Established in the Gift of Righteousness - Part 5

Last night I transcribed the most awesome sermon from this series. Part 5 was "Living Free from the Fear of Judgement". Yes Parts 2 and 3 are still coming I do promise! I have almost finished typing up Part 2 while at home. But my wonderful new laptop is serving me well and seems to be anointed with the charisma of express typing!

Oh that this sermon would set thousands free from the fear of judgement! Once again as I typed it, I just sat there laughing in sheer wonder that I must go through a dramatic mind-change. To start thinking constantly and continually that God is thrilled over me rather than being angry with me!

Here it is;

"Living Free from the Fear of Judgement".

"Please open your bibles to 2 Corinthians chapter 5. We are in a series and this is number 5 on being established in righteousness and I wanted to start teaching on a lot of other things like how faith works and how the anointing works yet God said 2009 is going to be the best year you have seen. Last year was the best year we have had in momentum in the 4 years in Hong Kong but God said that this year we are going way beyond that in being established in grace and on that foundation the power of God is going to move even stronger. So today in number 5 I want to talk about “living free from the fear of judgement”. many Christians have heard a bit about grace and heard a bit about the gift of righteousness but really aren’t free from the sense that maybe God will judge me and maybe God will be angry with me but lurking behind that conscious thought is the worry that if I sin or make a mistake or mess up then God will be angry with me and make me pay for that.

I know that Jesus died on the Cross but somehow years of conditioning of do wrong = get wrong, that law of cause and effect has conditioned us in a propaganda that robs us of a posture of peace and calmness to operate from. God wants us to be free from even a hint of fear of judgement. I believe today He can do that! When you go to a conference you often leave very tired because communication is not just speaking. Listening to someone speak is a high level form of communication. The way you listen is good communication. Communication technicians are not just about the transmission but are also about the receivers. Communication means focus and concentration on working to listening. When I have finished speaking like I do every Sunday I will stand here and look like I am okay but I will be exhausted, all my adrenal glands will be used up, I will fight a mild form of depression because of the anti-climax of being up at 04:00 preparing in the Presence of God to speak but if I have delivered what God called me to deliver and you have received it then it is all worth it!

THIS meeting can be the change of your life! It can literally bring you into greater joy and confidence than you have ever had!

The Bible talks about the foolishness of preaching - while I am speaking divine words, while I am speaking Gods heart to you I am going to be changed and I am going to be ministered to. Are you ready? Bring it on Lord! 2 Corinthians 5:21;

“God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God“.

We can see that God gave the gift of your sin to Jesus who had never sinned so that God can give the gift of Jesus righteousness to you and me who have never done anything righteously. So we have this great exchange - the perfect righteousness of Jesus has been given permanently, irreversibly and eternally to me!

2 Corinthians 8:9; “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor so that you through His poverty might become rich”.

Now the word “rich“ there I know it angers religious people but if you look in 1st Timothy 4:16 it is the same word that Paul is using when he commands rich people not to put their trust in uncertain money but to put their joy in God who gives us all things to enjoy in life. That money is powerful and you cant live without money - you cant do the gospel without money - it will take billions to reach the lost around the world. So money is a powerful servant but a terrible master. Jesus said you cannot serve money and God. Those that are greedy for money are finished and will never be able to walk with God. He said if you are not faithful with finances then you will not be able to be faithful with true riches.

So money is the lowest form of wealth and the anointing is the highest form of wealth. Having a love for people is a wealthy thing. Money is a form of wealth although it’s the lowest level. The word here for “riches” and the context of the chapter is money. So when did Jesus become poor? When He was in heaven He was wealthy and had infinite wealth. When He walked this earth He could pay for thousands of people and could feed thousands of people just by multiplying loaves. He had a treasurer but when He was on the Cross in the same place where He became your sin He became poor with your poverty so that you can become rich through what He did at the Cross and rich in every area of life.

So simply summarising - what is the heart of the Father through you to Jesus? He loves and cares about you so much and He is so committed to you that He has a desire to bring you through into the security that you have a sons righteousness and that you have the sons prosperity and the sons riches as you receive and you believe - you begin to walk increasingly in that abundance.

