Christian Finance Series
CHRISTIAN FINANCE SERIES
THE COVENANT OF PROSPERITY
Lets look at Gen.1: 24, the 6th day of creation, Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth the living creatures according to its kind; cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth each according to its kind”; and it was so. And God made the beasts of the earth according to its kind, cattle according to its kind and everything that creeps on the earth according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the cattle and over all the earth and over very creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him: male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves on the earth. And God said, “I have given you every herb that yield seeds which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be food. Also to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life. I have given every green herb for food”; and it was so.
Chapter 2:9 And out of the ground the Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.
God did not create man on the first day, on the second day, on the third day etc. God created man on the sixth day. In fact man was the last of God’s creation. He finished all the heaven and the earth. All the trees of the field, all the birds everything was full and complete. And man was the last of God’s creation. And if you understand the works of God, the last is always the best. The last wine that Jesus made in John chapter two was the best. There is a truth in that. And the reason for that is that God has always wanted man to enjoy freely His creation by His grace. It was never God’s intention for man to have to work and to have to toil in order to possess prosperity. It was never God’s intention that we have to toil and eat from the sweat of our brow. That doesn’t mean we are going to be lazy. Before the fall man did not have much to do. The trees produce by themselves. The plants will grow by themselves. The thorns, thistles, and weeds were probably good plants. But after the fall they became destroyers just like many of the animals and germs become wild and destructive. All these were at one time functioning perfectly. Even man himself became destroyer after the fall. What more all the other animals and all the other creations of God. So originally man didn’t even have to work. The trees will grow by themselves. You don’t need anyone to tend to the trees because they would be perfect.
Then what will Adam do? Sit around and enjoy and grow fat? There are a lot of things to do. We got to look at what is God’s eternal and ultimate plan for man so that we know how to live our life in perspective today. See we were born after the fall. Sometimes we see our perspective of life from what it is today. We don’t see it from God’s perspective.
Its after the fall in Gen.3: 17 God said to Adam. “Cursed is the ground for your sake”. That is after the fall. In toil you shall eat of it. And today it has so been. We may not be working in the garden. But we are in a certain way required in life to work in order to bring the daily bread in. We all have some kind of work to do. If we don’t do that the bible says in Paul’s time in reference and in the context of the fall, ”Then let him who does not work not eat.” And here God said you shall eat while you are toiling. All the days of our life both thorns and thistles shall bring forth to you. Why was there to be toiling? It is because now there are forces that are working against man. The fruit trees are no longer going to produce automatically. There need to be hard work.
But this morning we are going to look at the covenant of prosperity. God has intended for man never to have to work for his daily bread. But rather God wanted man to receive the daily bread from papa God. You can imagine little children who are born into this life. You don’t expect the little infants straight from the hospital to go out and work. Of course the child cannot. See God wants us to remain in that perfect sonship where we take everything from His hands of provision in a perfect relationship with our papa God. That’s his perfect will in our life. God did give man a certain amount of work.
In Gen.2: 8 the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden and there he put the man whom he had formed. Now he put Adam into that place in order for man to sort of watch over the place. He was the delegated guardian over the creation of God and Adam could spend his whole life feasting on the provision of God and giving God glory. When we look at Adam before the fall, we say how nice it is to be in that garden. How nice to get back to that God’s provision. It may not be having fruit trees but it is the corresponding realm of prosperity in our modern world. And that’s where we need to understand the Word that God actually wanted us to taste the same principles. We are restored back to that same place and position. We may not be back in the garden yet. But God had wanted us to return back to that stage.
