The Raising Of The Kingly Priests.
(17)
We continue from where we
left off last time. God is raising from among men a people in whom, as it is
with Lord Jesus Christ, the God-head will live. God is preparing the blessed
ones on the earth. He ministers and breathes
from the throne in the holy of holy
in heaven the beauty of divine character of His kingly priests.
In the third row of the
precious stones on the breastplate of the high priest, the second stone is
agate. It has the reputation of having the colour of flame; its action word is
to flame or to spark. It represents Asher.
Agate: the
gem-stone character of Asher.
Agate is Asher. Agate means to
flame or to spark. It is a flaming or sparkling gem. Which ever is used of
flaming or sparkling, it has connection with fire. Flame can be interchanged
with fire in a sentence and not lose its meaning. Fire judges, evaluates and
tries the quality of materials of the stuff they are made of; fire tries and
burns off impurities of metals and makes the true metals come out in their true
eternal lustre; fire destroys when not properly handled. In reality, man needs
all of his wisdom and presence of mind to handle a flaming fire. Fire is
compared with the tongue by James.
Agate is Asher. Agate is a flaming
gem. Fire is the pervading influence of flame; it is the invisible agency of
the physical phenomenon called flame. Flame is always associated with fire and
tongue and, remarkably, with the infilling of the Holy Spirit. Acts 2, verse 3: And there appeared unto them
cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. The same effect
was displayed in the burning bush of the back side of Horeb. Restless, fire is;
dance, flame does. Like tongue, active; like thought, expressive. Flame like
the Holy Spirit cannot be contained nor can be dictated to by man; it does its
own thing, burning as long as the right material is available.
Asher was the second son of Zilpah, Leah’s maid for Jacob. Genesis 30,
verse 13: And Leah said, Happy am I, for
the daughters will call me blessed: and she called his name Asher. Asher in
Hebrew has many connotations. It is a primary root-word meaning to be straight,
to be level, to be right, to be happy. Figuratively, it means to prosper, to be
honest or to go forward. Asher means happy. In the thought of Leah, Asher meant to be
blessed; it meant to be called, by the daughters, blessed; she indicated that
she was happy in her state of dwelling in an unloving home; she had been able
to look away from her pathetic situations and hoped in the blessedness that
came from another realm, being called
happy by the daughters. She, Leah, could not say she was blessed with good
marriage. And she knew that it was not her fault that she was not such a ravishing beautiful like Rachel; nor was it her personal design that she
was forced on a man that did not love her or was ever attracted by her
features. But now she recognised another realm of blessedness that is not of
this earth. She said, For the daughters shall call me blessed. It is an eternal
echo. Mary, when she visited her cousin
Elisabeth and looked forward to the future and saw what God was about to do
through her to the whole of human race, enthused: … for behold from now henceforth, all generations shall call me blessed (Luke
1: 46 - 48). Asher means happy. In fact the Amplified version adds a deepened
end to it: to be envied.
The Kingdom-Dynamic Antithesis of “ Happy”
Asher is agate, the flaming-gem
character. Being happy, for Leah was not for the immediate conditions of her
life; it was an expression of something else: her eternal conditions. The agate
person knows and appreciates the excellence of his eternal conditions. The Lord Jesus in the
Beatitude brought out this fact with a jarring poignancy. The blessed was not
necessarily the one who had gained the world. James writes: Behold we count them happy which endure.(James
5: 11) It means the steadfast one is the agate-man; he is the one happy, especially if he can look away from the blessings we are familiar with and see
another package known to those who can see.
