By Odon Bulamba (18 April 2003)
Exodus 12:3-13
Here God compared those people and they had to comply with His rules, they were all told to take the blood and put it on the doorposts. If you didn’t do it then you would sacrifice your first-born. God knew the Israelites but He wanted them to respect His rules. I think that God knew every single house, but He wanted to see how obedient they were, He wanted the Israelites to work and put laziness aside. How will you find the blood of a lamb if you haven’t worked first to find a lamb? How will you find the blood of a lamb if you haven’t worked to find the knife first? And you as Christians, do you have Jesus’ blood in your life? What kind of knife did you use? The Bible says in the book of Hebrews, the Word of God is like a double-edged sword. If you need to know Jesus Christ in your life then accept that this Word will cut you and the blood will live in you.
When the angel came, he didn’t choose the name of Michael or Saeeda, the only thing He looked at was the blood. And for us, one day when Jesus will be back the only thing that God will ask us is if the Holy Spirit is in us, those who are sealed by the Spirit will be met in the air and those who are not sealed by the Spirit will stay here.
I knew a pilot who was very strong, he said that when Jesus returns I will go to the airport and take a plane to meet Him, because there will be a big crowd I will try to find someone and jump on him and hold him tight and then my plane will crash. But for how long will you hold onto someone, you will be tired if you stay like this in the air. This man said what can I do then? I said, it doesn’t cost you anything, just change your life and give it to Jesus, that’s all.
Many Christians today forget that day, they don’t even check to see if they have wings to fly, they don’t even check to see if they are ready to go and meet Jesus, everyone of us must find this courage, always wear your belt with you. The Bible says that the belt represents the Gospel and the Word of God, which means the truth, we are called to carry the belt of truth, many people wear the belt of arguments, the belt of disorder, the belt of pride or curse and other things, but we are called to wear a belt of truth. Jesus said, ‘I am the way the truth and the life’, so if you have Jesus Christ you have the truth and you have the way and you’ll have life also.
Let’s read John 13:34 a new commandment I give to you, even as I have loved you that you also will love one another.
It’s not about loving my sister because she’s my sister; it’s not about loving my husband because he’s my husband. My God talks to us about a divine love and a divine love is a perfect love, we are called to love one another. If the Israelites didn’t love one another they wouldn’t have travelled together. Love is a great secret in Christian life.
1 Cor 11:27-31 Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep. But if we judged ourselves, we would not come under judgement.
This is the message, a lot of people get together the way that the Israelites got together around the Lord’s table, they are ready to open their Bible to take the bread but they don’t examine themselves, they don’t take time to think who am I, they don’t take time to think about what they are doing, and as a consequence they fall sick. There are two kinds of sickness, one is physical and one is spiritual. Sometimes they even find death, whether it’s physical death or spiritual death. So are we really ready to come to the Lord’s table? What is this Lord’s table? We must meditate on it, what is the Lord’s table? And who are called to come to this table, what does sickness mean, what does death mean and what does it mean to examine yourself?
Moses did what he had to do, because God helped him help the Israelites leave the place where they were, but at some stage Moses didn’t do anything, it was up to the conscious of everyone and up to everyone’s family to accept what God had asked them to do. Moses gave them the message, (I give you the message to be free), so Pharaoh let them go and they were free forever, but God also did something, He said to the Israelites you need freedom, I think that you should respect the rules that I give you and today Pharaoh will set you free. Many people on this earth, when the pastor talks to them they neglect it, when servants of God talk to them they don’t care about it.
On that day God didn’t come from heaven to talk to the Israelites, He used Moses. Whoever didn’t accept what Moses said and whoever doubted what he said would see death in his house the following day. As for us Christians let’s try to listen to what the servants of God are telling us, let’s try to respect the Gospel, if you doubt, try to check to know if what they are saying is true or not, but let’s respect the message because through man God speaks. This is how God works among man, it’s true that He reveals things to some people but we must be careful with the messages we are given.
The feast that the Israelites had, ended up with something very good on one side but on the other side it ended up with something very bad. Try to imagine there is a party and you go back home with swollen lips, if someone asks you what happened you’ll say someone punched me, so the party wasn’t good, but others go back home joyful, people ask them why are you happy? Because the party was really good. The Israelites had to finish the celebration with joy; they had to finish it with joy and honour. So how are we going to finish our feast on this earth?
On the earth we have joy, we eat whatever we want and we wear whatever we want and each person will say I’m to live because it’s a free gift. But how will this feast end, are you ready to finish this feast with joy or not? And if not, why don’t you think about it now, because when the angel of Lord will come some people will cry and others will laugh. When Jesus returns, some Christians will go and others will stay on earth. Those who are not serious will stay, the Bible says they will say, ‘Lord, I was your servant and I was this one’, but God will say, ‘I don’t know you, get out’. What a shame it will be on that day. Because you worked for God and did things for 10 or 20 years in your life but the master of your work says, I don’t know you.
So please take things seriously so that God will know you, if you are not recognised, woe to you. To be recognised, you must do something; for example here in New Zealand not everybody knows Chloe, if you put her on the road people will just say she’s a child, that’s all, but there are some famous people here, for instance if queen Elizabeth came to NZ I think everybody will know who she is. So Jesus also needs to recognise us, and to recognise us we need to make an effort. If a child is bright you’ll know it because of his work, and the teachers will recognise his name because they will know his work. As time goes the teacher might forget the names of the children but she’ll never forget the name of the bright child. On the other side the teacher will never forget the name of the child who is naughty, he will know that this one is trouble. It’s the same with Jesus, He recognises who belongs to Him and who doesn’t.