Now every religion in the world - and I have studied Islam, Buddism and Hinduism and I lived as a Hindu priest for nearly a year so every religion has a God that requires you to suffer to make that God happy. In the Kingdom of heaven our God is willing to suffer for us to be happy. He who became rich became poor so you can be rich.

God is not trying to take away from you or trying to steal from you or judge you or curse you -God is trying to make you rich, make you secure, fill you with peace and give you calmness and bless your life with a well-being that is psychological peace, emotional peace, joy, happiness, inner security!

This is the issue - if you have any traces of the fear of being judged by God then all of what I have just said gets neutralised. All of what I said becomes in your mind a nice idea or we live confused and schizophrenic wavering between thinking that God wants to bless us but suspecting He also wants to judge us when we sin and mess up.

That fear of judgement is what hinders your faith. Do you know that I have given up trying to have more faith? Do you know that you have enough faith to raise the dead today and open the blind eyes and see financial miracles happen through your life. You have got enough faith to do the works of Jesus and greater works. It is not lack of faith - the issue in your heart is the unbelief that hinders the operation of the faith that is in your heart. The man said to Jesus; “Lord I believe - help me overcome my unbelief“. So you can have faith and unbelief in the same heart at the same time. The unbelief you have got is neutralising or lessening the operation of your faith.

Don’t try to get more faith - focus on dealing with the elements of unbelief in your heart. When unbelief leaves, faith leaps into full operation and you will see the power of God in your life.

Andrew Wormack said that and it was a great revelation the other day but it is something that God has been speaking to me for many years. Don’t try to get more faith - get rid of unbelief. Now if you want to get rid of unbelief you have got to rid of the fear of judgement. I will show you in a moment the Scripture that shows that is the problem. It is the fear of judgement that squashes the operation of your faith in God. How can you have unlimited faith in an unlimited God when you suspect He may be angry with you and may want to judge you?

As soon as this fear of judgement totally leaves your life, you will have full assurance of faith and your faith will operate at the level it was designed.

Go to Hebrews chapter 10. The Bible says in 1 John 4:17; “When love is made complete among us we will have confidence on the day of Judgement for perfect love drives out fear of judgement“. What people don’t realise is that the entire Old Covenant of Moses law was deliberately written to drive fear of punishment into your heart. The New Covenant was deliberately written to fill you with a revelation of the Cross and the love of the Father and the change into the New Covenant that would drive all fear of punishment out of your heart. The fact that there is any fear of punishment in your heart means there is not enough revelation about what the New Covenant is and you are still operating with Old Covenant thinking. It is that thinking that stinking and the Holy Spirit wants to come by the power of His word and eradicate. 2nd Timothy 1:7 says that God has not given us a spirit of fear but a spirit of power and of love and of a sound mind. Romans 8:15 says you did not receive again to be in slavery of the bondage of fear again but you received a spirit of son ship by which we cry Abba! Daddy!

Now why is he saying that we didn’t receive a spirit of fear again? When was the first time you feared? The first time you lived in fear of judgement was when you realised that God was angry with all those who had broken the law. That fear then came on you and me before we were Christians. As a Hare Krishna I was nearly totally celibate in marriage. I was so committed to not having any fun! Ryan as you know exists today because I backslid as a Hare Krishna devotee and my wife tempted me and I sinned and Ryan was literally conceived and I know because we only had physical intimacy once in 10 months as a married couple!

Don’t tell me I haven’t tried legalism!

I was 23 and when you are 23 as when you are 54 you have got a lot of red blood! I knew when I saw the Law and I saw how way below I fall in my arrogant self-righteousness, not even in marriage, no alcohol, no meat, no bed, only a few hours sleep a night because too much is too indulgent! 7 days a week working for Krishna, farming, evangelising on the streets! Then in my self-righteousness the Holy Spirit showed me the law of God and how far I fell - and for 3 months I was nauseous with terror and fear of the judgement of God because under that Law you are facing genuine wrath and genuine judgement!

