Scripture Reading: Acts 3:22-23; Matt. 21:16; Heb. 10:5-10; 13:15
Ⅶ
Christ is the Prophet raised up by God—Deut. 18:15, 18-19; Acts 3:22-23:
A
As the Prophet raised up by God, Christ made the greatest prophecy in the Bible— "upon this rock [the person and revelation of Christ] I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it"—Matt. 16:18.
B
As the Prophet raised up by God, Christ died, resurrected, and ascended to the heavens to produce the prophets and give them as gifts to His Body for the perfecting of the members—Psa. 68:18-19; Eph. 4:11-12.
C
As the Prophet raised up by God, Christ has been dispensed into all the members of His Body, and they "can all prophesy one by one that all may learn and all may be encouraged"—1 Cor. 14:31; Eph. 4:20-21; 2 Cor. 1:3-4.
D
As the Prophet raised up by God, Christ speaks to and through His members, dispensing Himself into them in their living and serving, to fulfill His greatest prophecy to build up the church—"he who prophesies [speaks for the Lord and speaks forth the Lord] builds up the church"—1 Cor. 14:4b, 24-25; Rev. 2:1a.
E
As the Prophet raised up by God, Christ promised to care for us before and from our mother's womb to the end of our life to reveal Himself in us for our function in prophesying to build up the church—cf. Gen. 48:15-16:
１
We have been "borne from birth" by the Lord and "carried from the womb" by Him; furthermore, He says, "Even unto old age, I am He; / Even unto your grayhaired years, I will bear you"—Isa. 46:3-4.
２
"When it pleased God, who set me apart from my mother's womb and called me through His grace, to reveal His Son in me"—Gal. 1:15-16a.
３
"Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you; / And before you came forth from the womb, I sanctified you. / I have appointed you as a prophet to the nations… / Everywhere I send you, you shall go; / And everything I command you, you shall speak"—Jer. 1:5-7.
Ⅷ
Christ is the One praised by the babes and sucklings—Psa. 8:1-2; Matt. 21:16:
A
Psalm 8:2-5 shows us how the babes and sucklings are produced:
１
In order to produce babes and sucklings, God has visited man by becoming incarnated, by putting on humanity and becoming a man to be a little lower than the angels—vv. 4-5a.
２
God visited man also by living on earth, dying, rising up from the dead, and ascending to the heavens to be crowned with glory and honor—v. 5b.
３
God visited man through the long journey of His process to become the lifegiving Spirit to reach us and to enter into us—John 1:14; 1 Cor. 15:45b; 6:17; cf. 1 Pet. 2:12; Luke 1:68, 78.
４
The incarnated One has become the life-giving Spirit, and it is this One who regenerates us, making us babes and sucklings to praise the Lord.
５
The process of producing babes and sucklings continues with sanctification, renewing, and transformation—Heb. 2:11; Rom. 12:2; 2 Cor. 3:18.
B
The Lord has perfected praise, or established strength, out of the mouths of babes and sucklings for the purpose of stopping His adversaries, the enemy, and the avenger—Psa. 8:2.
C
God overcomes His enemy through babes and sucklings, the youngest, smallest, and weakest among men; this is the Lord's recovery and victory; all things will be ruled over by Christ with His Body, and all things will be subjected under His feet—vv. 6-9; Eph. 1:19-23.
D
The perfected praise of the babes and sucklings is the ultimate consummation of the Lord's work of incarnation, human living, death, resurrection, ascension, and coming back to rule on earth—Psa. 106:12; 146:2; 149:5-6; 150:1-6:
１
We may praise the Lord, but our praise needs to be perfected; through transformation we are perfected in praising the Lord.
２
The perfected praise is the praise for the Lord's incarnation, human living, death, resurrection, ascension, and kingdom.
３
In order to praise the Lord, we need to see Jesus, turning our view from the dark and messy earth to the bright and ordered heaven—Heb. 2:9; 12:1-2.
