The Psalm 23 Adventure, Part 44

 

June 16, 2017

 

One more story before we get started today, if you don’t mind, about our granddaughter, Jasmine.  Without getting into a lot of unnecessary detail, she has sort of been “the odd man out,” to use an old cliché.  She came into the family after the other children were already on the scene and struggled initially to gain acceptance with the other children, as well as many of her peers.  The consequence of it was that she became very territorial.  Her things were her things, and she was slow to share with her brothers and her younger sister.

 

Last week, I told you about the deliverance prayers that took place a few Sundays ago around the breakfast table.  Jasmine, Alden and Elijah have all been going to the Sylvan Learning Center in order to play catch-up academically.  At the end of each week at Sylvan, each one of them are given what amounts to credits that they can spend on some toy or special item in Sylvan’s “store.”

 

Elijah and Alden have not been savers, and they have been quick to spend their credits every week.  Jasmine, on the other hand, has literally saved every credit since beginning at Sylvan Learning Center.  Last Saturday, Jasmine decided it was time to spend her credits which, by now, were pretty considerable.  She went through the “store” and picked out three items – the total of which, literally spent every credit she had.  She kept them in a bag concealed from her brothers and when she got home, she asked me for some paper and some paper that she could wrap these items with.

 

At an appropriate moment, she brought them out and presented gifts to each of her brothers and her sister.  She had kept nothing for herself.  It was a demonstration of a place of deliverance that had taken place in her – and I have to tell you, Della and I were quite overwhelmed at what took place.  It was another “Praise the Lord” moment!

 

As noted in last week’s discussion, we’ve barely scratched the surface of this revelation of the anointing.  I’m not sure I can cover everything we need to discuss today, and if this extends across another week or two, you’ll understand once we get underway.

 

Let’s retrace some steps that we covered last week beginning with Ezekiel’s prophecy.

 

Ezekiel 28:12-19:  Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty.  Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created.

 

Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.  Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee.

 

By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned: therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God: and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire.

 

Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness: I will cast thee to the ground, I will lay thee before kings, that they may behold thee. 

 

Thou hast defiled thy sanctuaries by the multitude of thine iniquities, by the iniquity of thy traffic; therefore will I bring forth a fire from the midst of thee, it shall devour thee, and I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold thee.  All they that know thee among the people shall be astonished at thee: thou shalt be a terror, and never shalt thou be any more.

 

There is a rather interesting phrase – and one peculiar to Hebrew phraseology -- that occurs twice in Ezekiel’s prophecy.

 

What the Lord is saying is this, ”Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so:”  Then He says, “I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire.”

 

The first thing we see is that Lucifer was “the anointed cherub that covereth.”  The Lord says that “I have set thee so.”  The construction of the Hebrew here is what we need to understand, and that understanding has to come in the context of what we are seeing and hearing.

 

This “cherub” was anointed to “cover” the Throne of God.  The Lord says of him, ”the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created.”

 

The KJV rather obscures the significance of the Hebrew.  Where we read the word, “workmanship,” the Hebrew word here is, mela.kah, and it actually translates as “ministry.”  It means: to be commissioned, to be deputized, to be employed for a specific purpose.

 

Now, put that within the framework of God’s statement that he was anointed.

 

Next, consider the two words that describe what kind of ministry he was anointed for: “tabrets and pipes.”  The Lord is describing musical instruments.  When you put all of Ezekiel’s prophecy in its proper context, you see that Lucifer was anointed to “cover” the Throne with praise and worship.  In fact, the Hebrew word translated in the KJV as “covereth” is, “sakak.”  It has a broad range of meanings, but it literally means: to fence in, to hedge in, to defend, to protect, to entwine, to cover over.

 

Do you see it?  Lucifer’s ministry was to cover the Throne of God with praise and worship, to hedge it in, to literally entwine Father with the continuous sound of praise and worship.

 

Notice that one of the primary meanings of sakak is: to protect.

 

David certainly understood the protective nature of praise and worship!  The Psalms are filled from one end to the other with descriptions of the defense, the protection that David knew in praise and worship.  We don’t think of it in those realms, and certainly not with respect to God, but this is something that we live and experience on a day-to-day basis because of the nature of our business and labors for the Kingdom.

 

Before we take this the next step, consider Isaiah’s prophecy.

