Grain, Wine and Oil

In the 23rd Psalm in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, the writer describes God as Protector and Provider. The text, beloved by Jews and Christians alike, has often been set into music. For Christians, the image of God as a shepherd evokes connections not only with David but with Jesus, described as "the Good Shepherd" in the Gospel of John.

Recently I discovered the power pack from God in the 5th verse of this beautiful Psalm. This verse mentions of the Lord’s Table is Holy Communion and the oil that the Lord uses to anoint us is olive oil. These elements of the Holy Communion and the anointing oil can freely be found in the Old Testament as grain, wine and oil. However, these elements carry significant symbolic values of the sufferings of Jesus and these are the pointers that carry biblical value in pointing the believers to the Finished Work of Christ at the cross.

Psalm 23:5 ~ You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.

What a powerful verse this is. A resurrected life of abundant life is what the Lord had promised in John 10:10b. Psalm 23 is therefore the secret to divine granted abundant life in a Shepherd and sheep relationship.

Holy Communion and anointing oil are like medicine. These elements help us to believe the finished work of Christ progressively. We have this divine provision from our Lord, and we can eat and drink towards our health and prosperity that He had restored for us. We are to take good pleasure to look first to Communion and anointing oil before any other conventional provisions.

Grain – The Lord is our Bread and He offered His broken body to us as bread from heaven. In our nature world, the way we get bread from grain is to process it by sifting it, punching the dough and baking it at high temperature in an oven. These gestures are symbolic of the punishment Jesus Christ took on our behalf. During the process of making bread, the punching of dough has to be complete in term of force and time and Jesus, the way He sustained the sufferings were complete. He had totally absorbed all our punishments on His body.

Wine – The ways we get wine is to crush the grape fruit, trodden it and leave the fruit juice to be fermented. The crushing and troddening of these grape fruit also point to the suffering of Jesus and the colour of the wine has a symbolic value of Jesus’ precious blood.

Oil - The way we get oil is by crushing the olives. Jesus was crushed so that we can be healed. Crushing the olive fruit removes the bitterness and produces the oil. In the circular world, there are 3 pressings in the extraction of olive oil:-

The oil from the ‘first’ press is used for lighting the Holy Place. In substantial to Paul’s revelation, this first press serves to light us, as our body is the temple of God! In Gethsemane, it was the darkest era of darkness and distress, and Jesus was pressed until His sweat was mixed with blood, so that we may have light to see His truth spiritually.

The oil from the ’second’ press is used for medicine. Jesus was pressed the second time when He was scourged 39 times by the Romans soldiers so that by His stripes, we are healed!

The oil from the ‘third’ press is used for making soap. When Jesus was nailed at the Cross, His shed blood washed our sins away eternally!

All traditions in Christianity feature this Psalm prominently in funeral services. Hey, do we really need abundant life when we have passed on to be with Jesus? I think we need this Psalm more while we are still in the sheep pen (graceyard) instead of in the graveyard!

Wow... I want my cup to overflow in this graceyard! What do you say?

Religious Obligations

I just love this comic strip from Mick Mooney... Though we may live in different part of the world, from a different social background, brought up from a different culture..., it seems that we are walking through the same Christian path...

I'm convinced that this spiritual influence is from the same religious spirit, and this is happening in different parts of the Body of Christ! Therefore, if we are not of GRACE, we are of the work..., if we are not of FAITH, we are of the Law..., if we are not of the SPIRIT, we are of the flesh...!

If we are not being enlightened in GRACE and established in Jesus' RIGHTEOUSNESS, we will never understand what kind of message Mick is trying to bring across...

By Mick Mooney of Searching for Grace

Religious Obligations
By mick on September 25th, 2009

Pastor Moses often talks about how Christianity is not a religion, but John is a little confused. It seems Pastor Moses likes to the idea of Christianity not being a religion, but he’s still preaching about religious obligations every week?

An Epistle of Christ

Our Christian life is a life of rest, a total rest in Christ, for He had finished everything that God could think of at the Cross two thousand years ago. A divine exchange of life between God and men had taken place at the Cross where the sinful and hopeless life of men had been totally absorbed by Jesus and His sinless, anointed life had been freely lavished into this world. Whosoever believes in Him shall have this new life eternally. This is what Jesus had promised before the Cross. He said He came to give us life, a life more abundantly and He gave it all through the Cross.

As His believers, what can we contribute in living out this abundant life? Can a bankrupt man trying to live out this abundant life? Is there any instruction from the Lord that we can follow so that we can live out this abundant life?

