The
world’s way of defining success differs from God’s way of defining success, for
if God calls you successful, you are successful, irrespective of what everyone
else thinks. In Genesis 39:2, the Bible calls Joseph a successful man. At this
time, Joseph was a slave being sold in the Egyptian market. Joseph was a slave,
not a household servant. Slaves were the least of the least on the food chain
and they were sold worse than animals. Slaves had no sense of identity or
dignity. Slaves had no rights. In this state, God called Joseph a successful
man.
Genesis 39:1-2: “And Joseph was
brought down to Egypt; and Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, captain of the
guard, an Egyptian, bought him of the hand of the Ishmeelites, which had
brought him down thither. And the Lord was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous
[successful] man; and he was in the house of his master the Egyptian.”
This
means the definition of success is God with you. Many times, the problem is
that you hear God’s Word preached to you and prophetic words come to you, and
then you begin to assess the words you hear by your present status. But
whatever your status, God calls you successful. You have an identity, and God
is your helper.
Romans 8:31: “What shall we say
then to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?”
Now
the question is “If God be for us…” so what we need to prove is whether or not
God is with you. For if God is with you, no one can be against you. And you
need to be sure that God is for you, without evidence from your senses or your
emotions.
2 Corinthians 5:21:
“For he hath made him to be sin for us,
who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.”
Galatians 3:13-14: “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: That the blessing of
Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive
the promise of the Spirit through faith.”
An
exchange happened on the Cross of Calvary, according to 2 Corinthians 5:21.
When Jesus hung on the Cross, something was happening. He was crucified in
shame, stark naked, and He cried out, “Eli Eli, lama sabach thani?” “My God, My
God, why have you forsaken me?” This was an exchange. It was possible for God
to forsake Jesus in order to make it impossible for God to forsake you. In
spiritual things, there must always be a balance. The Bible says “the soul that
sins shall die”, but because of God’s love for us, there had to be an exchange
on our behalf, hence Jesus’ coming to die.
In
the Garden of Eden, when Adam sinned, God took an innocent animal and killed
it. The animal did not sin, but God spilled the blood of the animal to spare
Adam. God cursed the ground for Adam’s sin, He did not curse the man, because
He had already blessed him and God cannot curse whom He has blessed. But Adam
left the Garden in a spiritually fallen state, and there still needed to be a
balance because of God’s love for us.
The
story then continued in Genesis 12 where God made a promise to Abraham and then
onto Genesis 15 where God made a covenant on behalf of Abraham. God cut this
covenant for Abraham, not with him, because there is no record of
Abraham swearing anything. The power of God came upon Abraham (Genesis
15:12-17), he fell into a trance, and he saw similitudes of God as a burning
torch and a smoking furnace in a vision, walking in the valley of blood. God,
walking in that valley of blood, began to swear for Abraham. This is why we say
that the covenant of grace is the Abrahamic covenant fulfilled in Christ; because
God made the covenant to Abraham and to his seed,
not seeds, as referring to many, but seed
as of one, and that seed is Christ. (Galatians 3:16). So whatever God told
Abraham came to ultimate fulfilment in Jesus.
About
a thousand plus years later, Jesus came on the scene. About 33 years later,
they laid hold on Him in the Garden of Gethsemane where he had begun to drink
the cup of the Father’s wrath. And the exchange began. He was arrested but He
did not open His mouth to defend Himself. He was questioned but He did not
answer (Isaiah 53:7). He went through all because the claims of justice had to
be met. He was beaten, scourged, mocked and then nailed to the Cross. For three
hours, while He was upon the Cross, darkness ruled on the earth. The Bible
called it the hour of darkness. During this time, the powers of darkness
reigned supreme such that the light of the sun was blotted out all over the
earth. This was the only time that the powers of hell were let loose
completely. They thought it was their moment because they had the Son of God
crucified so they could manifest in their totality: sickness, death and curses.
But in the same moment, while they were “reigning”, the sacrifice was absorbing
the entire curse. Jesus became and took on the curse and the sin of all the
earth in that moment (2 Corinthians 5:21). Everything that the Bible records as
a curse in Deuteronomy 28 came upon the body of Jesus Christ (Isaiah 53:2).
Every disease and consequence of sin manifested in His body; He paid the price
in full (1 Peter 2:24, Isaiah 53:5). He was properly punished for us so that we
could have peace. But the story did not end in darkness.
3pm
was the hour of prayer, referred to by the Jews as the hour of Intercession.
The death of Jesus was the Great Intercession because it was done to withhold
judgement on our behalf. At 3pm, Jesus Christ cried out and gave up the ghost.
He yielded Himself up, He was not taken by death, to show that the sacrifice
was the greater than the judgement. He took the entire punishment on Himself,
He drank the cup of God’s judgement and fury to the last and there was still
enough left to say “It is finished.” Jesus was saying that God’s anger and
God’s judgement was exhausted in His sacrifice.
When
He cried out and gave up the ghost, death began to be reversed, right from the
Cross. Glory! There was a great earthquake, the earth was split, the veil of
the temple was torn in two from top to bottom and the tombs were opened and the
bodies of saints which slept were raised back to life and they entered into the
city and appeared unto many after His resurrection (Matthew 27 & 28). Even
the death of the Lord Jesus reversed death! (Hebrews 2:14-15). Now we are
liberated and set free! He came and He paid the price in full.
