March 4, 2007
You need to know God’s
will or purpose for your life. Not knowing God’s will could lead you into
confusion. When you don’t have the knowledge of God and you don’t know the
will of God in your life, all you do will be for the mere reason of getting
attention or just speaking. You need to find out your purpose. Why are you
born? Why are you created? God isn’t confused, He knows exactly what he
wants you to do. He is waiting for you to fit the puzzle.
Scriptures to look at:
1) John 4:34 2) John 5:17
3) John 6:29 4) John 9:4
5) John 17:4
What is your business?
Jesus knew His business and He was focused on doing the will of His father.
There were many challenges in His life but He still focused on His business.
He never backed out of doing the will of his Father.
Do you know your will?
What was Jesus focused on
doing? The job description of Jesus:
1) Jesus was focused on
winning the lost:
Matthew 18:1
1 Timothy 1:15
Jesus died for you so you
don’t have to die. What He did is priceless; we can never afford it even if
we try. Jesus Christ made a total sacrifice. He took everything and paid the
price so that we all may live a perfect life. We need to be totally
dependent of God’s grace. Don’t ever forget the grace that brought you where
you are.
2) He came to destroy the
works of the devil:
1 John 3:8
Jesus came to make the devil bankrupt and He
accomplished His job superbly. Colossians 2:14 tells us what Jesus
accomplished on the cross, “having wiped out the handwriting of requirements
that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of
the way, having nailed it to the cross.” He stripped everything off the
devil. He destroyed the devil, paralyzed his power and made him unemployed.
Now the devil is so stripped of what he once possessed, the only thing he
has is a loud mouth.
March 11, 2007
In the 4th chapter of the
book of John, we see Jesus’ disciples urging Him to eat but He replies to
them saying “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His
work” in verse 34. By saying this, Jesus is showing you the necessity of
minding your own business. His business is to do the will of the Father and
that’s His focus; He wouldn’t have it any other way. The power flows where
the focus goes, so we must be focused on our calling, what we are called to
do on earth, our business. The main intensive weapon the devil has against
you is dividing you; dividing your focus, your attention. If your focus is
divided then you wouldn’t have power to accomplish your calling, the will of
God in your life. It is very important to FOCUS. After all, that’s what
Jesus did, which enabled him to accomplish the will of the Father. If Jesus
did it, then how much more should we do it!
3) Jesus came to reveal
our heavenly father.
Hebrews 1:2-3
No one has seen the Father but the Son. When
Jesus walked on earth, He was revealing the Father to us in everything He
did. His ultimate goal was to reveal His Father, which was the heart of the
Father (His will). The Bible tells us that Jesus went into the cities,
teaching, preaching, and healing. Therefore, these three were the
will of God for Jesus to accomplish on Earth; why? because Jesus only did
what the Father sent Him to do. He was only focused on doing the will of
God.
God reveals Himself in
three ways, according to the scriptures:
1- Through His creation
2- Through His word
3- Through/ by His Son, Jesus Christ
Again, Jesus only did God’s will, so it could be
accurately concluded that if Jesus did it, then it must be the heart of God.
We need to grow in this area. We need to get to the point where everything
we do is the heart of God, where we’re only focused on doing the will of God
and nothing else. Paul wrote to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 11:1 “Imitate
me, just as I also imitate Christ.” Well, we should all ask
ourselves, are we at a point where we could look at a person eye to eye and
tell them to imitate us just as we imitate Christ? Are we only focused on
knowing and actually doing the will of God in our lives to the point that
people could imitate us and won’t be misled?
When you know Jesus
Christ, you know a lot of things. Jesus knew a lot of things because He knew
the Father. Now, if we know Jesus Christ, we also could know so many things.
How do we know Jesus Christ? By reading the word of God!
March 18, 2007
This is how Jesus saw God’s love: “My father
loves you so much that He’s willing to give me up for you!” (John 3:16) If
you begin to see what Jesus do for you, then you’ll truly understand God’s
love for you. Because of what Jesus did, we are able to see/know the will of
the Father. Hebrews 1: 2-3 says, “has in these last days spoken to us by
His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He
made the worlds; who being the brightness of His glory and the
express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His
power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of
the Majesty on high,” The only way God could be manifested in the atmosphere
was through Jesus Christ.