With the Law God has to judge you because He is holy. But we saw a few weeks ago that God never wanted to bring the Law into the earth at all. It was through Israel’s unbelief in the grace of God and Israel’s unbelief in the grace that God gave Abraham that made God finally have to give them the Law to show them how useless the Law is for the blessing to come. The Law will only bring curse but it is grace that brings blessing. Now the Cross was to redeem us from the curse of the Law - to remove all possibility of Law bringing wrath on your life again! When I got a revelation of the grace of God and got born again in a Hindi temple with clay and Hindi clothes on me - from that day the Spirit of God came into me in 1977 and I have never again feared judgement! Because the Spirit on the inside of me let me know that I don’t have to fear again!

I heard Bill Johnson say something interesting recently at a conference in Australia. He said we are in a grace revival in the church today. He said wherever the church turns its focus away from grace and back onto judgement, the anointing for miracles lifts.

Why doesn’t Hong Kong have plenty of churches where people are regularly having healing miracles? Why do we have to wait for Reinhard Bonke to come in and then a few miracles take place? Why aren’t we seeing every week in all the churches in Hong Kong signs and wonders and miracles?

Whenever fear of judgement or a judgemental spirit comes into the church the anointing lifts. Then the judgemental people say the anointing lifted because of the sin in the church. The anointing would have never come if it was waiting for our absence of sinning! If God anointed us because we weren’t sinning then we would boast that we deserved the anointing!

No - He became poor so that we can become rich. He became our sin so we could be seen perfectly righteous in the Father’s eyes. This church is going to a new, much higher level of the anointing. We are going from a 2 to a 7/10 this year as we deal with the fear of judgement and any judgementalness towards one another.

I want to read two verses out of Hebrews 10 and when we read them you are going to be terrified and are going to panic and think everything you have heard for the last few years is a complete lie and these two verses will seemingly contradict everything I have said. I am going to do what some preachers do. I will do it for a little while and test you. I will read verses in the Bible out of context and then I will preach them in context.

When you take a text out of its context then that text will con you.

That is what happens! When you take texts out of context then you are the worst criminal on the planet. There is no greater crime than taking the Bible out of context. It is like choosing to write your own Bible and it is saying the Bible isn’t finished - that is what preachers are doing! They are quoting the Bible but writing their own because a text out of context is a text that will con you, condemn you and confuse you. They are putting their opinions above the opinion of God. These two verses have bullied and abused God’s precious sons and daughters and held them hostage to fear for centuries. Fear always has the same evil effect on God’s people.

Faith can only gaze at grace. Faith has got no eyes for gloom and doom and judgement. Faith watches with wonder and awe because faith is focused and fixed on the Lamb of God. Faith looks at the perfection of Jesus sufficiency and sacrifice and fills the soul of that person with peace and calmness and no fear. Faith takes the focus off your unworthiness and puts the focus on His worthiness and the fact that you are in Him safe and secure and that releases a grace in your life that literally empowers you to be far more loving to others and far more good and very kind to people and you develop a sensitivity of considering others greater than yourselves and actually understanding them in a completely non-judgemental way that attracts the anointing into your life and through your life and attracts people around you to Jesus Christ.

It is impossible to live in faith in Christ and in the New Covenant and not attract heathens and pagans to Jesus Christ. It is impossible! If heathens and pagans aren’t attracted to us when we are with them for more than a few days then we are not living as people totally free from the fear of judgement. Because fear always has this opposite effect.

Fear of judgement brings the focus off Jesus and brings the focus onto you and your insufficiencies and your inadequacies and your failures and releases in your soul a frustration that gives you a striving and an unhealthy drive to try and improve yourself - that causes you to judge everyone else and try and control everyone else. They can feel it even if you are acting lovingly to them. Even if you say “No I don’t judge you” they can feel what is in your heart is measuring them and disapproving them. But when you are full of calmness because you have got faith and no unbelief or fear in your heart then there is something that tangibly comes out of your life that people around you feel and want to know this Jesus.

