Glad tidings of Good Things Part 5 – 6th December, 2010

IMPACT SCHOOL OF MINISTRY NLRC Petaling Jaya

Notes for 6^th December 7, 2010

THE NEW TESTAMENT MINISTER

THE OLD COVENANT MINISTERS

The Levitical priestly system God instituted was the essential heart of the Old Testament ministry.  Aaron was the first high priest, his four sons shared with him in his ministry. Many of the later prophets came from the priestly family.  Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Zechariah and John Baptist.  All the life and ministry of the Old Testament ministry revealed serious deficiencies.

1. The weakness of all the ministers to perfectly fulfill what was required.  No man able to accomplish what God wanted.
2. The gulf between the Holy God and fallen mankind was never bridged.  The Veil hung as a permanent reminder of that fact.
3. The longing for the coming of the Strong Man, the Messiah was implicit the promises and lore of the nation.
4. Everything hinged upon His coming.  God promised that His own arm would provide this Savior, Redeemer, Deliverer, Shepherd and Messiah (Isaiah 59v6).

 

JESUS IS THE MAN GOD PROVIDED-THE RECONCILER

He in Himself fulfilled everything that was required to reconcile God and man

1. Jesus is truly God and truly man.
2. In Him Divinity and Humanity hold together in perfect unity.
3. This is theologically called the hypostatic union.
4. This word ‘hypostatic’ means ‘to stand together.’
5. It means that Jesus held together God and man in Himself yet neither ceased to be what it truly is nor was a third ‘substance’ formed of the union.  There was no corruption or insult brought to either the Divine Nature or the Human.
6. In Christ God dwelt with humanity without a veil between.
7. This means that He in Himself is the reconciler.

 

THE HEART OF NEW TESTAMENT MINISTRY (2 Corinthians 5v17)

Reconciliation is the heart of everything, God and man coming to oneness, all division removed.  Peace with God and all wrought through Christ Jesus the Reconciler.

1. We live in the days when the Old Covenant has passed away with its divisions between God and man.
2. In Christ all things are made new (2 Corinthians 5v17).
3. Not all has been fully renewed yet but it shall be when He the New Man appears in His glorified body to wind up all things.  This is our hope to come.
4. Jesus is now the promise of complete newness to come when all things shall be united together in their appropriate and proper places in perfect accord, beauty and harmony.  Nothing clashing with anything else.
5. At this point in time those who live in Christ and in whom He lives are a microcosmic manifestation of that unity to come.  In the lives of such people all things hold together and also work together (Colossians 1v17&Romans 8v28).
6. Jesus is the guarantee that all shall be made new and the true Church is also, in its life it is a kind of secondary proof and guarantee that this shall come to pass.  As the church lives this kind of life in Christ it is a big warning to Satan that his time is short because to those who believe, even the devil’s tactics to disrupt God’s will are turned around against him.
7. Things are not chaotic; in Christ there is purpose and a connection between all and they move forward together in Him.  Things synthesize together.
8. We are like first fruits of a great harvest to come.  God takes what is against us and turns it around.  All is from Him.  If we live in Christ then “all this is from God” (2 Corinthians 5v18).

 

NO ONE SAT DOWN BUT NOW, IN CHRIST WE CAN!

There was one seat in the Old Testament, the mercy seat and God sat thereon.  The worshippers stood and the priests never sat down as they sang and raised their arms in the sanctuary (Psalm 134).  There was no lasting peace nor rest then and the veil was an ever-present reality. New things have come. Here are some of them.

1. The veil of separation between God and man is torn away and we can look upon Him with unveiled faces (2 Corinthians 3v18).
2. We can sit down with Him in heavenly places (Ephesians 2v6).
3. We can rest in His love and abide in His presence.

 

BECAUSE WE COULD NOT COME UP, GOD CAME DOWN!

God is a ‘sending God,’ a ‘missional’ God.

1. The Father sends the Son to accomplish His purpose of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5v19).
2. The Son sends the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2v1).
3. The Spirit sends the church into the world (2 Corinthians 5v20).
4. All comes from God; we participate in God’s mission, His sending forth of Himself through which He brings men and women into Himself (2 Corinthians 5v11-6v1).
5. His mission and ministry is reconciliation and we share in it.

 

ANDREI RUBLEV’S ICON OF THE TRINITY

He was a fourteenth century iconographer (painter of icons, pictures depicting truth about God and His ways).  He was commissioned by a monastery dedicated to the worship of God as Trinity and painted an icon to help the monks contemplate God in Three Persons.  This picture is full of truth, and depicts the Three Persons sitting at a table.  Two of the persons are directly pointing to a chalice on the table in which a blood red ram (lamb) can be seen.  The picture shows us an open space at the table, as though there is a place for us to come and sit down and the Three Personed God is calling us to enter in through the sacrifice of His Son.  Be reconciled to God!