By sending Jesus, God made
everything close to us because Jesus reveals to us what He has seen, heard,
touched etc. He was fully experienced. Unless you are fully experienced, you
are unable to witness fully. However, Jesus had all the experience so He
knows exactly what He is talking about. Jesus tells us that no one has seen
the Father except the son, so therefore the Son came to us to reveal God to
us. In the past, in the Old Testament, God sent many prophets to reveal
Himself, but at the end He sent His only begotten Son. So everything that
wasn’t revealed in the Old Testament is revealed through Jesus Christ.
April 8, 2007
1 John 4:19 tells us that
“We loved Him because He first loved us.” It is not us that loved Him first
but He loved us and showed us His great love for us by giving Himself up for
us.
Wrong view of God leads to wrong living of life.
When we read the Old Testament we should read it with the light of the New
Testament. Many people always misunderstand the Bible by only reading the
Old Testament. They think of God as an angry God who is ready to strike them
dead as soon as they commit a sin. However, they fail to realize that God is
LOVE, as depicted in the New Testament. God is not a mystery like
many think. He wants us to know Him, which is the reason He gave us His
word, the Holy Spirit, the fivefold ministries etc. We need to get out minds
transferred by renewing it with the word of God, because wrong view of God
leads to wrong living of life.
Therefore Jesus came to
reveal the Father to us so that we would know the Father and have a right
view of Him.
4) Jesus came to give his
life as a ransom for us.
Matthew 20:28- “Even as
the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give
his life a ransom for many.” So basically, Jesus came to die for each and
every single one of us so we may receive everlasting life as well as enjoy
our life while we’re still on earth.
5) He came to serve and
not to be served.
6) Galatians 3:13- “Christ
hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for
it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree:” The Bible tells
us that whosoever is hanged on a tree is cursed. Jesus was hanged on the
cross, which was a tree, so He became a curse in order that we could be
redeemed of the law (He bought us back). Deuteronomy 28 reveals the curse of
the law, including, death, sickness, poverty etc. a)
Because Jesus became a curse he freed us from all this, and now we are able
to enjoy life freely without all these curses. Colossians 2:14 says, “having
wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was
contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the
cross.” Since He took all the curse of the law and nailed it on the cross,
we became redeemed of the law. Now we live freely under grace. Also because
Jesus died on the cross and redeemed us from the law, we won’t have to worry
about the second death, the spiritual death.
b) Jesus also, by dying on the cross, redeemed us from sickness. Now we have
no reason to be sick anymore because Jesus defeated sickness and He gave us
victory over it. Isaiah 53 lets us know everything Jesus went through for us
so we won’t have to go through them. Verse 5 says, “But He was
wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities;
The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we
are healed.” The last part of the scripture says “by His stripes we are
healed,” meaning that we won’t ever have to face sickness anymore because He
defeated it.
c) Jesus redeemed us from poverty as well. Because Jesus died on the cross,
God will give us everything we need according to his glorious riches. We
will not be poor anyway because the Bible tells us that He who was rich
became poor for us so we could be rich.
April 15, 2007
7) Jesus came to preach the good news
In Luke 4:43 Jesus says to the crowd following Him, “I must preach the
kingdom of God to the other cities also, because for this purpose I have
been sent.” Also in Luke 4:18-19 Jesus reads the book of the prophet Isaiah
which says:
“ The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me,
Because He has anointed Me
To preach the gospel to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty those who are oppressed;
To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD.”
It is our responsibility
to continue the job that Jesus started. He did everything that He was sent
to do on earth, but it’s not over; we need to continue it. He now lives in
each and every single one of us to continue preaching the gospel, healing
the brokenhearted, proclaim liberty to the captives etc. We have to yield
ourselves to Him so through us He could continue doing what He did while He
was on earth. Jesus who healed back then is still able to do the same
because He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
8) He came to give life,
and life more abundantly.
