THE KEY OF RIGHTEOUSNESS

THE KEY OF RIGHTEOUSNESS

“That which is in Heaven, Will be Heavenly on Earth”

Preached by:  Pastor Carolyn Sissom

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Phil 1:11: “Having been filled with the fruit of righteousness, which comes through Jesus Christ, to the Glory and Praise of God.”

Rom 14:17:  “For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.”

Matt. 5:6: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be satisfied.”

“The people of God have yet to learn that the Kingdom belongs to those who are and have nothing, those who are poor in spirit and such as hunger and thirst after righteousness.  God exalts the meek and lowly to inherit the throne of princes, and the lofty and noble He sends away with empty hands.  May God help us each one, as His people, to humble ourselves and pray and seek His face---and above all things to recognized how little we have of Truth and Righteousness, that we might be prepared to received bountiful spiritual blessings at the hand of Him who gives liberally to all men and upbraids not.”  (G.W.) – Intro The Feast of Tabernacles

Isa. 3:10: “Say to the righteous that it will go well with them, for they will eat the fruit of their actions”.

And what is “Fruit”?  The Church has still not become that vital, living manifestation of Christ in the earth that we should be.  Our prayers is that God’s people every where might quickly come to the overwhelming realization that we have not arrived.  There must be a genuine spirit of repentance as the Day of the Lord is breaking forth upon us.  For truly I believe we are very close to the “time”.

It is harvest-time, and the Husbandman walks through the fields, examining the fruit to see how good it is and if it s ready yet for the sickle.  For in this hour He is looking for one thing and for one thing only…and that is, “the precious fruit of the earth.”  That is why He is faithful to send the “latter rain” where it is needed, and faithful also to send the sunshine and the heat and the drought, to hasten the maturing of “the full corn in the ear.”  In harvest-time He desires one thing and one thing only, and this is the Fruit.  In harvest time everything else is chaff!

…From the time “he planted the seed the good gardener has been waiting patiently to receive something from his field that will be equally as good as the precious seed that he planted.  Now the Lord is a good Gardener, and He is the Lord of the Harvest.  He cannot be satisfied until He comes into His garden and discovers the fruits that corresponds to the Seed that he became in the earth when He “fell into the ground and died.”

What time is it?  I don’t know, but I do know “it is time”.  Some of you remember the dream I had shortly after the first of the year about a white jelly watch trimmed in gold and rhinestones.  The watch was on my arm.

Saturday I was napping due to fever from the flu.  By faith, I knew I would be able to preach today, but was not sure of the message.  I had another dream about the white watch.  It was pointed toward a red arrow (which was a key).  Written out was, “The Key of Righteousness”.  In the dream, I retrieved a message from my library titled, “The Key of Righteousness”.

And so beloved, let us remember that harvest-time is threshing-time.  Think it not strange concerning the fiery trials which is to try you…and let us not be discouraged when we see all the devastation that is taking place, and will yet take place in the political, the economic, and the religious world.  For all must be crushed in pieces in this day when God is shaking, “not the earth only, but also the heaven…”  And let us remember that He is doing this for His own glory, and for your sake and mine.  We have “a kingdom which cannot be shaken”; and we must be loosed from the entanglements of this present world system.  God has been very patient with us as He prepared our hearts, planted the good seed, weeded the soil, watered it with the showers of heaven, and then sent the sunshine to dry up the stalk and to mature the fruit.  “Be ye also patient; establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord draws near.” (James 5:8)

“…When Jesus declared so emphatically, “I am the Truth.”  He there and then completely demolished the idea the truth has anything in common with creeds and doctrines and theories about God and spiritual things.”  I was so blessed by Mike Huckabee’s comments on certain sects of the Methodist Church embracing the Muslims to come into their churches and practice Islam.  He made it clear that we are Christians.  We believe there is only one God: the trinity, Father, Son and Holy Ghost.  Why would we invite those into our midst to preach “another gospel”?

“And not only so, for if Christ is Truth, then Truth comes to us in garments of humility and meekness and will find little acceptance at the hands of the learned or religious.  It is strange but true that those who lead the masses in the religious realm are those who cast the Truth aside when He knocks at their door and asks for admission.  There is only one answer to this strange state of affairs, and it is this: Religious success has developed into pride of heart,  and with pride has come that Laodicean spirit so prevalent in evangelical circles today; “I am rich and increased with goods, and have need of nothing…” (Rev. 3:17).  Instead of hungering and thirsting after God and righteousness, we find on every hand the boastful claims of various sects as to how much Truth they have, and how much knowledge and understanding of the Scriptures.  Perhaps it is needless to say that such boastful claims merely establish their Laodicean condition, and hinder them from taking their place as overcomers on the throne of Christ. (G.W.)

The Lord is calling the church to “come up higher”.  It is only as we go higher in the Spirit that we will be able to see and hear what the Holy Spirit is saying to the churches.

  Rev. 3:21-22:  He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with me on my throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.  He, who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

David was given the key to the throne.  Jesus, the Greater David, has the Key of David.  He is offering to us the church the Key of ruling and reigning with Him. 

3:15: “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I would that you were cold or hot.  So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth.  Because you say, “I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,” and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked.  I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire, that you may become rich, and white garments, that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed, and eye salve to anoint your eyes, that you may see.”