Asher is agate. It is about
a character that has been tried, purified and gained lustre and brilliance not
of the earth but of the heavenly. He has grown into the Head, Jesus Christ and
the earthy life has become dim and distant; he has ceased to be enamoured with
the values of the world. He is a man that has ascended above it all; he is in
the world but not of the world; he is unbound and therefore can soar above like
eagle. To the uninitiated, he is mad; he is stupid; he is an antithesis of
everything considered primary and premium by man. This is a man that has
attained the eternal life of living above peer-pressure groups and that, at
every stage of life. For peer-pressure lasts through out life and at every
stage of human development. My peers are buying cars and I have not, that is a
pressure. My peers are graduating from higher institutions and I have not, that
is another pressure. My peers are marrying and no one has proposed to me, that
is an interesting and recurring pressure known to many sisters. My peers have
built their houses and packed in and here am I still a tenant in somebody’s
house. My mates are now grandparents and I have not even married. My mates are
giving their children out to marriage and o poor me my own children are yet undergraduates. My mates have children
and I have none… The gem character will be able to say contrary to all these, I
am blessed for God is my exceedingly great reward. The agate man is aware of
only one-way ticket to God. My pastor and brother, Reverend Busiyi Olabode once
made a remark to someone: “Your own world has not arrived.” He said this
because he observed that the man had been able to do without many basic things
of life, including electricity supply. Now, virtually almost everybody goes
through this experience in the country. What the pastor was getting at was that
here was a man that believe in another existence and attempts to live in that
other world , even while in this one. Does that look and sound like some pie-in-heave-by-and-by
persona? But the agate-man is not! He is a man gaining heights in the spirit.
Asher is agate. He has been
refined and no longer craves the taste of the things earthy. No, he does not
hate the thing earthly; but his hope, his joy and blessedness is not in them.
He is a man whose sense of success has been tried and redefined by the Holy
Spirit, the purifier of the human souls.
Asher is agate. We are reading
from Amplified Version, Mathew 5: 3 – 4, pausing to comment here and there:
Blessed (happy, to be envied and spiritually prosperous – with life-joy and
satisfaction in God’s favour and salvation, regardless of their outward
conditions) are the poor in spirit (the humble, who rate themselves
insignificant) for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed is the poor in the
spirit! Is it possible for the poor to be happy on this earth? It is ironic. In
the kingdom of God, the one that is poor in spirit is critically aware of his
condition and presses more into divine favour and grace. As he gains spiritual
stature, he becomes more aware of his inadequacies and presses more. To this
kind of man belongs the kingdom of God.
Continuing: 4, Blessed and enviably happy (with happiness
produced by the experience of God’s favour and especially conditioned by the
revelation of His matchless grace) are those who mourn, for they shall be
comforted.
Mourn and happy – two unlikely words to be associated. But this man
mourns for the state of the sinful world; he does not want to continue here. He
is embarrassed by his limitations in the fruit of righteousness. He wants to
break into Sonship – to manifest as the son of God. Yes, he shall come into it;
he shall be comforted. For our
conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the saviour, the Lord
Jesus Christ: who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned into his
glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all
things unto himself. (Philipians 3: 20)
Continuing: 5, Blessed (happy, blithesome, joyous, spiritually
prosperous – with life-joy and satisfaction of God’s favour and salvation,
regardless of their outward conditions) are the meek (the mild, patient,
longsuffering), for they shall inherit the earth.
How can the meek be called blessed in the cut-throat race of the world
where the aggressive and selfish are the prized gift and character? In the
world, the mighty and the strong inherit the earth! Yet, such was not Jesus Christ for he was the
Lamb; like a lamb dumb before his
shearer, so opened not his mouth. This is the agate character – the joyous in
the spirit. (Acts 8: 32)
Continuing: 6, Blessed and fortunate and happy and spiritually
prosperous (in that state in which the born-again child of God enjoys His
favour and salvation) are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness
(righteousness and right standing with God), for they shall be completely
satisfied.
Can righteousness satisfy the hunger and assuage the thirst of man? It
is often heard, Isn’t righteousness we
will eat? Will righteousness give us lovely things of life? Or will righteousness give us name and fame
among mankind? These are the usual questions from the earth-bound individuals
but not the agate-gem man for he is unbound and unconscious of all these things
people call lovely. Some ask whether
moral uprightness is not enough from us to God. God’s righteousness is what God
has done
or is doing in us through His Son Jesus; it is above the best the most
morally sound man on earth can offer. The seeker after the righteousness
obtainable through faith in the atoning blood of the Lord Jesus shall be
satisfied. He is blessed.
