The Raising Of The Priestly Kings.(13)
Reading:
Job 1:
5 And it was so, when the days of their feasting were gone about, that
Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the morning and offered
burnt offerings according to the number of them all, for Job said, it may be
that my sons have cursed God in their
hearts. Thus did Job continually.
Revelation 1:
6 And hath made us kings and priests unto God and His Father…
We have been meditating on
the priesthood of Job.
Job being a priest
knew the excellence of character.
Aaron’s specialised
priesthood knew the heavenly excellence of character.
God raises a glorious priesthood
today.
This priesthood has
been from before the foundation of the world; it is a priesthood that knows the
excellence of power; this is a spiritual priesthood.
One of those gems of
character associated, we shall see in this meditation, with priesthood is
praise. This character as denoted by
emerald in the breastplate of the High Priest stands for Judah.
Judah:
The Emerald-gem Character Of The Kingly Priests.
Reading Genesisn30,
the 30th verse. Now said
Leah, will l praise the Lord. Therefore she called his name Judah. The word
in Hebrew is Yadah. It means directing praise to the Lord; it means to laud. Both
in the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New Testament, many words are translated praise and
consequently have many shades of meanings.
Emerald is a
transparent precious stone with a hue of green. It is transparently heavenly.
When a substance is transparent, it does not only allow light to pass through
it with ease but, you can also see through it to the source of light. The only
source of light is God the Father. For this character, you do not only see the
light of the Truth of God through him, you also see beyond and locate God. This
is not an ordinary priestly quality; it is an attained estate, a priestly character
that fetches both from the celestials and the earthlings praises of God, the
Father. Christ was; Christ is. Now, He, the Lord Jesus is raising the same
kindling kindred-spirits, the priests like Himself.
Judah is emerald. Judah means
praise. Genesis 30: 35: And she
conceived again, and bare a son: and she said, Now will I praise the Lord: therefore,
she called his name Judah… As pointed out before, on the breastplate of the
priest was Judah represented with emerald. Exodus 28: 18: And the second row shall be an emerald, a sapphire, and an amethyst.
Emerald is a
transparent precious stone with a hue of green. Green means life. There is such
thing as lively transparency. In this type of life, the quality of life is
clear and unambiguous. It does not require
elitist or recondite knowledge. It is simply what it is: life. Life here
is not defined by the limits of biology; its opposite is not cessation of life.
We talk here of the life of God; it is victory over carnality; it is the
habitation of God because of righteousness. This life does not know deceit or
self-consideration. The conscience of this individual has been purged from dead works to serve the living God. He
has, being devoid of self-motives, renounced
the hidden things of dishonesty. He has ceased from handling the work of God deceitfully nor does he walk in craftiness. By the manifestation of the truth, he has learned to
commend himself to every man’s
conscience in the sight of God.
Now, I will praise God… Leah
had possibly found a far better life than forever trying to make an inroad to
an unyielding rock of un-love (if that word is allowed). Now she rejoices in the
goodness of God and concluded that praise was due God. Rejoicing is associated
with praising. And the priestly kings of
today rejoice in the hope of the glory
of God. This hope is the governing force of their lives. Paul writes to the
Philipians, Rejoice in the Lord always:
and again I say, Rejoice. In the ambiance of our technology-propped-up civilisation-life
of comfort, we may give a mental assent to this injunction, especially when we
live in Western Europe and North America. But the time is almost upon us in the
desperateness of Satan to make a breach into the sense of security of the
saints of God. Then shall we know what it means; then shall we have the
empirical experience of what it means for the Apostle to be facing death and
yet had the courage to write, Rejoice in
the Lord… and again, I say rejoice.
Some of us but suffer a slight setback in our business, or education, or
marriage, or advancement in our profession when we begin to whine. But the
kingly priest being weaned away from the pains and pangs of carnality-induced
death praises God in rejoicing; he is on top of it all; he is not under. The
Lord himself rejoices over him; He is boasting of him. He actually gushed with
abounding praise for Job to Satan: Have
you seen my servant Job?
The fullness of God’s joy comes when he
rejoices over Zion – the church. For
Zion’s sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake, I will not rest
until the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, and the salvation
thereof as a lamp that burneth… For as a young man married a virgin so shall
thy sons marry thee; and as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall
thy God rejoice over thee (Isaiah 62: 1,5). This will be the end-chapter of
human history. The Lord God Almighty and
the Lamb are the temple thereof; the glory for God did light it, and the Lamb is
the light thereof (Revelation 21: 22). This is when man becomes His praise; this is
when all creatures see God clearly through man to His location. This is when
the priestly kings, even the sons of God become the visible expression of His
person and the brightness of His glory. This is our calling; this is our
pursuit.