Truly the Lord has prepared great and mighty things for His people; things which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, and which has not entered into the heart of man. (1 Cor. 2:9)  If the Lord’s true children would only believe this one Scripture with all their hearts, how greatly it would help to release the riches of Heaven, and unlock the flood-gates of Glory!  We know, of course, that Christians everywhere loudly profess to believe this, as well as the rest of the Bible; but in actuality they do not believe it.  Yes, they will acknowledge that God has some great and mighty things prepared for us when we get to Heaven, but Paul declares in the following verse that these unseen, unheard-of, and unthought-of things are “revealed…by the Spirit; and not by way of rapture or death.

1. Cor. 2:10:  “For to us God revealed them through the Spirit, for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God.”

Let us, therefore, give all diligence to enter into the realm of the Spirit, which realm constitutes the real heritage of the saints.  Truly the heritage is ours for the possessing.  And if no man from the ascension of Christ until now has entered in to it, it still does not make any difference.  The fact remains, it is ours for conquest if we can believe for it and receive it.  The universal Church has rejected the possibility of possessing it; that is true; but the history of the Church is by no means the pattern of spiritual attainment. 

Paul did not fully apprehend it either, but he beheld the glory of it.  As prophets, we can see it, and we can declare it through Jesus to the Glory and Praise of God.

The entering in is the “rest of the Lord”. It is living, moving and having our being in the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in Heaven.  The bible is the story of the remnant.  Rarely, if ever, is the story of a majority hearing “God’s voice”.   Most often it is a story of a few individuals who are hearing what the Spirit is saying to the churches.

The church still is look for the recognition of the Oscar red carpet.  The Lord was born in a stable and crucified on a wooden cross.  That should speak volumes.

The first generation that came out of Egypt by Moses failed to enter in because of unbelief, and God decreed that they would die in the wilderness.  However, He had already sworn that Abraham’s seed would possess the land, and therefore he raised up a new generation who would go in and possess what their fathers saw but refused to appropriate.  And they did.  The Lord’s purposes cannot miscarry.  He will have a people who shall believe their God and possess their possessions.  The early generation of spirit-filled people at the turn of the century took their journey from the blighting wilderness of denominationalism and encamped at the Kadesh-Barnea on the doorstep of Canaan---but they too failed to enter in because of unbelief.  Some saw the vision; the majority did not; and they perished and are still perishing in the wilderness. 

The Lord brought some in.  In 1989, Stanley Rankin gave me a word that I had entered the rest of the Lord and I would never go out of it.  I absolutely knew that I had entered another spiritual realm, but I had not placed an identity to it.  I don’t believe I have ever walked out of that place.  If I did, I quickly knew my way back into it.  Once you have entered in, you will always know how to find that secret place.

Many who were called out from among the denominations, called apart into a new fellowship in the Spirit and who were baptized with the Holy Ghost---they failed to enter into the land.  Many denounced those who exhorted the people to do so---and turned back into the wilderness like their predecessors in Israel. 

A new generation is coming forth.  If this new generation withdraws from the promises in the face of violent opposition, it too will perish in the wilderness, and God will wait for still another generation to take the land.  Because, “Some must enter therein…”  His Word has declared it, and it must come to pass.

We feel confident, however, that this time God’s people will not fail; that in this great hour God Himself will intervene in wonderful sovereignty on behalf of those who see the vision, and will take them through to complete and glorious victory.

I was ministering to a friend while I was in Baton Rouge.  The Lord gave me a word for her written out in a dream.  The Word was, “That which is in Heaven, will be Heavenly on earth.”   People of God that Word speaks volumes to the church.

The powers of heaven are being shaken, according to the prophetic word.  Great and momentous spiritual battles are being fought and won in heavenly places.  Spiritual hosts of wickedness are beginning to feel the impact of the saints who are pressing in by the Spirit and beginning to possess their possessions in “the heavenlies.”  And above all, The saints of God are receiving gifts of the Holy Spirit, the gifts are developing into ministries of the Spirit---and these ministries constitute God’s only method “for perfecting the saints, for the work of the ministry, for edifying of the Body of Christ; till we all come into the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” (Eph. 4: 12, 13)

I have a confidence that the “time has come”.  I could not see a time on the watch.  I only saw the watch.  I believe for the sons of God, that the eternal purposes of God in the Church are about to be revealed.  I have told you that like Anna, this is the vision for this church and my belief as we gather around this altar that my eyes will see the Glory of God cover the whole earth in my life time.

We conquer by yielding.  We receive by giving.  We overcome by being defeated and we live by dying.  There is no other way except the way of the Cross.  The Cross of Christ stands out on the horizons of time and eternity not only as the means of pardon from sin and the gateway to Eternal Life---but as the one and only principle of Christian conduct.  “if a man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.  For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.” (Mt. 16: 24, 25).  

Ro. 4:3:  “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness…Vs 13 “for the promise to Abraham or to his descendants that he would be heir of the world was not through the Law, but through the righteousness of faith.”

Heb. 10:38:  “My righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back my soul has no pleasure in him.”

Eph. 6:14:  “Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth and having put on the breastplate of righteousness.”

Preached by:  Pastor Carolyn Sissom

Eastgate Ministries, Inc.

www.eastgateministries.com