However,
when Jesus died on the Cross, the New Covenant was not yet enforced. He
abolished the curse and paid our debt in full. The Cross brought us to a place
where God was no longer angry with us and we owed Him nothing, but that was all
the Cross did for us. It’s like having all your debts paid off but not having
money anyway. So, that would make you a debt-free, broke individual. But, thank
God, the story did not end there; He had taken away the first to establish the
second. The Cross was the closure of the Old Covenant and the beginning of the
New. Jesus Christ came down from that Cross and descended into hell (Hades),
the place of departed spirits; He preached to them.
Hades/hell
was a prison made up of three compartments: Abraham’s bosom, Gehannah, and
Tartarus. Abraham’s bosom was the dwelling place for the saints of old from
Adam till the thief that died beside Jesus (because no one could enter into
heaven apart from the blood of Jesus). Gehannah was the place for those, from
Adam to Jesus, who did not believe in Messiah who was to come. Tartarus was the
place for the fallen angels who had left their first estate. So Jesus went and
announced to the saints in Abraham’s bosom that He was the One they had seen
and believed afore time and He was now come.
Jesus
also went to Gehannah, to the ones who did not believe in the sacrifice. Notice
that the problem was not that they did not keep the law; it was that they did
not believe. There were both Jews and non-Jews in Gehannah. Some of these
people lived before the advent of the law, and yet others lived even outside of
the law, like Job, Abraham (for he was a worshipper of the moon before God
found him) and Balaam (Numbers 23). They all saw the Messiah in a type and a
shadow, and they believed in Him. God used whatever men had and were interested
in to show them the gospel, because He used the story of the stars (the zodiac
as it is known today) to preach to Abraham, and Abraham believed the gospel. Many have asked if non-Jews
ever made it to heaven before the coming of Jesus and before the gospel went
round the world. I believe that some did, God using the things in their lives
and their cultures to reveal Himself to them. God spoke to them in different
ways, but now, God has spoken to us by His Son (Hebrews 1:1-2).
After
He made the announcements to the prisoners, He was raised from the dead on the
third day. On Sunday morning, the stone was rolled away. Mary came to the tomb
to anoint His body –to complete the process of embalmment that was not finished
on Friday and could not be completed on Saturday because it was the Sabbath. No
one was allowed to work on the Sabbath and this was God’s idea because Jesus
was going to be raised from the dead while men were resting. Early that Sunday
morning, the stone was rolled away, not by man, not even by Himself, but by an
angel. The cocoon in which He had been embalmed had solidified; the Spirit that
raised Him from the dead came upon His body and I believe that He filtered out
of that cocoon, the Spirit having put His broken body back together in perfect
form. And while He was about to depart,
Mary came in. Mistaking Him for the groundskeeper, she asked for her lord. Then
He called her by her name and she recognised Him immediately. She ran to Him to
embrace Him, but He forbade her to touch Him because He had not yet ascended to
the Father with His blood. Jesus was taking His blood into the heavenly Holy of
Holies, and as shown in the law, when the high priest is entering into the Holy
of Holies with blood, no one is allowed to touch Him. The Bible tells us in the
book of Hebrews that He entered into the heavenly Holy of Holies, and with the
Father and the Holy Ghost, sprinkled His blood upon the altar and the mercy
seat and upon the law, and swore a covenant on behalf of man. They took the
oath, swearing in the blood of Jesus, and pronounced the blessing upon man
because the price had been paid.
After
Jesus had completed His high priestly duty and the covenant had been cut, He
came back to earth and saw His disciples, even telling them to touch Him (because
His work was done). In the Old Testament, when the High Priest entered and
exited the Holy of Holies, the anointing would come upon him and he would
pronounce blessings upon the people that would last for one year. This was
because the extent to which the sacrifices offered could last was just a year,
and so they had to be offered daily. But Jesus Christ came out of the Most Holy
Place with an eternal redemption, not a temporal one. He came back to earth,
appeared to His disciples for 40 days and nights, and went back to heaven. Then
in Acts 2, the disciples were gathered together in one place and they were
filled with the Holy Ghost and spoke with tongues as the Spirit gave them
utterance (Acts 2:1-4). The same language of the Spirit that God spoke when He
swore by the blood of Jesus in the heavenly shrine –the Most Holy Place- was
deposited in your spirit and God has asked you to use it to conquer your world.
For the Bible says He that speaks in an unknown tongue is not speaking to man
but to God (1 Corinthians 14:2), so you are speaking to God and not to men when
you are speaking in tongues.
Jesus
was forsaken; He took His blood into heaven and obtained eternal redemption for
us so that you would never be forsaken. It is not a feeling, it is a
blood-sworn oath, that God will never leave you (Hebrews 13:5-6). There is
nothing to fear.
This
is the proof of Romans 8:31. It is no longer a question of whether God is for
us. Now we know that God has sworn an everlasting oath in the blood of Jesus
that He will never ever leave you nor forsake you so that you may boldly say,
The Lord is my Helper; He is always for you. This is why we can shout and
declare that there is a mighty supply and these are great days, and the Lord is
our Helper! We have lost all confidence in the flesh, in our looks, in self, in
our abilities and talents, in our background and we have put all confidence in
God because we know that God is for us and we are successful.
by Pastor Adah Igah
