood of Jesus, or have been inspired to spontaneously kiss the bread because it is the closest thing to touching Jesus until He returns in the flesh?

Church: “You say, ‘We want to be like the nations, like the people of the world, who serve wood and stone.’ But what you have in mind will never happen.”^[220] The Father and the Holy Spirit will not allow Jesus to be defamed. The Father does not want an idol cast as an imaginary image of Jesus for you to worship. Remember God said, “You shall not make for yourself an idol in any form of anything in Heaven above or on the Earth beneath or in the waters below.”^[221] He does not even like dressed stones because we defile it with the tools of our hands.^[222] So what shape of wood and stone can man make that would capture the formless beauty of our eternal God? Moses the prophet warned, “Therefore watch yourselves very carefully, so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape, whether formed like a man or a woman.”^[223]

Look around the house of God. It is filled with detestable idols of wood and stone and lifeless words. They are not beautiful or grand, but disgusting. They disgust my Father, insult my Brother and grieve the Holy Spirit. Get rid of the idolatry in the temple. Do you think the Holy Spirit feels at home when He walks into the idol-filled, yet empty buildings? You don’t think it makes His hair stand on edge, while His simmering rage rises to the surface of the wounds we had inflicted upon our Father’s heart when we reject listening to Jesus at the standard to which we are called?

Church: Why can’t we see that what we do is meaningless to the Lord because we went off on a tangent by failing to listen to Jesus? The church is not where it is supposed to be. The church is not at the full power of the Holy Spirit. There is no use pretending. Accept the truth and repent. What we do now in worship and fellowship with Him is only a vague shadow of what His heart truly desires.

What is in the Father’s heart? Do you know? Can the Holy Spirit trust you with the deepest secrets of God? If He does, would you go sell them through books, tapes and conferences? Would you have a fancy website named after yourself? Or would you keep His secrets until He tells you to give them away freely by proclaiming it on the highest rooftops? Jesus taught His disciples to freely give what they have received.^[224] Yet we love to sell the truth to our own family within the house of God. Where do we get off making money from family?

The time of the old covenant has passed for those who believe in Jesus. There needed to be an offering that was pleasing to the Father, because God desires mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgement of God rather than burnt offerings.^[225] This need was fulfilled even before the creation of the world. It is time to follow the Law of Jesus, not the Law of Moses.

Enter His Son. Enter the New Covenant for the Forgiveness of Sins - the covenant of the blood sacrifice of God’s own Son that completely, instantly and permanently rendered the offerings of bulls and lambs obsolete. The old covenant has been superseded. It is written: “Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, nor have You delight in them; You have given Me the capacity to hear and obey. My ears you have opened; burnt offering and sin offering You have not required. Then I said, ‘Here I am, I have come - it is written about Me in the scroll. I desire to do Your will, O My God; Your law is within My heart.’”^[226]

What is the will of the Father for Jesus? Read Jesus’ testimony in John 6.40 (NLT): “For it is My Father’s will that all who see His Son and believe in Him should have eternal life. I will raise them up at the last day.”

The New Covenant and its commands replaced the old covenant and its commands. In truth, the old covenant was so tainted that when Jesus spoke to the Jews about the law, He sometimes referred to it as their own law.^[227] This was not because the law belongs to the Jews in the meaning of Moses’ words, “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.”^[228] No, it was because the Jews changed the law through both ignorance and manipulation so that it became a vehicle for customs and traditions, rather than an instrument in God’s hands to exercise kindness, righteousness and justice. For Jesus said to the Jews, “Has not Moses given you the law? Yet not one of you keeps the law.”^[229] And to the Pharisees and teachers of religious law, “You ignore God’s law and substitute your own traditions. You skilfully sidestep God’s law in order to hold on to your own tradition.”^[230]

Count the kings of Israel who had followed the Lord in all His ways in the books of Chronicles and Kings. And count the kings who began their kingship steadfastly in the Lord but then strayed from Him. Is it written that any of the kings of Israel followed the rules of kingship in the book of Deuteronomy 17.18-20: “When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law, taken from that of the priests, who are Levites. It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life, so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees and not consider himself better than his brothers and turn from the law to the right or to the left. Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel.”

