Meeting: Season of the Spirit (Day 6)
Date: 9 March, 2025
Message: Enacting the Covenant of Overcoming Death
Minister: Pastor Laide Olaniyan
God wants to push us ahead and stretch us. The theme is an advent upon us that we are going to be learning for a long time. We will be journeying as the theme further breaks open upon us.
(Deut 5:1-3) – “And Moses called all Israel, and said unto them, Hear, O Israel, the statutes and judgments which I speak in your ears this day, that ye may learn them, and keep, and do them. 2 The Lord our God made a covenant with us in Horeb. 3 The Lord made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us, even us, who are all of us here alive this day.” The precept and the judgment of the LORD are concealed within His covenant. They are to be taught for us to keep them and do them. If we don’t learn His statutes, we will not be able to keep, and if we can’t keep, we can’t do them.
(Deut 29:1) – “These are the words of the covenant, which the Lord commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, beside the covenant which he made with them in Horeb.”
God cuts one covenant before another higher covenant as we journey. The church in the wilderness i.e. the children of Israel from the Old Testament did not have only one covenant but first, there was the covenant that was given to them in Horeb as children after they journeyed out of Egypt.
God measures covenants to us to the degree that we have fallen short of His glory. This first covenant was a similitude or template of the covenant of Christ. The Fathers of old did not need that first covenant because they had not fallen to the degree the children had fallen to.
The first covenant which is the similitude of Christ was meant to deliver them from bondage and bring them closer to the Living God. God manifests Himself to us based on where we are. The manifestation of God who made a covenant with them was the God who delivered them out of the house of bondage.
(Deut 5:22-27) The controversy here is journeying further. The hearts of the children of Israel were not willing to journey because of the things that were in their hearts, likewise, we can come to a point where we are unwilling to journey further. There was a thing in the hearts of the children of Israel that wanted to preserve a life outside of the speakings of God. They liked the life of flesh and wanted to retain it.
The prophecy of God is for a people that will draw nigh to Him and dwell with everlasting burnings. What God wants to reap from out of man is all of him (man) but many times man does not want to release all of his fleshly (carnal) way of life but this life must die for God to receive him. Many times our hesitation with journeying further with God is the knowing that all of us will die, that all of self will have to die.
(Deut. 5:27) – “Go thou near, and hear all that the Lord our God shall say: and speak thou unto us all that the Lord our God shall speak unto thee; and we will hear it, and do it.” All of the speaking of God is not one a carnal man likes to endure, this is why we see the children of Israel in the scriptures ask Moses to go and hear the words of God for them. When God was telling them to come closer, He knew they were not perfect but more importantly, He was watching their heart. If they had a heart that desired His speaking, all of the things striving in them, that fallen or fleshly life would have fallen off so they can come up a people pure and acceptable unto Him.
Some people in their generation heard the voice of the Living God but could not press further even though they had previously heard the speaking of Christ and accepted it (1 Cor. 10:4). In the wilderness, there were calibrations of speaking to them and God wanted them to hear all that He had to say but their generation could not.
(Deut. 29:1-29) This commandment or covenant is a covenant of secret things; highly classified secrets of God. (Deut. 29: 4-6) They saw all the miracles but they didn’t have ears to hear, hearts to perceive and eyes to see. (Matt 13:13-15) God must do a work in the heart to be able to receive it — a work on the eyes and ear. To relate with the things of the covenant, the Lord must give us eyes that see, ears that hear and a heart to comprehend the things that are concealed in the covenant.
At every speaking and new or higher covenant, God must give us a heart and an ear to receive it. (Deut. 29:6-11) The covenant is for everybody. The testimony of God & covenant of God is a covenant of making, not just an agreement as in verbal terms of conditions, it is for making a man. (Heb. 7:21-28) The oath is what the new testament calls testament or testimony. We are to enter into the covenant and into the oath. The entrance into the covenant and the oath is the submission to the word that makes us consecrated forever more. This is what the blood of Jesus holds for all who believe.
There is a difference between covenant and testimony. The covenant and testimony is actually the covenant of the fathers (Rom. 9:3-5). The heritage of the fathers is that they have a covenant that the sons did not have.
(Heb. 6:16-17) Our coming must be by the two immutable things. Abraham had not just a promise but he also had an oath which God swore by. God used the lives of the patriarchs as a template to show what God wants to establish with us (the children). The Devil has painted it to be just a tradition of the Jews but it is meant to be an example for us who will lay hold. Their lives ought to be studied so that we can enter into the things God wants us to come into. These things speak much more of things Everlasting and Eternal.
God wants us to enter into His covenant and into His oath (Deut. 29:12-13). When God said the Israelites will be His people, He was speaking prophetically. What will establish the prophecy is contained in the covenant and in the oath. When we first believed, there is a sense in which we became the people of God, but the actual establishment of us as His people is in our journeying into covenant and oath.
(2 Cor. 6:14-16) – “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? 15 And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? 16 And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”
(Isa. 66:1-2) – “Thus saith the Lord, The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool: where is the house that ye build unto me? and where is the place of my rest? 2 For all those things hath mine hand made, and all those things have been, saith the Lord: but to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word.”
It is only when we have been raised a house/temple that we will be considered to be a people. Likewise, a poor and contrite man is a man who will be considered as a place of rest. A people of God are supposed to be God’s place of rest, however it doesn’t mean they already are. There are speakings of God to raise a people of God who He can dwell and walk in.
The establishment of the covenant is to confirm His covenant and His testimony or secret intent in His heart. When God swears, it is for testimony. The swearing of God is the giving forth of His Spirit. The place of testimony or oath is for to end all strife (Heb. 6:16). God wants to achieve a man that can beat death and He is looking for a way to establish that word with us. God is raising a people who do not desire to draw back but learn and finish all that God is speaking and then become it. We are just at the beginning of the speakings of God and His covenant.
(Deut. 29:29) The essence of the spirit of revelation is to unveil the secret things of God and show unto us and our children so that we can do them for the confirmation of His covenant and His testimony because without these two things we might never be able to defeat our enemy that stares us in the face. Our final victory lies in what is couched in the secret things of our God. We must learn them and give ourselves to doing them. When God is showing us the things of His blood and flesh, our hearts must not draw back.
(John 6:51-56) The flesh here is the word for the raising of the house (Us). By the flesh, the temple/house is raised but remains dead without the laws or ordinances of the house. (Ezek. 43:10-11) God is showing to us not only the form and measurements of the house but also the ordinances of the house.
(Heb. 9:1-6) All of these have their significations in the realm of the spirit and God wants a people who will be a house and then learn the spirit/ordinances of the house. The ordinances of the house is what furnishes the house. (2 Tim. 3:17) – “That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” God is not just looking for a perfect man but one who is thoroughly furnished.
THE END.