Important Ministry Dispatch - 6th January 2020
The Lord will hear your cry - ‘Pakod Pakadti’
Today is the 6th of January 2020. A new year and a new decade have dawned. As we enter this year, we await the finalisation of our nation's Brexit deal with the EU. If we are to understand how we have arrived at this point in our history, we would need to look even further back into how it all started in the first place. Fundamentally, the EU model was to emulate the empire of Rome, which would mean all member states would have to give up sovereignty. If the plan was to succeed, the EU would have to centralise government, economy, borrowing, taxation and security, thus making each state dependent on its power. It is not my intention to dwell or extract anything further in this introduction, only to say that all of us are at a crossroads. Father God is looking to see who the nations bow the knee to. True believers will have to stand up and make their loyalties known too.
Our loyalty, as believers, is first to God, and as a declaration of our faith, we promised to uphold the constitution of the Kingdom we belong to by fighting and defending it. The defence and wellbeing of it are supported by what we have been given through our enhanced physical and spiritual gifts.
Yeshua, the Word of God, tells us that these gifts are from God and that they should be used through a model of wise investment. The economy of God is different from that of the world. We are of course affected by it, but we are given an option to come out of it and create our own. We are not expected to materialise our needs from thin air, but we can use the world economy to obtain material wealth to purchase them.
The Lord has been speaking for some time to us about how we are to invest our talents. Again, this week, I have had another two separate conversations confirming this important subject. So, I express no apology in continuing to push out this message. The reaffirming of God’s word means we need to be paying attention to it.
The Christian teaching on the talents focuses on the financial aspect which seems to be central in Matthews's parable Ch25. When we look at what this passage teaches more closely, we see that the one who invests wisely receives the greatest reward. He, in fact, receives a double portion plus the talent that was hidden away. This tells us that what we are given to invest by God can also be lost and given to someone else who knows how to use it. It is a sobering thought and one that should challenge us to look a little closer at what we are doing with our own. It would help us to understand also that our talents are made up of all that we have both personally and corporately - our God-given gifts and what we have accrued materially is our combined wealth, and together we have the power to make more.
Deut 8:18…17 You may say in your heart, “The power and strength of my hands have made this wealth for me.” 18 But remember that it is the LORD your God who gives you the power to gain wealth, in order to confirm His covenant that He swore to your fathers, as it is this day. 19 If you ever forget the LORD your God and go after other gods to worship and bow down to them, I testify against you today that you will surely perish.
Our talents are given in order to build the kingdom of God here on earth, to show to the heavenly council and the principalities and powers in the heavens that He is ‘I AM,’ and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently serve and seek His purposes.
In this week's Torah, Vayigash -Genesis 45 we read that the sons of Jacob were sent back to him by Joseph, laden with the finest goods from Egypt on the back of twenty donkeys. The brothers did not leave on their journey back to their father in the dusty clothes they arrived at Joseph’s court in.
The donkeys, ten males, and ten females represent the ten tribes that set out from Egypt. It can be by no coincidence that the donkeys have a multiplicity connection either. Benjamin remains in Egypt with Joseph. Furthermore, the return of the brothers with their father Jacob dressed in the fine garments given to them by Joseph would serve to identify them among Egyptian society. Joseph will present to Egypt his siblings and father, not as a famine stricken family but as a family that would have standing and favour. The symbology of Yeshua presenting His own family, dressed in fine raiment to the heavenly witness is not by coincidence either.
It is important to understand that Pharaoh had respect for Joseph’s God, and thought of Joseph so highly that he transferred to him supreme authority over the land. Joseph could do no wrong.
Israel’s position and wealth ensued, but their time of favour would soon draw to an end. They would soon become slaves to the new Pharoah. Joseph lived another seventy years in Egypt, eventually passing away at the age of 110. Early Egyptian documents record such longevity was the ideal age to which to live.
There is a document called the ‘Insinger Papyrus,’ dated to the Ptolemaic period around 305BC that reads:
A man spends ten years as a child before he understands death and life.
He spends another ten years acquiring the instruction by which he will be able to live.
He spends another ten years earning and gaining possessions by which to live.
He spends another ten years up to old age, when his heart becomes his counsellor.
There remain sixty years of the whole life, which Thoth has assigned to the man of god.
From the age of 40 to the expected 100, a man could enjoy the best years of his life, using the fruits of his labour and knowledge.
Psalm 90, speaks however, that the life of a man might reach 80 years by God giving him strength. On a side note, the age of 120 seems unapproachable simply due to the sin nature. In ancient times, it is not hard to imagine that a person of this ripe old age would have been considered something of a marvel and almost mystical.
Moving on, we see that prosperity and the favour of Israel’s adopted country would last only until the death of Joseph. Could these seventy years of favour and growth be symbolic of Israel’s history to date? From their emergence from persecution, trial and holocaust, the nation of Israel has possessed a land that is still not truly recognised by their neighbours or from governments and neither by some parts of the church. Despite seventy years of prosperity and innovation which they have shared with all humanity, the promises to Israel given through historical mandates continue to be disputed and even reneged upon, maybe even forgotten.
In Genesis Chapter 46:1-5, God says to Jacob that He will go with him to Egypt and that one day Israel will return to the land of the promise in multitudes. God never said when.
Jacob and Joseph would, however, never see this in their lifetimes. Jacob asks to be buried with his father and grandfather, Joseph asks that his bones would be taken to Shechem when Israel leaves Egypt.
The passage in chapter 50:22-26 gives us a subtle clue to the conditions that would eventually bring an end to Israel’s captivity and to the beginning of their second exodus, the first being their departure from Canaan to Egypt because of famine. The last and greater exodus would bring the house of Jacob to their unification and their final destination.
Joseph reminds his family that the promise to the patriarchs will come about when God’s people cry out.
Genesis 50: 24 Yosef said to his brothers, “I am dying. But God will surely remember you and bring you up out of this land to the land which he swore to Avraham, Yitz’chak and Ya‘akov.” 25 Then Yosef took an oath from the sons of Isra’el: “God will surely remember you, and you are to carry my bones up from here.” 26 So Yosef died at the age of 110, and they embalmed him and put him in a coffin in Egypt.
In this passage, as coming from the Hebrew, the idea of being remembered or noticed by God is ‘pakod pakadti’ which means that God hears the cries of His people. Let us read the following scriptures:
1 Samuel 9:16 English Standard Version (ESV)
16 “Tomorrow about this time I will send to you a man from the land of Benjamin, and you shall anoint him to be prince over my people Israel. He shall save my people from the hand of the Philistines. For I have seen my people, because their cry has come to me.”
Psalm 130 1 {A Song of degrees.} Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O LORD. 2 Lord, hear my voice: let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications.
3 If thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? 4 But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared….
….7 Let Israel hope in the LORD: for with the LORD there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption. 8 And he shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities
Exodus 22 21 “You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. 22 You shall not mistreat any widow or fatherless child. 23 If you do mistreat them, and they cry out to me, I will surely hear their cry, 24 and my wrath will burn, and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall become widows and your children fatherless.
Exodus 3: 7 The LORD said, “I have indeed seen the affliction of My people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their oppressors, and I am aware of their sufferings. 8 I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites.
Psalm 34:17 The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears; He delivers them from all their troubles. 18 The LORD is near to the broken-hearted; He saves the contrite in spirit.
Today, God’s people in the nations are realising the urgency to come out of the world and live separate and holy lives.At last, the prayers of our ancestors are being answered. It has been the desire of the Lord to see His people wanting what He wants for them and it has been the lament of generations before us.
In the secular world, unbelievers are becoming stressed and burdened with trying to attain material possessions and many believers have joined them. All of creation groans as a woman in labour desiring the birth of a new age.
Those willing to invest in God’s kingdom purposes and the deliverance of His people from the captivity and enchantment of this world is also becoming a burden. Their desires and the understanding of the times drives them forward to pursue this end time move; symbolic of Israel’s cries and their final greater exodus.
The investment of talents and wealth, gained from life’s experience and walking with the Lord, will increase to the double portion. Those who are unwilling to do anything with what they have been given responsibility for, will gain no such reward and what they have, will be taken from them. This is the meaning given by Yeshua to His disciples . We must look now at this moment we stand in and ask the Lord what we must do with our talents.
If we are sincere, the Lord will hear the cry (pakod pakadti) of our heart. Ask for wisdom and understanding and it will be given you. We have been given the power to gain wealth and prosper from the work of our hands. But know the truth; none of it is for our sake, but for His great name.
Finally, as an aid to how we are to respond; we must put aside differences, traditions, habit and emotion. We must be resolved, even sometimes to go back to save our family with the gospel message of hope and salvation.
I will leave these words of Joseph with you;
Genesis 45: 19 “‘Moreover — and this is an order — do this: take wagons from the land of Egypt to carry your little ones and your wives, and bring your father, and come. 20 Don’t worry about your stuff, because everything good in the land of Egypt is yours.’”
21 The sons of Isra’el acted accordingly; and Yosef gave them wagons, as Pharaoh had ordered, and gave them provisions for their journey. 22 To each of them, he gave a set of new clothes; but to Binyamin, he gave seven-and-a-half pounds of silver and five sets of new clothes. 23 Likewise, to his father he sent ten donkeys loaded with the finest goods Egypt produced, as well as ten female donkeys loaded with grain, bread and food for his father to eat on the return journey. 24 Thus he sent his brothers on their way, and they left; he said to them, “Don’t quarrel among yourselves while you’re travelling!”
Please read the whole of Psalm 96 …
1.Sing to Adonai a new song!
Sing to Adonai, all the earth!
2 Sing to Adonai, bless his name!
Proclaim his victory day after day!
3 Declare his glory among the nations,
his wonders among all peoples!
Shalom,
Grant