The Psalm 23 Adventure, Part 60
October 6, 2017
This has been a long
adventure. When the Lord first began to
unfold the prophetic significance of the 23rd Psalm and its picture as a
lifelong adventure, I had no idea it was going to expand into the study it has
become. We've been at this for well over
a year. Hopefully, we will wrap this up
by the end of next week.
FINALLY!!
We
have come to the last phase of this adventure.
This is what it has been all about.
This has been our objective from the very first day we declared,
decreed, and entered into this Covenant relationship with the Lord Jesus
Christ, when we said, The Lord is my Shepherd!
It
has cost us everything to get here. We
have had to overcome our flesh. We have
had to overcome the Enemy. We have had
to overcome every kind of opposition — both in the natural, and in the
spirit. We have had to overcome
religious indoctrination and social programming which have worked steadily
throughout the years to contravene what God has been developing in us. We have had to overcome every kind of fear
and stand in the face of the unknown more times than we could possibly count.
And
it has been worth it! Now we get to
dwell with the Lord forever! Now we get
to know the merging experience on a permanent basis where we are totally
immersed in Jesus Christ, and He is immersed in us.
How
was it that David put it?
And I WILL dwell in the House of the Lord forever!
Take
a look at how this amplifies from the Hebrew.
And I will settle myself (and be settled) permanently, I will
inhabit and abide in the family dwelling of Yod He Vav He (Jehovah) throughout
time immemorial — throughout eternity, and throughout the eternity of the
eternities. (Psalm 23:6b, RAC
Translation & Amplification)
Understand? This is not talking about going to
Heaven. Heaven is inclusive, of course,
and all that comes thereafter, but what David sees and describes is a
“here-and-now” event which continues into eternity. Heaven has never been our
objective. Jesus is our objective! Being joined to Him NOW is our
objective. Dwelling with Him, and in
Him, and He in us, NOW, is our objective.
I
feel bad for preachers and teachers who make the statement, “You need to get
saved so you can go to Heaven.” They
just don’t get it. If a person accepts
Jesus Christ and walks with Him, and then dies, there simply is no other place
to go. It is automatic! Heaven is not an objective. Heaven is “home base” — if I can put it that
way — for eternity. Heaven is a
stopover. What God has had awaiting the
Covenant believer so far transcends Heaven that words fail.
Far
too many “Christians” — and I qualify that term — have “accepted” Jesus Christ,
but never made Him to be the Lord and Shepherd of their lives. They frequently fret and worry over what
might happen to them when they fail the Lord or screw up in some significant
way. They’ve never developed an
understanding of the goodness and mercy of the Lord. They’ve never come to know the peace of God
that passes all human understanding and natural reasoning.
Years
ago, we used to sing from the 89th Psalm, “I will sing of the
mercies of the Lord forever: with my mouth will I make known Thy faithfulness
to all generations.”
I’ve
shared bits and pieces of my travels in the mid-1990’s where, for more than
three months, I traveled with the Lord throughout time, and even past the end
of time to see what lies before us in the eternity of the eternities. We’ve talked about the thousand-year reign of
the Lord (which is not far away) and the fact that this is OJT for God’s people
— “On-the-Job-Training”! This is a
preparatory period for the future.
Let
me digress for a moment. You may recall
that I saw time as an envelope. Time is
nothing more than a container for sin.
When Satan attempted to take the Throne of God and usurp God’s place, he
and his angels with thrown out of Heaven to the earth. When Adam and Eve succumbed to the treachery
and seduction of the Serpent in the Garden, time essentially began at that
point. Satan and his angels became
trapped forever in chains — the chains of time.
We
all know about Satan being cast into a pit at the beginning of the thousand
years and imprisoned there until he gets released at the end of that period to
make war on the Saints. But that
thousand years is scarcely a blink in eternity.
And when time comes to an end, Satan will be cast into the Lake of Fire
for eternity. He will never have access
to Heaven, or to the Heavenlies, and he will never have access to roam about
the universe and the interfere with the plans God has made, and the destiny He
has chosen for us throughout the eternity of the eternities.
Are
you seeing the picture? Time is measured
in seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, centuries,
millennia. None of that applies to us
any longer. We were created in the very
beginning to be eternity-based beings.
This whole process of walking with the Lord from the moment we entered
into this Covenant with the decree, The Lord is my
Shepherd,
has been designed to restore us from time-based and time-thinking beings to
eternity-based and eternity-thinking beings.
The
House of the Lord, and dwelling with the Lord throughout eternity was
constantly in David’s spirit. Consider
some of the things that he wrote in the Psalms:
Psalm 27:4-6: One thing have
I desired of the LORD, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of
the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to
inquire in his temple.
For in the time of
trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion: in the secret of his tabernacle shall
he hide me; he shall set me up upon a rock.
And now shall mine
head be lifted up above mine enemies round about me: therefore will I offer in
his tabernacle sacrifices of joy; I will sing, yea, I will sing praises unto
the LORD.
You
see what David sees? He was not looking
at this as some far-off future event! He
saw it as a real, present, “here-and-now” way of living. He saw the reality of dwelling in the House
of the Lord forever as something that he could experience in this present
realm.
Psalm 92:13-15: Those that be
planted in the house of the LORD shall flourish in the courts of our God.
They shall still
bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing;
To show that the LORD
is upright: he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness
in him.
