We have this Treasure in jars of Clay!
REV 12:11 “They overcame him
by the blood of the Lamb
and by the word of their testimony;
they did not love their lives so much
as to shrink from death.”
Y’know, if we don’t recognize that we are in a spiritual war, we will be enslaved by all kinds of things. Paul said we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers…Satan wants to steal our testimony!
We are living in a day when people want to deny the real cause of anything and everything. When it suits people they blame God for everything that’s going wrong, and when it’s convenient tell you that he doesn’t exist. They end up blaming the one who, according to them, doesn’t exist
Story.
A man was arraigned for murder in Los Angeles about 70 years ago. The case against him looked pretty good, but his lawyer thought of an ingenious ploy:
In his summing up speech, he said: “Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, you must find my client not guilty of murder if there is the slightest doubt in your minds that he is the murderer. And now I have one final witness. The true murderer is about to walk through the door.”
All eyes swung towards the door but no one came in.
“You see” the lawyer continued: “there is doubt in your minds about my client’s guilt, otherwise you would not have looked towards the door.”
The jury retired to deliberate and came back after an hour with a “Guilty” verdict. The lawyer was beside himself.
Before the judge could pass sentence, he sprang up and said “But I proved beyond doubt - that you had a doubt about my client’s guilt.”
A shrewd old man in the jury stood up and replied:
“As everyone looked towards the door, I watched your client’s eyes. He didn’t look towards the door because he knew no one was coming through. Why? Because he was the guilty one.”
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People make excuses for sin, and they refuse to acknowledge that their sin – personal sin – is a part of the problem! They don’t want to see the results of what is going on in our world or even in our own lives as the works of SIN, FLESH AND THE DEVIL.
In 1951 Professor James S. Stewart was a key speaker at Yale University and As he preached on the cross he said, ‘I fear that as Darwin banished the Creator God, Freud will see to it that we replace spiritual warfare with phobias an with psychological jargon.’
Billions of pounds are spent every year world wide on ‘anti-depressants’. We take pills to help us go to sleep at night, pills to wake us up in the morning and we take a pill to help us get through the day, and that’s some Christians! We need to examine whether the source of our problem is our arch enemy – Satan!
Don’t let Satan steal your testimony, for if he does, he’ll rob you of your joy and leave you without any hope or strength!
Colossians 2:13,14 tells us, "When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code with its regulations that was against us and that stood opposed to us, HE TOOK IT AWAY! Nailing it to the cross!"
(1) We read in Luke 10:17-20, “The seventy-two returned with joy and said, "Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name." 18 He replied, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. 19 I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. 20 However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven."
If he starts to rob you of anything in your life, tell him to get his filthy hands off! You belong to the Lord Jesus Christ, and he has already won the victory!
IF THE DEVIL REMINDS YOU OF YOUR PAST, REMIND HIM OF HIS FUTURE!
(2) Paul said in 2 Corinthians 11:3,14 that Satan deceives us through subtlety and that he appears as an ANGEL OF LIGHT, deceiving, and lying with half truths – the most deadly of all and easiest to swallow.
Do you see what the devil does? He tries to bribe us into compromise.
Satan wants you to live at such an impoverished level as a Christian, that the joy of the Lord is absent, and therefore your strength has gone! How many saints here this evening feel defeated? Then look up, and see Jesus with the keys of death and hades – he has won the victory!
WHAT IS KEY TO OVERCOMING THIS WORLD, IS RESTING IN HIS WORD!
Years ago there was a popular bumper sticker that said “God said, I believe it and that settles it!”
We need more than ever to believe God’s Word. One day we’ve got to stop sucking our thumbs and burying our heads in the sand and become the victorious church Jesus died for! AMEN! I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me!
The next part of Satan’s strategy is to turn you against the leaders God has set over you and who must one day give an account. He tries to make you feel that God’s leaders are trying to harm you and you get offended.
Think about that for a minute. How many times have you heard somebody say, I’m not going down to that church! I know deacon so and so or someone else and do you know what he or she does when they’re away from church? I’m not going down there with those hypocrites!
Today, the heat we face is many times hotter than it was a generation ago. For example, Satan has rigged the entire technology of our age -- corrupting it with seduction, sensuality, lust and temptation. Why do we face such a white-hot furnace of temptation today? Why are lust and sex being used to sell every conceivable kind of product? Why are there thousands of porno websites on the Internet?
