APOSTLES ARE MADE A SPECTACLE
“APOSTLES ARE MADE A SPECTACLE
Unto the World, to Angels and to Men”
(1 Cor. 4: 9-13)
Sunday, October 14, 2012, the Year of Our Lord
Pastor Carolyn Sissom
This Sunday we are having our regularly scheduled services at Celebrate Life Church, 14017 Huffmeister Road, Cypress, TX under the grace and graciousness of Apostle Samson and Elgin Rajkumar.
Last week we had the blessing of Apostle Sharon Billins attend our Sunday morning service. Apostle Billins was in Houston as a guest speaker at the 11th Annual Prophetic and Apostolic Gathering.
Even though our church budget could not support another guest minister for October, she and Pat came to our services to encourage and undergird our church fellowship during this time of the move and transition of our church building.
So for two consecutive weeks, we had two different visiting Apostles encouraging and holding up my arms and the arms of this congregation. Thank you very much, but that is all the accolades I can handle in one month.
The Holy Spirit revealed to Apostle Billins that our church congregation is an Apostolic Company. I received a prophetic interpretation of the message delivered in tongues that the Lord was making a “show” or “spectacle” of our church.
Spectacle – “theatron”: “a theatre, a place in which games and dramatic spectacles are exhibited, and public assemblies held (for the Greeks used the theatre also as a forum); a public show—a man who is exhibited to be gazed at and made sport of.
1 Corinthians 4:9: “I think that God has set forth us the apostles last, as it were appointed to death, for we are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men.”
In Hebrews 10:33, the Greek term for Hebrew believers who were made a spectacle is theatrize. In both of these passages the emphasis is on how the persecutions of believers make them a show or a theater of faith to the world and to the angels.
Hebrews 10:33: “While you were made a gazing stock both by reproaches and afflictions; and partly while you became companions to them that were so used.”
We have this comfort that someone whether man or angels are watching us and the Lord is using us as a testimony to the spectators.
The Old and New Testaments are filled with dramatic performers. Today we would consider the drama of the Old Testament prophets as street theater. Ezekiel performs the overcoming siege of Jerusalem with a model of the city and by acting out the citizens future deprivations. (Ez. 4-5:12).
Hosea’s marriage to Gomer, Isaiah’s three years of nakedness representing the future of Egypt (Is. 10: 1-6) and Agabus’s binding of himself to represent Paul’s subjugation (Acts 21:11). These are all symbolic prophetic performances. Jeremiah was the master of such theater. For those of you who may think we are being “pressed beyond measure”, it could be worse.
I wait until I receive a commission. I know when I got the commission for this drama. “Carolyn do you love me as much as you loved Don when you left everything and followed him?” It was time to buckle up the seat belts for a turbulent ride.
Job, Song of Songs, the Psalms, and the Book of Mark are all a theater of God’s dealings with Israel and mankind.
One can watch what is going on in Israel and it will always be a prophetic theater of the Lord’s dealings with mankind.
The Book of Revelation is the greatest drama every written. Of course, it was not conceived in the mind of man, but revealed dramatically by the Holy Spirit to John.
The prophetic actions are as anointed as their prophetic words.
In 1 Cor. 4, Paul is dealing with the arrogance and pride of the Corinthian church. It does not take a spiritual giant to discern that the universal church of the 21st century is very much like the church in Corinth.
1 Cor. 4: 7-8: “What makes you to differ from another? What have you that you did not receive? Now if you did receive it, why do you glory, as if you had not received it? Now you are full. Now you are rich. You have reigned as kings without us; and I would to God you did reign, that we also might reign with you.”
We at Eastgate Ministries have come through, and still going through a great trial of our faith. It is only by faith that we will be able to triumph in Christ. Our triumph will be our love for one another, our love for those who have betrayed us and those who are even now praying for our demise. Because of this great trial, our enemies will judge us. Mostly it will be my enemies whoever “they” are. I have no issues or hardness of heart toward any. “Being reviled we bless, being persecuted, we suffer it.”
This peace of mind is a great victory. I don’t have any issues with any who have received Jesus as their Lord and Savior and are saved by the same precious Blood and like precious faith through which we have all been redeemed by Grace.
Paul was in that place when he told the Corinthians not to even go to law before the unjust if they had a matter against another. I have never gone to law against anyone even if they treated me unjustly. It is not because I am still a “wimp”. I live in so much peace and walk so closely to the Lord that I trust the Lord to be my advocate to the righteous judge. I trust He will vindicate me to the unjust and make recompense either by the one who wronged me or through another means. I am content to allow the Lord to fight my battles. All I have to do is love and obey.
That does not mean that we are to be a door mat and allow people to walk all over us. As Christians we are not victims, but victorious.
Isaiah 51:22-23: “Thus says the Lord who pleads the cause of his people. Behold I have taken out of your hand the cup of trembling, even the dregs of the cup of my fury; you shall not drink it again. I will put it into the hand of them that afflict you; which has said to your soul, bow down, that we may go over and you have laid your body as the ground and as the street to them that went over.”
