The Kingdom of God!

Chapter 85

I want to talk with you this week about the anointing of God. There are a lot of Christians that have never experienced the anointing of the Holy Spirit or have never recognized it when it happened to them. Jesus, when attending His family synagogue, or church, was ask to read from the Old Testament scrolls from Isaiah, as recorded in Luke 4 :17-21, (NIV)

"He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. He began by saying to them, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing."

To properly understand what just happened, you have to understand how the synagogues were set up in those days. There was a seat in the front of the synagogue that was reserved for the Messiah when He would come. When Jesus was through reading the above verse, He sat down in that seat and proclaimed, "Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing."

Notice that all were amazed at the gracious words that came from His lips, but they began to reason with their carnal minds. Verse 22,

"All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. "Isn't this Josephs son?" they asked."

This spirit of religion rose up in them because they had been taught that when the Messiah came, He would deliver them from the Romans and set up His literal Kingdom here on this earth. Jesus discerned their thoughts and scolded them for their unbelief, and they were furious when they heard this in verse 29-30,

"All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff. But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way."

I want you to understand that the anointing of the Spirit of God on a person will protect Him from death. You might say, "Yes, but He was the Son of God!" Who do you think you are? If you have been born again, you are a son of God! Jesus was under a restraint from His Father that He could do nothing because He was God's son, but just like you and me, He had to be led by the Spirit of the Lord. He said this in John 16-19, (NIV)

"So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him. In his defense Jesus said to them, "My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working." For this reason, they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. Jesus gave them this answer: "Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does."

Once again, the religious leaders tried to kill Jesus! Religion prevails in most of our churches, when faced with the truth, it raises its head and begins to refute the truth. Even Peter had trouble with this spirit of religion in Mark 8:31-33, (NIV)

"Jesus then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. "Get behind me, Satan!" he said. "You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns."

That religious spirit will rise up within you every time you hear the truth about something that you have been taught against and you must learn to reject it and meditated on the word and ask the Holy Spirit to reveal the truth to you.

In all of these scriptures, I want you to notice that the anointing protected Jesus from premature death until the time for Him to willingly lay down His life for us. That same anointing rest upon us today when we have been born again. Paul said in Rom. 6:23, (NIV)

"For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Eternal life is not something that we will receive someday when Jesus returns, and we will be changed in the twinkly of an eye. Eternal life is a gift from God to us when we believe what Jesus said and did for us on the cross. This eternal life carries with it an anointing of the Holy Spirit. Paul said in 1 Cor. 12:

Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free and we were all given the one Spirit to drink".

Paul also said in Col. 2:9-10, (NIV)

"For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority."

Therefore, the very anointing that Jesus had, we have, however we must believe that we have it and by faith in His word proclaim it!

When I was in Kansas City, I taught the teenage class, and I can remember many times I would tell my wife before church started how the presence of the Lord was so strong in our class that morning. This was before I had received the baptism of the Holy Spirit many years later.

So many times, later when I was preaching, I would tell the audience that what I had said was from the Holy Spirit. The anointing can be so heavy at times that you can actually physically feel it. It comes from within your belly. That might seem strange to you, but Jesus said in John 7:37-39,

"If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture has said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. (But this spoke he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.)"

You might say to me, "David, How do I get this anointing?" The same way you get anything from God. By faith in what His word says. If it says that out of their belly's shall flow rivers of living water and He was speaking of the Holy Spirit that would be poured out, then believe that and begin to declare it and it will happen. Paul said in Rom. 1:17,

"For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed; a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: "The righteous will live by faith."

He did not say that you shall live by what you see or what you feel but what you believe and practice that is in God's word. Paul also said in 2 Cor. 5:7,

"For we walk by faith, not by sight!"

So, how do I know when I am anointed. First of all, you must realize that you are anointed because you have been baptized into the Spiritual Body of Christ, of which He is the head and as such He is anointed. If He is anointed, so are you because you are in the same spiritual body with Him. When you understand this begin to declare what the word says about you.

I am the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. Not by anything that I can do to deserve this but because I believe in Him, God considers that I am righteous because of what Jesus did for me.

In the same manner, declare that "I am anointed because the Spirit of God is upon me and I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me!" (Phill. 4:13)

Paul also said in 2 Cor. 1:17, (NIV)

"Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come."

Therefore I can boldly state that, "I am anointed of God and the Spirit of God dwells in my heart!"

Spend time with the Lord and learn to discern His voice. Jesus said in John 10:4, (NIV)

'When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice."