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"Teaching the things concerning the kingdom of
God..."
Part 251
THE
(continued)
“And
there shall be no more curse…” (Rev.
22:3).
These
words have been a star of hope to all who follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth, and to all who contemplate the ultimate triumph of
the
The
curse fell upon the world as well as upon the heart, creating around man a
hostile environment. Some entertain the
notion that “no more curse” is limited to the holy city. Not so!
For the assertion is the one immediately following the declaration,
“…and the leaves of the tree are for the healing
of the nations.”
So
now we see that God has provided for the healing of the nations by means of a
race of men — the trees of the city — that He has brought forth from out of all
men. Now there is life for all and
nothing shall defile! And God gives the
guarantee of this wonderful outcome with His sovereign promise: THERE SHALL BE
Isn’t
that exactly what happened to
And
now comes the promise — there shall be no longer any excommunication or
banishment from the presence and glory of God!
Instead of excommunication, the Cherubim are gone, the
Write
it between your eyes and
“Where
are you going Shepherd?
To find My sheep.
How
far will you go?
As far as My sheep.
How far may that be?
To the world’s end.
How
long will you seek it?
Until I find it.
When
you find it, will it come to you?
No, it will flee from Me.
Where
will it go then?
To the rocks and the sand.
When
will it stop?
When it can run no more.
What
will you do then?
Carry it home.”
Friends,
you will
Hear
now these words of the prophet Isaiah quoted from the New English Bible. “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will
prepare a banquet of rich fare for
In
the preceding chapters the prophet tells us how that God will destroy all that
has ever oppressed the people of the earth.
His power will be used to take away every degrading thing and everything
that binds and this power is spoken of as THIS MOUNTAIN in the passage quoted
above. “This mountain” signifies the
authority, dominion, government, and
After
the preparation of this feast, this mountain, or this power of God, will do
another wonderful thing. The veil that shrouds
Instead
of preparing a terrifying, eternal hell to bring to a close this age as we have
been told by the churches, we find that God is preparing a wonderful feast for
the opening of the coming age. But the
carnal mind or the human nature always looks upon the negative side of anything
and it actually forgets there is a positive side. For instead of preparing for destruction, God
is preparing for a new day, the
dawning and opening of a new age in which there will be no more weeping,
crying, pain, sin, death, or curse! And
here is a beautiful truth. “Christ hath
redeemed us from the curse of the law
(that is, all the fruit, guilt, and pu
“There
shall be no more curse” — perfect wholeness.
“The
throne of God… shall be in it” — perfect rule.
“His
servants shall serve Him” — perfect service.
“They
shall see His face” — perfect vision.
“His
name shall be in their foreheads” — perfect likeness.
“No
night there” — perfect day.
“They
shall reign forever” — perfect authority and power.
HIS SERVANTS SHALL SERVE HIM
“And
there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in
it; and His servants shall serve Him” (Rev.
22:3).
When
we come to this thought of servants there
is a great deal of misunderstanding among the Lord’s people. When we speak of servants, some boast that
this calling does not apply to them, for they are no longer servants, but sons. That is true in the spirit in which
It
is far from the truth, however, to say that there is no sense in which those
who are sons are also servants. Paul is
speaking in the passage above of our
relationship to God, the Father.
Under the Old Covenant the people of God had not received new birth by
the Spirit, to live in the Spirit and walk after the Spirit, but were placed
under the rule of law. They were not a
house of sons, but a house of servants.
Their relationship to God was the relationship of
servants. They were not sons. God had not sent the spirit of sonship into their hearts. By the New Covenant God has redeemed us from
the curse of the law that we might receive placement as sons and has birthed
into our hearts the Spirit of His Son, the spirit of sonship, whereby we cry,
“Father!” This has brought a change in
our relationship to God. Unto Him we are no longer servants, but
sons. As sons, however, we become
related not only to God, but we also become related to men. Jesus is the Son of God, but He is also the
Saviour of men, the Redeemer of men, the Reconciler of men, the Blesser of men,
the Deliverer of men, the Sovereign Lord over all flesh. It is here that we must be very clear in our
understanding. Unto God I may be a son; but
unto men I must be a servant.
I am God’s servant, sent of the Father to serve mankind. I cannot be a servant to God, for I am His son;
and I cannot be a son to men, therefore I must approach
unto men in a relationship through which I can minister unto them the life of
the Son who dwells in me. The only way I
may minister Christ unto men is as a servant.
To minister means “to serve,” and
both minister and servant are a number of times translated from the same Greek
word.
Can
a son be a servant? Jesus, the pattern
Son declared, “Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto (served),
but to minister (serve) and give His life a ransom for many” (Mat. 20:28). It is the SON who SERVES! The Son is a Servant-Son. The very same Jesus of whom the Father
witnessed, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,” of
Him the Father also witnessed, “Behold my servant whom I uphold; mine elect,
in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my Spirit upon
Him: He shall bring forth judgment to the nations” (Isa. 42:1). Matthew 12:15-21 shows unmistakably that this
servant
of the Lord is Jesus. The Son came as a
Servant-Son. In like manner, we are not
servants to God, but we are indeed servants of God!
John
understood this significant truth, for the same John who wrote, “Behold, what
manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons
of God,” later stated, “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave
unto Him, to show unto His servants things which must
shortly come to pass; and He sent and signified it by His angel unto His servant
John” (Rev. 1:1). Paul
understood this truth, for the very same Paul who wrote, “Wherefore thou art no
more a servant but a son,” also said, “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ,
called to be an apostle.” “Apostle”
means a “sent one,” therefore Paul was sent to serve! To God he was a son, but he was the servant
of men. Is Jesus a Son or a
Servant? Was John a son or a servant? Was Paul a son or a servant? And lest the elect of God in this Day should
exalt themselves above John, or Paul, or even Jesus, we further find that of
the 144,000 overcomers, that glorious company of the sons of God who stand with
the Lamb on mount Zion, having the Father’s name in their foreheads, it is
written, “Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have
sealed the SERVANTS OF OUR GOD IN THEIR FOREHEADS” (Rev. 7:3). So there you have it! The sons are the servants! Not servants to God, but sons who are
servants to men, humble ministers of the mercies and goodness of the Lord.
You
will never be a king-priest without the servant-nature. The story is told of a farmer who had just
sat down to the table and prayed, “Oh Lord, bless the poor people in this
neighborhood, and feed them.” Very soon
after, there was a knock at the door and a poor neighbor came in and asked the
farmer for a bushel of potatoes. The
farmer began to make all kinds of excuses.
He had fifty bushels of potatoes, and his little boy said, “Papa, there
is a chance to answer your own prayers.”
That is the servant-nature, and the spirit of kingship and
priesthood. Then there is the fable of
the Arab mystic Sa’di. A man walking through the forest saw a fox
that had lost its legs and wondered how it survived. Then he saw a tiger come in with game in its
mouth. The tiger had his fill and left
the rest of his meat for the fox. The
next day God fed the fox by means of the same tiger. The man began to wonder at God’s great
goodness and said to himself, “I too shall just rest in a corner with full
trust in the Lord and He will provide me with all I need.” He did this for many days, but nothing
happened and the poor fellow was almost at death’s door when he heard a Voice
say, “O you who are in the path of
error, open your eyes to the Truth! Follow the example of the tiger and stop
imitating the disabled fox!” So many in
this hour want to be sons and kings and priests while living in their own
little world, studying the deep revelations, singing beautiful kingdom songs,
but never having any practical outworking of the servant-nature in the
nitty-gritty of everyday living where the needs of creation are met. May the Spirit of God make very real to all
our hearts the great truth that he who will not serve cannot be a son. “For even the Son of man came not to be
ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life...” The sons come for the same purpose!
What
a blessing there is in giving! Even on
the natural plane it is a part of the makeup of everyone that they feel good
when giving or helping others. But in
many people, and even in some who aspire to be kings and priests of God, this
attribute is never developed into becoming a part of their life-style, so the
opposite takes place. However many
wonderful people spend their lives in giving service to others. When analyzed, the servant-nature is the most
prized possession of the human race.
What a joy is the restaurant waitress who gives true service. To be a real nurse requires this above all
else. The secretary in an office can be
an inspiration to everyone through her ability to be of help and support in
every situation instead of merely doing what is required of her. Then there is the teacher who is vitally
concerned for every member of her class.
In such as these is the servant-nature revealed even on the earthly
level. Serving those about you will
never of itself make you a king-priest of God, but YOU CAN NEVER BE A REIGNING
SON WITHOUT THE SERVANT-NATURE! HE makes
us kings and priests! Because we have
priestly hearts we shall stretch forth our hands to heal the nations and speak
forth the word that brings them life!
