By faith they were prophets
I will share one revealed Word.
“Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for if you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.” Then they said to Him, “Who are You?” And Jesus said to them, “Just what I have been saying to you – I AM from the beginning. I have many things to say and to judge concerning you, but He who sent Me is true; and I speak to the world those things which I heard from Him.” They did not understand that He spoke to them of the Father.” (John 8:24-27)
One of the major thoughts that I see here – the Lord was delivering minimum two things in this passage, which the disciples did not understand. I want to ask, what else we do not understand what Jesus is delivering to us. Jesus marked those two things, which disciples did not understand, but those things were very important in the eyes of the Lord, and He marked it that they did not understand them.
This is a very relevant topic, how much do I understand, when I hear the voice of the Lord, what He wants to tell me. What does the Lord want to tell me through what is happening here? What I understood and what He really wants to tell – is there a difference between these? Sometimes a teacher is communicating some information, but the student answers a completely different thing. It comes out he listened in vain, and it can even be harmful, because wrong accents lead him away from the point.
And here the Lord says these words: “if you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins”. Another words, you have to understand, that this is I, who I AM. This is the first thought that the Lord is delivering to them, but they do not understand. “This is I” means not only that here I am before you now in the flesh, the son of a carpenter, the son of Joseph, born in Bethlehem, from Nazareth – no. But all that you have around you, all your journey you’ve gone through – this is I. And if you do not believe that this is ALL I – you will die in your sins, having not changed your life. You won’t be able to crawl out, to shoot out, to catapult out of life of sin or carnal life into life by the spirit.
In the verse above He says, “you are from beneath, I am from above”, and you have to understand that this is I. Understand, brothers and sisters, that this is He. Look around at your closest time circle, the second and third circles and find where He IS, that it is He.
The second thing Jesus wants to deliver to us: “Then they said to Him, “Who are You?” And Jesus said to them, “Just what I have been saying to you – I AM from the beginning.” – You know that I AM is the One who revealed Himself to Moses. And He spoke about I AM as He spoke of Himself. Here’s the key how Jesus Himself could know that this is He, and here’s the key He shows to the disciples, how to see that this is He. And He is showing, that He is I AM, though it wasn’t I AM standing before them, it was Jesus Christ, who was born of Mary, the son of the carpenter – how can You be I AM? But He can just like He is saying it, teaching us that this is He.
This is revelation. Without revelation you won’t understand anything of what I am saying. One should approach the Word with revelation. Some of us preach not revelation, but human thoughts, and worst is when they make it look like wisdom, thought it is foolishness that sounds.
“I have many things to say and to judge concerning you, but He who sent Me is true; and I speak to the world those things which I heard from Him.” – The Father did not tell Him to speak more than what He heard from Him.
“They DID NOT understand that He spoke to them of the Father.”
Today if to take our prayer meetings, we pray about the world of people, about us, about other people. If you are enabled to see the throne, you can scan it and hear that 99% of the prayers are about us, “and God help us”.
But to pray to God doesn’t mean to pray about the world of people, because thus we only take from Him. He is supposed to keep giving and giving things to us. But what do we give to Him? What does He receive from us?
Jesus had been speaking to them about the Father, but they did not understand that He spoke to them about the Father. In other word, the disciples who surrounded Him did not see God in all things. They weren’t able to see God through all their lives. They did not discern God, did not see Him in their journey. Sometimes He shows Himself through the lattice, sometimes He come and goes and you don’t know from where and where to. But sometimes He is present and says, “this is I who stands before you, whom you see and hear.” Sometimes God is present, but we don’t know it. Even in a church meeting we come and things are of the flesh there.
My prayer today is that we see God, that it may not be written about us “they did not understand that it was He”, and “they did not understand what He said to them”. They did not understand. Jesus saw this, that they did not understand.
And one more thing:
“By faith Abraham, when he was put to test, offered Isaac as a sacrifice: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten, of whom it was said, that in Isaac shall your seed be called: accounting that God was able to raise him up even from the dead; from where also he received him as a figure.” (Heb.11:17-19).
By faith, when he was put to test, he even could think in the wrong way. First, he had to overcome that it was God’s voice – it was the first time when someone was to kill his son, there was no another case, there were no books of Moses. It was the first time to hear that God wanted a dead son, Isaac. And he was thinking, “how can this be, the Lord spoke and He can’t lie, then, probably when I kill him, He will raise him up” – this is what Abraham thought, as Hebrews 11 says.
