TODAY’S DEVOTION (WEDNESDAY 28TH DECEMBER 2022)
“And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.
Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another. Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath:
Neither give place to the devil. Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.
Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers. And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.
Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice:” Ephesians 4:24-31 KJV
WELCOME TO THE 362ND DAY OF OUR YEAR OF AMAZING GRACE!
God has been our refuge and immediate presence help in time of Trouble. That is why we have seen 362 days of this year and are confident that we will see the remaining 3 threes and years beyond if we keep having Him as our God.
It’s been a journey of faith indeed with the Cry of the Holy Spirit on the Presence of God. We have learned so much about the wonderful presence of the Most High God that is for our side of eternity. But there is much more than even our days on earth can uncover.
We have seen the three dimensions or categories of His presence; the Omni-Presence, the Manifest presence and the indwelling presence. Because of its importance tour lives on this side of eternity, and in the life to come we have been looking at maters of His indwelling presence.
Authentic salvation experience is the work of a combine power of God’s manifest and indwelling presence.
And this is how it works; the manifest presence will hit you somewhere in your life, causing your spirit to yearn for mercy from God for the life of sin you may have lived. As soon as that happens, that presence will enter into your spirit and soul, to carry out the regeneration of the spirit and conversion of the soul; fulfilling the condition for salvation in scriptures (Acts 3:19 and Titus 3:5-6).
When that happens, that presence will remain in you and become an indwelling presence, growing from 30-fold, to 60-fold, then to 100-fold (full strength) depending on how yielded you are to God, and how submissive you are to His Holy Spirit. Before the cross none of that could happen. The attempt to change man from the outside did not work at all that was why God’s justice system tolerated a lot of things.
It tolerated trespasses like polygamy, having concubines and divorcing for any reason. Meaning, one can wake up in the morning, look at the wife’s face, even if there was nothing, and just say, “I can’t marry you again” then take the person to the priest and that was it. I know there are lot of people who would have preferred that generation. But understand that none of them could go to Heaven when they died. They all went to hades.
IT TOOK CHRIST’S DESCENT INTO HADES TO BRING SOME OF THEM OUT.
So, living that life now will take any to hell.
In other words, you could do any of that then, in the dispensation when it was tolerated, even if it never guaranteed any eternal rest after death, but you cannot do any of that now. You will have hell as your eternal home if you do and die that way without repentance.
The Bible says these things were tolerated by God then because of the hardness of the hearts of the people. The Holy Spirit could not enter into their hearts to soften it with convictions and take away its hardness because Christ had not died. So, God had to make a promise of a new covenant, which is clearly spelt out in the New Testament as a covenant of grace.
The Bible says;
“Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD:
But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.
And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” Jeremiah 31:31-34 KJV
WHEN HE SAID THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL, IT TRANSCENDS THE NATURAL NATION OF ISRAEL.
Israel was a missionary nation that stood on behalf of the whole world. So, He was referring to them and all they represent, that is the entire human race. That is why as soon as you get saved you become a Child of Abraham by promise.
Friend, there is a lot in this scripture that we cannot uncover here.
But if you have eyes to see like the scripture says, you will be able to understand that forgiveness of sin and having our sins remembered no more is conditioned on a new heart and a new spirit created within us, and having the laws of God written in our hearts. That is what salvation is all about. Having the laws of God written in our hearts is a key and a mystery to be understood.
The laws of the LORD reveal the character of God. They were seen as regulations and legalities by the harden hearts of those generation, Sadly, people still see them as such today, especially the ten commandments, which some erroneously preach that have been abolished.
The ten commandments have not been abolished but have been fulfilled in Christ. In other words, the purpose of the commandments, which was to unveil the lost character of GOD that was in man to that generation, was fulfilled in Christ. Now it’s time for it to be fulfilled in us.
Let me reiterate again that the fulfillment of the purpose of the ten commandments in us is the establishment of the character of GOD in our lives, because the ten commandments were a revelation of our character before the fall (the character of God in man when man had not tasted sin). If you do not see them in that light, the light of God’s glory, you will be in error thinking they are no longer a necessity today.
Understand that Moses saw the laws differently because He heard God say them under the glory. He saw them as the character of God that was in mankind before sin came into the world. But Israel saw them as laws to be kept; laws from an oppressive God. Sadly, so many today still see them that way too. Instead of seeing them the way Moses saw them. That is why they have been forgotten in our age.
IN THOSE DAYS, EVERY CHILD KNEW THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.
