The Rod Of God In Your Hands

But you have come to Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. To an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, who are registered in heaven. Now I prefer the NIV translation, which makes it really exciting because the NIV takes the phrase at the beginning of verse 23 and puts it on with the end of verse 22. To try and explain that it’s just a matter of punctuation is rather complicated. But the NIV says, and this really blesses me: To an innumerable company of angels in festal array. That thrills me! To think that the angels put on their best because we’re coming. Then to the church of the firstborn, who are registered in heaven. That’s the church of all those who have been born again through faith in Jesus Christ and through the new birth we have now come, already to the heavenly Jerusalem, to Mount Zion. To God, the judge of all... Thank God there’s something there besides God the judge because otherwise we’d never make it. ...and to the spirits of just men made perfect... I understand that to be the Old Testament saints who, after a lifetime’s walk of faith, at the end came to Mount Zion. Whereas we through the new birth, get there now. That’s why Jesus said: of men born of women there has not arisen a greater than John the Baptist, but he that is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he because we’ve been born again. The new birth takes us into a new realm which was not open to the Old Testament saints until after death. We enter there now. We’re not going to come, we have come. So now, back to Psalm 110. The LORD shall send the rod of your strength out of Zion; rule in the midst of your enemies... I believe this is a tremendous revelation of the kind of ministry that we can have as a kingdom of priests. I believe all three persons of the Godhead are referred to in those two verses: God the Father said to Jesus the Son, Sit at my right hand. The Lord the Holy Spirit, sends the rod of Christ’s authority out of Zion, the assembled company of God’s people. So, when we meet under the headship of Jesus and in divine order, then the Holy Spirit out of our meeting, out of our ministry and out of our prayers, sends out the rod of Christ’s authority. And as a result, Christ rules in the midst of His enemies. That’s where He is now. He is now at the right hand of God. And we can exercise His authority on His behalf and affirm His rule even in the midst of His enemies. We are certainly aware that His enemies are numerous. They’re vociferous, They’re getting angrier and more violent every year. But don’t let their cries and their activities cause you to overlook the fact that Jesus is already on the throne. And He’s never going to give it up. He is ruling now in the midst of His enemies. In spite of all the rage and all the evil forces, Jesus is ruling. But, we have the privilege of being the instruments of His rule. Out of our assembly, God’s people gathered in His name in divine order, led together by the Holy Spirit, for Jesus said: where two or three have been led together into My name, there am I in the midst. We have the privilege of thrusting out the rod of His authority over the nations. And bringing the nations into line with the purposes of God. Not imposing our will on the nations. Or telling God what we think ought to happen. But becoming instruments for God to reveal and declare His will over the nations. Now, I told you that the title of this was going to be: The Rod of God. You may have wondered how I was ever going to get there. And I was wondering myself for a while! But, we got there. The rod. The rod in the Bible is the emblem of a ruler. And it’s the mark of his authority. I want to speak just about two examples of the rod. First of all, at one point as I said, I think, in the seminar, Aaron’s authority as high priest was challenged by the other tribal leaders. They said, Why is it only Aaron, why not we? And God said, Let’s settle this once and for all. So He said to Moses, take the rod of every ruler of each tribe, tell him to write his name on it, and put it in front of the Holy of Holies and leave it there. So Moses did that. 24 hours later he went back. Eleven rods were just the same. The twelfth rod had blossomed, budded and put on almonds, in 24 hours. And they checked the name on the rod, it was Aaron. Aaron the high priest, a type, a figure of the Lord Jesus. And the blossoming of the rod in 24 hours is a type of the resurrection, which established forever His identity as the Son of God and the high priest. So the rod has the name of the ruler on it. This has become so very, very real to me in periods of prayer and intercession that we can extend the rod of Christ’s authority, which has His name upon it, over the situations that we’re praying for. But the authority is in the name. Then the other case of the rod was Moses. You remember, at age 40 he was confident he could deliver his people Israel out of Egypt. He ended up spending 40 years in the desert looking after his father-in-law’s sheep. At age 80 God appeared to him in the burning bush and told him he was to deliver his people out of Egypt. And at that point Moses was totally devoid of self confidence. He said, God, just try to find somebody else. He was so defendant that in the end the Lord actually got angry with him. Moses said: Well, if I’m to deliver my people, what can I do it with? And the Lord said: What have you got there in your hand? And this is a little bit of the amplified version, but Moses said: It’s just my shepherd’s rod. The Lord said: Throw it down on the ground and see what happens. He threw it down on the ground and it became a snake. And Moses ran from his own rod. See, the lesson is we oftentimes have something in our hand, we don’t know the power that’s in it. The Lord said to Moses: Pick it up by the tail. Now anybody who knows anything about snakes knows you don’t pick snakes up by the tail. You pick them up just behind the head. But Moses obeyed the Lord and it became a rod in his hand. So the Lord said to Moses: That’s all you’re going to need. Just take that rod. And it’s called from then on the rod of God. But He said: If you have any problems, I want to give you two other signs. I want you to notice that God sovereignly appointed these signs. Moses didn’t say, God, I need signs. My conviction is, God has never sent a messenger with supernatural revelation without giving him supernatural attestation. It is unscriptural. So, the Lord said to Moses: Put your hand in your bosom, and pull it out. It was completely leprous. He said: Put your hand in again, pull it out. It was completely whole. I was meditating on that today and I think the Lord said to Moses, I kill and I make alive. You can put your hand in there and it comes out totally dead with leprosy. You can put it back again, and it comes out alive. Then He said: The other thing you can do, is take the water out of the river, the Nile, and pour it on the ground and it will become blood. So now, there are your three authenticating signs. And if you need help, I’ll let your brother Aaron be your spokesman, go back.