If you have been working for months with them and know them and they don’t sense this calmness and this peace anointing then something has gone wrong. We are here to see the lost saved. We are not here to be introspective and analysing our performance. We are here to look away from ourselves and look to the Lamb and let that peace come into your life.

Hebrews 10:26; “If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left but only a fearful expectation of judgement and of a raging fire that will consume the enemies of God”.

What a verse! Some people try to get out of that by saying “Yes but its if you keep on DELIBERATLY sinning”. But if you sin by accident then that is okay. There is no sin by accident. All sin requires the operation of your will. You make a choice - all sinning is deliberate! In the book of Exodus when Israel sinned with the sin of idolatry Moses was up on the mountain getting the :Law and came down Mt Sinai and there they were worshipping a golden calf. Moses went to Aaron and said “What is going on?!”. Aaron said; “I don’t know! All we did was take our gold and threw it in the fire and this golden calf came out!”. No - they deliberately made that calf. No sin is an accident - it is deliberate. Since you got born again and you received the knowledge of the truth - how many of you have sinned?

Everyone who is born again since you got saved in thought, attitude or deed if you were judged by the Law have sinned - and sinned deliberately and therefore this verse applies to you. And you must live your life with a fearful expectation of judgement and the fury and the wrath of God coming after you.
This Scripture bothers so many people! The devil has got them in fear and wrecked them and no one is being led to Christ through them because they are driven with a fury to improve themselves! And they are being judgemental to the lost! So let me push it a bit further as I take it right out of context. How do you KNOW when you have done enough deliberate sinning? Obviously people know that God doesn’t kill the first or second time we sin but there is an invisible line and if we cross that line then He will kill us!

People think that is how Jesus is treating the Bride of Christ - that there comes a point where grace will let you get away with one or two deliberate sins but then there comes a point where if you have done too many deliberate sins and especially of a particular kind … whoever defines which are the worst ones I don’t know because the Bible doesn’t … but finally you come across a line and when you cross it - all you can wait for is a fearful expectation of judgement! Who defines where the line is? There is nothing in the New Covenant to show me where that line is. So who defines the line? The Pharisees define where the line is! The Pharisees decide a circle where it is “safe sinning”. In this circle there is safe sinning. They never exclude the sin from this circle that Galatians 4 speaks about as the “works of the flesh” - gossip, lying, jealousy, envy, selfish ambition. Those are put on the same category as having sexual orgies in Galatians 5!

But in the Pharisees mind - just one sexual orgy and that is it! Let me say this - I have been married for 33 years and never committed adultery and neither has my wife so I am not promoting sin.

Anyone in this church or around the world who thinks that Rob Rufus is preaching to promote sin - I just want to say to you go and have a brain operation because you are an idiot.

So there are safe circles. The trouble is that everyone outside their circle is in danger of wrath. They begin to warn you - its okay to sin but in the safe circle! And they start getting self-righteous because they are keeping the laws in that circle. There are whole churches that are defined by circles! Some denominations have quite wide circles and some have quite small circles. I promise you in that denomination most of the churches will have the same circle. Eventually if you live outside the circle for so long and the demonic spirit begins to make you fear again and you think it’s the Holy Spirit then you are mistaken!

The Holy Spirit only ever convicts you of one sin and that is the sin of unbelief in Jesus. Then He convinces you that you are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus and the devil has been judged (John 14:8).

So when you feel so unworthy and in danger of wrath then you know it is not the Holy Spirit. That is a demonic spirit. But under pressure and coercion and guilt and you may finally come in without faith or joy. Then you start thinking that you are better than those guys out there. Judgement! And anointing lifting off the church. We in this circle talk about how we have got to get the people in the outer circle into the safe circle of sinning. There is no faith in that! But then the devil comes to you in your circle and says “This circle is too big and you are still in danger!”. And without faith and without joy and being incredibly unhappy because you are looking at yourself alone being motivated by fear - you make that circle smaller.