I remember when the ten commandments were written in schools and taught as moral codes to pupil, students and undergraduates, there was sanctity and morality in our schools. You could see the character of GOD in the pupils of our primary schools, students of our high schools, and undergraduates of our universities.
You could see the Holy Spirit fulfilling the purpose of the ten commandments in their lives. But today, most schools have become thrones of Satan where young lives are ruined with rape, sex, drugs, and etc. because the ten commandments where taken out, and the devils were brought in.
The enemy will prefer giving you a job, a marriage, a raise and even a fortune in life, instead of having the character of GOD restored in you. With a job, a marriage, a fortune or a raise in life, you can still be damned in hell, but with the restoration of the character of GOD to you by the indwelling presence of GOD, hell will never have you after death.
Do not forget, Satan and his host have been condemned to hell already.
The judgment of the lake of fire was exclusive for him. But now he is looking for humans to join him there in the next life, and sadly he has gotten so many. He got them by doing even the unthinkable; like raising preachers to use the Bible to preach things that will give people what they want but deny them having the character of GOD.
That tells us why some preachers in our generation even preach against the ten commandments and what it was sent to accomplish. The enemy planted them in some Churches to take down the ten commandments from the sight or minds of the people of God so that it will not be written in our hearts in fulfillment of the covenant of grace.
In the days before the cross, the commandments where written on tablets of stones, but under the covenant of grace, they are to be written in our hearts and minds by the Holy Spirit. In other words, their prophetic purpose is to be fulfilled in our lives – which is the restoration of Godliness to man.
THAT IS WHY YOU FIND THEM WRITTEN IN THE HEARTS AND MINDS OF THE EARLY CHURCH.
The prove is in what they documented under GOD. For instance, if you read the book of Romans down to Ephesians and even beyond, you will see the entire ten commandments imbedded in there. The new Testament has them buried in its chapters. Our devotional text is a vivid example. It says;
“And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.
Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another. Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath:
Neither give place to the devil. Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.
Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers. And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.
Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice:” Ephesians 4:24-31 KJV
If you look at this scripture, you can see most of the ten commandments embedded in them. You can see “thou shall not steal” clearly embedded in it. You can see “thou shall not kill or murder” hidden in the words that said we should put away all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, evil speaking and malice from.
Clearly, every murder case is rooted in one of them.
WE CAN DISSECT THIS DEVOTIONAL TEXT AND SHOW HOW ALMOST ALL THE COMMANDMENTS ARE EMBEDDED IN IT.
Clearly, the passage began with a call to leave the old life of sin and embrace the new life of righteousness and holiness. That life was what God gave the ten commandments to achieve in the nation of Israel, which never worked, leading to the abolishing of the Old Covenant (which sort to change man from the outside), and the establishment of the New, (which is spiritually engineered to change man from the inside).
Today, once we get saved, the indwelling presence of God will write the laws or the ten commandments in our hearts. That is why people who are truly saved knowingly and unknowingly live lives that aligns with what the ten commandments.
Understand that, Initially, God gave the commandments to Israel so they could catch a revelation of what to press into in their walk with Him. But they could not so it became terrible laws to them. That was when God then decided the write them in hearts, and it only happened after Christ had died to establish the new covenant – the covenant of grace.
Enough have been shared for the day.
As we bring this to a close understand that the covenant of grace is a covenant that Jesus died to rectify, and then release His Holy Spirit upon us to enable in our lives. It is a covenant that changes us from the inside, by giving us a new heart and a new spirit, and taking away the heart of stone that could not be yielded to God’s ways, from us.
It is a covenant whose work is not complete until the indwelling presence of God is established in our lives and the character of God made visible.
As we exit this year, according to the Gregorian Calendar, make up your mind to be child of God whose life will be full of God’s indwelling presence. Let the manifest presence of the LORD be your dwelling place, and your body a carrier of His indwelling presence. There is a kind of life to live to let them happen.
MAKE THIS SCRIPTURE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR THE DAY!
“Be happy [in your faith] and rejoice and be glad-hearted continually (always); 17 Be unceasing in prayer [praying perseveringly];
Thank [God] in everything [no matter what the circumstances may be, be thankful and give thanks], for this is the will of God for you [who are] in Christ Jesus [the Revealer and Mediator of that will].
Do not quench (suppress or subdue) the [Holy] Spirit;
Do not spurn the gifts and utterances of the prophets [do not depreciate prophetic revelations nor despise inspired instruction or exhortation or warning]. But test and prove all things [until you can recognize] what is good; [to that] hold fast.
Abstain from evil [shrink from it and keep aloof from it] in whatever form or whatever kind it may be.” 1 Thessalonians 5:16-22 AMPC