TODAY’S DEVOTION (WEDNESDAY 19TH FEBRUARY 2025)
“THE LORD said to Moses, Command the Israelites that they put outside the camp every leper and everyone who has a discharge, and whoever is defiled by [coming in contact with] the dead.
“Both male and female you shall put out; without the camp you shall put them, that they may not defile their camp, in the midst of which I dwell.
The Israelites did so, and put them outside the camp; as the Lord said to Moses, so the Israelites did.” Numbers 5:1-4 AMPC
WELCOME TO THE 50TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF VICTORY
We can call it the Jubilee day of the year, because fifty is the number of Jubilee. The term Jubilee is a type and shadow of our redemption in Christ. It is a term that captures one of the most significant blessings that God bestows on a man.
It speaks of our freedom from sin, its penalty, practice and presence. It frowns at the freedom to sin we see in Church today and made us understand that if we are still free to sin, then we are under the bond of sin. We are not in freedom at all.
Real freedom is freedom to live right, instead of freedom to live in sin. One of the major penalties of sin is death. But God did not create man to die, God created us to live forever, spirit souls and body. But sin stopped all that, and from scriptural revelations, the blood of Jesus has repaired all that.
Maybe let me share some Bible truths on God’s way of helping us experience what the Blood of Jesus has done for us in fulness. Jesus said to His first set of disciples.
“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen. Matthew 28:19-20 NKJV
This scripture contains God’s way of helping humanity come into the fullness of what Jesus did by His precious blood. The way of teaching people to observe the very things that Christ taught the early disciples, both in His natural form, and by the Holy Spirit that fell on them after Pentecost.
In simple terms, Heaven ordained discipleship as the only way of bringing humanity to the fullness of what Christ accomplished on the cross by His blood. That is why you find Church members who have not been discipled still not experiencing what the LORD has accomplished on the cross in its fulness.
THIS IS THE REASON WE MAJOR ON DISCIPLESHIP IN OUR CHURCH MINISTRY.
In discipleship you must understand that the goal of coming into the Kingdom of God is knowing God. If you do, you will value both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. You will not fall into the trap of treating the Old Testament of the Bible as a done away part.
You will understand that the Books of the Old Testament are the mother and father of the New Testament and be able to find the revelation of God in all the pages of the scriptures without any religious prejudice. In fact, the early Church had no complete Bibles like we have today.
They were literally preaching from what we know today as the Old Testament. The result was a Christianity that was Christlike in every form.
Disciples will ask what the early Church knew about what we call the Old Testament that we do not know? Off course they knew a lot. That was why they did not raise the altars that were raised in the Old Testament. They did not involve themselves in what we are involving ourselves in.
These are the things that stir a thirst for knowledge in the hearts of disciples of Jesus Christ. Our fathers knew that the central truth of the Old Testament is “KNOWING GOD,” and the Central Truth of the New is also “KNOWING GOD,” hence using it to preach Christ and Him crucified.
They also knew that “The Old Testament is the will of God concealed, and the New Testament is the will of God revealed.” That is why you cannot understand what is revealed until you discover what was concealed. All these tell us that a Christian generation that is not familiar with the Old Testament will not be established in sound doctrine.
SADLY, THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN SEPARATED FROM THE PRECIOUS REVELATION OF GOD IN THE OLD TESTAMENT CALL IT THE LAW.
That is why they are not established in sound doctrine. They only worship God with their emotions. They called the Books of the Old Testament the law and diminish its amazing lights that contain the revelation of God in ancient times that helps men to worship Him in present times.
If you want to succeed in your Christian race, you must not follow such a bad spiritual behavior.
Obviously, those who diminish the books of the Old Testament do so because of the demand some of its precious portions places on their morality. They found out how the word of the LORD condemned their sinful lives and decided to throw it away, calling it the law.
One of the most exciting scriptures you will ever read in the books of the Old Testament, as a disciple or student of Christ is the scripture of our devotional texts. It says,
“THE LORD said to Moses, Command the Israelites that they put outside the camp every leper and everyone who has a discharge, and whoever is defiled by [coming in contact with] the dead.
“Both male and female you shall put out; without the camp you shall put them, that they may not defile their camp, in the midst of which I dwell.
The Israelites did so, and put them outside the camp; as the Lord said to Moses, so the Israelites did.” Numbers 5:1-4 AMPC
This is the language of the Old Testament that some find complicated. But in it is the will of God for our moral lives concealed.
It is important to understand that leprosy in the Old Testament was a skin disease but in the New it is a term used to describe impurity or punishment for persistent sins. If you live your life with a leprosy, you will be outside God’s camp.
YOU WILL LOSE FELLOWSHIP WITH THE REST OF GOD’S PEOPLE THAT ARE LEADING A RIGHTEOUS LIFE.
You see this concealed truth revealed in the New Testament. It says,
“I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world.”
“But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner — not even to eat with such a person.
“For what have I to do with judging those also who are outside? Do you not judge those who are inside? But those who are outside God judges. Therefore “put away from yourselves the evil person.” 1 Corinthians 5:9-13 NKJV
A leprous person here is a sexual immoral person, one plagued with covetousness, idolatry, or drunkenness. It did not stop there, it called an extortioner leprous, then brought in the principle found in our devotional text; the principle of keeping them outside the camp.
It says we should have nothing to do with them. Indeed, truth is one, both in the Old and the New Testament. What confuses some people is the language.
I believe God has spoken to us this morning. If you want to be a Christian indeed, you must cut off from the Christianity of today and connect the one that existed in the early Church. Make all that God taught in the Old and the New Testament your way of life.
MAKE THIS SCRIPTURE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR THE DAY!!
“Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come.” 1 Corinthians 10:11 NKJV.