Now, that Abraham thought wrong, his ideas were not right, but this did not hinder him to bring a sacrifice by faith, which God accepted, though Abraham was not right in his head. This shakes me – that sacrifice is brought by faith!
Today you’ve calculated pragmatically that it won’t work – you fear to go to a different place, here you do nothing – because you’ve lost your faith, brother! I meet some brothers, pastors, and I see they are non-believing people, they speak like non believers, two of them get together and find common excuse to live by flesh – these are two cowards. I always shunned from such people. We will never make friends with you, if you are a coward, I will never have any “secret” matter or talk with you, because you make me weaker, but I want to be stronger. It is my right to choose strong ones for friends.
But by faith he offered his son as a sacrifice, because he had the promises. And further on he says: “And what more shall I say? For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthah, also of David and Samuel and other prophets…” Well, David and Samuel prophesied, they can be called prophets, but Gideon – a prophet? Where did you see that? Barak – a prophet? Samson and Jephthah – prophets? But the Scripture calls them prophets! Why does it call them prophets? What is the calling of a prophet? And further on we read what those men did, we penetrate in the nature of a prophet:
“who through faith subdued kingdoms (by faith Abraham, though thought wrong, made his step and brought his sacrifice), worked righteousness (a prophet works righteousness), obtained promises – they took promises – prophet, stopped the mouths of lions – prophet, quenched the violence of fire – prophet, escaped the edge of the sword (moving in the strategies of the divine wisdom) – prophet, out of weakness were made strong (they rose up in hope) – prophet, became valiant in battle (always on watch, brother or sister), turned to flight the armies of the aliens – yes, they guard the purity of their flock – prophet. Women received their dead raised to life again – yes, the women’s faith is required a dead one can’t raise himself up. These women are also churches that bring back those who backslid.
Also it says about the suffering of a prophet. And all these things are done by faith!
Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. Still others had trial of mockings and scourging – by faith! yes, and of chains and imprisonment – by faith! They were stoned – by faith! they were sawn in two – by faith!.. were tempted, were slain with the sword – by faith! They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented— by faith!.. of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, in dens and caves of the earth. And all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise, God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us.
These ones had obtained a good testimony of their faith, so it is written of them, and they added the line of the qualities of the prophet. Some had just lacks and deprivations, but they lived in such a way that it was added by the Holy Spirit that this quality is also of the prophet. These people wrote with themselves the history of God’s Kingdom, of God’s traces on earth. What kind of trace shall we leave after us, you and me?
Brothers and sisters, we can’t live like ordinary people in the cities, mediocre, and the worst is when he speaks great pathetic speeches. There must be a testimony of your faith! This is what differs them, they all had a good testimony of faith, which is our works. And works aren’t travelling to a conference or coming to a Sunday service.
It is 2025 now, and I urge you to test yourselves, if you are in faith, even if we still think wrong, but we bring our Isaac as an offering – the Lord accepts him as faith, as an offering. I urge us all today to rise in faith. Examine and evaluate yourselves, if we are afraid of something, then it is probably not faith anymore. This projection of fears on your deeds, this pragmatism and counting money – this is what people of the world do. You will never walk on water this way, because you are heavier than water. Only a crazy one can step on water, who is out of himself in his faith. How can you fly in the air like Philip, how can you pray for a dead body?!
I want to inspire you today! And stop boasting in other people’s works and hiding in the crowd. Bring your lives to the point when you preach and tell your own stories, what kind of works the Lord does in your lives and through you. This is called to have a good testimony in faith – this is who prophets are. This is how cities are taken – by faith!!! One needs strength of God in order to take a city, not any shrewdness and tricky things. If there’s no strength, you won’t take the city, neither you take a nation without strength. Strength is required, so that you speak and so it happens, you pray and answers come. And crucify your nasty character to hurt people, to scold or yell at them. I see how pastors don’t work on their character anymore – this is awful. You can’t bring alien fire into the holy place. No one gave you right for that. Therefore, let us cleanse ourselves and watch the vineyard, what is happening with it.
By faith they subdued kingdoms…