TODAY’S DEVOTION (TUESDAY 17TH DECEMBER 2024)
“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates.
For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.
“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the LORD your God is giving you. Exodus 20:8-12 NKJV
WELCOME TO THE 352ND DAY OF OUR YEAR OF IMPACT!
Daily and surely, we are all getting to the expiry date of the year, and ultimately, on the earth as we know it.
Bible prophecy, the most authentic prophecy on earth, tells us all about that. The earth as we know it will expire one day and the signs are everywhere. Only those with prophetic eyes are recognizing them. Sometimes, the earth can be very exciting.
Anytime things are good with us, we just feel, it should continue the way it is. But when things are bad, we feel differently.
Well, irrespective of how we may feel, if a prophet had prophesied that the earth will end one day, I would not have believed because most prophets today are derailed. They just say things to get attention. Sometimes people forget that we will give an account of ourselves to God.
They forget that Jesus made it clear that an account for every word spoken in His name will be given in the day of reckoning. Our generation seem to have the most reckless prophets since the Church began on earth. It is also a fulfilment of another Bible prophecy. The Prophecy says;
“Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold.” Matthew 24:11-12 NKJV
This is one of the signs of the end. That is why we have so many reckless prophets today who are masters at speaking lies in the language of truth. And if you look at the prophecy closely, you will discover that the spirit that will come out of their rise is the spirit of lawlessness.
Meaning, the rise of true prophets will always lead to an increase of godliness and the collapse of lawlessness. It will lead to the collapse of false Christianity and a major conflict between Churches or preachers who are established in error, and churches or preachers who are established in truth.
THOSE WHO DO NOT UNDERSTAND WILL THINK THE CHURCH IS FIGHTING HERSELF. THEY WILL NOT KNOW THAT GOD IS PURGING HIS CHURCH.
He is exposing to expel anything that causes lawlessness in His Kingdom.
As you wake up and embrace each day, know that we are gradually getting closer and closer to the end of times, and that Satan will do so much to gather souls into His kingdom. But God will not sit idle. He will intensify His activities to seek and to save all who reach out to Him for salvation.
God will increase the capacity of His true servants to take down kingdoms of religious darkness and falsehood across the nations of the earth.
There will be those with capacity to turn the tables of money changers who call themselves world changers in the Church.
Wherever the spirit of lawlessness was celebrated and exalted, you will see the wave of God bringing it down through the frailty of the mortal men He has laid His hands upon.
He said in His word;
“I will punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; I will halt the arrogance of the proud, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible.” Isaiah 13:11 NKJV
One of the ways God helps us individually to overcome the spirit of lawlessness, is by establishing restrictions for His own. The restrictions are called the laws of the LORD. I know that will not sit well with those who present God’s grace as a covering for lawlessness.
THEY THINK GOD’S GRACE HAS REMOVED ALL FORMS OF RIGHTEOUS “DOS” AND “DON’TS” FROM HIS BOOK.
Yet, before the Cross, it was, “thou shall not steal.” The book of Ephesian still said, “let he that steal do that no more.” So, nothing has changed except the release of the Holy Spirit to help us fulfill the righteous requirement of the laws God gave to Moses. Truth is constant either in the old or the New Testament. The only thing that is not constant is symbolism. They were a shadow in the Old Testament and have become substance in the new.
Talking about shadows and substance, our devotional text is about the Sabbath; a part of the ten commandments. A major portion of the text says;
“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates.
For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore, the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.” Exodus 20:8-11 NKJV
God imprinted His ways and what He expect from us on the nation of Israel. A lot of what He asked them to do was prophetic and symbolic. Some were just health rules they kept for the wellbeing of their bodies. The ones that hold eternal truths for us are the things God asked them to do which were prophetic and symbolic.
When we say, some of the things they did were symbolic, we are saying the things were shadows reflecting Christ as the substance.
When we say, other things they did were prophetic, we are saying they did things that were a pointer to Christ; things that are preplanned to be fulfilled in Christ. The sabbath that God commanded them to keep falls into this explanation. First it was given to them to break the slavery culture that was imposed upon them by the Egyptians. The culture of working seven days a week, without a day of resting and reflecting on God’s goodness.
Secondly, the command was given to them as a prophetic act to be fulfilled in Christ.
THE NATION KEPT IT UNTIL IT WAS FULFILLED, MOVING THE SABBATH FROM A DAY TO A PERSON.
Before the cross, the Sabbath was a day to be kept, but after the Cross it became a person to give your life to so that you can enter your sabbath of rest. Jesus said;
“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Matthew 11:28-29 NKJV
Today, the Sabbath is no longer a day of worship but a person we worship, since man was not made for it. God made it for man! The Bible says;
“And it came to pass, that he went through the corn fields on the sabbath day; and his disciples began, as they went, to pluck the ears of corn.
And the Pharisees said unto him, Behold, why do they on the sabbath day that which is not lawful? And he said unto them, Have ye never read what David did, when he had need, and was an hungered, he, and they that were with him?
How he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and did eat the shewbread, which is not lawful to eat but for the priests, and gave also to them which were with him?
And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath: Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath.” Mark 2:23-28 NKJV
Truth is progressive. If you do not progress with it, you camp at a particular revelation of it and remain there. That is why you find so many who have camped around the Sabbath as a day, and took Saturday as their day of corporate worship. They did not progress to the truth that tells us that the sabbath is no longer about a day but a person.
The Sabbath would later become a life that is restricted by the freedom in Christ in the Book of Hebrew. A life of obedience to the will and ways of Christ. Now let us get to the main purpose of our devotional text.
THE PURPOSE LIES IN THE LAST VERSE OF THE TEXT.
The verse says;
“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the LORD your God is giving you”. Exodus 20:12 NKJV
If you look at this scripture you will realize that one of the roles of fathering is to guide so that all the days appointed to us by the LORD can be fulfilled. It will be required that we allow fathering to be a guide to us by honoring the system itself.
Honor is not worship. The Bible did not say we worship the system, it says we honor the system. And if you are to honor, you are not to honor a fathering system built around men of God, you are to honor the one built around the Tree of life Himself.
Though the scripture on our devotional text is about biological fathering system, we must understand the underlining truth; it is when we honor a fathering system that is built around the Tree of life itself that we can reap the blessing of honoring the system of spiritual fathering. That blessing is long life.
In simple terms, longevity! It could be longevity of our callings, blessings, success, glory, and etc.
The Bible says our lives will be long upon the land which the LORD our God gives us, because we will be eating from the Tree of life and prolonging our days as we honor the system. Honoring spiritual fathers, therefore, is not enough. You must honor those whose lives are built around the Tree of life. The less can only be blessed by the better.
If the man is not a thousand miles ahead of you in the ability to eat from the Tree of Life, you will just be laboring in vain. It is my prayer that the LORD will use these words to keep building us up and giving us an inheritance among they that are sanctified.
LET THIS SCRIPTURE BE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR YOU TODAY!
For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the Most High God, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him, to whom also Abraham gave a tenth part of all, first being translated “king of righteousness,” and then also king of Salem, meaning “king of peace,”
without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God, remains a priest continually.
Now consider how great this man was, to whom even the patriarch Abraham gave a tenth of the spoils.
And indeed those who are of the sons of Levi, who receive the priesthood, have a commandment to receive tithes from the people according to the law, that is, from their brethren, though they have come from the loins of Abraham; but he whose genealogy is not derived from them received tithes from Abraham and blessed him who had the promises.
Now beyond all contradiction the lesser is blessed by the better. Hebrews 7:1-7 NKJV