So please learn something from this Passover, freedom is there, redemption also. Moses did what he had to do and now it’s God’s time to do what He has to do. Boaz and Ruth also did what they had to do, Naomi also; it was complete freedom. I don’t know if you know what I mean but try to see a bit higher and you’ll understand.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
The Passover (Part I)
By Odon Bulamba (18 April 2003)
We are going to open our Bibles to Exodus 12:3-13. As we know when there is a feast, each person must get ready to go to the feast, especially when you are invited we are all proud of the invitation and we all get ready with our clothes. This is when we need a mirror to know who we are and what we look like, especially Mums when they are invited they always look at themselves in the mirror so there will be no mistake on their face or bodies. Although their husbands will say you look nice, the woman might think that the husband doesn’t see very well and their husband might have glasses and eyes but the wife will not trust the husband’s eyes. They will turn in front of the mirror to see themselves and they might change their make up two or three times.
Why? Because they want to make themselves attractive and the source of this, is the opportunity to go to the feast. If there was no feast, this woman might not even wear make-up or wear nice clothes. So once we are invited it’s up to us to decide what type of clothes we will wear. We know that with some feasts we have to wear a certain type of clothes as a uniform whether you like it or not. For a normal feast or party, you might wear what you like but for some special feasts you are compelled to wear a uniform and if you don’t wear it, you might not be accepted.
I remember a year ago when Pete and Ang got married; Michelle and Hayley had the same dress and colour and the four men wore the same thing. I was wondering if Lebon was marrying Ang, or was it Ken or Pete’s cousin because the four men wore the same clothes and it was not easy to know who was who. And on the other side we saw Ang and Zoe wearing wedding clothes and maybe people could think that Lebon had married Zoe because Lebon and Zoe were holding hands and they were two young children wearing wedding clothes, because that was an opportunity and a wedding feast.
Before God there are no small and big feasts; if it is a ceremony or feast everyone must wear the same clothes and you will never say this belongs to the oldest one and this belongs to the children because children and adults all need salvation and salvation doesn’t care about race or anything else. It’s just about accepting and receiving salvation.
So because it was a feast (Exodus 12) they had to get ready and they all had to do the same thing and God gave them a condition. You all must wear the same thing on your feet; you must all wear sandals and in your hand you must also have something. So those conditions were a must.
Maybe those people would think they were free but before God they were slaves and they had to accept everything God asked and if not, they would be punished. If someone wanted to do something different they would have seen later on the consequences of their actions.
God said, “take a lamb without defect” and if you took a lamb with a defect, for God automatically you would be put aside because you didn’t respect the rules. For instance, if God says, you are going to eat this meat with bitter herbs and you wanted to eat your meat with cabbage, for God you were put aside. To mean that when you are called free in the Lord, we are not free in our bodies but we are free in our spirits and the freedom for a Christian is humility. Humility is a branch of love as you know.
So the lamb was given to us and this is Jesus Christ and He is the unblemished lamb. Once you have killed the lamb, you must share the meat with the members of your family but if your family is too small, you must go and knock at the neighbour’s door and share the meat together. You who have Jesus Christ in your life, do you share this Jesus Christ with the members of your family? If yes, praise the Lord and if not, what are you waiting for. Maybe you will say, my family are still small, my children are still at an age they cannot understand the gospel. If this is the reason, ok but what about your neighbours, have you invited them to share your meal with you? If not what are you waiting for. This is the first condition that Jesus gave his disciples, go everywhere and evangelise His people. But before you go everywhere in the world, start with Jerusalem, preach first with your family members and after that go somewhere else.
They were taught the meat they were going to eat must be roasted. As you know the ladies who prepare the food, maybe you can help me understand what this means. So what happens when you put it in the oven? It will cook slowly but you will see that the size of your meat will shrink and the water that was in the meat will evaporate and maybe the blood will also come out and maybe the meat will become dry. This meat that you couldn’t eat before, is roasted and now you can eat it. Why can you now eat this meat? The heat has transformed this meat into something edible.
You can have Jesus Christ in your life and you can have received salvation in your life but you need the heat of the Spirit of God to understand what you are eating. Many Christians are saved and receive the Holy Spirit in their lives but they don’t let the Holy Spirit work inside of them. It’s like a mum who takes the meat and puts it in the oven and forgets to turn the oven on. What will happen to the meat? The meat can stay there for ten years and instead of having a nice smell, the smell will turn into something disgusting (rotten) and people will not get close to it. It’s like a Christian who receives the gospel and he doesn’t want the Holy Spirit to lead him. He’s there because he is a Christian but he doesn’t have this divine heat in him.
So the Israelites ate the roasted meat, not raw meat. They were told to eat this meat with bitter herbs. What are bitter herbs? Steve told me to eat the bitter herbs last time and when I ate them, my head shook. Everyone could show something on their face and I tried to joke with Amber and ask her if she wanted more and she said no. Why that? Because it was bitter and it didn’t taste nice.
When you preach the Word of God, sometimes it touches people. Many people when they are touched instead of feeling the bitterness deep in their heart they start criticising the preaching and judging the preacher and don’t accept the bitterness deep inside themselves.
Once Chloe had taken the herbs she took a glass of juice to change what is in her mouth and many Christians act like that. Because the gospel told them the truth, e.g. you smoker don’t smoke anymore, you thief don’t steal anymore, they feel touched deep in their heart and say, because you disturb me, let me drink alcohol so I can forget it all because if I can be a drunkard I can forget about it. Or maybe I can decide not to go to this church anymore because they always shock people. This is the truth on this earth and in the church of God. Many people want nice preachings that flatter them and always want to hear may God bless you and they always want to hear that they are children of God but if you talk to them about something that is wrong in their lives, they start to go away.
So our brothers ate the herbs and although the meat was very nice the bitter herbs were eaten with the meat and you couldn’t separate them. You can have Jesus Christ in your life but you must know that you will also go through hard situations and see things that will shock you but if you persevere you will be a winner.
Once they had finished eating this, God said something; you must wear clothes with a belt and you must wear sandals and a staff in your hand. Do you wear sandals? In the book of Ephesians it says that the sandals are the zeal. Are you zealous? If not what are you waiting for? I know that when Michelle wants to buy shoes, she will go to a shop and pay and try on all the shoes and makes a decision and once a decision is made she sacrifices her money and takes the shoes. If you are not zealous, why don’t you go to God’s shop to sacrifice your laziness and take some zeal? Sacrifice your time and go and pray, sacrifice your time and do something that will please God. The greatest thing that Christians lack today is the zeal.
