Series: Other Speakers
Sun am 8th August 2010 – Daniel van Eeden
Eph. 4:4-13; John 18:5-6; Rom. 10:8; Matt. 10:40-41; John 1:14 (Message); Eph. 1:22-23; John 6:48-51, 68; Isa. 55:1-3; John 6:63; John 1:1 ; John 12:24-25; 2 Cor. 4:10, 12
Therefore it says, “WHEN HE ASCENDED ON HIGH, HE TOOK CAPTIVITY CAPTIVE, AND HE GAVE GIFTS TO MEN.”(KJV) (Eph. 4:8). Jesus was one man in one body in one place at one time. This truth we are talking about is so simple that we might miss it, and if we knew and lived this truth we would have turned the world upside down by now. Jesus took captive His limitation of being one person at one place at one time and He poured Himself out into the gift ministries in His many-membered body. So where is Christ today? In His many-membered body!
This is such a perfect example of the fleshing out of the father- son principle; Jesus poured Himself into the sons in order to effectively duplicate Himself in His sons. Jesus poured Himself into the twelve baskets (John 6) signifying the apostolic. We are now all required to become breadbaskets that can feed the world by and through His Living Word. The father in this house breaks the bread so that the sons can break it down further and distribute it to the world. This is what the father- son relationship is all about, to remove the bottleneck in the ministry. Make a lifestyle out of this truth and not a doctrine to dialogue about yet not flesh out.
Something in our mindset, our perception, our thinking of how we see and understand things must change. Can we see Christ in ourselves or do we lock Him up and out, in that image that we have of Him as this super person who lived two thousand years ago that I will never be able to be like. Until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature, which belongs to the fullness of Christ (Eph. 4:13). Jesus is coming back to a bride without spot or wrinkle. The equipping of the saints is for a purpose, it is for serving and building up of the body of Christ which consists of many members, many of whom are still out there in the world crying to see Jesus. Christ in us is the hope of glory.
The world is looking for Jesus in His Church, and the frustration we feel is because we need to meet the need of the world and their cry of “we want to see Jesus.” Thank God for a father ministry in this house, who can take this frustration, identify it, call it by its name and channel it into something positive.
When the crowd looked for Jesus in Gethsemane they could not identify Him by His appearance until He opened His mouth and said “I am He” so when He said to them, “I am He,” they drew back and fell to the ground. (John 18:6). The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind (John 1:14 Message Bible). Jesus was the firstborn of many brethren, the pattern Son the example to us. The many membered Christ cannot be different, how will the world taste and feel Christ if not through us?
“I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh.” (John 6:51).
When we eat something, it becomes a part of us, it feeds us and sustains us and causes growth in our physical body. The same happens with the Living Word, His Body broken for us, our spirit man is sustained and grows because of the life that is in the Word. “Why do you spend money for what is not bread, And your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, And delight yourself in abundance. “Incline your ear and come to Me. Listen, that you may live” (Isa 55:2-3). When we feed on His Word we become the substance of Christ in the earth. There is no life outside His Word (John6: 63). In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1:1).
I believe that there is a dying to self and self-interest; there is a shift, a mindset change that has to take place from the church’s inward focus of us four and no more to becoming the breadbasket of the world, where Christ in us is the bread we serve. So death works in us, but life in you (2 Cor. 4:12).
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. (John 12:24).
“He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal (John 12:25).
Are the sons in the house delaying this process, this dying and maturing, by running away from the dealings of God and the discipline that is built into the Living Word coming from this pulpit week after week? Don’t run away from suffering; don’t run away from the dealings of God, it is God’s way of dealing with the weakness of our flesh.
Quoted from the word of Sunday 18th July 2010 by Kobus Swart:
How many people have you infected with the gospel in the last weeks? How many people have you led to the Lord? These questions need to be dissected with an open heart and mind. God’s heart is that none should perish (John 3:16). Do we have that same heart or have we become selfish Christians? Are we a Church that is busy infecting the community or are we merely a presence with some services rendered into the community? We are talking about something in our attitude, our way of living, our character. I believe in my heart that we in this household must make a transition, not just in our mind and thinking but in the way we infect the world.
We don’t just need to represent Him, we need to reproduce Him. This is the heart of this message – we need to reproduce Him.