 

Isaiah 14:5-20:  The LORD hath broken the staff of the wicked, and the sceptre of the rulers.  He who smote the people in wrath with a continual stroke, he that ruled the nations in anger, is persecuted, and none hindereth.  The whole earth is at rest, and is quiet: they break forth into singing.  Yea, the fir trees rejoice at thee, and the cedars of Lebanon, saying, Since thou art laid down, no feller is come up against us.  Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming: it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; it hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations.  All they shall speak and say unto thee, Art thou also become weak as we? art thou become like unto us?  Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee.

 

How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!  For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:  I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.

 

Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.  They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms;  That made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not the house of his prisoners?  All the kings of the nations, even all of them, lie in glory, every one in his own house.

 

But thou art cast out of thy grave like an abominable branch, and as the raiment of those that are slain, thrust through with a sword, that go down to the stones of the pit; as a carcase trodden under feet.  Thou shalt not be joined with them in burial, because thou hast destroyed thy land, and slain thy people: the seed of evildoers shall never be renowned.

 

 

We won’t take time to go into all of the aspects of the judgment pronounced upon Lucifer, and the judgments and curses that came upon those who followed him (as well as those who follow him and his example today), but think about the overall context of what took place when he was thrown out of Heaven.

 

He lost his place around the Throne.  He lost the right to be entwined with the Lord God in the midst of praise and worship.  He lost that place of protection and covering for which he had been anointed.  He had corrupted praise and worship, and with it, the sound in music generally.  In Isaiah’s prophecy, he refers to “the noise of thy viols.”  This word, “viols,” comes from the Hebrew, nebel, which is a word for the lyre, the harp — stringed instruments in general.

 

Allow me to digress for just a minute to give you an example.  Throughout the Word, we have musical frequencies which abound.  For example, the sound of creation in Genesis is based on what we consider to be the key of “A” on the piano.  What is significant is that the frequency in the Word is 444 for “A.”  By the same token, when you see healing in the Word, the frequency is 523, or “C” on the piano.

 

When you listen to the old classical masters like Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Handel, etc., they based their music in the frequency, 444.  At some point during the past couple hundred years, someone decided that they didn’t like the results that came when listening to music keyed in these frequencies.  They lowered “A” to 440 (for the common people) and 442 for concert pitch.  That simple change took away the exactness of what God had ordained for creative purposes, for healing, for peace and rest, etc.  That simple corruption has affected generations of people as they listen to music.

 

I was never a fan of the Beatles, but somehow they discovered the significance of this shift and wrote all of their music based on the 444 scale.  I’m indebted to folks like Ray Hughes, David Van Koevering, and Michael Tyrell for their research and studies.  May I suggest to you that you Google “Wholetones.”  Michael Tyrell has put together a series of CD’s with all of the fundamental frequencies found in the Word and their impact on our existence.

 

OK, back to the subject at hand.  We were talking about “the noise of thy viols.”  No Hebrew word better describes what has happened in the music world — and, unfortunately, in generations of “Christian” or “Gospel” music.  That word, “noise” comes from the Hebrew, hemyah, (which refers specifically to music) and its root, hamah, which literally means: to be in great commotion or tumult, to rage, to war, to clamor, to be excessively loud, to be in an uproar.  See the picture?

 

Lucifer — now Satan — has waged war against the realm of true, intimate praise and worship.  The unadulterated **** that passes for praise and worship in some circles is anything but!  Excuse me for being so … umm … pointed, but after you’ve spent time in the presence of the Lord, really enjoying the peace and rest of His being in you while in praise and worship, nothing else even begins to come close!

 

I’ve gotten a tad off track so let’s back up a bit.  This would easily become a book if I were to begin citing all of the Scriptures that demonstrate this, but something phenomenal happened when Satan was cast out of Heaven.  He lost his place around the Throne.  He lost the place of praise and worship with which he’d been anointed to surround Father.

 

So God did something stupendous!  He said, “I’m going to create a people, a species of being, a family of my design to take Lucifer’s place.  I’m going to create a people who will bring pleasure to me.  This species of being will be like me.  They will not be sub-beings like angels who are only created to obey my commands.  They will be created in my image and likeness.  They will surround the Throne!  They will surround me!  They will think and speak like me!”

 

And for roughly two thousand years in the Garden, Father God had that kind of intimate relationship with Adam and Eve.  They walked together.  They talked together.  They fellowshipped together.  The sound and song of Adam and Eve’s existence was praise and worship to the ears of the Lord.  There’s a secret here that we’ll come to in due time.

 

This picture becomes more and more fascinating and revelatory as it unfolds, so let me quit for today, and let’s continue this narrative next week.

 

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 2^nd.

 

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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