And in the Lord Jesus Christ that second Adam he restored man back to that stage where man could live in God’s abundance and provision just like after the sixth day of God’s creation. In fact Jesus is the ultimate, the complete work that God the Father has. And Jesus has done everything such that there is nothing else we could add. In 2 Cor.8: 9 For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor that you through His poverty might become rich. See God the Father wants us, Jesus wants us, the Holy Spirit wants us to go back to that stage where we understand that prosperity comes not by work but by grace. Abundance and provision come not by works but by grace. He wants us to understand that part. Every scripture you can think of on abundance and provision it ties back to the covenant of God’s provision. You minus away grace and the covenant and provision of God you can work your fingers to the bones. You can work your lifeblood out. You could work from dusk till dawn and dawn till dusk and you would never be prosperous. It is not just God prospering the works of our hands.
Anyone who is in business long will know that hard work is part of it. But its not hard work alone, hard work plus opportunity. You could be working hard and don’t have the opportunity in some areas. You will never be able to come up in life. Think about those who lived in one or two generations ago. Today most of us have the privilege of receiving our education. And with the education we could make a living in the world. But think about those one generation or two generations ago. Some of our parents and forefathers never receive an education. And they toiled, worked hard and we read in the magazine their success stories. But behind every success story are thousands of others who went through the same road and failed. The difference is not only hard work but also opportunities. You take away the opportunities, take away the open doors, and you are left with little. Sometimes opportunities only knock once. And if you take it and that is. That’s your role up the ladder of success.
What are opportunities? Opportunities of blessings are what we call the special arrangement of God because of His covenant. In other words hard work is still required. But you must imagine that there is a boundary line of God’s blessings. If you are outside of that boundary line, you could work your fingers to the bone and you will never have success. It would all be working and working and there would hardly be any success. But the moment you cross His boundary line or what I call His covenant, you will have the opportunities and the privilege of receiving His special grace of prosperity. In other words, if you enter into the realm and you work hard is different. You are able to tap on the opportunity God provided. He is still not going to prosper you without your work. But you need to move within the boundary line of God’s blessings. Now there are some Christians who move into the boundary line but don’t understand the principle of hard work. So they are no difference from those outside who work very hard and still get nothing. What we need to understand is the covenant of God’s blessings. Since the fall of man, man has always felt a guilty conscience every time he possess something. No matter how hard he works, there is always that guilt conscience inside him.
And man will move to two extremes. With prosperity, he will move to one extreme like Nebuchadnezzar and became puffed up and proud and think that he had got all these by his own hands. When Nebuchadnezzar was looking over the hanging garden of Babylon and said how great he was, a voice from heaven said that is all because God gave it to him. No one have prosperity without God’s help even those who do not know Him. Who could be richer that Nebuchadnezzar. And God told him. God wanted him to realize that there is no prosperity without special blessings. God gave rain on the just and on the unjust. Lets look at the book of Daniel and see the statement that God said to him when Nebuchadnezzar became proud. Chapter 4:30 The king spoke saying is not this great Babylon that I have built for royal dwelling by my mighty power for the honor of my majesty. So we are talking about two extremes. On one extreme are those when prosperity come they became proud and would be like Nebuchadnezzar who said, “I did it all by myself.” He had no knowledge of God. Now here in verse 31 came the answer, A voice from heaven said king Nebuchadnezzar to you it is spoken the kingdom have departed from you. They shall drive you from man and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field. They shall make you eat grass like oxen and times shall pass over you, referring to the seven years, until you know that the Most High rules in the kingdom of man and gives it to whom ever He chooses. There is no prosperity without the grace of God. This world came because God was generous. There is no way man have earned this earth and the blessings therein.
So there is one extreme especially those who do not know God. They will think they got it themselves. And usually they have the attitude to their utter destruction.