What is the zeal for you? Do you know what this means? People use their time for things they feel are important. It can be your job; for example how many hours do you work a day? After that is the bed; how long do you sleep? You make an effort to sleep for eight hours and when the children disturb you, how do you feel. Angry. If someone plays music, or if the phone rings and you are asleep you will think, who can ring me. Some people even turn the phone off because it is the most important time in their life. When they go to work they work hard because they are zealous. Work is very important because you will get paid and if you haven’t worked you will not get paid.
God has also asked us to be zealous and his salary is not what you will receive at the end of the week but his wages will be at the end of everything. So when you work you must realise that someday you will be paid for that and He is counting your hours. He counts the hours you work for Him. Maybe His way of counting and our ways are different but the bible says our actions will follow us on that day. So you as Christians try to find some time for the Lord. It’s not just a little time but an important time in your life. When people eat for instance, they have food and people say in the name of Jesus and then they eat and other people don’t even pray to say thanks. When they sleep, “oh I’m tired, protect me in my sleep, in the name of Jesus Amen”. And that’s it, two minutes to pray to God but 20 minutes to chat around and only take one minute to pray to God and sometimes not at all, yet they have 20 hours to do whatever they like.
When they get ready to travel, they are really excited. Once we went camping with this family and I observed something. I went to Michael’s place and Michelle and Ang had prepared everything they wanted to take. I thought they are serious about it because everyone would prepare what they needed and everyone knew they would be leaving soon. We didn’t know exactly what time we would leave the house but we said maybe around 9 or 10 o clock. Everyone got ready for that time to the point that we didn’t forget our toothbrush.
And what about you with the Gospel, do you prepare your trip? Because soon we’ll go to heaven and meet our Lord, what luggage will you take with you, is it a luggage of sins? Do you have a luggage with a bank account, or with clothes? What luggage will you take with you? Many Christians have not thought what they can take with them on that day.
I remember when my dad died, he was buried in a very expensive coffin, he had really beautiful clothes on and that was it, apart from that there was nothing else. I thought that they could put his TV in the coffin with him, because at that time TV had great value in my country, I think he was the third person in the area to have a TV, so TV was worth a lot. So why didn’t he take the TV? Why didn’t they give him the money he had to be buried with? He was buried and his friends were the first ones to take some dirt and throw it on him, then his wife was called to do the same thing, “oh, my husband, you are leaving me, I’m alone”, but she also threw dirt on his coffin, why didn’t you go with your husband. No, this is not my trip, that’s his time. Which means that everyone will prepare their own trip. Marcia, you will never go with Steve, Odon will not go with his sister, every one of us will go alone, even if you are twins you will go alone.
We are going to open our Bibles to Exodus 12:3-13. As we know when there is a feast, each person must get ready to go to the feast, especially when you are invited we are all proud of the invitation and we all get ready with our clothes. This is when we need a mirror to know who we are and what we look like, especially Mums when they are invited they always look at themselves in the mirror so there will be no mistake on their face or bodies. Although their husbands will say you look nice, the woman might think that the husband doesn’t see very well and their husband might have glasses and eyes but the wife will not trust the husband’s eyes. They will turn in front of the mirror to see themselves and they might change their make up two or three times.
Why? Because they want to make themselves attractive and the source of this, is the opportunity to go to the feast. If there was no feast, this woman might not even wear make-up or wear nice clothes. So once we are invited it’s up to us to decide what type of clothes we will wear. We know that with some feasts we have to wear a certain type of clothes as a uniform whether you like it or not. For a normal feast or party, you might wear what you like but for some special feasts you are compelled to wear a uniform and if you don’t wear it, you might not be accepted.
I remember a year ago when Pete and Ang got married; Michelle and Hayley had the same dress and colour and the four men wore the same thing. I was wondering if Lebon was marrying Ang, or was it Ken or Pete’s cousin because the four men wore the same clothes and it was not easy to know who was who. And on the other side we saw Ang and Zoe wearing wedding clothes and maybe people could think that Lebon had married Zoe because Lebon and Zoe were holding hands and they were two young children wearing wedding clothes, because that was an opportunity and a wedding feast.
Before God there are no small and big feasts; if it is a ceremony or feast everyone must wear the same clothes and you will never say this belongs to the oldest one and this belongs to the children because children and adults all need salvation and salvation doesn’t care about race or anything else. It’s just about accepting and receiving salvation.
So because it was a feast (Exodus 12) they had to get ready and they all had to do the same thing and God gave them a condition. You all must wear the same thing on your feet; you must all wear sandals and in your hand you must also have something. So those conditions were a must.
Maybe those people would think they were free but before God they were slaves and they had to accept everything God asked and if not, they would be punished. If someone wanted to do something different they would have seen later on the consequences of their actions.
God said, “take a lamb without defect” and if you took a lamb with a defect, for God automatically you would be put aside because you didn’t respect the rules. For instance, if God says, you are going to eat this meat with bitter herbs and you wanted to eat your meat with cabbage, for God you were put aside. To mean that when you are called free in the Lord, we are not free in our bodies but we are free in our spirits and the freedom for a Christian is humility. Humility is a branch of love as you know.
So the lamb was given to us and this is Jesus Christ and He is the unblemished lamb. Once you have killed the lamb, you must share the meat with the members of your family but if your family is too small, you must go and knock at the neighbour’s door and share the meat together. You who have Jesus Christ in your life, do you share this Jesus Christ with the members of your family? If yes, praise the Lord and if not, what are you waiting for. Maybe you will say, my family are still small, my children are still at an age they cannot understand the gospel. If this is the reason, ok but what about your neighbours, have you invited them to share your meal with you? If not what are you waiting for. This is the first condition that Jesus gave his disciples, go everywhere and evangelise His people. But before you go everywhere in the world, start with Jerusalem, preach first with your family members and after that go somewhere else.