The words of this chapter are designed chiefly to comfort the Jews in their exile. There is to be the certain prospect of speedy deliverance and the punishment of the enemy.
Chapters 51 and 52 deal with Zion’s redemption and restoration. We see God’s people released (the principle of the Year of Jubilee). God urges His people to draw comfort from past history and to look forward to a great Presence of His Glory. It is time to shake off grief and lethargy. There is good news. God is about to escort His people back to their inheritance.
I live only in the realm of the Good News. The Lord has a grace on my life that only operates in the positive. The negatives are only stepping stones for me to go to higher ground. Give me such courage that I can scale the hardest peaks with Christ’s help and transform every stumbling block into a stepping stone.
Courage is the garment of the Overcomer, a strong inner resolution to go forward in spite of obstacles and circumstances. Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly. It is only that which we do willingly and with a joyful heart that is a blessing to the Lord. If we begrudge, feel put-upon or have strings attached to our giving, it would be more pleasing to the Lord to not give or not serve, than to give with the wrong attitude. At least you would be honest with the Lord.
In Isa. 51: 1-8, is a call to courage in which the Israelites are charged to look back to Abraham and rejoice in the presence of God in their midst. Next is a cry of courage in which they first look up to the arm of the Lord, and then look back and remember how He has delivered, and finally, look on in the assurance that He will deliver.
In Isa. 51:12-16 is a great message of comfort. First of all fear is rebuked as due to forgetfulness of Jehovah, and finally, Jehovah is pledged by His might to succor and establish His people.
51: 17-23: God calls on Jerusalem to awake because the end of her suffering is approaching.
I had a dream last week that we (our church) were marching in a parade down an avenue lined with people. It was a march of triumph.
In the time of the New Testament, the triumphal procession was developed by the Romans to celebrate the occasion of a major victory. The victorious general or ruler in ceremonial dress would drive his captives---usually those of highest status---and the spoils of war before him into Rome.
In 1 Cor. 2: 6-8, Paul alludes to this story behind the scene of the victory of the Cross. The “rulers of this age” did not comprehend the mystery of the divine wisdom of the Cross, “for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory”. These rulers are spiritual, cosmic powers who are hostile and oblivious to the wisdom of God’s plan for the ages (Eph. 3:10), and so they have crucified the Lord of Glory.
This was their monumental folly, for they did not understand that God’s strategy of triumph was a deeply paradoxical one and utterly contradictory to the strategies of this age. Colossians 1:15 alludes to the circumstances of the defeat of these powers. The powers unleashed their assault on Christ in a climatic expression of the nations attacking Zion, and on the cross they destroyed his “body of flesh” (Col. 2:11).
Christ absorbed and exhausted their fury in his death, with his vindication in the resurrection, and so he triumphed over the powers and principalities. On the cross Christ marched them in his own triumphal procession, publicly displaying their defeat and exposing them to shame.
The paradox of the crucifixion is thus placed in its strongest light---triumph in helplessness and glory in shame. “The convict’s gibbet is the victor’s car.”
The metaphor of victory is, at its heart, not simply the victory of a superior power, but the triumph of God’s holy, righteous and creative love over the destructive forces of evil, the reclaiming of a creation gone astray.
Paul elsewhere makes plain that the cross is not the last chapter in the warfare against the powers of this age. The enemy is still hostile, and active, posing a threat to the church (Eph. 6: 10-, 18).
In 1 Cor. 2:14, Paul speaks of himself as being led in the triumphal procession of Christ. Paul is not portraying himself as one of the high-ranking officers in Christ’s army, but a former enemy and prosecutor of Christ, who has been conquered and is now marching as a captive, constantly being led to his death (2 Cor. 4:10).
By this metaphor he sets forth the paradox of his apostolic ministry: in his weakness and suffering the power of the triumphant Christ is made manifest (2 Cor. 12:10).
The triumph of God in Christ is not the triumph of brute force, as if to assert a cosmic principle of “might is right”. It is a triumph of grace in which divine love goes forth in sacrifice.
The Bible describes the journey of life as a battle, a pilgrimage and a race. Whichever metaphor fits your today, the necessity of finishing is all the same. For if life is a journey, it must be completed; if life is a battle, it must be finished. If life is a pilgrimage, it must be concluded. If life is a race, it must be won.
There is no defeat in Jesus!!!
“We shall steer safely through every storm, as long as our heart is right, our intentions fervent, our courage steadfast, and our trust fixed on God.” (St. Francis De Sales)
To the “naysayers”: “Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.” (Booker T. Washington)
“Ah, great it is to believe the dream
As we stand in youth by the starry stream;
But a greater thing is to fight life through,
And say at the end, “the dream is true!”
(Edwin Markham)
Carolyn Sissom, Pastor
Eastgate Ministries, Inc.
Scripture from K.J.V; I entered into the labors of Dictionary of Biblical Imagery; Edwin Markham; Booker T. Washington; St. Francis De Sales; Principles of Present Truth from Isaiah by Kelly Varner. Comments, conclusions, dreams and Words of Wisdom were given to me by unction of the Holy Spirit and not meant to reflect the views of those from whom I entered into their labors.