The other extreme is where most people fall under. That is every time you receive prosperity, you have a guilty conscience. Why? It is because inside you, you feel you don’t deserve it. Of course we don’t deserve it. None of us deserve it. But it’s a lack of understanding of God’s grace and covenant and His ever-present mercy to us. His ever-present desires to just give us because of whom He is. Not because of what we have done or who we are. And you could always see that when somebody receives a blessing from God, they would try to justify it. There is a guilt conscience. You are thankful for it yet you are guilty about it. Others have developed it in such a way where every time they have a blessing from God, they had to justify to people. Since the fall of man, man cannot even enjoy what God gives. Before they enjoy it, they must justify it first. This is the other development of the same guilty conscience. Where when the prosperity and abundance come, others see it and say, “Well you don’t deserve it.” And there is where they get jealous; it is the Cain syndrome. How can he have it and I don’t have it. If I don’t have it he can’t have it. You know that is the opposite working of the guilty conscience. In other words if I don’t have it nobody in the world should have it. It is the reverse working of the same guilt conscience. This guilt conscience came into mankind when Adam and Eve fell. The guilt conscience of not being able to receive from God. I mean the garden is all ours; it belonged to everybody. After the fall man don’t deserve it. Then when other receives it Cain syndrome comes. The guilt conscience work and play against others. As we mature in Christ, we grow out of it. But practically every young carnal Christian has it. We may not launch into an open outright persecution. But we can persecute with words behind the back. We can say comments like that person don’t know how to handle money. If I were that person I would handle it differently. If I were, if I were, if I were this, if I were that. If you are so clever of handling money, why didn’t God give it to you instead of him. God will not bless a person if that person has not done something right and kept the principles of God.
And as we look at the covenant of prosperity, that is what we want to realize in our life. That we have to learn to be restored back to this covenant of blessing to realize that God gives all things freely for all to enjoy. He is no respecter of person. And He wants us to come back to this area here. It is just like a person out there in the world who does not know God. He is earning possibly hundreds of thousand or millions of dollars. He has all the money in the world for anything he wants. But he can’t enjoy it. He has very poor health. He can’t eat proper food. He is on a liquid diet. In spite of all the abundance, he is practically like not having it. Why, because he cannot enjoy it. It is better to have a hundred dollars that you can enjoy than to have one thousand dollars that you cannot enjoy.
Now here if we don’t deal with our conscience and allow God’s grace to touch our guilt conscience to realize in the first place about receiving by works. Forget about receiving anything by our good works or who we are. Then we realize that everything is by grace and the covenant of God’s blessing. And this you receive. If you received the blessings of God and the guilt conscience is still there you can never enjoy it. You can never enjoy God’s prosperity in your life as long as you have that thing in you called the guilt conscience. We are talking about learning to enjoy the things of God and learning to partake of it. Think about going to a dinner. The person who took you to the dinner ordered things that you know that you would never have ordered in your whole lifetime. And you are looking at the expensive costs with all those food. And you are thinking you could do a lot with the money going into these foods. That one meal could mean one year’s savings for you. But the difference is you are not the one paying. It’s the other guy. I am not advocating for us to go into this kind of waste. If you ask me I personally will not spend so much on food like these under normal circumstances. Once in a blue moon, okay.
But here is where your reaction comes in. All the good food is there and you cannot enjoy it. And as you are looking at all these things, your mind is full of guilt and then jealousy comes in. Then from jealousy it became anger. Angry at this fellow who don’t know how to use the money. Finally you leave the place less blessed than you went, when all God want you to do was just to be blessed with a good meal that in your whole life time you may never be able to pay for. And God got somebody else to pay for you. And you never lift up your hands to say, “Thank you God,” even though no doubt you said grace. But it was more from your mouth not from your heart. You even thank God for the food that you never enjoyed when you could have enjoyed it. This is what I call guilt conscience. But suppose God wants to take some of us right now and put us back into the Garden of Eden. Right now some of us will be so shy. We don’t even want to touch the fruit. We will say Lord we don’t want to disturb your creation. The Lord said, “Eat.” We will say Lord I will be satisfied with these grass here. Guilt conscience. If God were to take us out for dinner, we will not feel the guilt complex because no one dare to judge God. But if somebody else takes us we dare to judge that person.