４
The perfected praise is the strength out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, the praise that defeats the adversaries, the enemy, and the avenger—2 Chron. 20:22; cf. vv. 12, 20-21.
５
We must give our praises through Him; in other words, our praise must be composed through Him, composed with Him, and must be constituted with our experience and enjoyment of Him—v. 15; Psa. 50:23:
ａ
We must pass through Christ, experience Christ, partake of Christ, and enjoy Christ to have the adequate praise of Christ—45:1-2.
ｂ
When we praise the Lord, this is the highest experience of our enjoyment of Christ—22:3; cf. 1 Thes. 5:16-19; Eph. 4:30.
E
"Through Him then let us offer up a sacrifice of praise continually to God, that is, the fruit of lips confessing His name"; the principle of offering up a sacrifice is based upon loss; God wants us to praise Him in the midst of our loss—Heb. 13:15:
１
If we have not learned to praise God every day, it is hard to have the kind of sacrifice of praise spoken of in Hebrews 13—Acts 16:25; Psa. 119:164:
ａ
"My mouth is filled with Your praise, / With Your glory, all day long"— 71:8.
ｂ
"I will hope continually / And will add yet more to all Your praise," i.e., I will praise You yet more and more—v. 14.
２
We should praise Him simply because He is worthy of praise—18:1-3; Rev. 4:11; 5:4, 9, 12.
３
God desires His children to praise Him in everything and through every situation—Psa. 146:2; 48:1-2.
４
The Lord is good and is never wrong, even though we cannot always understand what He is doing—25:8; 100:5:
ａ
God's heart toward us is always good; under His sovereignty even our mistakes work for good—cf. Gen. 50:20; Psa. 51:14-15.
ｂ
The good is our gaining more of Christ, having more of Him wrought into our being, that we may be transformed and conformed to His image—Rom. 8:28-29.
F
Christ meets with His brothers in the church to praise the Father with and in the brothers in the midst of the church—Heb. 2:12; Psa. 22:22; cf. 48:1-2:
１
The intrinsic nature of praise is to magnify, manifest, and express God.
２
Whatever we speak, pray, sing, and do with the resurrected Christ as the content is a praise to the Father because it magnifies, manifests, and expresses Him as the source of life—John 5:26; cf. Phil. 1:20.
Ⅸ
Christ is the One who comes to do God's will—Psa. 40:6-8; Heb. 10:5-10:
A
The will of God is to have Christ as the replacement for all the offerings in the Old Testament so that we may enjoy Him as everything in living and practicing the Body life for the building up of the Body of Christ as the organism of the Triune God—Eph. 1:5, 9, 11; Heb. 10:7-10; Rom. 12:2.
B
Christ's replacing of all the Old Testament offerings, taking away all the Old Testament types to establish Himself as everything to us, is God's great will:
１
The Old Testament predicted in Isaiah 53 that Christ would come to be the sacrifice for sin, that is, to replace and terminate the Levitical sacrifices— vv. 6, 11-12.
２
God prepared a body for Christ so that He could offer Himself to God to replace all the offerings—Heb. 10:5.
３
Christ took away "the first," the sacrifices of the old covenant, so that He might establish Himself as "the second," the sacrifice of the new covenant—v. 9.
C
The will of God today is simply for us to enjoy Christ so that we may become the corporate reproduction of Himself through His organic salvation—1 Cor. 1:9; 1 Thes. 5:16-18; Rom. 5:10; 8:6.
D
We need to enjoy Christ as the tabernacle, the enterable God, and as the reality of all the offerings of the Old Testament (the reality and content of the universe), so that He may become our genuineness and sincerity for us to worship God with the worship that He seeks—John 1:14; 4:23-24; 14:17a.
E
We need to live a life according to God's heart and will by daily enjoying Christ as the reality of all the offerings for the divine goal of the Triune God, which is to bring us all into Himself so that we may take Him as our dwelling place and allow Him to take us as His dwelling place for His universal, enlarged, divinehuman incorporation—v. 23; Rev. 21:3, 22.