As soon as you make your circle smaller then it increases the number of people outside your circle and now you have more people to judge. In the Christian world today there are Christians and are born again but they are a cult. In their circle they believe they are the only ones going to heaven. Everyone else born again has deliberately sinned too much and they will face the wrath of God. You may say well look at that religious cult but if you look and point but still think incorrectly about these verses then you are only a few circles from them. Your circle is only a bit bigger by degree. If someone doesn’t get to these people with grace then the devil will make sure you keep shrinking your circles and then you cant stand being in the circles because it is spiritual claustrophobia and you break out and have some rip-roaring sin! And your life is a fear of judgement and is not calm or peaceful!

I want to show you now how to read the Bible.

Context Number 1: What covenant is this? I know that Rob - it’s Old Covenant or New Covenant. Wrong! You have got two covenants under the Old Covenant. You have got the Abrahamic covenant of grace and the Moses covenant of law. When you read Abraham - you read grace. As soon as Mt Sinai comes read law and wrath! When you read New Covenant read that Jesus suffered everything so that you can have everything and be safe forever.

What is the New Covenant? Isaiah 54:8-9; “God takes an oath in predicting the coming of the New Covenant and He said it will be like in the times of Noah never to judge the world with a flood”. Now God says; “I swear by Myself in this New Covenant that I will never condemn you again and I will never be angry with you again!”. Under the New Covenant if God gets angry with you then He has broken an oath that He swore and a promise He made under oath. Remember Romans 5:20 and when you fly into a storm - you fly by your instruments of grace! “Where sin increased, grace did much more increase”. How can there be a limit to the deliberate sinning?

The word for “increase“ regarding sin is different to the word regarding grace. Where sin increased, grace already existed in superabundance and over and upon that superabundance, grace did even more increase! So there is absolute infinite increases of grace and sin has got total limitation! There can be no way that an invisible line in the sand comes that makes deliberate sinning finally wear the grace of God out.

When you have sinned you are actually in the most advantageous of places because if sin comes then grace is already existing and in superabundance and even more grace upon that superabundance!

Fly your life by that Scripture and you wont crash and burn!

Context Number 2: Who was this book written to? To Jews. It was written to Hebrews. It was written to people living in the time that Jesus had come, died and been raised, the Day of Pentecost had come and the power of the Spirit had been poured out and the temple still stood in Jerusalem. Do you know that before Jesus went to the Cross He told the people that all of these stones will be torn down? He prophesied that! And it happened 40 years after Jesus death on the Cross. It happened in A.D 70 and the Roman armies came in under General Titus and came with a clear agenda and smashed the Temple and pillaged and raped and stole the gold and overturned every stone. The Western wall is still there but all of that was below ground. No stone was left standing!

But there was a 40 year window from the time Jesus died in about 30 A.D to the time that the Temple was destroyed. In those 40 years they were having blood sacrifices of bulls and goats every single day in that Temple. A priesthood of an Old Covenant order was operating in that Temple. They were preaching the Law in that temple. They were the shadow and the symbol but not the reality. On the Day of Passover Jesus the ultimate final sacrifice died on that Cross for which afterwards there is no sacrifice for sins needed or can be EVER AGAIN and when Jesus died - the Bible said He cancelled the Law and took away the Law and abolished the Law for those in Christ. He gave you His righteousness, His blood wiped away all sin in the Father’s eyes in time and eternity and that blood forever cleansed you from all sin for all time. On that Cross the Bible said that Jesus fulfilled the burnt offerings of the Temple and fulfilled the meal offerings, peace offerings, transgression offerings and everything of shadow and type of the Temple were made instantly obsolete!

They were the Nothing that was pointing to the Substance and when the Substance came and people saw the Substance - and then Hebrew apostles like Paul and Peter preached to them the Substance that the Law is over and offerings are over - blood has come! Stephen preached to these Hebrews and they stoned him and rejected him!

The Bible says if you keep on deliberately sinning. What is the deliberate sin? It is not general sinning - it is specific sinning, it is choosing the inferior blood of bulls and of goats and choosing the inferior priesthood and inferior Temple and choosing shadow and symbols above Substance and Reality that is in God! That is the deliberate sin!

You in Christ can never commit that sin! It is something people don’t even think about!