They were taught the meat they were going to eat must be roasted. As you know the ladies who prepare the food, maybe you can help me understand what this means. So what happens when you put it in the oven? It will cook slowly but you will see that the size of your meat will shrink and the water that was in the meat will evaporate and maybe the blood will also come out and maybe the meat will become dry. This meat that you couldn’t eat before, is roasted and now you can eat it. Why can you now eat this meat? The heat has transformed this meat into something edible.
You can have Jesus Christ in your life and you can have received salvation in your life but you need the heat of the Spirit of God to understand what you are eating. Many Christians are saved and receive the Holy Spirit in their lives but they don’t let the Holy Spirit work inside of them. It’s like a mum who takes the meat and puts it in the oven and forgets to turn the oven on. What will happen to the meat? The meat can stay there for ten years and instead of having a nice smell, the smell will turn into something disgusting (rotten) and people will not get close to it. It’s like a Christian who receives the gospel and he doesn’t want the Holy Spirit to lead him. He’s there because he is a Christian but he doesn’t have this divine heat in him.
So the Israelites ate the roasted meat, not raw meat. They were told to eat this meat with bitter herbs. What are bitter herbs? Steve told me to eat the bitter herbs last time and when I ate them, my head shook. Everyone could show something on their face and I tried to joke with Amber and ask her if she wanted more and she said no. Why that? Because it was bitter and it didn’t taste nice.
When you preach the Word of God, sometimes it touches people. Many people when they are touched instead of feeling the bitterness deep in their heart they start criticising the preaching and judging the preacher and don’t accept the bitterness deep inside themselves.
Once Chloe had taken the herbs she took a glass of juice to change what is in her mouth and many Christians act like that. Because the gospel told them the truth, e.g. you smoker don’t smoke anymore, you thief don’t steal anymore, they feel touched deep in their heart and say, because you disturb me, let me drink alcohol so I can forget it all because if I can be a drunkard I can forget about it. Or maybe I can decide not to go to this church anymore because they always shock people. This is the truth on this earth and in the church of God. Many people want nice preachings that flatter them and always want to hear may God bless you and they always want to hear that they are children of God but if you talk to them about something that is wrong in their lives, they start to go away.
So our brothers ate the herbs and although the meat was very nice the bitter herbs were eaten with the meat and you couldn’t separate them. You can have Jesus Christ in your life but you must know that you will also go through hard situations and see things that will shock you but if you persevere you will be a winner.
Once they had finished eating this, God said something; you must wear clothes with a belt and you must wear sandals and a staff in your hand. Do you wear sandals? In the book of Ephesians it says that the sandals are the zeal. Are you zealous? If not what are you waiting for? I know that when Michelle wants to buy shoes, she will go to a shop and pay and try on all the shoes and makes a decision and once a decision is made she sacrifices her money and takes the shoes. If you are not zealous, why don’t you go to God’s shop to sacrifice your laziness and take some zeal? Sacrifice your time and go and pray, sacrifice your time and do something that will please God. The greatest thing that Christians lack today is the zeal.
What is the zeal for you? Do you know what this means? People use their time for things they feel are important. It can be your job; for example how many hours do you work a day? After that is the bed; how long do you sleep? You make an effort to sleep for eight hours and when the children disturb you, how do you feel. Angry. If someone plays music, or if the phone rings and you are asleep you will think, who can ring me. Some people even turn the phone off because it is the most important time in their life. When they go to work they work hard because they are zealous. Work is very important because you will get paid and if you haven’t worked you will not get paid.
God has also asked us to be zealous and his salary is not what you will receive at the end of the week but his wages will be at the end of everything. So when you work you must realise that someday you will be paid for that and He is counting your hours. He counts the hours you work for Him. Maybe His way of counting and our ways are different but the bible says our actions will follow us on that day. So you as Christians try to find some time for the Lord. It’s not just a little time but an important time in your life. When people eat for instance, they have food and people say in the name of Jesus and then they eat and other people don’t even pray to say thanks. When they sleep, “oh I’m tired, protect me in my sleep, in the name of Jesus Amen”. And that’s it, two minutes to pray to God but 20 minutes to chat around and only take one minute to pray to God and sometimes not at all, yet they have 20 hours to do whatever they like.
When they get ready to travel, they are really excited. Once we went camping with this family and I observed something. I went to Michael’s place and Michelle and Ang had prepared everything they wanted to take. I thought they are serious about it because everyone would prepare what they needed and everyone knew they would be leaving soon. We didn’t know exactly what time we would leave the house but we said maybe around 9 or 10 o clock. Everyone got ready for that time to the point that we didn’t forget our toothbrush.
And what about you with the Gospel, do you prepare your trip? Because soon we’ll go to heaven and meet our Lord, what luggage will you take with you, is it a luggage of sins? Do you have a luggage with a bank account, or with clothes? What luggage will you take with you? Many Christians have not thought what they can take with them on that day.
I remember when my dad died, he was buried in a very expensive coffin, he had really beautiful clothes on and that was it, apart from that there was nothing else. I thought that they could put his TV in the coffin with him, because at that time TV had great value in my country, I think he was the third person in the area to have a TV, so TV was worth a lot. So why didn’t he take the TV? Why didn’t they give him the money he had to be buried with? He was buried and his friends were the first ones to take some dirt and throw it on him, then his wife was called to do the same thing, “oh, my husband, you are leaving me, I’m alone”, but she also threw dirt on his coffin, why didn’t you go with your husband. No, this is not my trip, that’s his time. Which means that everyone will prepare their own trip. Marcia, you will never go with Steve, Odon will not go with his sister, every one of us will go alone, even if you are twins you will go alone.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Building the True Church
By Odon Bulamba (summary only)
Psalm 133
How good and pleasant it is
when brothers live together in unity!
It is like precious oil poured on the head,
running down on the beard,
running down on Aaron's beard,
down upon the collar of his robes.
It is as if the dew of Hermon
were falling on Mount Zion.
For there the LORD bestows his blessing,
even life forevermore.