Judah
is Yadah, praise, in Hebrew. Emerald stands for Judah. It is associated with
the set throne of God in heaven. “…and
there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto emerald.” (Revelation 4: 3). The early
appearance of rainbow is in Genesis 9: 12-13. “ And God said, this is the token of the covenant… I do set my
(rain)bow in the cloud and it shall be for a token of a covenant, which is
between you and me.” it represents the concept of our covenant-keeping God
who in judgment still remembers mercy. The One who sat on the throne in
Revelation was about to start series of
judgments, culminating in the victory of His heart’s yearning, yet, at each point
in the stories, He always desires and longs for mercy, repentance and
salvation. This is the gem called emerald, the character full of the judgment
of God copiously mixed with mercy because he sees the Father and does what the
Father does.
Emerald stands for Yadah who was Praise.
Praise can be expressed in songs, in hymns, in dance, in loud approbations, in
spiritual raconteuring, in chanting in the spirit. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and
admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with
grace in your hearts to the Lord. And what you do in word or deed, do all in
the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks (praise) to God and the Father by Him
(Colosians 3: 16, 17). But gathering all these human gestures and the
vocal, instrumental and dancing expressions to itself is the priestly attitude
of the man. Yadah was a person; praise is a person. It is an attitude of utter
abandonment to God. Christ praised his father by the testimony of his life; He
lived not for Himself but for His Fathers. He said, “I honour my Father…And I
seek not my own glory.” At another time, the Lord answered, “If I honour
myself, my honour is nothing; it is my Father that honoureth me.” This is true praise. For every intent and
purpose, the driving force of our lives is to honour the Lord. The hunger of
our h ears is to hear Him what He will say to us so that we will do it. We
tremble at His word. Our existence and life depend on our success at hearing
Him; they depend on our obedience to Him. We may pant after revelation
knowledge, the real gist is not to prove that we have arrived; it is that we
may obey and please Him in line with the revelation(s). This is real Yadah, the
real emerald.
The
Lord was utterly given over to the will of the Father; He had no personal will
or direction or plan or a personal curricular agenda for each day. He depended
solely on the Holy Spirit. Oh, Father that we also come to this estate of life;
Oh that we are lost in the Spirit like Him you sent to show us your ways. And Jesus, being full of the Holy Ghost
returned from Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, being forty
days tempted of the devil. Then again, one day, Jesus when urged by His
brethren to go to Judea for the feast of Tabernacle, to go and ’shine or show
stuff’ replied, “Go ye into this feast;
I go not up yet unto this feast; for my time is not yet full come.” The
implication of this is that He had to hear from the Father whether to go and
when to go; His time was not His own to dispense as He wished. The true meaning
of this is that the Lord lived to honour His Father per time. This is praise;
the emerald character.
Praise is
an attitude of a heart completely surrendered to the Father, out to honour the
Lord. Ephesians 1:12: That we should be
to the praise of his glory… This attitude or way of life is only complemented
by the verbal and foot expressions of singing, chanting and dancing components.
Another word for praise is halal, the root-word
of hallelujah, praise Jah or Praise Yaweh. Halal comes off from giving
heart-attitudinal expressions to God. We shall do well to check examples in the
bible.
Readin, 2
Chronicles 20:
21 And when he had consulted with
the people, he appointed singers unto the Lord, and that they should praise the
beauty of holiness… and to praise the Lord, for his mercy endureth for ever.
22And when they began to sing and
praise, the Lord set an ambushment against the children of Ammon, Moab, and
Mount Seir, which were come against Judah…
Such
glorious stories! A people, Judah, went to war without weapons, without human
defence… and it was not a dress rehearsal but live war. They confronted the
enemies with music-playing –and-singing Levites lauding the holiness of the beauty
of God. When the kingly priests raise their hands and voices and praise God,
the devil is in trouble. The victory of the first battle of Israel on the way
from Egypt was a memorable one; it came off from a man who was raised up his
hand in praise.
