Here is My Servant whom I uphold, My chosen One in whom I delight. I will put my Spirit on Him and He will bring justice to the nations. He will not shout or cry out, or raise His voice in the streets. A bruised reed He will not break and a smoldering wick He will not snuff out. In faithfulness He will bring forth justice; He will not falter or be discouraged till He establishes justice on earth. In his law the islands will put their hope Isaiah 42:1-4
Here is My servant whom I have chosen, the One I love in whom I delight, I will put My Spirit on Him and He will proclaim justice to the nations. He will not quarrel or cry out; no one will hear His voice in the streets ………….till He leads justice to victory. In His Name the nations will put their hope. Matthew 12:18-21
We speak of the victory of the Lord as a passé’ expression constantly, and testify of the victories which God gives us over the problems that beset us – be they diseases or persons – yet, rarely have we ever understood what victory is in the eyes of God.
The Old Testament gives us plenty of battles where Israel was victorious and conquered cities and nations. Indeed, the words victory, victorious and victories are mainly in the Old Testament; but rarely in the New Testament. And as always, we tend to focus in on the old rather than the new, forgetting that Jesus came to establish the new, causing the old to be obsolete.
So let us look at victories that are obsolete in the context of God—victories that God gave Moses, Joshua and David, and even Jehoshaphat. If you study the battles of the Old Testament, the enemies of Israel were either –
1. Vanquished to the point they never came back such as Jericho where every man, woman and child was put to the sword leaving no survivors to take vengeance on Israel later.
2. They were defeated and weakened, only to return at a later stage to attack again from Egypt, which was devastated by Moses, but later rose up again In the fifth year of King Rehoboam, Shishak king of Egypt attacked Jerusalem. He carried off the treasures of the temple of the Lord and the treasures of the royal palace. He took everything, including all the gold shields Solomon had made. 1 Kings 14:25,26 - as if it was recompense for the gold that Moses took out of Egypt almost 600 years ago.
Another example is the Arameans when they tried to first attack Elisha in 2 Kings 6:8-23, and Elisha blinds the entire army and leads them to Jerusalem where he then feeds them and sends them home, but after a little time. Some time later, Ben-Hadad king of Aram mobilized his entire army and marched up and laid siege to Samaria. 2 Kings 6:24 It is as if the enemies of God’s people do not learn—or rather, the victories that God gave the Israelites were always temporary, and no sooner had they driven their enemies out of Israel, they would come back again!
Why is this the case? Is it because God could not provide a permanent solution, or is it because Israel never took up God’s permanent solution? Unfortunately, it is the latter case. God promised in Deuteronomy 28, and rather in Leviticus 26:1-45 - v 3 “If you follow My decrees and are careful to obey My commands, - “…they would be blessed, and most importantly in v 6 “I will grant peace in the land, and you will lie down and no one will make you afraid…..You will pursue your enemies, and they will fall by the sword before you. Five of you will chase a hundred, and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand, and your enemies will fall by the sword before you.”
You see, each time the enemies of Israel would attack and threaten, to make Israel fearful was because they, that is Israel, had rebelled and not obeyed the Lord. Joshua only suffered one setback because of Aachan’s sin—but never was Joshua attacked—he was always the attacker.
Another feature of the victories that God gave Israel—>None of their enemies ever became their friends or loyal servants. If they were not eliminated, they were weakened only to wait for a time when they would become strong enough to attack again. There was no lasting peace with a final victory.
So when you read verses like 2 Samuel 22:51 “He gives His king great victories….”, it is important for you to understand as New Testament kings what your victories are, and how they differ and are meant to be superior to anything written in the Old Testament.
Since only Joshua obeyed the Lord, Joshua is the only leader of Israel who had a foretaste of the victories God had for Israel if they were obedient to His word & His commands. Joshua was leading a generation of people who had nothing to look back to – except a desert filled with the bones of their parents. They had no memory of the melons or garlic of Egypt like their parents—and when the army obeyed the Lord’s command to the letter as they marched around Jericho, they were given an absolute victory over Jericho. No Jerichoans were ever to rise up against Israel, ever again! It was a total and devastating victory. However, even the victories of Joshua are only a shadow of the victories of Jesus.
So what are the victories of Jesus and how do they differ from the Old Testament?
Jesus, like Joshua but more than Joshua, fulfilled the Law and the Prophets—that is the letter and the Spirit—and not just the letter, as Joshua had. And the victory of Jesus, in being absolute, destroys all his enemies completely with a unique feature. Because He is the Resurrection and the Life, all the enemies of God except for the Devil, False Prophet, Death and the Beast are raised up again—resurrected and restored, and after that, they become the grateful friends of God and Jesus. No Jerichoans became grateful allies of Israel after they were completely destroyed, for Israel was not the Resurrection, but Jesus is….. And the victory of Jesus is unique, because it is a victory based on justice and not conquest, vengeance or retribution…but justice…which none of the victories that God gave Israel were based on.
- The victory over Egypt was based on retribution
- The victory over Jericho was based on conquest
- And the victories throughout the rest of the OT were based on deliverance.