No wonder the kings and their descendants did not reign over the kingdom of Israel a long time. In fact, the Book of the Law was so misplaced that it was found in the temple of the Lord during the reign of Josiah.^[231] How could it be found unless it was lost in the first place? How could the Book of the Law be lost unless it was not used regularly? I imagine that people nowadays use their mobile phones more than the kings of Israel did the Book of the Law.

If you delight in the restoration of the Father’s direct command to disciples to listen to Jesus and understand its importance in these last days, would you go the extra mile and write your own king’s scroll, that is, your own set of the words spoken only by the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit as recorded in the Bible? If so, it would be easier to highlight Their words first before you commence the writing. To me, the task is not taxing. It is a delight and deeply satisfying.

With the New Covenant came new commands. According to Leviticus 17.14, we are not fit to return to the old covenant once we partake in the New Covenant. The Lord said, “You must not eat the blood of any creature, because the life of every creature is its blood; anyone who eats it must be cut off.” Entering into the New Covenant by drinking the blood of Jesus forbids us from returning to the old covenant. We are cut off from God according to God’s word. So where does this leave us? Well, squarely in the arms of our Saviour Jesus Christ, of course.

The New Covenant requires us to commemoratively drink the blood and eat the flesh of the Son of Man by faith. He was one who can change the very substance of things and situations by His words and thoughts. And so by His word, the wine is His blood and the bread is His flesh. By faith, we have drunk the wine, which is the lifeblood of Jesus, and we are cut off from God by the Father’s own words in Leviticus 17. We have nowhere to turn except to Jesus, the Father’s Son. The old covenant does not serve a purpose for us, for we are “flesh-eaters” and “blood-drinkers”. We have been irrevocably cut off from the laws of the old covenant, so that we may serve under the New Covenant as we are being led by the Spirit of Sonship.

About the sacrifice of Christ, the writer of Hebrews wrote: “The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First He says, ‘This is the covenant I will make with them after that time,’ says the Lord. ‘I will put My laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds … Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.’”^[232] Jesus alone has the words of eternal life. He is the Resurrection and the Life.^[233] He is the Beginning and the End.^[234] Death came because Adam first disobeyed the command of God. Death was never intended for this Creation. Look at the way life was meant to sustain itself in Genesis 1.29-30. Man, the beasts of the Earth, the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground were given plants and fruits for food. It was not until after the flood in Genesis 9.3 that God gave Noah everything that lives and moves for food. Life with God was meant to be a beginning in which there is no end. We were not created to die and go to Heaven. Think about it…

There is a standard the Father wants us to commit to His Son and His words. For disciples, the only sin against our Father is the disobedience of His direct command to listen to His Son Jesus. Jesus’ words are the building blocks of a structure that is of the everlasting and ever-rising. With one command regarding the blood of the New Covenant, “Drink from it, all of you,”^[235] we have been given a certificate of divorce from the old covenant because of our marital unfaithfulness. We are not to return to our first husband. Anyone who looks at the old covenant lustfully now has already committed adultery with it. This is true sexual immorality. So if your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for the whole body to be thrown into Hell.^[236]

Church: It is time to move into the New Covenant completely. For through the Holy Spirit, the Lord is spring-cleaning every religious nerve and stiff-necked bone in the body of Christ. The Holy Spirit works so hard to prepare the church for the R/resurrection and the L/life. He is ushering us into the new treasures of the Kingdom of God where the doors previously stood closed for us. Are you for Him or against Him?

If the Father’s command resonates in you like a long lost love song that has at last anchored your faith, pick up your Bible and highlighter and start consuming the words of Jesus in the company of the Holy Spirit. That’s just taking us back to kindergarten because of the height from which the church has fallen. Let us allow the Holy Spirit to guide us into ALL truth, just as the Lord had led us all the way to the extreme edges of the Law of Jesus, so that it is possible to go beyond the beginning of time when there was no sin, no wickedness, no rebellion and no ache in the heart of God.

Don’t be afraid; just believe.

The commands of the New Covenant

Will you be an extreme follower of the New Covenant? If you dare, then you have more of a reason to listen to Jesus. For how else would we learn the commands of the New Covenant except through listening to Jesus and the Holy Spirit? Jesus is our first Counsellor. He is entrusted by the Father with the commands, decrees, regulations and instructions of the New Covenant. This is the Law of Jesus. The Holy Spirit is our second Counsellor who guides us into ALL truth and teaches us ALL things, ^[237] for indeed we are all being taught by God personally and collectively. And that is life!