Certainly cannot, how can a bankrupt man live out this abundant life? Jesus did not say He came to teach us how to live but He came to give us this abundant life. This abundant life is a spirit life. He caused us to born again in the spirit as a new creation, a creation that never existed during the six days of His majestic creation work.

We, as a new creation, we just need to believe that we are righteous simply because of the gift of the righteousness that Christ died to give us. Our soul will be at rest when we establish ourselves in Christ's righteousness. This rest will enable the Holy Spirit to write the law in our heart and He will cause us to live out the abundant life through us.

Hebrews 10:17 then He adds, "THEIR SINS AND THEIR LAWLESS DEEDS I WILL REMEMBER NO MORE."
Hebrews 10:16 "THIS IS THE COVENANT THAT I WILL MAKE WITH THEM AFTER THOSE DAYS, SAYS THE LORD: I WILL PUT MY LAWS INTO THEIR HEARTS, AND IN THEIR MINDS I WILL WRITE THEM,"

The best kind of Christian life to live is the life that we live out without our conscious of how we are going to live it. If we live our life conscious of how we are going to live, we ended up being religious and the outcome is self righteousness.

Recently, we came to understand of this Spirit led life happening in our midst. My wife, Penny had gone through a tough time in her office for the past two months due to the numerous closing of tender. Her working life then was quite stressful. After the closing of all these tenders, their office life was back to normal and a colleague who is quite new in the company, came to her and asked her whether she could know more about her God. Hey, this colleague of hers wanted to know more about Jesus…! Penny was surprised by her approach and introduced Jesus to her.

Though Penny does not know as much scriptures as I do, she does not share with people as much as I do, she does not pray as much as I do and she does not speak in tongue as much as I do, the Lord told me that she believes He is a good God. She trusts in His grace, the unearned and unmerited favour of God. She believes she is righteous because of what Jesus had done for her at the Cross. She believes and is resting His finished work.

Abundant life is not what we can do but what we believe and how we rest in our Lord. Just by believing and trusting in Jesus' goodness, He can write a beautiful epistle in our life.

2 Corinthians 3:1-3 (The Message)
Does it sound like we're patting ourselves on the back, insisting on our credentials, asserting our authority? Well, we're not. Neither do we need letters of endorsement, either to you or from you. You yourselves are all the endorsement we need. Your very lives are a letter that anyone can read by just looking at you. Christ himself wrote it—not with ink, but with God's living Spirit; not chiseled into stone, but carved into human lives—and we publish it.

Though I felt inferior after the Lord had revealed this truth to me, but He reaffirmed me by saying, "Son, you two are in one...!" Man..., this is the kind of righteous life that we should be living! An effortless life that lived through by the Holy Spirit. Indeed, we are an epistle of Christ, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart!

We are where we are now, because of the kind of message we have listened before. We will be who we are in the future, because of the message we are listening to now...

Joseph Prince On DayStar

Pastor Joseph Prince is on Daystar, a Christian Television Network in Bedford, Taxes, magnifying Jesus' abundant provision of grace and the gift of righteousness.

Pastor Joseph Prince on Dayster

Only those who really appreciate grace, respect the Law...

Building The Kingdom

By Mick Mooney of Searching For Grace

I Know you Pastor Moses, next is fund raising!!!

The Kingdom Is Within Us
By mick on August 26th 2009


Luke 17:20-21
Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is within you.

Church Orientation

Again, I can't help myself but to post this comic strip from Mick Mooney of Searching For Grace because I was from that sort of environment with the same obligations portrayed by Mick. I was wondering and wandering in that religious wilderness for 7 years, 7 perfect years! Wow... praise God it's 7 years not 40 years! Gosh... What a life...!

By Mick Mooney of Searching For Grace

Church Orientation
By mick on July 22nd, 2009

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28)

You have to love the good news (Gospel of Grace) of Jesus Christ. Through His perfect finished work upon the cross, we now enjoy the blessings of a relationship with God that does not depend on our religious performance, but upon His glorious grace!!

Unfortunately Pastor Moses (one of the characters in my comic strip) seems to have missed that point!

Wisdom Of The World

By Mick Mooney of Searching For Grace

Wisdom Of The World
By mick on September 7th, 2009

The more you love Christ, the more you love His church – that is His people. I love the church, I really do. I had somewhat of a tough time uploading this comic, because I know it will probably offend some people I love and care for.

So then why did I upload it you might ask. Good question. I’m doing it for the very reason that I love the church. I just want Brothers and Sisters in Christ stop for a few minutes, and think about what is going on. God calls the wisdom of the world ‘foolishness’, so why are we using it for our model of church organization and growth?