Under the Old Covenant the blood of bulls and of goats could temporarily cover you from the wrath of God. As Ryan said - they had license to sin! They went and sinned and went to the priest and got goats blood and stopped wrath. But your guilt didn’t go - you constantly felt guilty and out of touch with God but at least that shadow blood could stop the wrath of God coming on you! But once the ultimate sacrifice for which there are no more sacrifices for sin left - when that sacrifice happened at the Cross from that moment, when the Day of Pentecost came and the New Covenant began the blood of bulls and goats no longer worked, no longer covered you from wrath, no longer would protect you - it is obsolete, redundant and passed away! The New has come!

What was this deliberate sin? Not general sin! (v29) Not generic sinning. Not living in a safe circle of safe sinning. It had nothing to do with general sin. It had to do with a specific sin of choosing animal sacrifices above Jesus and choosing animal blood above Jesus and that was what was insulting to the Spirit of grace.

(Hebrews 10:29); “How much more severely do you think a man needs to be punished who has trampled the Son of God underfoot and treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, who has insulted the Spirit of grace“.

To insult the Spirit of grace is legalistic, law-preaching, guilt manipulating preachers who have no idea how seriously dangerous it is to insult the Spirit of grace. How do you insult the Spirit of grace? Legalists will tell you it is by sinning too much. You cannot insult the Spirit of grace by sinning because the Bible says that where sin increases, grace does much more abound. So you cannot insult the Spirit of grace by the amount of sin because God gave you superabundant grace because He knew that you weren’t going to act perfectly overnight and He knew that it would take you years and years to change and when you are 98 there will still be some areas that you need to change so that at the end of your days you will still need superabundance of grace! So you cannot insult grace by your sin.

How do you fall from grace? Galatians 5:4 says you who are trying to be made right with God through the law have alienated yourself from Christ - YOU have fallen from grace!

Who is insulting the Spirit of grace? The grace preachers of the New Covenant or those who are telling people to rely on a religious system of priests, to rely on the Law and on keeping the Law and on self-righteousness. They are deliberately sinning against the Body and blood of the :Lord and they are mixing Old and New Covenant together. Paul says in Galatians 1 that if you preach a gospel that mixes the Old Covenant and New together then may you be eternally condemned! You are insulting the Spirit of grace, you are misrepresenting the New Covenant, writing your own Bible and putting millions of people in confusion and fear and in unbelief.

And that judgemental spirit is stopping miracles, signs and wonders and the healing power of God in the world today which is stopping millions of people getting saved! It is a dangerous thing to insult the Spirit of grace!

Look at (v8). I said to Ryan yesterday I wanted prayer that I won’t look too angry! When I talk about religion I get so angry - not because I am taking it personally but I have seen the effects of religion around the world. I want you to see that these are passages that you need to become familiar with. You need to know these passages not to win religious debates but for hungry and frightened people and show them in context to help them. (vv8-14) show Jesus talking to His Father and saying look I know that the Old Covenant is not what you wanted or desired. I hope the legalists listening to this website find that it proved that the Father never desired to bring the law. He never desired to bring the Temple system and He never desired to bring the priesthood system or burnt offerings. He wanted all of Israel to be priests of God under the power of the grace He gave Abraham! There was a constant self-righteous arrogance not believing in the grace of God that God finally had to do what He didn’t want and bringing the Temple system.

(v8); “Nor were you pleased with them although the Law required them … He sets aside the first (covenant) to establish the second … once for ALL … the same sacrifices which can never take away sins … one sacrifice for sins … since that time He waits … by one sacrifice He has made perfect FOREVER those who are being made holy”.

If you are in Christ then the Father sees you as perfectly righteous all the time and there is no more confessing your sin like under the Old Covenant because all sin has been blotted out and dealt with and can never separate us from the love of God ever again - you are perfect forever in the Father’s eyes!