However, Jesus’ fight was never about retribution, conquest or vengeance or deliverance, but of justice!
That is why it is written in Isaiah 42:4 “In faithfulness He will bring forth justice; He will not falter or be discouraged till He establishes justice on earth. [till He leads justice to victory. Matt.12:20]” And if God is justice – which indeed He is – then the focus of Jesus’ ministry reads like this: In faithfulness He will bring forth (reveal) God. He will not falter or be discouraged till He establishes God on earth, till He leads God to victory.
So, if we are to be like Him on earth as John wrote in his letter, then we have to be servants of God, who like Jesus - In faithfulness we will bring forth God; we will not falter or be discouraged till we establish God on earth. till we lead God to victory - which is a radical upside down way of looking at things – for in Psalm 144:10 [O God] to the One who gives victory to kings,…. Yes it is God who gives victories to kings, but the kings should first know what are the victories of God so that they know when they are savouring the victory of God, or whether they are savouring the victories of the world. Rarely are the victories of the world based on justice—but rather they are based on conquest to take that which did not belong to them in the first place.
God is not claiming back anything that did not belong to Him in the first place. It is justice that God should have everything back, everything that was stolen from Him, so that He can dispose of it as He wishes—as it is written, if He chooses to have mercy—mercy; compassion—compassion—and if He chooses to dispose of the Devil, Death, the False Prophet and the Beast as He chooses in the lake of burning sulphur—so be it. For God did make the anointed cherub who became the Devil. God brought death first when He killed the lamb that covered the nakedness of Adam and Eve—and even the lack of the Beast was something God brought forth to punish Adam when He said, “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field….” Genesis 3:17
The so called 4 horsemen of the Apocalypse came forth from God, for in Revelations 6, it was the Lamb who opened the seals that released them. So all things belong to God except mistakes – and God can dispose of them as He wishes. – Now that is justice!
Even when God takes vengeance and revenge for dreadful sinners, and we remember those verses, Isaiah 47:3 “I will take vengeance”, the vengeance of God on such places as Sodom and Gomorrah is not forever—for God says in Ezekiel 16:53 “However, I will restore the fortunes of Sodom and her daughters…”
So the victories of God not only are different in that it is based only on justice, but are filled with mercy and compassion where His former enemies are also restored.
On a personal level, the Apostle Paul is the classic example of the victory of God in a person’s life. He changed Paul from Saul the murderous Zealot to Paul, his greatest Apostle—from a death sentence because Paul had shed blood to that of a ‘life’ sentence—eternal life in Christ—from being one of the churches greatest enemies to the churches greatest ally.
So as you are being prepared for your Kingship, it is just as important for you to understand the standard of God’s victory through Jesus Christ and not the victories God gave to Israel.
Jesus will and is and has led God to victory through justice—not through conquest or vengeance—but justice and this He did firstly through faithfulness in revealing what justice is—You see, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ is the greatest injustice done by men to a man. Forget for a moment that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. If Jesus Christ is not the Son of God, He was merely a young man who had gone mad—in fact—a paranoid schizophrenic with delusions and hallucinations, who had harmed no one—the son of a widowed woman. The horrible killing of such a man by men who claimed to be the leaders of their community just showed their depravity.
And if Jesus Christ is the Son of God, then His crucifixion is the greatest injustice done by men to God, for we have killed God’s Son. Either way, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ highlights what injustice is—to man and to God.
Yet in the same way the crucifixion highlights the injustice, the resurrection highlights the justice—for He who was dead came to life again. If Jesus was merely a man, His resurrection by God on the 3rd day annulled the injustice done by man to man—all by the miraculous intervention of God’s power, showing God to be just to the oppressed and the innocent. If Jesus was truly the Son of God, the resurrection of Jesus Christ gave justice to God, destroying the power of death and allowing God to show His enemies how truly powerless they are compared to an Almighty God. And the almighty power of God was justly displayed, for He did not kill those who killed His Son, but He raised up his Son who was killed thus annulling the murderous act of those who killed Him.
And it was Jesus’ faithfulness to His Father’s will even to die on the cross, that brought forth justice—God’s justice as it would apply men to man and God to man. In the same way, we are to bring forth justice by our faithfulness to God’s command, and His command to us, that is Jesus our King’s command to us is – “Love one another as I have loved you.” John 13:34, 35 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. All men will know that you are My disciples if you love one another.” This command He gave after John 13:30 As soon as Judas had taken the bread, he went out. And it was night.
It was a command that was not given until the disciple who would betray them was revealed and exposed—for Judas did not just betray Jesus, he betrayed the other eleven for they came not just to arrest Jesus, but all the eleven as well. When Jesus said, “A new command…” we missed the point. For this new command came after He said, “This is My blood of the New Covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” Matthew 26:28 When they drank from the cup they drank the blood, and the New Covenant was put in place; but by that cup, the new came and the old was done away with. So when Jesus said in John 13:34, “A new command…”, that new command was the first commandment of the New Covenant. As surely as Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and strength Deuteronomy 6:5 was the first commandment of the Old Covenant, so “Love one another as I have loved you” is the first commandment of the New Covenant for the disciples of Jesus Christ. For when you are a disciple of Jesus Christ, you have believed in Jesus and when you have believed in Jesus, you have already fulfilled the Old Covenant.