I remember when I stayed in a house where there was wall-to-wall carpeting. When we stayed there we said, “Look at the carpet.” And I am not saying we develop an attitude and a lust for this kind of things. It makes no difference whether whatever kind of house you are staying. It doesn’t matter. But on the other side when God began to really bless you, the guilt is so much that you cannot enjoy. As I was lying there on the bed, I was saying, “Everything that went into furnishing this room here could have printed about ten thousand of my books.” And as I was thinking on all these things, I couldn’t sleep. God gave me this luxurious place to sleep and I couldn’t enjoy it because of a guilt conscience. The guilt conscience prevents us from enjoying the Garden of Eden.
That’s where we need to understand the part of us that prevents us from enjoying prosperity is because of guilt conscience. That’s why we have to see that in the Word of God. God originally plan for all prosperity to come to us by his grace. Man was never made to toil for those things. It was freely made. None of us would have a guilt conscience in heaven. If your mansion is one of the biggest, who dare to be jealous? Because everybody could afford it and everybody could receive it from God. If in heaven even though God says, “Son I give you every thing your heart desire,” there is no limit. And you said, “Lord I just want a little hut at the edge of heaven.” God will not stop you. God will say go ahead as you desired, although God could give you the best mansion. You say, “God I want a little mansion somewhere far, far away. Make it a flat land. I don’t want to disturb you Lord.” Whenever God bless you, just sit back and lift up your hands to God and say, “God I worship you, I thank you.” Remember that is God’s original plan to bless us. Not because we deserve it. Not because we work for it but because He made man on the sixth day. And he has always wanted man to enjoy His creation, all the blessings of God. All the people in the bible who were rich or who were prosperous, were prosperous not because of their works. God even told the Israelites that you are going to be a great nation not because you are the best nation. Even though you were the smallest, yet because of His covenant with them He made them the greatest. In Gal.3:13 it says Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us, for it is written. Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree, that the blessings of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles through Christ Jesus that we might receive the promise through faith.
What I like you to see in the scripture is that prosperity is part of the covenant of God. It is freely given to you as much as forgiveness of sin. At the same cross, where He took your sins is the same cross where He took our poverty. Prosperity is a covenant right as much as the healing. When you think about receiving healing from God, none of you would think about paying for it. When you think about receiving forgiveness, none of you would think about paying for it. But when we think about prosperity, most of us think about paying. Although we say its grace yet we always think about the works side. Now the works side no doubt has to be balanced with the grace side.
To understand the perspective of obtaining prosperity through works instead of by the grace of God, let us compare it with healing. Its just like we preach on healing and people become so focused on the methodology of receiving healing that they forgot that healing comes from God and Jesus Christ freely. Because of the words of Jesus, they forgot that the most important thing is it comes from God Himself. Healing is a person not just a formula. And so it makes it harder to receive the healing because they don’t meditate on the person of God. They don’t focus or have the awareness of the person and the presence of God.
In the same way in prosperity there are the also laws of prosperity. You can keep all those laws and yet forget that basically prosperity is in the person of God, who He is and His desire to give us freely, abundantly just as He gave Adam and Eve at the Garden of Eden. He wants to give the Garden of Eden to each one of us freely without our works for it. We need to understand that covenant of grace. The blessings on Abraham’s life were the result of God’s covenant. In Gen.12 we know that incident where when Abraham went to Egypt, even though he was not perfect yet, God protected him and his wife. And in verse 17 he inflicted Pharaoh and his house for taking Sarah into his harem although Abraham was also responsible for that by telling a lie. Chapter 13:1 Then Abraham went up from Egypt. He and his wife and all that he had and Lot with him to the south. Abraham was very rich in livestock and in silver and in gold. Now we all know about that in verse 2. We have touched on that. And we always look at that and we say thank God for Abraham’s prosperity. The blessings of Abraham and we praise God that he reaped what he sowed. But it is more than that. It is also beyond reaping what he sowed. Why? It is because Abraham told a lie. By right he should have gone into ruin. Under normal circumstances if Abraham were an ordinary man who did not know God, who did not have a covenant with God, he would have been condemned to Egypt for the rest of his life. Perhaps others who took the same route would have gone before him. And perhaps their wives would have been taken into Pharaoh’s harem and they were stuck in Egypt for the rest of their lives.