There are still Christians on the planet today who if Israel re-built the Temple on the Dome of the Rock - they will be excited about that? Israel already has plans to build the Temple on the Dome of the Rock. Top orthodox Rabbis and leaders have already got the plans and have already declared once they do that they will start blood sacrifices again. Many Christians know about this and think it is fantastic. When they do that they will be insulting the Spirit of Messiah and the Spirit of grace. Animals blood being seen as superior to the blood of Jesus! That is the wrath of God! He blew that thing down with the Roman armies who came in and smashed it. He doesn’t want a Temple in Israel - Jesus was the final temple - we are the Temple of the Holy Spirit! Both Jew and Gentile in Christ - WE are the seed of Abraham! Jew and Gentile in Christ!

Becoming like Abraham (Romans 10) makes you more Jewish and more Christian! Those very same Christians that will rejoice at a temple being built will turn to fellow Christians and tell them to stay in this particular circle of sinning otherwise you are in serious danger. Why do they teach that? Because they do not understand the book of Hebrews and do not understand the New Testament and they are preaching a false and a confused gospel. I want to read Hebrews 10:1-4.

It is in some of your religious thinking and religious programming that God actually wants you to be sin-conscious. I want to prove it to you again that He does not want you to be sin-conscious but grace-conscious, life of God-conscious and conscious of the Lamb. Keep looking to the Lamb and you will keep changing from glory to glory! Don’t be conscious of yourself or your sin but keep looking to Him!

What about if I do something wrong to Wesley over there and sin against him? Do I have to confess my sin to God? No I have to confess my sin to Wesley! I need to say sorry to him! When we talk about not confessing your sin or being sin-conscious like under the Old Covenant we are talking about God-ward! James says confess your sins one to another! Let me tell you if you are looking at the Lamb and living in that peace of no fear of judgement you will find it easier to say I am sorry to someone. You are not defensive anymore because there is just grace! If I know I have done someone wrong and treated them badly in a financial deal or a business deal and said something behind their back then I will go and say sorry! I will keep grace alive in my life!

But when it comes to my relationship with God there is no desire to have a covenant that makes you feel guilty for sin. He had to institute a covenant under law that He didn’t want or desire it and He calls it weak and useless! He did it because of mans unbelief in the grace of God! He brought in something that He doesn’t want us to live under but rather something that we will never feel uneasy or guilty every again!

Hebrews 10:1-4. “ ... it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin”.

He didn’t want a covenant that reminded people of their sins! The Church is full of reminding people about their sins! We think God is reminding us of our sins because we have not understood which covenant we are in and the devil took advantage of that and speaks to us in an audible voice and tells us; “I am God and I am angry with you”. He is not God, he is the devil! If I hear a voice saying he is God and he is going to bring fury for that sin - then I say “Well you are not worth serving because Isaiah 54:9 says you took an oath that you will never be angry with me - how can I trust a God who lies under oath? You are guilty of perjury! I am angry with You!”. My God can never be angry with me - if He is then He hates His Son for His full anger was poured out on His Son so He has got no anger left for me! Jesus was made poor so I am made rich! He was made sin so I am made righteous!

By one sacrifice - perfect forever! Why are so many Christians struggling with guilt problems and condemnation problems? Inferiority problems - self conscious in the worship - cant worship God extravagantly? “I feel unworthy”. Why? Didn’t pray enough this week. This week I hardly read my Bible and sinned a bit and had ugly thoughts so I don’t deserve to worship. Old Covenant deception! You have got a default setting that is so dangerous when you read this Bible without a proper teacher who is the Holy Spirit then you will read vv26, 27 and think there is some point if I keep sinning then wrath is coming my way! It is not just about you that I care but those who could get saved through you if you are free!

The Old Covenant prophets saw the New Covenant by revelation hundreds of years before Jesus died on the Cross.

(Jeremiah 31:17); “Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more, and where these have been forgiven there is no longer any sacrifice for sin”.

You don’t have to confess your sin to the Father or make right with God. God will not remember your sin - this one sacrifice has made you PERFECT FOREVER!