Here David was talking about living in unity between brothers and sisters and that it is not a materialistic unity to gain money but it is about Jesus.
John 17:23, whenever we are in unity, although we might be sinners, with repentance slowly we can become perfect. If you repent and you accept to forgive, people will see you are really perfect and although problems can be among you, you can continue in unity because of forgiveness. Usually people want to avoid problems with others and so keep a distance or break the relationship altogether but God is looking at us to see if there is unity and how can there be unity if we don’t forgive (Mark 11:25) or accept the mistakes we make?
How will you feel if God asks you to put oil on someone’s head or if someone wants to put it on your head? One day God will ask this and it’s a big command and whenever God chooses us, people will see things that are not normal and find that our ways are different from theirs. People will think we are crazy. You will easily forgive and forget and people will say, ‘no you can’t forgive and forget you must punish them and take them to court’.
It’s very pleasant to see people in unity and it always starts with being in unity with each other and then with God and then with the Word of God. How do we make unity? By knowing the needs of others (Mat 27) it is easy to understand and to forgive and to support or lead the person in the right way. Jesus broke the bread to share with others to bring unity and when we have something, why don’t we share it. When I have many pairs of shoes why don’t I share with someone who has none or when I understand the Bible, why don’t I share it with others?
If you want unity with someone you have to keep that relationship clean and how do you keep it clean? If you lose the habit of praying you will gain gossip and if you lose the habit of reading the Bible you will find information from the television and if you lose the habit of being with God, you will find satan to be your friend. Most people can only make physical unity but not spiritual unity (we can visit the sick but don’t pray for them).
To meet together as a church on Sunday is good but it requires us to be prepared as priests and to accept the anointment of God on us and then people will start to see the anointment flowing down. We need the Holy Spirit acting in our lives and we must be in unity. We must love our enemies and pray for them and then God will manifest Himself among us. Don’t neglect yourself, get ready and tell God to make you ready. We are priests of God so how will we look after that priesthood? We need unity and that unity will take us to a place where the world will be shaken.
Psalm 133
How good and pleasant it is
when brothers live together in unity!
It is like precious oil poured on the head,
running down on the beard,
running down on Aaron's beard,
down upon the collar of his robes.
It is as if the dew of Hermon
were falling on Mount Zion.
For there the LORD bestows his blessing,
even life forevermore.
Here David was talking about living in unity between brothers and sisters and that it is not a materialistic unity to gain money but it is about Jesus.
John 17:23, whenever we are in unity, although we might be sinners, with repentance slowly we can become perfect. If you repent and you accept to forgive, people will see you are really perfect and although problems can be among you, you can continue in unity because of forgiveness. Usually people want to avoid problems with others and so keep a distance or break the relationship altogether but God is looking at us to see if there is unity and how can there be unity if we don’t forgive (Mark 11:25) or accept the mistakes we make?
How will you feel if God asks you to put oil on someone’s head or if someone wants to put it on your head? One day God will ask this and it’s a big command and whenever God chooses us, people will see things that are not normal and find that our ways are different from theirs. People will think we are crazy. You will easily forgive and forget and people will say, ‘no you can’t forgive and forget you must punish them and take them to court’.
It’s very pleasant to see people in unity and it always starts with being in unity with each other and then with God and then with the Word of God. How do we make unity? By knowing the needs of others (Mat 27) it is easy to understand and to forgive and to support or lead the person in the right way. Jesus broke the bread to share with others to bring unity and when we have something, why don’t we share it. When I have many pairs of shoes why don’t I share with someone who has none or when I understand the Bible, why don’t I share it with others?
If you want unity with someone you have to keep that relationship clean and how do you keep it clean? If you lose the habit of praying you will gain gossip and if you lose the habit of reading the Bible you will find information from the television and if you lose the habit of being with God, you will find satan to be your friend. Most people can only make physical unity but not spiritual unity (we can visit the sick but don’t pray for them).
To meet together as a church on Sunday is good but it requires us to be prepared as priests and to accept the anointment of God on us and then people will start to see the anointment flowing down. We need the Holy Spirit acting in our lives and we must be in unity. We must love our enemies and pray for them and then God will manifest Himself among us. Don’t neglect yourself, get ready and tell God to make you ready. We are priests of God so how will we look after that priesthood? We need unity and that unity will take us to a place where the world will be shaken.
Monday, October 4, 2010
Jesus and the woman of Samaria (Part III)
By Odon Bulamba (20th June 2003)
JOHN 4
Jesus carried on with his discussion with this Samaritan woman and you will see that Jesus answered questions that the woman didn’t ask and the woman would answer questions that Jesus didn’t ask.
Jesus asked the woman for water and the woman said, ‘you don’t have a bucket’. ‘I ask for water to drink and you speak about a bucket’. Jesus said, ‘if you want water I’ll give you water.’ and so forth. Sometimes we have to expect confusion in our lives when we say to the world something, the world will answer something else. When you say something to the devil, the devil will say something that is completely opposite to what you asked.
Jesus asked for water and then he started to ask the woman to get her husband and she said, ‘I don’t have a husband’. ‘But you have’, ‘no I don’t’ and the conversation that was about water become a problem of marriage. Was Jesus willing to marry this woman, no, so why did he want to know where her husband was? Because He had an aim, he wanted this woman to discover that He was the Messiah.
Jesus Christ didn’t drink the water and this woman didn’t give the water that He asked for. After that she went to tell all the people that I have seen the Messiah and all the people came. The woman discovered Jesus’ identity was not a Jew but the Messiah.
What identity do you give God? Is Jesus your mother, father, your friend, what identity do you give Him? Or is Jesus like a bank that gives you credits, so you go to Him and say, ‘Jesus I need that give it to me, Jesus give me,’ and you will take loan and loan after loan from Jesus but how are you going to pay back these loans? What is your boss’s identity and what is your own identity?
This woman thought that she was a Samaritan but she was not a real Samaritan because she knew there was a Messiah and Samaritans wouldn’t believe there was a Messiah. As for us Christians we have to make an effort to localise Jesus in our lives first. Jesus is the Son of God, He lives some where in heaven, or Jesus is my friend, we can give Him all the identities we want and that is true but we have to know that He is my saviour.