Until we stop to think, and actually give ourselves the permission to think about such questions, we can never learn from the Holy Spirit his way of Church organization and growth. It won’t look like the world’s idea of wisdom, it won’t be founded on worldly principles, rules and laws. It won’t look anything like a worldly corporate business model, but it will work, I’m sure it will.

God created the entire universe by His Spirit. He holds the whole universe together by His Spirit. With the same Spirit He can build, unite and grow His people (that is the church), but we have to be willing to let Him do it. If we keep trying to hold the church together by our amazing organizational skills, we’ll never experience the church being held together by God’s Spirit (that is by love, instead of structure).

Let’s all come to our Father as He desires, like children, and ask Him for advice about this whole topic. He will guide us into all truth, and He will help us as we continue searching for grace.

Blue skies,

Mick

Fruitful Tart

Today is Sunday, a beautiful Sunday! We wish to bless you all with this fruit tart overflowing with varieties of fresh fruit. May your week ahead be fruitful with His favor shining upon you.

Ingredients for tart crust:

250g flour
10g milk powder
70g caster sugar
170g butter
40g beaten egg

Ingredients for custard:

100g instant custard
700ml cold milk
varieties of fresh fruit

1. To make tart crust, combine flour, milk powder and caster sugar. Rub in butter until mixture resemble bread crumbs. Add in beaten egg, knead to forms dough.

2. Wrap the dough with plastic wrap, refrigerate for half an hour until ready to use.

3. Roll out enough of dough, place into mould.

4. Touch some flour on both thumbs, Press the dough. Tim off the edge.

5. Bake tart crust in oven @ 180 degree for twenty minutes.

6. Dress tart crust with instant custard and top with varieties of fresh fruit.

The No. 5 Jersey

In my early Christian life, I was always being taught to put Jesus No. 1 in my life. Under that sort of environment, I could only understand the life of Jesus when He was on earth serving His people and I have no idea of how His resurrection life is like. Nevertheless, the grace message has done a perfect job in bringing revival to my understanding of who the resurrected Jesus is.

After years of sitting under grace based and Jesus conscious ministry, I have totally forgotten about the idea of putting Jesus No. 1 in my life. From the comment given by my Pastor in my previous post (Do We Have To...?), his simple comment inspired me with a new insight on the rules of a football player in a football match.

I love to watch English Premier League and I know a bit of English football through the computer game called FIFA Manager. I am not going to tell you my favorite team because that is not important here… but I chose a particular team because they were computed to be rich and it was easy for me to buy good players and built my strong team. Anyway, my insight here is how we are going to position our players!


When we put Jesus No. 1 in our life, we are actually asking Jesus to wear the No. 1 jersey, and He is our Goalkeeper. Though we have the desire to put Him No. 1, we are actually restricted His movement within our own penalty box taking cares of all the penalties and free kicks. (The truth is, He had already taken care of all our penalties of sin and the free kicks because of our nonsense). Though we could never lose the match then, we have restricted Him in the box and we have to do all the defending and attacking ourselves. Mind you, that kind of match is tough and the score is hard to come… That is actually the scenario of my early Christian life when I put Jesus No. 1 in my life!

When we put Jesus to wear the No. 5 jersey, He is no more our Goalkeeper but our Midfielder, as He is now, always in the midst of us! (The penalties of our sins and the nonsense of our free kicks had all been exhausted by His body!) He is now no more restricted by the penalty box and He defends and attacks from box to box. He is the best defensive Midfielder as well as the best attacking Midfielder we can ever find. We can be assured that no one can go through His defense and we can rest assure that He can create the best chances up front for us to score. Whenever we miss in the defense, He will be there in time to clear the danger and whenever we score at the up front, He hugs us and we celebrate the goal together, as He credits the glory to us! This is the beautiful scenario when we don't let Him wear the No. 1 jersey but the No. 5 jersey... This is the beautiful fruit of a grace based, Jesus conscious Ministry.

That is why we can never put Jesus No. 1 in our life for we have been crucified with Christ and we no longer live, but Christ lives in us. The life we live in the body, we live by faith in the Son of God, who loved us and gave himself for us. For we are dead, and our life are now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, appears, then we also will appear with him in glory. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. And if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in us, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to our mortal bodies through His Spirit, who lives in us and Christ in us, the hope of glory.

Wow… What an inspiration! Who say Christian cannot watch English Premier League?

Do We Have To...?

Do we have to put Jesus No.1 in our life? Hmmm... Interesting question. What is your opinion?