This is the first command about love under the New Covenant: “Love your enemies.”^[238]

And this is the new command about love under the New Covenant: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another.”^[239] Jesus repeated this command in John 15.12, “My command is this: Love each other has I have loved you.” And again in verse 17: “This is My command: Love one another.” Both commands about love were given to disciples.

The obedience of the new command is a proof of our discipleship, because by this all men will know that we are His disciples. Then the world will learn that Jesus loves the Father and He does exactly what the Father commands Him. And we have become friends of Jesus, even brothers and sisters, who are no longer servants because we know our Master’s business.

But can we learn the Master’s business when He is not around? How can you love one another as Jesus has loved you, if you do not spend enough time to experience the delight in coming to know Jesus through His words and deeds by the counsel of the Holy Spirit? Do you have a rich store of testimonies of Jesus and the words of Jesus? Do you know that His words are truth and they work? For example, has more been given to you who have, until you have an abundance?^[240] As you seek first the righteousness of the Father and His kingdom, have you asked and it has been given to you?^[241] Did you knock and the door was opened; did you seek understanding and it was found?^[242] For your testimonies about Jesus and the word of God are your treasures on Earth that no moth can destroy and no thief can steal.

Enter the Holy Spirit who brings glory to Jesus by taking from what is His and makes it known to us.^[243] The Holy Spirit - with whom we are called to testify about Jesus. I love the way He shows us something in the word, which has always been right in front of us, but He takes away the smoke screen that veils our vision to give instant understanding. It *clicks* and we are one step closer to knowing and understanding God. Each revelation from God is a wonderful gift. It is what makes reading the word so exciting.

The commands of the New Covenant build a foundation of discipleship that is based on love and forgiveness for one another as Christ has loved and forgiven us. And it is powered by the Holy Spirit, for He is Jesus’ witness. The first command of the New Covenant goes far beyond, “Do to others what you would have them do to you,” which Jesus said, “Sums up the Law and the Prophets.”^[244] For the old covenant is a covenant of worship and fellowship.

The New Covenant is a covenant of worship and fellowship, and also of discipleship, friendship and sonship or daughtership, leading to kingship. The commands of the New Covenant also reveal the role of the Holy Spirit in discipleship. Love for your fellow disciples like Jesus’ love for you is not only a fruit of the Holy Spirit; it is the hallmark of disciples who are dedicated followers of the New Covenant. It is about the love you have for your fellow disciples, not the world, and it is based on a personal love that Christ has shown you. It is relationship love that you share with Jesus, which you then take to love your fellow disciples in fulfilment of the new command of the Covenant for the Forgiveness of Sins. And that love includes continuous forgiveness.

However, if you have not established and nurtured a relationship with Jesus by listening to Him and putting His words into practice today, how would you experience a personal love by Christ that is beyond the love of John 3.16, which is God’s love for the world? How then will you fulfil the first command, let alone the other commands that follow? You must obey the first command of the New Covenant, which is love of enemies, so that your obedience to the other commands will produce fruits that are pleasing and lasting to the Gardener, our Father in Heaven.

This love begins in the word, for in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.^[245] That’s why it is so important for us to listen to Jesus.

The 10 commands of the New Covenant

Just as there are ten principal commands that were set apart as the cornerstone of the Father’s Levitical Law, so there are ten commands set apart as the cornerstone of the Law of Jesus under the New Covenant:

1. “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near … The Kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the Good News!^[246]

2. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you, and lend to them without expecting anything back … that you may be sons of your Father in Heaven.^[247]

3. Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.^[248]

4. Take [the bread] and eat; this is My body … Drink from [the cup], all of you. This is the blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.^[249] This is My body given for you; do this in remembrance of Me … This cup is the New Covenant in My blood, which is poured out for you.^[250]

5. Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.^[251]

6. He who has an ear, let him hear and understand what the Spirit says to the churches.^[252]

7. Do not blaspheme the Holy Spirit.^[253]

8. And you also must testify, for you have been with Me from the beginning.^[254]

9. Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.^[255] Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.^[256] Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod.^[257]

10. Go into all the world and preach the Good News to all Creation^[258] … Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”^[259]

Do you see that there are New Covenant commands? Can you tell the difference between the commands between old and the New Covenant? These are the New Covenant commands we must obey as beneficiaries of the Covenant for the Forgiveness of Sins made between the Father and Son. The New Covenant is powered by the Holy Spirit when disciples put Jesus’ words into practice. Who are Jesus’ disciples? Jesus said to the Jews who had believed Him, “If you hold to My teaching, you are really disciples.”^[260]

The New Covenant is a covenant of discipleship under the counsel of the Holy Spirit when we are baptised with Him by Jesus. It was not an angel that the Father sent, but His Son and His Holy Spirit. The New Covenant is forged between the Father and the Son, and we benefit from this covenant. If you do not listen to Jesus carefully and faithfully, how would you know His teachings to hold onto them? If you do not receive the Holy Spirit, how can He disciple you in Jesus’ words and deeds under His supervision and counselling?

The New Covenant introduces us to the higher level of love. It is the sacrificial love of Jesus for His Father. It is not a wishy-washy gesture of weakness, but a calculated, pre-destined and powerful act of redemption. Jesus’ love and honour for His Father saw Jesus lay down His life to become God’s sin offering for the world. Jesus took on the fullness of the wrath of God against the sins of mankind. By His blood, the Son of God sealed His eternal signature as our Saviour so that we may receive God’s mercy, even though He received no mercy Himself. Jesus did not receive mercy from God, nor from you or from me. He suffered the full weight of the sin of mankind from the days of Adam, and He finished the work of salvation in fulfilment of His covenant with His Father. Love and honour for His Father is the passion of the Christ.

By drinking the blood and eating the flesh of the Son of Man, Jesus said we would remain in Him and He in us. His disciples are authorised to forgive anyone their sins so that they may also receive God’s forgiveness in Jesus’ Name.^[261] This ties in with the Lord’s earlier teaching, “For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”^[262] Jesus taught this to disciples at the beginning of His ministry to prepare and soften their hearts, and sharpen their minds for the revelation of the New Covenant.

The extra mile or the higher level of forgiveness must be practised on enemies, as well as on your brothers and sisters in Christ. The love of enemies is your first love under the Covenant for the Forgiveness of Sins. What is the significance of the love of enemies? By this, we fulfil the Lord’s decrees, “Be merciful, as your Heavenly Father is merciful;”^[263] “Be perfect, therefore as your Heavenly Father is perfect;”^[264] and “You must be compassionate, just as your Father is compassionate.”^[265] This is the beginning of sonship and daughtership because Jesus said, “your Father.” He did not say, “your God.”

If you only forgive those who love you, what credit is that to you? God forgave you and reconciled you to Him through the death of His Son when you were still His hostile enemy. So who are we to withhold forgiveness for a much smaller debt? Since God showed us mercy when we were His enemies, who are we to withhold mercy from our enemies? And who are we to question the Lord’s methods by which He disciplines and trains us into His perfection through love for our enemies? God’s ways are higher than our ways; His thoughts are higher than ours.

Therefore, listen to Jesus: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.”^[266] “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in Heaven.”^[267] And when your enemies are blessed, do not be bitter. Rejoice! For you have become a little bit more like Jesus. You are the redeemed image and likeness of God.

For the Lord did not pour out His blood for sins He had committed. Jesus was no sinner. But He intercedes before the throne of grace for the sins we commit against God. Jesus was not appointed as a judge or arbiter between men,^[268] but there is one God and one Mediator between God and men: The Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all men - the testimony given in its proper time.^[269] We all need a Saviour and salvation, but we are mostly too rebellious and self-righteous to accept the truth about ourselves.

So if you preach the Gospel to the condemned^[270] and the Good News is rejected, do not convert them or force the truth upon them. God’s gift to mankind is freewill. Our duty is to neither convert nor force, but to compassionately preach the Good News and testify about Jesus Christ who died for our sins but was resurrected by the power of the Holy Spirit, and to convince them with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power. Jesus is the Son of Man who is authorised to forgive sins. Our display of signs, wonders and miracles is purposed to back up our testimony about His authority. That is why Jesus said, “When the Counsellor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of Truth who goes out from the Father, He will testify about Me. And you also must testify, for you have been with Me from the beginning.”^[271] The purpose of power is to testify about Jesus and His words. He is the Resurrection and the Life. And He is coming soon to reign on Earth for one thousand years.

Do not resist an evil person but go on your way to meet the King at Jerusalem if the Holy Spirit instructs you. The primary goal is to prepare the church, the Earth and the people of the world for Jesus to arrive back for His millennial reign, without further delay. Don’t worry about the condemned who are rejecting the Lord’s beautiful Gospel. Remember the words of a wise woman in 2 Samuel 14.14: “But God does not take away life; instead, He devises ways so that a banished person may not remain estranged from Him.” God has a grand plan for the salvation of ALL He has created. Keep your eyes on Jesus and the Lord will reveal the details of His plans to you, so that you may share in the understanding of a brilliant mind that mercifully delights in kindness, justice and righteousness.

If you believe Christ’s testimony about the power of forgiveness that is in His blood, and the truth of the gesture of drinking wine and eating bread by faith, then you are in the New Covenant. There is no room in your life for the old wine. To look back now after Christ died for you is worse than Lot’s wife who looked back at what or who she left behind in Sodom and Gomorrah. She was turned into a pillar of salt. To look back at Egypt now means turning your face from the Lord who is bringing you into the promised time on eagle’s wings.

So how do we reconcile ourselves between the old and the New Covenant? How do we practise listening to Jesus in obedience to the Father’s command, yet still uphold the laws of the old covenant? The Father has made it so simple for us.

Jesus said in Matthew 7.12, “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” If someone accuses you of dishonouring the laws of the old covenant because you listen to Jesus first and foremost, this is your answer, “I do not dishonour the Father when I do not abide by the Law of Moses. The Father commanded Jesus’ disciples to listen to Jesus. As His disciple, I must obey Jesus’ commands and hold onto His teachings. Jesus said that “do to others what you would have them do to you” sums up the Law and the Prophets. So when I practise these words of Jesus, I am upholding the laws of the old covenant and listening to Jesus at the same time.”

So let us place ourselves firmly in the New Covenant. The next time you hold the cup of wine and piece of bread in your hand; inhale the sweet fragrance of forgiveness and consider that which came at such a price to our God, but is not charged against us.

Give thanks to Jesus for the fate that we have been spared, and imagine the future that we have been given by Jesus who hung on the cross for us. Say to the person on your right and left joyfully, “Your sins are forgiven you,” and give cheers to our Saviour and Lord. We have a God who enjoys being the Forgiver!

Praise be to our Lord Christ Jesus forever and ever.

Amen Holy Spirit!

---

[1] Luke 22.19-20 NLT

[2] Genesis 6.1.5

[3] Genesis 6.17-18

[4] Genesis 7.2 NIV / AMP / NASB

[5] Genesis 7.11-12

[6] Genesis 7.24

[7] Genesis 6.11; 2 Peter 2.5

[8] Footnote of Job 2.1 in NIV / AMP

[9] Ezekiel 18.4

[10] Deuteronomy 9.2

[11] Deuteronomy 2.11

[12] Deuteronomy 2.20

[13] Deuteronomy 3.11

[14] 1 Samuel 17

[15] Joshua 11.21, 22

[16] Joshua 14-12

[17] Deuteronomy 2.20-21

[18] Genesis 8.1

[19] Genesis 8.13-14

[20] Genesis 7.23

[21] Genesis 8.20

[22] Genesis 9.1

[23] Genesis 1.29-30

[24] Genesis 9.4-5

[25] Genesis 9.11-12

[26] Genesis 9.12-13

[27] Genesis 9.11

[28] Genesis 17.1-4

[29] Genesis 17.7-8

[30] Genesis 17.6-8

[31] Genesis 17.9-14

[32] Genesis 26.5

[33] Genesis 22.16

[34] Genesis 26.2; 28.13

[35] Genesis 22.15

[36] Genesis 26.2-5; 28.13-15

[37] Genesis 35.10

[38] Genesis 41.41

[39] Genesis 45.7

[40] Exodus 1.5

[41] Exodus 1.11

[42] Exodus 1.22

[43] Exodus 2.10

[44] Exodus 12.40-41

[45] Leviticus 18.3

[46] Leviticus 17.7. Also see footnote b in the NIV.

[47] Exodus 19.5-6

[48] Exodus chapters 7-11: The plagues of blood, frogs, gnats, flies, livestock, boils, hail, locusts, darkness and on the firstborn.

[49] Exodus 12.14

[50] Genesis 2.1-2

[51] Genesis 2.3

[52] Exodus 31.13-16

[53] Isaiah 28.13

[54] Mark 6.45; John 6.17; Matthew 14.34 - Read all three for the full account of the apostles’ disobedience against Jesus’ instructions.

[55] Colossians 2.23

[56] Matthew 5.17; Luke 24.44

[57] Exodus 40.36-38

[58] Matthew 23.23; Luke 11.42

[59] Psalm 95.8-11

[60] Proverbs 1.24-25

[61] John 5.39-40

[62] Matthew 7.26-27

[63] Matthew 7.22-23

[64] Proverbs 26.11

[65] Matthew 12.32; Mark 3.28-29; Exodus 20.7

[66] Proverbs 2.2-5

[67] Revelation 2.7, 11, 17, 29; 3.6, 13, 22

[68] Jeremiah 7.18-19; 44.15-28

[69] John 8.31

[70] Luke 1.48

[71] Luke 11.27

[72] Luke 11.28

[73] Matthew 12.50

[74] 1 Corinthians 12.27

[75] John 6.63

[76] 1 Corinthians 6.19

[77] John 19.26-27

[78] Mark 3.21 (31-35)

[79] John 14.26

[80] John 14.16; NASB: ‘Helper’

[81] Acts 1.4

[82] Acts 1.8

[83] John 20.22

[84] Isaiah 65.2

[85] John 2.5

[86] Luke 2.52

[87] Matthew 1.25. See Mark 6.3 NLT: Then they scoffed, ‘He’s just a carpenter, the son of Mary and the brother of James, Joseph (Joses), Judas, and Simon. And His sisters live right here among us.’ Also see Matthew 12.46-47; Mark 3.32; Luke 8.19-20

[88] Ezekiel 13.17-18

[89] John 8.49

[90] Matthew 23.15

[91] Luke 11.52

[92] Haggai 1.4, 6

[93] Matthew 13.12

[94] Jeremiah 2.5

[95] Isaiah 41.22-24

[96] Jeremiah 2.8

[97] Revelation 2.20

[98] Jeremiah 2.11

[99] Jonah 2.8

[100] Revelation 3.17

[101] Isaiah 52.5

[102] Jeremiah 9.24

[103] Jeremiah 7.11

[104] Isaiah 52.5

[105] Psalm 119.37 NIV / AMP

[106] Jeremiah 44.4

[107] Haggai 1.5

[108] Matthew 10.37-38

[109] Matthew 7.12

[110] Exodus 23.20-33

[111] Exodus 19.5

[112] Exodus 24.8

[113] Romans 6.23

[114] Romans 8.2, 5

[115] Revelation 21.6

[116] John 6.63 and footnote a

[117] Matthew 24.35

[118] John 4.10, 13-14 NLT

[119] Exodus 24.18

[120] Exodus chapters 25-31; Leviticus

[121] Exodus 34.10-16

[122] Exodus 32.6

[123] Exodus 32.1-6

[124] Exodus 19.24

[125] Exodus 4.14-17

[126] Exodus 7.9, 19; 8.5, 16; 9.8

[127] Exodus 32.24

[128] Exodus 24.1-2

[129] Exodus 24.10

[130] Exodus 29.9; 30.30

[131] 1 Chronicles 23.13

[132] 1 Chronicles 23.14

[133] Numbers 8.14

[134] Exodus 32.27

[135] Numbers 25.1-3

[136] Numbers 25.4

[137] Numbers 25.9

[138] Numbers 25.10-13

[139] Numbers 25.11 AMP / NASB

[140] Exodus 20.3

[141] Mark 12.30; Matthew 22.37

[142] Isaiah 48.9-11

[143] Exodus 20.13

[144] Leviticus 21.1-4

[145] Number 35.30: “… but no one is to be put to death on the testimony of only one witness.”