Thus the whole basis of the New Covenant was to be founded on “A new command”, the first of many that would follow; and being new, it made the old obsolete whilst embodying the spirit of the old. Thus a church, which focuses on raising disciples who love each other as Jesus loved them, is no longer under the power of the Law, but is upholding the Law; and they operate in a new dimension—a new constitution. And because there was a new constitution, there is a new legal system and a new government, a new kingdom—the Kingdom of the Son. Luke 22:29 “And I confer on you a kingdom, just as My Father conferred one on Me…” A new kingdom where the first command is “Love one another as I have loved you” for those who are worthy of this new kingdom are already His disciples for whom the old commands are already fulfilled.
Our failure to recognize the significance of the “new command” with the “new covenant” has been due to our failure to obey the command of the Father when He said, “Listen to Him” Mark 9:7. But then the church has been raising up believers rather then disciples. That is men and women who like the first group had come to know Jesus as if they had been walking, talking and living with Him because of the power of the Holy Spirit that has been given unto them to witness. The power and endurance which we need not to falter or be discouraged until we establish Jesus as King on earth, will not come unless we fellowship in obedience to this first new Commandment – for only in this way, will we not discourage, wound and destroy each other. The schisms of the church age have been and can entirely be traced to the failure to observe—“Love one another, as I have loved you.”
The four recommendations of James the Younger in Acts 15:6 completely contravene the new command, because by James recommendations, the Gentiles were placed under the Law from which Jesus had set the Jewish disciples free through His finished work and blood.
The new command—or rather the fulfillment and obeying of this new Commandment is what will (rather it was meant to) release the power of the Holy Spirit which would enable the disciples to come to the place where “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in Me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these…” John 14:12. We failed to understand that the new command is the first and greatest Commandment of the New Covenant, as “Love the Lord your God…” was the first and greatest commandment of the old Covenant which the Jews were under.
It is when you and I, now having earned and proven our discipleship with Christ through our earnest listening to Jesus and practising of His words, that we can begin to practise the new command, for the new command is given to disciples only. --Disciples who will not run off to those who are under the Law to betray Jesus for silver and fame—disciples who will not run to the Judeaizers like the Nicolaitians or pander to the Balaamites. The power that is needed remains hidden from us as yet, for it is hidden-- Habakkuk 3:4 His splendour was like the sunrise, rays flashed from His hand, where His power was hidden. –Now revealed in us—the power in our hands and more—The power to not falter or be discouraged, the power to establish justice on earth—justice for Jesus—will only flow out of a fellowship of disciples who are obeying the commandments of the new covenant, beginning with “Love one another, as I have loved you”.
Then and only then will we experience the victories of God that are given to Jesus where enemies are completely destroyed only to be raised up again as grateful friends forever. For when we love one another as Christ loved us, we are the victories of Jesus Christ for God…and when we are the victory of Jesus Christ, we are truly victorious and that is the victory John spoke of.
1 John 5:3 This is love for God to obey His commands. And His commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.
1 John 4:11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love each other, God lives in us and His love is made complete in us.
John the Apostle was trying to teach the church the new commandment—to get it right with the new commandment then everything else falls into place—and everything can be overcome, even our faith and the world. That is, we will be victorious in all things, at all times, regardless of our faith and the world.
As we have failed to “Listen to Jesus”, we have failed to emphasize the “Love one another as I have loved you” is the first and greatest commandment of the New Covenant, which is the missing piece of the puzzle when we failed to place the correct priority of the commands of God. Failure to do so meant that the world does not know us as disciples of Jesus Christ and that the subsequent promises of John 14- 17 have never manifested, just as for Israel. They never experienced complete freedom from the enemies that surrounded them after Joshua and his generation passed away, so the church has never had the power of the Apostles displayed as in Acts 2-5 and in particular Acts 5:16 Crowds gathered also from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those tormented by evil spirits, and all of them were healed. Acts 5:16 was like the report of Jericho—all the inhabitants were slaughtered never to rise again. The impossible happened—all were healed—all were delivered.
That power vanished and only re-appeared in dribs and drabs like the great victories of Joshua disappeared and only did it reappear in the Kingdom of Israel occasionally.
So let us repent for we who have drunk the blood of the New Covenant have not placed the first command of the New Covenant in its proper place—“Love one another as I have loved you.”
If Jesus has forgiven you—forgive each other.
If Jesus has healed you—heal each other.
If Jesus has blessed you—bless each other—in the way that He forgave you, healed you and blessed you.
If Jesus delivered you—deliver each other—in the way He delivered you.
You and I will be witnesses that our primary focus from now on is on the new commands of the New Covenant—as disciples of Jesus proven over time because we have listened, we have practised and we have kept His words first and last—we will witness, as will the world, a fellowship of lords and kings of the Kingdom of Heaven emerge, culminating with Jesus arriving for His coronation in Jerusalem, establishing His kingdom on Earth in total victory!
HAIL KING JESUS, COME. AMEN HOLY SPIRIT.