Again
David describes this as a present-day reality and a matter of fact. He describes the blessing of the Lord that
they bring to the world around them by virtue of their dwelling in the House of
the Lord. He reinforces this with the
following statement in the 118th Psalm.
Psalm 118:26: Blessed
be he that cometh in the name of the LORD: we have blessed you out of
the house of the LORD.
Let’s
pause here to make a distinction in the use of this phraseology. The term, “The House of the Lord,” was used
interchangeably throughout the Old Testament to refer to the Tabernacle of
Moses, the Tabernacle of David, and the Temple.
David DOES use it this way in some of the references we see in the Psalms,
and this is a term which appears 213 times in the Old Testament. However, when David refers to dwelling in the
House of the Lord, he is not talking about setting up housekeeping in the
Tabernacle. He is referring to an
ongoing, intimate, permanent indwelling with the Lord, Himself.
Psalm
23 is a vivid picture of the process and the processes that are an essential
part of our development so that our existence becomes synonymous with the Lord
Jesus Christ. He is us, and we are Him! Everything we say and do becomes an extension
of Him. We become His presence in the
world today. We are so much “Him,” and
He is so much “us” that you cannot separate between us.
Let’s
take this picture a bit farther and consider what John saw when he wrote the
Revelation. In the sixth of the seven
letters in Revelation 3, the Lord is speaking to the Ekklesia in Philadelphia,
and what He speaks is a mouthful!
Revelation 3:7-13:
And to the angel of the (Ekklesia) in Philadelphia write; These
things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David,
he that openeth, and no man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man openeth; I know thy works:
behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it: for thou
hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name.
Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say
they are Jews, and are not, but do lie; behold, I will make them to come and
worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee. Because thou hast kept the word of my
patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come
upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.
Behold, I come quickly: hold that fast which thou hast, that no
man tae thy crown.
Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my
God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God,
and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh
down out of heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name.
He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the (Ekklesia).
In
case you hadn’t noticed it, this is the only one of the seven letters in which
the Lord references “the Key of David.”
This is extremely important to our understanding the overcoming that has
brought us here, and the means by which we have been able to overcome our
flesh, the Enemy, the mental, emotional, spiritual and physical obstacles, as
well as the religious programming and social and cultural mindsets which have
attempted to interfere.
What
is “the Key of David?” We get a glimpse
of this in Psalm 63, which we sing from time to time in our fellowship.
Psalm 63:1-2, 8: O
God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee,
my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is; To see thy power and thy glory, so as I have
seen thee in the sanctuary.
My soul followeth
hard after thee: thy right hand upholdeth me.
You
see the phraseology that David uses?
1. My soul thirsteth
for thee.
2. My flesh longeth
for thee.
3. My soul followeth
hard after thee.
That
same picture appears in Psalm 42.
Psalm 42:1-2: As
the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O
God.
My soul thirsteth for
God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?
Here’s
that same phraseology again:
1. So panteth my soul after Thee, O God.
2.
My soul thirsteth for God.
The
cry in David’s being from the time of his childhood was to be joined to the
heart of the Lord. He saw into the very
heartbeat of the Lord. He knew God’s
desire, and he wanted that desire to be fulfilled. More than life itself, David sought to
fulfill the heart of the Lord. He
understood the nature of worship in a way that no one before, or after him in
the generations prior to the coming of Messiah understood.
The
heart of the Lord was so fixed in David that when he became King over Israel,
his first priority was to re-take the Ark of the Covenant, set it before all
Israel on a high and readily visible peak in Jerusalem in a simple tent with
the flaps open so that Israel could see a visual representation of the Covenant
of marriage that God had for them.
That
simple tent became “the Tabernacle of David.”
He surrounded it night and day,
24-hours
per day, with three families of praisers and worshipers — the families of
Asaph, Heman and Jeduthun — who shared his heart and vision. Their assignment and permanent occupation
(David paid them salaries so that they would never have to worry about working
at other secular jobs and have to leave the praise and worship) was to minister
unto the Lord non-stop on a rotating basis.
He
established something that became the standard for generations of kings who
followed. (We will revisit this whole
picture in the weeks to come, and I may do an addendum to this series titled,
The Key of David.)
See
you next week. I'm going to try and wrap
this up next week, even if I run a bit longer than usual.
For those of you
who’ve been participating in our Monday night Healing Prayer Conference Call,
we just want to let you know that beginning with the month of July and continuing
until the first Monday night in October, we will be taking a break for the
summer. We’ve found during the past
three years of doing this call that participation during the summer months
drops significantly because of folks taking their vacations, and being involved
in other activities. That said, we will
resume our prayer calls on Monday night, October 2nd.
At the same time, in
case you are missing out on real fellowship in an environment of Ekklesia, our
Sunday worship gatherings are available by conference call – usually at about
10:45AM Pacific. That conference number
is (712) 770-4160, and the access code is 308640#. We are now making these gatherings
available by Skype. If you wish to
participate by video on Skype, my Skype ID is regner.capener. If you miss the live voice call, you can dial
(712) 770-4169, enter the same access code and listen in
later. The video call, of course, is not
recorded – not yet, anyway.
Blessings
on you!
.
Regner A. Capener
CAPENER MINISTRIES
RIVER WORSHIP CENTER
Temple, Texas 76504
Email Contact:
CapenerMinistries@protonmail.com
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