Who’s the target of this flood of filth?
Surely it’s not the wicked masses -- those who are already blinded by Satan, according to scripture. It isn’t the secular world, which has already been seduced. No, Satan’s target is none of these. Rather, he has manipulated the media to snare the hearts of overcoming Christians. He wants to weaken and destroy the testimony of the gospel!
Right now the furnace is being heated seven times over in the lives of many believers. Satan has created situations in their homes, on their jobs and in their relationships that are more intense than ever. And many once-strong Christians are giving up, quitting on God. They no longer pray for help. Instead, they think, "My trial is too intense for me to survive!"
Yes, things are going to get hot economically, physically, mentally, spiritually and in every other way. But God has already placed his hand on separated, godly men and women in every place. And his gospel will be preached as a testimony.
Then the Lord will come!
I love lost people and I’m comfortable around them because I spent most of my adult life lost. I can sympathise with their weaknesses, because I once owned them myself. But I cannot bear to see men and women lost in sin. I want them to experience pardon and joy – the breathless wonder of God’s forgiveness!
I want to tell you this evening from the OT just how precious the testimony of God is. I want us to take a look at the ark of the covenant:
God said to Moses in EX 25:10 "Have them make a chest of acacia wood--two and a half cubits long, a cubit and a half wide, and a cubit and a half high. 11 Overlay it with pure gold, both inside and out, and make a gold molding around it. 12 Cast four gold rings for it and fasten them to its four feet, with two rings on one side and two rings on the other. 13 Then make poles of acacia wood and overlay them with gold. 14 Insert the poles into the rings on the sides of the chest to carry it. 15 The poles are to remain in the rings of this ark; they are not to be removed. 16 Then put in the ark ‘the Testimony’, which I will give you.”
When God makes something holy, he gives us the instructions, and we are to follow his instructions. He is the maker, and we are the material!
The ark was a symbol of the presence of God, and God commands the testimony be placed in it. The Testimony was what we know as the ten commandments:
EX 31:18 “When the LORD finished speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai, he gave him the two tablets of the Testimony, the tablets of stone inscribed by the finger of God”, of divine origin, being written with the finger of God, but the ark was made of precious materials by human hands.
Just like our lives – We are like Jars of clay, but we have this treasure within! God has placed his testimony in us – in fact the bible says He has written his laws upon our hearts.
1CO 3:16 Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? 17 If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple.
Eph. 2:22 says, “And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.” And the Apostle Paul teaches us that we are like portable temples! We carry the presence of God with us!
Do you Remember the Jews who used the testimony of Jesus and Paul to drive out some Evil Spirits? AC 19:13 “Some Jews who went around driving out evil spirits tried to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who were demon-possessed. They would say, "In the name of Jesus, whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out." 14 Seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, were doing this. 15 One day the evil spirit answered them, "Jesus I know, and I know about Paul, but who are you?" 16 Then the man who had the evil spirit jumped on them and overpowered them all. He gave them such a beating that they ran out of the house naked and bleeding.” They did not know the reality or power of that testimony in their lives – they were beaten up!
We read in EX. 26:34 – “Put the atonement cover on the ark of the Testimony in the Most Holy Place.”
Christ is referred to in Romans 3:25; 1 John 2:2; and 1John 4:10 as an “atoning sacrifice.”
The word for ‘atoning’ is ‘hilasterion’.” This is the same word in the Greek Old Testament for the “Atonement Cover” as we have just read in Ex. 26:34.
The atonement cover was also known as the “Mercy Seat” on the Ark of the Covenant. Here we see that Jesus is paralleled in this way with the exquisite gold piece that covered the ancient Ark.
God told Moses on several occasions that the significance of the “Mercy Seat” or atonement cover was that, “There, above the cover between the two cherubim that are over the ark of the Testimony, I will meet with you and give you all my commands for the Israelites.” (Exodus 25:22).
If, then, the “atonement cover” was the place where God was to be found, and Christ himself is “hilasterion” or “atonement cover”, then Christ is the place where God is to be found.
Follow the concept here. God, the consuming fire present “above the cover between the cherubim that are over the ark of the Testimony” is the God, whom, we are told, is Christ.