Continuing: 7, Blessed are the merciful for
they shall obtain mercy.
This is contrary to the law that sustains the systems of the world. It
is called the law of the survival of the fittest. Here, might is right. The
weak is weeded away; the strong is tended. In an ancient Western European
nation, the king wanted war-glories through plunders and battle, so he ensured
the mating of strong, tall marriageable young men with equally strong and tall
young women. For what purpose? To feed his military machine, his army. And this
was before Mendel. In the early turn of the last century, a nation in
Western Europe came up with a policy of eliminating, after its delivery, any weak-looking baby through what it called
mercy-killing; the more fanciful word being eugenic. It is so evident here that
the law of the spirit of life in the Lord Jesus was stupid to the rational man.
The world wants razor-blade-sharp brain, strong and mighty persons; the Lord
chooses the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty of
man. The world loves wisdom of its own breed; the Lord loves the fools to
confound the wisdom of man. The agate-man is merciful and can appreciate the
weak; the rational world wise-man sees him as stupid. On the other hand the law
of sin and death, that principle of the self or the flesh, where the concept of
eugenics springs from, is not less stupid to the agate-gem man.
Continuing: 8, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
No natural man can be found here. This speaks of a man not only filled
with the Holy Spirit but is be being filled. He is more in spirit than out. He
is the priestly king that has so merged with the Father that no particle of
unrighteous thought crosses the threshold of the thought of his heart; he has
mastered the art of being perpetually in the presence of God. He sees God and
what controls him is the joy of God’s presence. He lives contrary to the notion
of loving God for what He gives. There was a man who because he is a civil
servant is not a millionaire because he also holds the testimony of Christ;
there is another who is contemptuous of his Christian brother because he does
not know how ‘to pray to prosper.’ The
agate-gem man has crossed the threshold of seeking personal gains and his heart
is rested from evil and unrighteous scheming to arrive.
Continuing: 9, Blessed are the
peace makers for they shall be called the sons of God!
Another contrariety in the world
where you are admired for your wit at initiating war and quarrel and
dominating others! Yet there heavenly admiration for the harbinger of peace, of
the glad tiding and of the salvation of God. How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good
tidings, that publisheth peace… (Isaiah 52: 7). These are the
reconciliators of man to God. This is priestly. Only the priest can take the
hand of the sinner and put it in the hand of God and, that through the blood of
the Lord Jesus, effect a reconciliation. This is the agate-gem whose main
preoccupation after losing his identity to Christ is to reconcile others to Him.
He is the son of God for this is the life of God himself who did not only
desire reconciliation with man but also gave His life to initiate and sustain
it. The sons of God or his princes on the throne with Him ensure peace. A son
is every way like his father; the son of God is like God.
Continuing: 10, Blessed are those persecuted for righteousness sake for
theirs is the kingdom of God.
Persecution is the currency of the preparatory to the kingdom of God. He
that keeps the testimony of the Lord Jesus cannot escape it. But the agate-man
is hardly bothered because he does not have any thing other than God to live
for; he is not moved when you remove his position from him, when you relegate
him; he is not embarrassed when you demean him, when you ridicule him, in fact
when you threaten to kill him. I am
crucified with Christ, says an agate-gem character, nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life
which now I live in the flesh I live by faith of the Son of God who loved me
and gave himself for me.
Continuing and now taking fragments from the last chapters of the bible:
Revelation, 22:14: Blessed (happy and to be envied) are those who cleanse their
garments that they may have the right to (approach) the tree of life and to
enter through the gate into the city.
There are seven ‘blesseds’ in the book of Revelation. First for the man
who reads, hears and keeps what is written therein; second those who die in the
Lord; third, the one who keeps alert and avoids being naked; fourth, those who
are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb; fifth, those who take part in
the first resurrection; sixth, those who keep the sayings of the prophecy of
the book; those who live the prophetic life.
