Sun am 19 July 2009 – Kobus Swart

Eph. 1:17-23; Rom. 11:36; (1 Cor. 15:24); John 12:24; (Heb. 1:3)

What is very closely related to the finished works of Christ is to live a life without a sin consciousness. We do not need to have consciousness of sins anymore because the old outer court rituals fell away when Jesus died on the cross as the once for all Sacrifice. He came and not only forgave, He took away sin. We have somehow allowed the act of redemption to fill the whole spectrum of the gospel to the exclusion of other strands of truth. We made as if God’s ultimate purpose has always been the redemption of human kind. The gospel has become largely centered on the plan of redemption, which made the fall the starting place. The fall is where it all went wrong, so God is totally pre-occupied with restoring what went wrong at the fall. Wrong! The question is;” Did God plan sin in His original purpose for creation?” No, He did not plan sin. But He created Adam and Eve and gave them a choice. It’s that choice where things went wrong.

When Jesus died on Calvary, there were three crosses. He was in the middle with one thief on the left and one on the right. The one on the left represented Satan. He came with the typical words, “If you are the Christ, take yourself down”, the same words as when he tempted Jesus in the wilderness; the same words as in the Garden of Eden, “Has God said?”. The other thief rebuked this man and turned to Jesus and said, “Today when You’re in the Kingdom, think about me.” And Jesus said, “Today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:33-43). That man represented Adam, the first Adam. Both thieves died. Jesus didn’t do half a job on Calvary. He became the last Adam; there are therefore no more Adams to deal with. Adam was put down on Calvary! Satan was also destroyed. The ruler of this world has been judged (John 16:11). We give him access to us by listening to him and believing that he is powerful. God did not plan sin, but yet in His foreknowledge He was not caught off guard when Adam made the wrong choice. We read in the book of Revelation that the Lamb was slain before the foundation of the world (Rev. 13:8). If Adam had chosen right, we would not have had the insertion of the redemption history. There would not have been a need for it. Adam and Eve would have multiplied this royal family. We have to see what God’s original intention was. This is what God is bringing back in this apostolic season.

My first exposure to what was truly apostolic some decades ago was when God confronted the religious spirit in me and the religious spirit in general. As with every past move of God, invariably a move of God turns into a movement of man. It becomes legislated, with do’s and don’ts and the protocol that follows a move that has lost its first encounter. As in the book of Joshua, they did not know the God of Joshua. In this season God is hitting the religious spirit head on with a corporate momentum second to none. The religious spirit is not going to survive this season. Jesus said, “This is how you pray, ‘Our Father!’” What a clue! What is God after? A family! Sons!

If you want to see how things are going to end, see how they started (Rom. 11:36). It started with Father and is going to end with Father (1 Cor. 15:24). Even Jesus, when all things have been fulfilled and all things have been subjected under His feet, will give the Kingdom back to the Father. There is a whole Christo-centric history in between, where God the Father invested everything in the Son; and the Son, when He ascended invested everything into the sons. You have to see the cycle in perspective.

God has a family plan (Eph. 1:18b). All things are subjected under the feet of Jesus until the fullness of Father fills all in all, from Him, through Him, to Him.

Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat, but if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. Jesus is the exact representation of the Father (Heb. 1:3). In Jesus the fullness of the Godhead dwelt bodily. In Romans 8 we see that the sons must become the exact representation of the Son (Rom. 8:28-29), so the corporate Christ will only be complete when Jesus the Head is connected to a body of sons through which Father is going to be glorified. So the plan of redemption is like a parenthesis. His plan is on track and in fact is entering its final phases.

Grow up into Him who is the Head! The sin problem has been dealt with, it is non-existent in God’s eyes for between us and Him stands the intercessor Himself and He is the Guarantor of the New Covenant. The New Covenant is not going to fail.

The Holy Spirit is hovering over the chaos and a Word is going to be spoken like in Genesis 1. God is going to say, “Let there be….” and time and delay are going to be eliminated. The latter wine, the best wine was a miracle. The wine that Jesus turned instantly from water was better tasting than the best wine they had at the feast. So the last thing is not going to take time; God is going to bypass delay.