But Abraham was different. What was the difference?. That Abraham should make a mistake, go into Egypt get into problem and yet God will rescue him was due to His covenant with Abraham. Abraham had made a covenant with God. Because of that covenant even though Abraham made the mistake, even though Abraham didn’t deserve it, but because of his covenant the opposite happened. Silver and gold and livestock were poured abundantly on Abraham because of that covenant that God has with him.
Abraham’s son Isaac in Gen.26:12-13 Isaac sowed in that land and reaped in the same year a hundred fold. But don forget the next phase. It says, and the Lord blessed him. Why did the Lord bless him? It is because of the covenant. If you take away the covenant and all you have is the law of sowing and reaping, it will not multiply that fast. You keep the law of tithing or sowing or reaping plus the covenant it is going to be fantastic. You see the most important thing to understand is not just keeping the law of tithing, the law of sowing or reaping. It is not just that. It is learning to move into the covenant and then keep the laws. And God blessed Isaac. He prospered so much.
Notice his prosperity was so great that in Gen.26: 28-29 the people around Isaac said, “We have certainly seen the Lord is with you.” When Isaac prospered there were certain things prospering him that another person with the same gift, with the same talent, the same hard work would not be able to produce as much. God desire to prosper him so that the world will see that unless the Lord has been with him there is no way he could do it.
Most of Christian who prospers if they were out there prospering, other non Christians will look at them and say, “If I had the same opportunity and I work as hard I can do the same thing.” But God wants to prosper you so much that unbelievers are going to say, “If we were in your shoes and did the same things you do, and work as hard as you and keep the same principles - we still couldn’t do it.” Then you can recognize it’s the covenant of God that works. Think about the so-called prosperity that Christians have. Another unbeliever will say, “I have the same education, I work as hard as you, I will have the same thing - no difference.” We are only touching the fringes of the covenant. We are only touching a small scale of the laws of our hands prospering. But God wants more than that. He wants to show the world that we are prosperous because He is with us.
How does He manifest? The way circumstances are arranged. You become prosperous in such a way because there was a special divine arrangement of circumstances. As we all know hard work is on one side, and opportunity is the other. And there are so many opportunities that it cannot be just a normal law of chance. There is a special arrangement, right place, right time, doing the right thing. Doing the right thing is what people focus on. But God is going to cause the right place and the right time, right people, right opportunity to come together. And Abimelech and his gang said to Isaac, “We know it’s the Lord.” You know how they know. They were one of those with the guilt conscience. Isaac was prosperous and he had a good well. In those days water wells were a sign of prosperity. They were the bank account in those days. Abimelech and his gang came and took over the well and chased out Isaac. And Isaac did not fight. The meek shall inherit the earth. He depended on God’s covenant not just on his works. Most Christians will fight tooth and nail for that well. I owned it. I have a right to fight for it. It’s not a question of right. It’s a question of meekness. The meek willingly suffer injustice trusting in God their judge. And he moved on to another well and dug it. Again here they came Abimelech and his gangsters. And he went again to the next well. Abimelech and his friends looked at him. We cannot do what he did. We could dig and dig and we couldn’t get that kind of water he did. There is no way we could affect him. There is no way we could stop him.
In the end Abimelech and his friends came and said, “Lets be friends. You got something special. Unless God had been with you, you would not have prospered.” And they recognized that fact in Gen.26: 28 So we said, “Let there now be an oath between us, between you and us; and let us make a covenant with you.” They are quite smart because if they bless Isaac, they get the blessings of Isaac’s covenant with God too. After all it is in Abraham’s blessing, blessed are those that bless you, cursed are those who curse you. They wanted the covenantal blessings of Isaac too. They wanted to have a part of that good fortune. That’s what the world calls it. For us it is blessings. We want the good luck, the world call it luck. But we understand it as blessedness. So they said, lets make a covenant so that we can partake of that special grace that you have. And they said, “that you will do us no harm since we have not touched you. We have done nothing to you but good and have sent you away in peace. You are now the blessed of the Lord. We know that in Isaiah that the blessing that’s going to be on the church and on Zion is such that the people are going to say that their God is with them. That’s why we want to understand the covenant of prosperity in Isaac’s life.