[146] Leviticus 22.9

[147] 1 Kings 19.1-18

[148] John 8.29

[149] Deuteronomy 22.9

[150] Luke 8.11

[151] John 15.1

[152] Isaiah 5.7

[153] Matthew 13.25, 39

[154] Matthew 13.29-30

[155] Isaiah 42.14

[156] John 4.35

[157] Isaiah 65.6

^[158] Isaiah 42.17

^[159] Jeremiah 12.13

^[160] Isaiah 57.11-13

^[161] Matthew 13.30

^[162] Isaiah 5.5-6

^[163] John 15.5

^[164] John 15.4

^[165] Matthew 7.19

^[166] Matthew 21.43

^[167] Matthew 12.49; Mark 3.33-35; Luke 8.21

^[168] Luke 14.33

^[169] 1 Corinthians 12.3

^[170] 1 Timothy 6.10

^[171] John 16.26-27

^[172] Acts 15.1-35

^[173] Luke 5.39

^[174] Daniel 2.45

^[175] Hebrews 9.24; 10.14

^[176] Numbers 20.8

^[177] Daniel 2.45 NIV / NLT; Matthew 21.44; Luke 20.18

^[178] Daniel 2.35

^[179] Isaiah 2.2; Micah 4.1

^[180] Zechariah 14.4

^[181] Zechariah 14.10; Micah 4.1-6; Isaiah 66.20

^[182] Zechariah 8.3 NLT. See also Isaiah 25.6 NLT and footnote

^[183] Ezekiel 48.20; 45.1-2 NLT

^[184] Genesis 7.2

^[185] Leviticus 18.22 NASB

^[186] Genesis 5.5

^[187] John 3.16-17; Revelation 21.5

^[188] Genesis 6.3

^[189] Genesis 2.16-17

^[190] Genesis 2.23

^[191] Ezekiel 28.16-17

^[192] Ezekiel 28.18

^[193] 1 Peter 3.19-20

^[194] John 8.44

^[195] Revelation 13.7

^[196] Isaiah 65.11 NLT / NIV

^[197] Revelation 18.10, 17-18

^[198] Revelation 17.5-6; 18.24

^[199] Revelation 18.11-13, 23

^[200] John 8.44

^[201] John 17.3

^[202] Ephesians 6.14-17

^[203] Ephesians 6.12

^[204] Luke 22.29

^[205] 1 Corinthians 15.24-26

^[206] 1 Corinthians 15.28

^[207] Revelation 21.5

^[208] Romans 8.21

^[209] Romans 8.16-17

^[210] Isaiah 51.1

^[211] John 6.40

^[212] Colossians 1.16 AMP

^[213] Psalm 145.13

^[214] Revelation 5.13 NIV / NASB / AMP

^[215] Isaiah 1.10-17

^[216] Psalm 107.11

^[217] Isaiah 28.29

^[218] Isaiah 11.2

^[219] Ezekiel 20.27-28

^[220] Ezekiel 20.32

^[221] Exodus 20.4

^[222] Exodus 20.25

^[223] Deuteronomy 4.15-18

^[224] Matthew 10.8

^[225] Hosea 6.6

^[226] Psalm 40.6-8 NIV / AMP / NASB combined

^[227] John 10.34; 15.25

^[228] Deuteronomy 29.29

^[229] John 7.19

^[230] Mark 7.8-9

^[231] 2 Kings 22.8

^[232] Hebrews 10.15-17

^[233] John 11.25

^[234] Revelation 22.13

^[235] Matthew 26.27

^[236] Matthew 5.29

^[237] John 16.13; 14.26

^[238] Matthew 5.44

^[239] John 13.34

^[240] Matthew 13.12

^[241] Matthew 6.33

^[242] Matthew 7.7

^[243] John 16.14

^[244] Matthew 7.12

^[245] John 1.1

^[246] Matthew 4.17; Mark 1.15

^[247] Matthew 5.44-45; Luke 6.27-28, 35 combined.

^[248] John 13.34

^[249] Matthew 26.26-28. Also read Mark 14.22-24.

^[250] Luke 22.20

^[251] John 20.22-23

^[252] Revelation 2.7, 11, 17, 29; 3.6, 13, 22 NIV / NLT

^[253] Luke 12.10; Mark 3.29 on a separate occasion.

^[254] John 15.26-27: We are to testify with the Holy Spirit.

^[255] Luke 12.1

^[256] Matthew 16.6, 11

^[257] Mark 8.15

^[258] Mark 16.15

^[259] Matthew 28.19-20

^[260] John 8.31

^[261] John 20.23

^[262] Matthew 6.14-15

^[263] Luke 6.36

^[264] Matthew 5.48

^[265] Luke 6.36 NLT

^[266] Luke 6.27-28

^[267] Matthew 5.44-45

^[268] Luke 12.14

^[269] 1 Timothy 2.5-6

^[270] John 3.18

^[271] John 15.26-27