Christ is “hilasterion” the place where God “appears.” But Christ is also the “atoning sacrifice.” He is the one who makes it possible for a man to be in the room with the terrifying presence. He is the pacifier; the one who appeases. So, in short, God is both ‘the terrifying presence’, and ‘the one who appeases’ the angry God at one and the same time. God is, at once, the consuming fire and the one who takes the heat.
EX 27:20 "Command the Israelites to bring you clear oil of pressed olives for the light so that the lamps may be kept burning. 21 In the Tent of Meeting, outside the curtain that is in front of the Testimony, Aaron and his sons are to keep the lamps burning before the LORD from evening till morning. This is to be a lasting ordinance among the Israelites for the generations to come.
The people were to bring oil to keep the lamps burning. Ring any bells? Do you remember the story of the 10 virgins/bridesmaids? This lasting ordinance is fulfilled by millions of believers all over the earth whose light shines forth and lights up the testimony of God and his Son Jesus Christ In their lives. The Priest was to keep the lamps burning – Jesus our high Priest keeps our lamps burning brightly!
EX 30:6 “Put the altar in front of the curtain that is before the ark of the Testimony--before the atonement cover that is over the Testimony--where I will meet with you.”
Look at the language here – the 2nd part of this verse tells us that the atonement cover or ‘mercy seat’ is over the testimony – that is God’s word. Well, we have already learnt that Jesus himself is the atonement cover, and God’s word is our testimony – WHAT AN AMAZING PICTURE.
Christ not only is the reason for my testimony, but he guards it within each believer! Just as the atonement cover protected the stone tablets of God’s Word, So Jesus as the atoning sacrifice for our sins, keeps God’s imperishable seed, His Word, safe in our hearts!
EX 30:22 “Then the LORD said to Moses, 23 "Take the following fine spices: 500 shekels of liquid myrrh, half as much (that is, 250 shekels) of fragrant cinnamon, 250 shekels of fragrant cane, 24 500 shekels of cassia--all according to the sanctuary shekel--and a hin of olive oil. 25 Make these into a sacred anointing oil, a fragrant blend, the work of a perfumer. It will be the sacred anointing oil. 26 Then use it to anoint the Tent of Meeting, the ark of the Testimony, 27 the table and all its articles, the lampstand and its accessories, the altar of incense, 28 the altar of burnt offering and all its utensils, and the basin with its stand. 29 You shall consecrate them so they will be most holy, and whatever touches them will be holy.”
Everything that was to be used for the Lord was to be consecrated to Him – anointed with precious oil, holy unto the Lord. Jesus told us that we are sanctified by the truth – and His Word is truth – he also said you are clean by the Word I spoke to you.
The bible says that His anointing remains in us and teaches us all things.
EX 30:34 Then the LORD said to Moses, "Take fragrant spices--gum resin, onycha and galbanum--and pure frankincense, all in equal amounts, 35 and make a fragrant blend of incense, the work of a perfumer. It is to be salted and pure and sacred. 36 Grind some of it to powder and place it in front of the Testimony in the Tent of Meeting, where I will meet with you. It shall be most holy to you. 37 Do not make any incense with this formula for yourselves; consider it holy to the LORD. 38 Whoever makes any like it to enjoy its fragrance must be cut off from his people."
Now, the Lord asks Moses to make a beautiful perfume – grinding it to powder, and scattering it before the testimony – the ark of the covenant. What a lovely picture – as the Priest entered the most holy place, a wonderful aroma would fill the room.
We also note here that the Lord says that no one is to make or use any of this perfume for themselves – He is a jealous God, ad this is to be used only for the temple.
Sadly, people do counterfeit God’s work today. There are many who claim to know God, but there is no fruit in their lives – no evidence of a relationship with the Lord.
I thank God that the only aroma I have is the Lord’s, and it’s the only one I want!
2CO 2:14 “But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him. 15 For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. 16 To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life.”
The bible tells us that we are the aroma of Christ. We are like the Ark of the covenant – for God’s laws are written on our hearts, and the scent of his presence surrounds us – and how lovely too that the Word of God is also called ‘the testimony’, And just as the testimony (God’s word) was placed in the ark, so know we have the full testimony – the person and the work of Christ, living in our hearts.
I hope this evening that you have seen the Beauty of the Lord; His testimony; and His glory.
LET US PRAY…….