He is our saviour, that is the first thing and everywhere that we are we are together with him. Imagine if Jesus would visit your couple, what would you do? Imagine if Jesus would phone you and tell you tomorrow I’m coming to your house, what would you tell your wife? “Ah get ready, Jesus is coming.” ‘Where will Jesus come from?’ “No He said that He will come tomorrow, organise the house, organise yourself’. Maybe the sister will go to the hairdresser and maybe you will go too, and you will get ready but even a fly won’t go through the room on this day, if a fly comes there will be fly killer because there is a special guest and if we eat every day bread and salad, on this day that Jesus will come, the meal will change. It won’t be KFC anymore, I’ll say my, ‘wife let’s do something, how much money do I have in my pocket, I’ve got $500, so what can we prepare for Jesus?’
Sister what would you prepare for Jesus? “Roast chicken”. Here it is a really special meal and husbands will find their wives cook better meals for the special visitor than for themselves. I think on this day when Jesus will come, you will not be the same as you are with your husband on every other day. You will try to find a dress, or buy something new and everything will be nice and beautiful to look at.
Then while you are waiting for Jesus, Odon knocks on the door. The husband will say, ‘what’s the time, oh it’s 12 yes He must be here’. Maybe during this two minutes the husband will touch his hair and trousers and then say I will open the door now but the sister will say, ‘no wait a minute, mirror, mirror, am I right?’ OK open the door now, and when the brother opens the door Odon is there. What will be your reaction?
You will be disappointed and in your heart you will say, where does this one come from? The sister will say, welcome brother, how are you? But in the heart you will say let him go we are waiting for someone special, you must go now. Maybe where he is sitting is special covers and he might have damaged them in the way he is sitting and after three minutes, ‘oh I have to go now, may I pray for you?’ You know that he normally prays a long time, 15 minutes to waste. No problem brother we will pray later, thank you very much.
The man goes, you rearrange your chair and after three minutes someone knocks at the door. The husband says, ‘You open the door, this time I’m not opening it might be him again’. You look first out the window to see if it is him, if it’s not him you will say now is the time. A man comes in, someone you don’t know, and you will think this is the real Jesus, what will be the first thing you will do when he comes into your place? You’ll discern if this is really Jesus or not.
When Jesus comes into your couple what are you going to do brother and sister, everyone here. Will you open the door, what are you going to do? Bow down? Or say welcome, take a chair? What are you going to do? You’ll be scared? What are you going to do if Jesus comes in, maybe you are going to lose control. Sometimes you even forget what to say and sometimes you might even shake because you see the presence of something very powerful in your life and when Jesus is here instead of getting clothes, or bow down you might even faint, this happens. You might not even say welcome, or come here, you will say I’m tired, I’m really hot let me take off my clothes and you are a little bit confused, why that?
Because when the physical body we have discovers spiritual matters, this body becomes weak and when it becomes weak we might be in confusion. We might answer the way this Samaritan woman answered Jesus, she answered as if she would talk to an enemy. She talked to Jesus as if Jesus was low and she was very high to the point that she said, you don’t even have a bucket. Maybe Jesus didn’t have one there but had one at home. As for us when we come close to Jesus in our lives we must have a certain strategy, we must have a plan.
When your wedding was organised there was a program to follow, there was this, this and that, first thing the couple will come in and it will be that way, that way, that way. For someone who has never been married, they don’t have the time to think about how a wedding is organised they have other programs. Me, who is not married for example, you cannot ask me to welcome someone in my place like someone who is married. I know that if I go to Peter’s, his house will be a nice place because there is a woman living in that house but if you go to a bachelor’s place, don’t be surprised if you find a shoe on a chair. Don’t be amazed if you see the banana skin that he ate three days ago under the chair and when he realises that he will take it, apologise and throw it away. Maybe a glass that was used to drink water five days ago is still on the table and when you come in you can see that it is really unorganised and untidy and you will think is this really someone’s place or is it a pig living here.
‘Brother I’m going to pray for you in your bedroom’ and maybe he hasn’t changed his sheets for 15 days. You’ll find one blanket here and the pillow over in the corner, the clothes he took off are on the floor and you find the pens and sheets of paper all over the place and when you get close he will start wiping the chair and say you can sit here. This is normal life and these pictures are also pictures the spiritual life.
If really you are not married to Jesus and you want to live in a Christian life as a Christian bachelor you can be sure that your life will be disorganised and how do you become a bachelor Christian? It’s when you put Jesus outside your life, to say Jesus I want to organise myself, I want to make my own decisions, I don’t want you to tell me. Jesus feels pushed aside because he’s not there to assist you anymore, for example when you wear your shirt and when you put it on back-to-front, nobody is going to help you but if the brother does it today, the wife will say no, stop where are you going there, that is not the right way to wear a shirt, she will take it off and put it right and sometimes there are women that will say, I don’t like this shirt, take it off, Michael you won’t go to work with sandals like this, you will leave this here.
Michael will say, it’s cold and he wears his jacket, Sylvie will say this jacket you wore this three times, it’s dirty. So she will take the jacket and put it in the washing machine but he will say, I don’t have another one, I am cold now. She will say, ‘tomorrow you can buy another one’. Michael will think I suffer but she is right, and he will buy another one tomorrow.
This is the Christian way, Jesus is there to control us and say, this is missing you must put this here, you must put this at this place, this doesn’t deserve to be there because I am going to visit you. When He comes He watches how you welcome Him and watches how you get close. My sister imagine if you receive Jesus at your place and you prepare mussels and Jesus says, is that what I am going to eat and you say yes. How can we eat that, you might have to teach him how to eat mussels, he might eat it with the shell so you will have to say, this is the way we eat it at our place but I think that if you really welcome Jesus at your place you won’t prepare mussels, you will prepare something special.