PAUL A MINISTER OF THE NEW COVENANT (2 CORINTHIANS 1-7)

These chapters contain the most intimate insights into the life and ministry of a New Testament minister.  They are the most important chapters concerning what it really means to be a son/servant of God.  In them we see the way the apostle Paul ‘ticked.’  He is an example of an authentic New Testament minister.  Here are some elements revealed in these chapters.  These are just a few of them.

1. We see what constrained him to ministry (2v4&5v14).
2. His anointing which he shared with all other members of the New Testament churches (1v21).
3. Where he looked, his face and his eyes (3v18, 4v18).
4. His inner man and his outer one too (4v16, 5v12, 4v7-12).
5. His comfort (1v3-).
6. His gospel (1v19&2v17).
7. What he renounced and rejected (4v2).
8. Where he lived (2v17&4v2).
9. His afflictions and sufferings (1v3&4v7-12).
10. His conscience (1v12).
11. His simplicity (1v12, 4v2, 5v12).
12. His forgiving heart (2v10).

 

PAUL A NEW TESTAMENT PRIEST SERVING GOD

Old Testament priests moved around a tabernacle, a tent made of skins.  They handled sacrifices and blood, they offered them and sprinkled them.  They burnt the incense and there was fragrance everywhere in the tabernacle.  They washed in the water of the laver that must have looked like mirror reflecting the glory of the presence of God Who hovered in the cloudy presence over them.  They tended the light of the lamp stand and the bread upon the table and saw the glory diffusing through the veil.  They walked around in the sight of God though they could not see Him.  They were of the holy family, had a pure pedigree and at the age of thirty left their home places to give themselves to the rigors and cleansing and service of God in the tabernacle.  They gave the blessing of peace to the waiting worshippers and were clothed in fine garments specially made.  They were anointed with the oil, as was everything in the tabernacle.  Theirs was a physical tabernacle with service using things of gold and brass and wood.  Ours is a spiritual ministry.  We are spiritual priests.  We have these things, but they are ‘in the spirit.’  We will find them all in these chapters of Second Corinthians.  Here are some of them.  This epistle is the letter of the New Testament priestly minister of God.

1. God’s true New Testament priests turn away from everything to do with the old life.  They are separated unto God alone (4v2).
2. They live in the sight of God; they fear Him with holy loving fear and care not for the opinions of men (2v17&4v2).
3. They carry on their ministry within the tent (tabernacle of their bodies) of their flesh 5v1).
4. They are open to the elements of difficulty and suffering just as the Old Testament tabernacle had the elements beat upon it (4v7-12).
5. They offer sacrifices but through the blood of Jesus they are able to sit down with Him upon His throne (4v9-12&1v3-7).
6. They keep themselves clean and renewed by looking at the Lord Jesus reflected in the mirror.  They keep ministry holy and pure from all trickery lest the light of His glory should be dimmed (3v18-4v2).
7. They see the light of His glory in the face of the deeps of their persons.  They see His glory, His outline shining within their own ‘tent’ (4v5&6).
8. They themselves are a fragrance, like incense, both to God and to man.  To God an odor of Christ as they are crushed in difficulties and to the members of the church they smell of the glory of a true dying to self and to those in the world they smell of life unto life (2v14-16).  Always led in triumph, remember the incense was crushed and burned in the old tabernacle everyday.  There should be a fragrance of Him about us every day too.
9. New Testament priests do not handle pieces of stone with the law written upon it nor books and scrolls but what they minister is written by the Spirit in their own hearts and they write it upon the hearts of others.  They are ‘heart’ ministers of the Holy Spirit (3v2-4).
10. Their whole burden is not to simply ‘bless people’ with the Old Testament blessing of Numbers six (v24-26).  But to bring people to God (5v20&13v14).
11. New Testament ministers participate in the altar of Calvary (5v15).
12. They recognize all that coheres with the anointing that they have in their hearts; they sense that God’s will and purposes are ‘anointed’ unto them and that in Christ everything is ‘yes and amen’ (1v18-22).
13. True Ministers keep their hearts wide open, as God’s heart is also wide open.  They do not give up, they do not close down when problems come and they are wounded and hurt, neither do they harden up (6v1-11).

THE GLAD TIDINGS OF GOOD THINGS

Can be summed up in this phrase “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself” and into His life and ministry He wants to bring each one of us.  We must be reconciled to Him first and so we shall be able through His grace to bring people to where we ourselves have been brought.