Do
you remember what Jesus said to His disciples when they aspired to greatness in
the Kingdom? “Now an eager contention
arose among them, which of them was considered and reputed to be the
greatest. But Jesus said to them, The
kings of the Gentiles are deified by them and exercise lordship, ruling as
emperor-gods over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors
and well-doers. But this is not to be so
with you; and on the contrary let him who is the greatest among you become as
the youngest, and he who is the chief and leader as one who serves. For which is the greater, he who reclines at
table (the master), or he who serves? Is
it not he who reclines at table? BUT I
AM IN YOUR MIDST AS ONE WHO SERVES” (Lk. 22:24-27, Amplified). The one who serves the people well as a
priest is the one who will also reign well as a king. “They shall be priests… and they shall reign.” That is the order! Though He is calling us to be kings with
authority over all, yet our inner spirit must be that of a servant, that we
might freely minister, loving, touching, doing good, speaking kindness and
encouragement, healing, reconciling, restoring, with mercy, compassion and
love. The problem with many people is
that they have never learned to live for anything other than themselves and
their own — me, my wife Mary, my daughter Sue, my son John, these four, no
more.
God
by many and varied experiences brings preparation into our lives to teach us
the attitude of a servant. Pride shows
that that person has failed to grasp that rulership is rooted in God, who is
Love, and not in ourselves. Jesus was
the most lowly and humble of all men, and also the most powerful and
authoritative. He was not a
super-duper-elite-country-club Son of God.
He didn’t bounce onto the platform under the lights with a flare of
worldly showmanship and then disappear out the back door to escape contact with
the people. “Although He existed in the
form of God, He did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but
emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and was made in the
likeness of men. And being found in
appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of
death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:6-8).
THEY SHALL SEE HIS FACE
“And
they shall see His face…” (Rev.
22:4).
In
order to understand the deep mystery that the Holy Spirit would reveal to us in
these words we must realize that God has had a specific purpose in man from the
very beginning. In the very first
chapter of the Bible we find, “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and
let them have dominion” (Gen. 1:26). And
then in chapter five of Genesis we have these words, “This is the book of the
generations of
God
created man. At the beginning, when the
animals were created, God did not give
them names — it was given to
If
we stand back and get a correct perspective of the sweep of the entire picture
I think we will understand it. You go
back to the very beginning — marriage was the first institution that God made
for man. And it was none other than the
Lord Jesus Christ Himself (the Word, the Voice of God) that brought the first woman
to the first man. How significant, then,
that when Jesus began His ministry on earth His very first revelation of His
sonship was at the wedding in
God’s
ultimate desire and need was for the companionship of beings like unto Himself,
of His own kind, born of His own Spirit, with whom He could share His mind and
heart and through whom He could expand Himself, incorporating them into the
outworking of His own eternal purposes.
As we view from the Father’s heart it becomes obvious that God in His
own social and paternal nature has “marked out for Himself” a vast family which
shares His own life, nature, mind, spirit, purpose, and power. I do not believe that any creature or entity
that existed before man either in the heavens above or on the earth beneath,
even came close to providing what God needed.
This is the condition which prompted God in that distant beginning to
issue the wonderful fiat, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness:
and let them have dominion…” (Gen. 1:26).
Little
wonder, then, that we read from the literal translation of the Hebrew
How could Christ become intimate, on all the
levels that intimacy implies, with anyone who is not comparable to Him? A human would not marry a monkey, a horse, a
dog, or a chicken. There is no
correspondence! There are no grounds for
union of mind, desire, emotion, knowledge, hope, understanding, body, or love. And even within the same species, not
everyone is suited for the marriage union.
Would Christ become intimate with a little girl who is not mature either
physically, mentally, or emotionally, and has no comprehension of the ways of
love and responsibility? Would He share
all He is and has with any kind of creature incapable of returning mature love,
relating to His deepest thoughts, intents, and heart, or participating in His
divine activities and purposes? I think
not!
This
is a purpose all religions are missing, including traditional
Christianity. Religion separates God
from man. It says that God is somewhere
up there; He is holy, exalted, and His mind cannot be comprehended. A man, then, is small, low, sinful, limited
by time and space and his mind is limited too, and he was created almost on the
level of animals to, like a faithful dog, obey God’s commands and keep His
laws. But this is not true! God has decided, because of His need, to come
down to man and lift him higher — to Himself.
We have been born of God. God is our Father. Christ is the brother of every son of God and the husband of His bride! Don’t tell me that we are something less than
God-beings! You will contradict a thousand
scriptures if you maintain that!
Now
let us return to our
The
whole redemptive process through the ages has been designed to bring man back
to behold the face of God in all that it means.
In the Old Testament dispensation God gave only a partial revelation of Himself.
It is written in Exodus chapters thirty-three and thirty-four that long
ago, when Moses became discouraged with the children of
Now,
that does not mean that a physical God passed by Moses and Moses saw His back
end. For Moses had not prayed for a
physical experience, but for a revelation of God. God gave him a revelation of Himself, the Old
Testament revelation., and here God is proclaiming the great truth that prior
to the coming of Jesus He only gave a partial
revelation of Himself. Men were able
to catch only a faint glimpse of what God is really like. He did not fully disclose Himself. We see the example of this in the natural
life of men today. A man goes out into
the business world fully dressed and no one sees him the way his wife sees him
in the privacy of their bedroom. He does
not fully disclose himself to other women.