Sometimes when you pray you know that you are going to meet your Lord, what do you bring as a meal. What do you give Jesus as a prayer, or perfume or nice smell? I give you a last example, one day there was a competition somewhere and for this competition everybody had to get well clothed and there will be a competition about it. So you must get ready accordingly and as for us who are going to judge we will look at the quality of clothes you wear and the perfume you wear. Everybody bought perfume and beautiful clothes and everything was expensive and a man looked and in his pocket he didn’t have $2000 and he looked at what people wore as clothes and it was very expensive. A pair of shoes would cost $3,000 for example while himself didn’t even have $2,000.
He went home, he took a ride on mower because this man didn’t have a beautiful car so he wore his boots and work clothes and didn’t have perfume so he had a hen in it’s place and took the waste from a hen and mixed it with water and put it on his body and went to the ceremony. When he went in, the person beside him looked at him and walked away. He got close to the second person and this person fled also. He made all his adversaries flee, he wouldn’t talk but the smell he had made the other people unable to complete the competition and eventually he was the only candidate, there was no competitors and he won the prize.
So what do we have to do to win the prize in our prayers, we must have a strategy and if we apply this strategy we will win. Has my prayer a good smell in God’s eyes or is my prayer a good smell only for man’s eyes. You can ask Odon to pray in English and you will find 20 mistakes but when someone who lived here and studied here prays in English all the words will be at the right place to the point the people will say I like how this person prays. This person knows how to pray but when Odon prays everybody is tired.
We are going to stop here, we have to analyse the life of this Samaritan woman and we must get ready all the time to meet Jesus and Jesus is also asking us for water to drink, what are we going to offer Him? Although He lives in our lives we are liars and drunkards, we are drunk with our sins but Jesus is there and accepts to be in our lives knowing that one day we are going to change and be transformed. The little faith we have, we have to give to Him and say, ‘Jesus this is all that I have. I know my faith is very small Lord, my faith is very small but you can help me to have a faith that won’t be thirsty anymore. You will help to have a faith that will help me to know who I am and I will discover you are really the Messiah so help me Lord to get ready to be always ready to meet you in my life and when we walk together I will be proud to walk with Jesus and when we sleep together with you Lord I will be proud to be with Jesus in my bed’. Make sure Jesus is always in your life
JOHN 4
Jesus carried on with his discussion with this Samaritan woman and you will see that Jesus answered questions that the woman didn’t ask and the woman would answer questions that Jesus didn’t ask.
Jesus asked the woman for water and the woman said, ‘you don’t have a bucket’. ‘I ask for water to drink and you speak about a bucket’. Jesus said, ‘if you want water I’ll give you water.’ and so forth. Sometimes we have to expect confusion in our lives when we say to the world something, the world will answer something else. When you say something to the devil, the devil will say something that is completely opposite to what you asked.
Jesus asked for water and then he started to ask the woman to get her husband and she said, ‘I don’t have a husband’. ‘But you have’, ‘no I don’t’ and the conversation that was about water become a problem of marriage. Was Jesus willing to marry this woman, no, so why did he want to know where her husband was? Because He had an aim, he wanted this woman to discover that He was the Messiah.
Jesus Christ didn’t drink the water and this woman didn’t give the water that He asked for. After that she went to tell all the people that I have seen the Messiah and all the people came. The woman discovered Jesus’ identity was not a Jew but the Messiah.
What identity do you give God? Is Jesus your mother, father, your friend, what identity do you give Him? Or is Jesus like a bank that gives you credits, so you go to Him and say, ‘Jesus I need that give it to me, Jesus give me,’ and you will take loan and loan after loan from Jesus but how are you going to pay back these loans? What is your boss’s identity and what is your own identity?
This woman thought that she was a Samaritan but she was not a real Samaritan because she knew there was a Messiah and Samaritans wouldn’t believe there was a Messiah. As for us Christians we have to make an effort to localise Jesus in our lives first. Jesus is the Son of God, He lives some where in heaven, or Jesus is my friend, we can give Him all the identities we want and that is true but we have to know that He is my saviour.
He is our saviour, that is the first thing and everywhere that we are we are together with him. Imagine if Jesus would visit your couple, what would you do? Imagine if Jesus would phone you and tell you tomorrow I’m coming to your house, what would you tell your wife? “Ah get ready, Jesus is coming.” ‘Where will Jesus come from?’ “No He said that He will come tomorrow, organise the house, organise yourself’. Maybe the sister will go to the hairdresser and maybe you will go too, and you will get ready but even a fly won’t go through the room on this day, if a fly comes there will be fly killer because there is a special guest and if we eat every day bread and salad, on this day that Jesus will come, the meal will change. It won’t be KFC anymore, I’ll say my, ‘wife let’s do something, how much money do I have in my pocket, I’ve got $500, so what can we prepare for Jesus?’
Sister what would you prepare for Jesus? “Roast chicken”. Here it is a really special meal and husbands will find their wives cook better meals for the special visitor than for themselves. I think on this day when Jesus will come, you will not be the same as you are with your husband on every other day. You will try to find a dress, or buy something new and everything will be nice and beautiful to look at.
Then while you are waiting for Jesus, Odon knocks on the door. The husband will say, ‘what’s the time, oh it’s 12 yes He must be here’. Maybe during this two minutes the husband will touch his hair and trousers and then say I will open the door now but the sister will say, ‘no wait a minute, mirror, mirror, am I right?’ OK open the door now, and when the brother opens the door Odon is there. What will be your reaction?
You will be disappointed and in your heart you will say, where does this one come from? The sister will say, welcome brother, how are you? But in the heart you will say let him go we are waiting for someone special, you must go now. Maybe where he is sitting is special covers and he might have damaged them in the way he is sitting and after three minutes, ‘oh I have to go now, may I pray for you?’ You know that he normally prays a long time, 15 minutes to waste. No problem brother we will pray later, thank you very much.