One day, Paul
had a girl delivered from the stranglehold of the python spirit of divination. The
whole town of Philipi rose up to mob him and Silas, his companion. Not yet
satisfied, they drew them in jail. The 16th
chapter of the Acts, verse 25 continues the story: And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises to God: and the
prisoners heard them. The next verse introduced the spectacular involvement
of heaven: And suddenly there was a
great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and
immediately all doors were opened, and every one’s hands were loosed. We
should note that this result comes from praying and praising; but it is more
noteworthy that praying and praising were as a result of the attitude of
hearts. These men were already a praise to God themselves. They were not
seeking their salvation or escape, but the sought to honour and glorify the
Lord. This is emerald character.
Emerald is
Judah; it is praise. It is halal. Yadah and halal run through the psalms of the
bible. Yadah is commendation, a laudation. In our first story, the people
lauded, commended and honoured the holiness of the beauty of God and suddenly
the heaven got concerned. In the second example, the word in Greek is humneo
from whence the English word, hymn. It means to hymn or sing to the praise of
(Vine). It means that at midnight, Paul and Silas prayed to and hymned God. The
emerald-gem character of the priestly is a terrific character; it is formidable
and a terror to the enemies of God. It is called praise.
Yadah is
emerald character. It is halal. Halal, according to Strong’s concordance means
to be clear or to shine; it means to boast and, says Strong again, ‘thus to be
(clamorously) foolish. It also means to rave. It is only in God’s priests you
can see these concepts of halal displayed. Those who possess this attribute gush
out praise of and to God; it is as natural to them as breathing, as a reflex
action. Many show this in the privacy of their homes while some display them
everywhere at the drop of a pin.
A priest of
God was attacked and afflicted by ‘the army of the aliens.’ The priest whirled round and said, Satan, just watch
what I want to do now. You wonder what this person would do who lost her family
in an automobile accident (His Beauty for My Ashes). She retired into the
closet and literally, permit the word again, gushed out praise in the Holy
Spirit language. She experienced an inner glow, an unearthly joy. It was a
transformation of the inner being known only to those who had the experience.
Emerald is
not the second nature of the priest, but his real nature; it is an expression
of an estate he has come to. When he has the opportunity to flaunt or show this
nature, he raves and boasts (as it appears to the uninitiated) and behaves
foolishly like David dancing almost naked before God. The priest dances and
sings in the Spirit and, in his boasts, turns a raconteur. Emerald is not a
natural instinct, but a spiritual attribute that grows with patient walking
with the Lord. What does that mean? An example from Oyo will do. In that
empire, the king’s poet lived in the palace and grew up there. He learned all
the kingly lifestyles and manners. He knew the king’s lineage and their
different political, social and religious challenges and prowess. Now, when it
was time to praise the king he reeled off all these accomplishments of the past
with amazing ease, weaving in and out of time with most elevated language and
modulated cadence noted among the practised poets of the time. But we are
talking of the priests of the Creator of heaven and earth.
In our
childhood, we were taught to praise God always. We learned how God physically
intervened in the challenges of his people when they praised. But this robbed
off on us in the wrong way. We are very careful here not to upset the apple
cart of this doctrine. But we cautiously point out that when Silas and Paul
sang praises to God, it was not as if they had in the corner of their hearts,
“Common, let us praise God so that He will perform a miracle to take us out of
this mess or so that he will avenge for us.” The author of His Beauty for My
Ashes did not have it at the back of her heart that she would praise God so
that He would raise her husband back to life. In both examples, we submit that
praising God was the nature of the people involved; it is the nature of the
joyous. Things dramatic and evidential can occur because we praise; it may not
either. Praise is a person; praise is a kind of life; it is an absolute abandon
to and trust in the Lord. We have heard of praise program tagged, Praise your
way to victory. No, praise is not a quick fix for our pains and challenges; it
is a nature that has been patiently nurtured under the watchful eyes of the
Spirit. It is not a fire-brigade approach to life’s problems, but a
spirit-cultivated mind that rests on the Lord. It speaks of a walk in the
spirit that has paid off handsomely.
Lord,
this is the spirit we pray for, the spirit of praise; Lord, this is the life we
pray for, the life of praise. Lord, this is the heart we yearn for, the heart
that knows praise; this is the mind of Christ we want, the mind that is expressed
in your praise. Lord, this is the Spirit-language we want, the language that
prophesies praise; this is the utterance we long for, the utterance that if
full of praise. We receive therefore the ability to gush out your praises as a
reflection of who we are and not as a result of a doctrine. Oh, Father that we are like the people of old
who can, out of your Spirit in us, sing, chant, laugh and dance spontaneously
to you, our God. We are helped by the Spirit to do this for this is our heart
longing, to be you praise and to give glory to you. Thank you, Father.