On another level, to his neighbors, friends, work associates, and others he does not share everything he has
experienced in his life, or all that he thinks, knows, or plans. There are always many things that we do not
disclose to people when it is none of their business. We disclose to those who need to know, and
the closer the relationship, the more they learn about us. Therefore, under the Old Covenant, man’s
revelation of God fell short because man was not yet restored to God’s
fullness. There was a lack. “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” To Moses and
the prophets God revealed the FORM of Himself, the FORM of truth, the FORM of
His nature, and this produced the LAW — the external legal code which revealed
something about Him but was void of the Spirit of His Life! The letter of the word, the form of truth,
always falls a little short of the glory!
A doctrine or a ritual, a program or a ceremony, a commandment
or a law — none of these are sufficient to cause men to SEE THE FACE OF
GOD. They are one and all a partial
revelation — the backsides of God!
But
in the hour of the new
Our
As
one has written, “‘Beloved, we are God’s little children now. It does not yet appear what we shall be, but
we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope within him, purifies himself even as He
is pure’ (I Jn. 3:2-3). ‘This hope’
which is making us purify ourselves is the hope of this glory coming to us, the
hope of being like God and seeing God as He is. Millions who only hope to see Jesus
coming in the clouds are doing nothing about purifying themselves as He is
pure. But a company that has become
anxious and hungry to see God as He is is setting to work to purify themselves. When we receive the revelation that God plans
to again fully manifest Himself in some human tabernacles, we immediately make
ourselves candidates for that demonstration, and begin to purify ourselves
(become single, unmixed, unadulterated), as He is pure, that we might be
like Him and thus qualify to see God as He is, and be of the company of
sons and daughters in whom He will be
glorified, and through whom He will manifest Himself to the waiting world. When you inspect the company that today is
attempting a purification of themselves in the inner man, you will find it to be the people that has this
blessed hope — not of Jesus in the clouds, but that once more God is
going to descend into tabernacles of flesh, into a people that have become like Him, and therefore shall
both see Him as He is and reveal Him as He is. This time it will not be just one Son,
but a company of ‘many sons brought to glory’”
— end quote.
HIS
“…and
His name shall be in their foreheads” (Rev.
22:4).
All
the way through scripture when we find the name of God mentioned, it signifies
to us the nature and the character of God. It is not just a title so that we know what
to call Him, as we would with a person or a pet. Each name has a meaning, and the meaning
discloses something of His nature and character. Here on earth, when we speak of a person’s
good name, or of one who has a bad name, we are speaking of their character by
which they are known. When the scripture
speaks of God’s name being written in our foreheads, this is where our minds
are, and it simply signifies that we will have come within ourselves to the
nature and character of God. We will
understand Him perfectly and will be walking in perfect oneness with Him and
perfect expression of Him. HE will be
our only mind-set and our very state of being.
The
key to receiving His name in our forehead is overcoming. The starting
point in overcoming is with the little things, those “little foxes” that spoil
the vine. You will be defeated if you
start with the giants. Like David, you
must first slay your bear and kill your lion before you take on Goliath. Start overcoming the little things, those little
quirks and egocentricities in your personality —those things you think, those
words you speak, those attitudes you manifest from time to time, sins of
omission — those little things that fall short of HIS mind, will, and
nature. God wants us to be changed! We will
This
is not attained in one grand leap, but HE must increase, and WE must decrease —
and it can only be in that order. The
other way won’t work! You do not die in
order to live, you live in order to die.
My
beloved, until this happens within us we are not Saviours to the world. We can talk about manifest sonship and brideship all we please, we can confess it, name it and
claim it, blab it and grab it, teach it and preach it, and pride ourselves in
our high calling — but until the nature of Jesus rules within we are not one
whit beyond the religious world around us.
Every enemy within must be rooted out and cast out by the power of His divine name. Do you want power to cast out devils? Begin by having the devils cast out of
you. That’s the starting point, you
see. You say, “I don’t have any devils
in me.” That may be true — but it’s
amazing, isn’t it, that when just the right testing, temptation, problem,
pressure comes our way, or something or someone pushes just the right button,
what kinds of spirits can rise up
within us! Sometimes it takes very
little. And I’m not talking about going to some “
Many
scripture passages speak of believing on the name of the Son of God. In the vast majority of cases the preposition
in the Greek
To be continued… J. PRESTON EBY
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