When I sin do I ignore it? If I sin against a brother or sister then I make right and repent and say sorry. What do I do if I sin in God’s eyes? I say; “Father I thank You that in 1st John 1:9 speaks about before I was saved and while I was trying to be righteous by the Law and the priests system of temples - while I was doing that I was under wrath and under judgement. And there came a place where I had to realise that I am a sinner, no matter how many laws I am keeping as a Hare Krishna and I cant deny it. I confess my sins to you and ask you to cleanse me from ALL unrighteous and You are faithful and just. And on that day I confessed ONCE and He cleansed me ONCE and there is no other verse in the whole New Covenant that says Christians must confess their sins to get right with God.

I challenge you - go find one in Paul’s writing to confess your sins to God. That was an Old Covenant mentality and the more they did it, the more guilty they got because it reminded them of how sinful they are. Under the New Covenant it is written to remind you of how perfect in Christ you are, how safe you are and how bold you can be before God all the time!

Ryan will take Hebrews 6 next week and show you it in context and you will sing and dance and then you have got Hebrews 10 and 6 sorted and the whole book is open to you! He has got amazing insight - it blew me away - I had never seen the context like that!

When God says (and it is a promise) “Their sins and lawless deeds I will never remember“ - that in the Greek is the double affirmative. It is a double NEVER! It is not just forgetting your past sins! Jesus died before you sinned once. That means He has died for all sins (Colossians 2)! If you are in Christ then God will never, ever remember anything you do that is wrong or any transgression. All He sees and all He remembers is every act of holiness and obedience and love and humility you did. That He will reward you for! You don’t get blessings as rewards! They come as part of the New Covenant! But when you go to heaven you are sowing up acts of obedience that will have rewards!

God will never look at you or relate to you or have vision of you with the knowledge of your sins. He wont relate to you thinking about your sins - He never remembers them. Under the Old Covenant of law God says He will remember sins and will visit them on the 3rd and 4th generations. That will go even further because the 3rd and 4th sin and it continues. Ancestral cursing!? Absolutely for those not in Christ! But when I came into Christ I came into the perfect genealogy of Christ and my past, present and future was redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. I am NOT part of a cursed lineage and I don’t care how many alcoholics are in my past - I am not living in that but in the genology of Christ. I am redeemed with the genology blessing of Jesus Christ!

In the New Covenant it is the opposite - God promises He will not remember our sins or lawless acts and therefore will not pass them on to our seed! By one sacrifice! The law was a shadow of the good things that are in Jesus.

Under the law God was righteous to remember your sins. Under the finished work of the Cross, the New Covenant God is holy and just to remember your sins no more and your lawless acts no MORE!

(v23) “Hope” - confident, expectation of good. You can walk into the Presence of God and can say that we hold unswervingly to this hope. Fear will come automatically. Most days I get up and somewhere within the first 20 minutes I tell my Father I expect GOOD things to happen today because I am in the New Covenant. I don’t have any fearful expectation of judgement because judgement is passed! I expect good today!

Who is insulting the Spirit of grace? Those who are preaching the finished work of the Cross or those who are making the people weird in church but outside in the real world they are far more relaxed. This should be what you look forward to all week! At least when we get to church we can let rip and go mad - I have got no sin against me! The more you believe this, the more you will pray, and do His will! The world is your parish and you walk through territory free from wrath and the fear of judgement! My Father loves me and doesn’t remember what I have done! He took an oath never to remember but only to bless! His Son became poverty on my behalf! We are princes and royal priests in the house of God!

I did not come to Hong Kong to have a nice little church - I came as a divine bulldozer - I came as a prophet and came with the call of God, came in weakness, fear and trembling but I came to rip Hong Kong open - to see it broken! I don’t want to see people with emptiness in their eyes! No destiny, no power of God! Just living for something that is not the power of the gospel but empty religion! We have GOT to see the power of God move! Stir your faith! Let all unbelief in the gospel get out of our hearts, let our hearts be full of absolute freedom from the fear of judgement!

City Church International - what are you hoping in? The blood of bulls, goats, priests, Law, self-righteousness? No! Therefore you are not committing the deliberate sin! You are honouring the blood! That blood declares we are righteous forever! We are going to stay free in the power of God and honour the Spirit of grace!