The agate-gem is driven by this inner consciousness. Some are happy
because they marry the most personable spouse; some, because of their achievements
and the vastness of their riches in the material; some yet, because of their
position and authority and status and power and some, in few categories,
because of their needle-sharp intelligence that has brought dazzling glory and
honour. But the agate character though may be in any of these things fails to
locate his happiness in any of them; he is in another realm. Sometimes, this
individual cannot understand himself any more. He knows the cries and the
craves of his soul, but he simply cannot pander to or tend them any more. He
has passed from death to life.
Have you met a person whose marriage seems to be a misalliance because
of Christ and yet happy? Have you met a Christian childless couple and yet
happy? Have you met a happy Christian claiming the joy of having Jesus and that
Jesus is enough for him though he has
failed in all of life’s endeavours?
Have you met a family happy and saying it has everything in Jesus though
it is poor and jobless? Have you not seen a person who the whole world denounces
as needing his head examined because he is to them mad as he is everything
opposite what they consider to be the reason for life and pursuit? Have you not
heard the razor-sharp one declaiming that religion is the opium of the people
even though they fail to realise that there is an agate man that is not
religious and yet has taken this opium?
No, the agate man is not
“anti-success,” but his being happy does not depend on any human- culture definition of success;
he is driven by another culture unequal by any in this world. It is called
the culture of heaven or of the Holy Spirit. Have you come across such a being?
We have come across them a-plenty. Perhaps, there is a need to expatiate here
to avoid confusion. Many people resolve to keep happy whatever be the tide.
That is not what we are talking about. That is carelessly tuck-in part of
psychology. We are talking about the agate-gem characters who are happy because
of eternal things and relationship with God; we talk about the person whose
heart has been reconditioned by the Holy Spirit. I will illustrate with two
examples from Nigeria.
Contemporary Examples
Pa Elton came to Nigeria as a
missionary in early 1930s, touched many lives, and was used of God in revivals
and was a able to raise ministers of the gospel that are yet being mightily
used of God today in this country and the world. In every place on God’s earth,
you will find gospel ministers of Nigerian origin. Directly or indirectly, each
has a connection somewhere with Pa Elton. Pa Elton had a daughter called Ruth
who also became a preacher of the gospel. Sister Ruth remains single at close
to eighty. I keep wondering why she did not go back to England and marry and
return again to continue her ministry. This is a being who can keep happy only
because of God. The second example has to do with another missionary, an
American sister who trained as a nurse. (I will give the whole world to know
the name of this sister). She came in
the last decade of 20th century and ministered in that part of the
country where the people preferred walking about naked. She ministered the
gospel to them, clothed them and nursed them as well as taught them how to read
and write the bible in their own language. This was after she had spent a long
period learning the language herself. In
course of time, this beautiful American sister married one of the men who converted
to the Lord through her ministry – you should see this blessed brother in his
stark nakedness except for the hand-breadth-size kerchief below his groins. In her
native country, she will be regarded, their claim to Christ notwithstanding, as
mad, for, hold it, marrying a native, a pure negro! I asked myself why she did
not go back to the US and marry her kind. The Lord whispered to me in my heart,
“Son, she did it because of Me; she loves so.” Can you beat that? The agate man
having lost all sense of personal importance will go to what man calls extreme
to please God.
Leah said, “Happy am I, for the
daughters will call me blessed…” Asher means happy and is represented by the
agate gem noted to flame or spark…associated with fire and its properties… like
the presence of the Holy Spirit.
Father, we pray that you will
help us to look away from the earth to see you and your glory - Jesus who is our glory… We read this but
cannot really grasp the true meaning because we have not been able to posit
this King in his rightful place in our hearts. We get frustrated and
disappointed when things which our souls long for pass us by. O, Father that we
may see the true riches of what is called eternal life, God’s kind of life. Cause
us, Lord, as we look into these things to see the true glory and apply our
hearts diligently to eternal values. Thank you, our Father.
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