Now lets look at Jacob’s life. In Gen.28: 13 When Jacob was running away from Esau his brother. It says in verse 13 when he dreamt, “Behold the Lord stood above it and said. I am the Lord God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and your descendants.” In other words God was keeping a covenant with Jacob. And Jacob made a vow to God. If you don’t have that covenant, you could repeat the same story in Genesis. How Jacob went to work for Laban and you would not have the success story. You will just have the simple story of somebody who work there and that’s all. He would not have the measure of success he has if you take away the covenant and leave the hard work. You add the covenant and the hard work, and then you get the prosperity that Jacob had.
What we are trying to get is that the basis of prosperity is the covenant of God. The basis of prosperity is not just in sowing and reaping. Sowing and reaping and all the others laws are under the covenant. In other words they are activating the covenant. So we must know what is the basis. The basis is that it is His covenant to bless us. Involve with that we demonstrate our faithfulness and that we love Him through hard work.
Even when God told Moses to go and bring the Israelites out, the Israelites came out with prosperity with much of the silver and the gold of Egypt. The basis for that whole thing was the covenant. When God first met Moses He told him in the book of Exodus, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In Exodus 2:24 So God heard their groanings and God remembered his covenant. Let me tell you the Israelites who were already working hard. They were already working like slaves and they were not prosperous because God’s covenant was not activated. And there many Christians who work hard but they don’t seem to make ends meet because they don’t know the covenant. The only reason for God wanting to work in their lives is because He remembered His covenant.
Why did God take so long to make the covenant? This is important. A covenant must be remembered and be activated. And what happened in Exodus happens in many Christians’ life - they forgot the covenant. They remembered the formula. They remembered the hard work. They remembered the principles. They forgot the covenant prosperity. How do I know they forgot? The only way is to look at the life of Moses in Exodus 4. When Moses had met God and was returning to Egypt in verse 18, So Moses went and returned to Jethro his father-in-law, and said to him, “Please let me go and see whether they are still alive. And Jethro said to Moses, “Go in peace.” Now the Lord said to Moses in Midian, “Go and return to Egypt; for all the men who sought your life are dead. Then Moses took his wife and his sons, set them on the donkey and he returned to the land of Egypt. And Moses took the rod of God in his hand. And the Lord said to Moses, “When you go back to Egypt, see that you do all these wonders before Pharaoh which I have put in your hand. But I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go. Then you shall say to Pharaoh, “Thus says the Lord, ”Israel is My son, My firstborn.
But verse 24 is a puzzle to many Christians, And it came to pass on the way, at the encampment, that the Lord met him and sought to kill him. Or rather the Hebrew word imply that Moses was allowed to go to some area that nearly killed him. Perhaps it was some sickness. But Moses nearly died on the way to Egypt. If Moses died there is no story in Exodus. Why did that happened? The bible doesn’t tell us clearly whether there was any disease that he nearly died from on his way there. The rest of the story gives us a clue. Verse 25, Then Zipporah took a sharp stone and cut off the foreskin of her son and cast it at Moses’ feet, and said, “Surely you are a husband of blood to me!” God had told Moses, although it was not recorded but it is implied, that he must circumcise himself and his children. Why was that so important? In some of your bibles there is a sub-title, “The sign of the covenant” to the chapter Genesis 17. What was the sign? Circumcision. Verse 10-13 God says, “This is my covenant which you shall keep between Me and you and your descendants after you. Every male child among you must be circumcised. It’s not just circumcision. It was the covenant. Circumcision is the signature God wants to see that you remembered His covenant. In verse 13 He who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money must be circumcised, and My covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant. And the uncircumcised child who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that person shall be cut off from his people; He has broken My covenant. God said to Abraham that anyone who doesn’t keep the law of circumcision is not part of His covenant.