The man goes, you rearrange your chair and after three minutes someone knocks at the door. The husband says, ‘You open the door, this time I’m not opening it might be him again’. You look first out the window to see if it is him, if it’s not him you will say now is the time. A man comes in, someone you don’t know, and you will think this is the real Jesus, what will be the first thing you will do when he comes into your place? You’ll discern if this is really Jesus or not.
When Jesus comes into your couple what are you going to do brother and sister, everyone here. Will you open the door, what are you going to do? Bow down? Or say welcome, take a chair? What are you going to do? You’ll be scared? What are you going to do if Jesus comes in, maybe you are going to lose control. Sometimes you even forget what to say and sometimes you might even shake because you see the presence of something very powerful in your life and when Jesus is here instead of getting clothes, or bow down you might even faint, this happens. You might not even say welcome, or come here, you will say I’m tired, I’m really hot let me take off my clothes and you are a little bit confused, why that?
Because when the physical body we have discovers spiritual matters, this body becomes weak and when it becomes weak we might be in confusion. We might answer the way this Samaritan woman answered Jesus, she answered as if she would talk to an enemy. She talked to Jesus as if Jesus was low and she was very high to the point that she said, you don’t even have a bucket. Maybe Jesus didn’t have one there but had one at home. As for us when we come close to Jesus in our lives we must have a certain strategy, we must have a plan.
When your wedding was organised there was a program to follow, there was this, this and that, first thing the couple will come in and it will be that way, that way, that way. For someone who has never been married, they don’t have the time to think about how a wedding is organised they have other programs. Me, who is not married for example, you cannot ask me to welcome someone in my place like someone who is married. I know that if I go to Peter’s, his house will be a nice place because there is a woman living in that house but if you go to a bachelor’s place, don’t be surprised if you find a shoe on a chair. Don’t be amazed if you see the banana skin that he ate three days ago under the chair and when he realises that he will take it, apologise and throw it away. Maybe a glass that was used to drink water five days ago is still on the table and when you come in you can see that it is really unorganised and untidy and you will think is this really someone’s place or is it a pig living here.
‘Brother I’m going to pray for you in your bedroom’ and maybe he hasn’t changed his sheets for 15 days. You’ll find one blanket here and the pillow over in the corner, the clothes he took off are on the floor and you find the pens and sheets of paper all over the place and when you get close he will start wiping the chair and say you can sit here. This is normal life and these pictures are also pictures the spiritual life.
If really you are not married to Jesus and you want to live in a Christian life as a Christian bachelor you can be sure that your life will be disorganised and how do you become a bachelor Christian? It’s when you put Jesus outside your life, to say Jesus I want to organise myself, I want to make my own decisions, I don’t want you to tell me. Jesus feels pushed aside because he’s not there to assist you anymore, for example when you wear your shirt and when you put it on back-to-front, nobody is going to help you but if the brother does it today, the wife will say no, stop where are you going there, that is not the right way to wear a shirt, she will take it off and put it right and sometimes there are women that will say, I don’t like this shirt, take it off, Michael you won’t go to work with sandals like this, you will leave this here.
Michael will say, it’s cold and he wears his jacket, Sylvie will say this jacket you wore this three times, it’s dirty. So she will take the jacket and put it in the washing machine but he will say, I don’t have another one, I am cold now. She will say, ‘tomorrow you can buy another one’. Michael will think I suffer but she is right, and he will buy another one tomorrow.
This is the Christian way, Jesus is there to control us and say, this is missing you must put this here, you must put this at this place, this doesn’t deserve to be there because I am going to visit you. When He comes He watches how you welcome Him and watches how you get close. My sister imagine if you receive Jesus at your place and you prepare mussels and Jesus says, is that what I am going to eat and you say yes. How can we eat that, you might have to teach him how to eat mussels, he might eat it with the shell so you will have to say, this is the way we eat it at our place but I think that if you really welcome Jesus at your place you won’t prepare mussels, you will prepare something special.
Sometimes when you pray you know that you are going to meet your Lord, what do you bring as a meal. What do you give Jesus as a prayer, or perfume or nice smell? I give you a last example, one day there was a competition somewhere and for this competition everybody had to get well clothed and there will be a competition about it. So you must get ready accordingly and as for us who are going to judge we will look at the quality of clothes you wear and the perfume you wear. Everybody bought perfume and beautiful clothes and everything was expensive and a man looked and in his pocket he didn’t have $2000 and he looked at what people wore as clothes and it was very expensive. A pair of shoes would cost $3,000 for example while himself didn’t even have $2,000.
He went home, he took a ride on mower because this man didn’t have a beautiful car so he wore his boots and work clothes and didn’t have perfume so he had a hen in it’s place and took the waste from a hen and mixed it with water and put it on his body and went to the ceremony. When he went in, the person beside him looked at him and walked away. He got close to the second person and this person fled also. He made all his adversaries flee, he wouldn’t talk but the smell he had made the other people unable to complete the competition and eventually he was the only candidate, there was no competitors and he won the prize.
So what do we have to do to win the prize in our prayers, we must have a strategy and if we apply this strategy we will win. Has my prayer a good smell in God’s eyes or is my prayer a good smell only for man’s eyes. You can ask Odon to pray in English and you will find 20 mistakes but when someone who lived here and studied here prays in English all the words will be at the right place to the point the people will say I like how this person prays. This person knows how to pray but when Odon prays everybody is tired.
We are going to stop here, we have to analyse the life of this Samaritan woman and we must get ready all the time to meet Jesus and Jesus is also asking us for water to drink, what are we going to offer Him? Although He lives in our lives we are liars and drunkards, we are drunk with our sins but Jesus is there and accepts to be in our lives knowing that one day we are going to change and be transformed. The little faith we have, we have to give to Him and say, ‘Jesus this is all that I have. I know my faith is very small Lord, my faith is very small but you can help me to have a faith that won’t be thirsty anymore. You will help to have a faith that will help me to know who I am and I will discover you are really the Messiah so help me Lord to get ready to be always ready to meet you in my life and when we walk together I will be proud to walk with Jesus and when we sleep together with you Lord I will be proud to be with Jesus in my bed’. Make sure Jesus is always in your life
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