In John 10:10 He tells us, “The thief does not come except to steal, and to
kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may
have it more abundantly.” Whenever He gives something to you, He
gives it abundantly. Elshadai, which means multi-breasted God, is able to
give you in abundance what ever you need. Like David, our cups will be full
and will start overflowing when we come to God with our needs. The devil has
three purposes: to kill, to steal, and to destroy. He’s not trying to steal
your money, job, clothes, but he’s after the word of God in you. When he
steals the word from you, you become paralyzed because you don’t have a
weapon against him. When you have the word in you, you become powerful
because it is the armor of God as Ephesians 6:10-11 tells us. The Bible says
that when you think you are standing firm, be careful that you won’t fall.
You might think you’re ok, but one by one the devil comes to steal every
Word in you, and before you know it, you’ll fall with one blow of wind.
Therefore, keep feeding yourself with the Word so you will gain more power.
If you’re going to live a life of a Christian
and live a mighty life, you need to live from the inside out; not only on
the outside. The Greek word Zoe means God kind of life. God kind of life is
abundance, whole, with nothing missing. The reason Jesus came is to give us
that kind of life. His life comes with everything. Everything you need is
included in the package. 2 Peter 1:3 is the key verse, which says, “as His
divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and
godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue.”
He gave us the life but most of us aren’t living in that life because we
don’t know Jesus the way we should. We don’t read enough of the Word to know
Jesus the way we should and to discover all that He has for us. Unless you
know the Word, you won’t have faith. You cannot have faith greater than the
Word in you. “You tell me how much you know the word of God, I tell you how
much faith you have.”
9) Jesus came to do the
will of the Father:
John 6:38 “For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the
will of Him who sent Me.”
10) He came to give the
Father’s words:
Jesus prays to the Father in John 17:8 saying, “For I have given to them the
words which You have given Me; and they have received them, and have
known surely that I came forth from You; and they have believed that You
sent Me.” Also John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word
was with God, and the Word was God.” Jesus brought the Word by becoming
flesh and being born through a virgin.
April 29, 2007
11) Jesus came to
fulfill the law of the prophets:
Matthew 5:17- ““Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets.
I did not come to destroy but to fulfill.” He didn’t come to get rid of the
law but to fulfill them so we won’t live in the law anymore. Non of us could
have done it so Jesus came and fulfilled it. Because of what He did, we’re
now free forever and live under grace. After fulfilling the law Jesus left
us with two commandments: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your
heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your
mind’ ; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” In order to get the
old law out of the way, you need to replace it with a new law, and that’s
what Jesus did.
12) Finally, Jesus came
to become our high priest.
High priests are given authority to represent the people and come to God on
behalf of the people they’re representing. Jesus took the sin of ALL
humanity and brought it up to God as the ultimate sacrifice. Hebrews 2:17
says, “Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren,
that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining
to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.” In order to bring
an offering to God on behalf of us, He had to become one of us. The
scripture says that he had to be made like His brothers in everyway.
Atonement signifies “reconciling by shedding of blood.” Jesus reconciled us
with the Father once and for all by shedding His blood. He brought an
offering, which is why we are now able to enter boldly to the throne of God
without fear or inferiority.
Now did Jesus do His job
well? Of course He did!
It is our responsibility
to finish the work that he started. That’s why it’s important to know what
He started doing, so could continue it. This is like a relay race where one
person finishes his/her part of the race and hands over the baton to the
next person so they would go run. Jesus already finished His Job, He
accomplished His part of the race. Now it’s our responsibility to take the
baton and start running. We don’t have to worry about the things that Jesus
already finished. He said “It is finished” after he was crucified. What is
finished? His part of the race. His part is done, but there are things that
we are expected to do. He said that we can do even greater things than He
did. When He walked on earth He was limited to only one body, He could only
be one place at a time. However, He is not limited anymore because He lives
in us and could reach out to the whole world through us! All we need to do
is take the baton and finish the race that was started. We know that we will
win because we have the winner with us and we’re on the winning team!
Preached by: Pastor
Teddy
Written by: Rebka Tekeste