Now the reason for God sending Moses back is because of the covenant. If Moses himself does not keep the covenant, he himself is not part of His people. God is no respecter of persons. How can the covenant work? It looks like a very simple thing he missed out. It was the basis and the foundation for the whole of Exodus. The whole basis of prosperity, of abundance, of provision was the covenant of God. Later on the covenant grew in complexity. When Moses led the Israelites out, they had the Passover Lamb. That became part of the covenant. Then as they build the tabernacle, that tabernacle became part of the covenant. If you keep that you know that is your honoring of the covenant. In Solomon’s time it became the temple. And you notice every one of those kings who came after Solomon, every time they remembered the covenant they were blessed. Every time they forgot the covenant they were cursed. They became poor.
What is the sign of the covenant in the New Testament? It is no more the circumcision of the flesh. Let me read to you the New Testament covenant so that you know how to invoke it in your life. 1 Cor.11: 25 In the same manner He also took the cup after supper saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” The Lord’s Supper is the covenant of the Lord with you.
The Lord’s Supper is an expression of our remembering of the covenant of God. It is invoking that covenant of God in our life. It was never reserved to be just done in the church. Neither was it reserved to be done by a priest or a full time worker. You do not find the New Testament saying that. That is a part of Christian tradition. Neither was it reserved for those who are ordained. You don’t find scripture and verse for that. In Acts 2:46 so continuing daily with one accord in the temple breaking bread from house to house. Every day they were invoking a covenant with God. And every time the New Testament people gathered like Paul. The first thing they do is to have a breaking of bread. It is not just reserved for the five fold ministers to do. It is not just reserved for those who are ordained. Not just reserved for the full time worker. Every head of the family and every born again Christian could gather with others or with themselves do it.
You could take some grapes juice, some unleavened bread and pray and thank God for the covenant. Give thanks and eat it. It is invoking the covenant of God and it’s so powerful, even though sometimes you think you do it out of habit. It’s so powerful that I challenge you in the name of Jesus that when you began to do it regularly in your homes, you will experience the blessings of the new covenant in your lives. The blessings of the Lord’s Supper are largely untapped by Christians today. We are tapping on other areas of blessings. But we are not tapping on one of the greatest, where if you take the Holy Communion through prayer in your homes, you invoke the covenant of God. And I want you to see how far your tithes go. How much further your offering go. How greater the blessings come. How greater the circumstances of the world seem to line up for you. I challenge you each family here to begin to take the communion in your own home. In our church we give you the permission to do it in your homes with our full blessings. I know that in some churches they will require a minister of the gospel, someone ordained. But in our church because of the new covenant and because of the bible practice, we encourage every head of the family to do it from time to time. It’s just a simple thing.
Like Moses although it was just a simple act of circumcision, yet it was so powerful. Without that the rest of the blessings will not flow. And prosperity seems not to be the only key. If suddenly there is a plague that affects the whole world, if you are in a place where cholera strikes nine out of every ten persons, what do you do? Have the Holy Communion, because the plague will pass over you. You will begin to see health and you will be in the area of dwelling in the secret place of the Most High. Where things will strike you on the left, on your right but they will never come near you. You will see blessings of prosperity. You will see blessings of health. Blessings so powerful you could not imagine. I encourage you to test this truth. Because it’s powerful, if you start doing it regularly and within a few months, there will be things that will happen that has never happen in your whole life time. Opportunities and blessings that have never open before but now begin to open in your lifetime. Why before that you were working the same way but there is as difference now. You remember the covenant. And you apply the covenant. I tell you blessings that literally multiply on themselves. Its what I call the covenant of prosperity.