Joseph Prince - Know Your True Identity in Christ
This is an excerpt from: Hear Your Way Out Of Every Weakness
Praise the Lord. The Word of God, how precious it is, amen. And how many of you have experienced kairos moments in your life? I'm surprised that my son is picking up. Every little good thing that happened, "It was a kairos moment. I had a kairos moment in school," he says. "I had a kairos moment here, kairos moment there". And I'm talking about him a bit more because it is his birthday today, ah ha ha. He slept last night ten years old. He woke up 11. How time flies, huh? Praise the Lord. Romans 6:14 tells us, "For sin shall not have dominion over you". The word "dominion" is the word "kurio," which is where you get the word "kurios" for lord, the word "lord".
Sin will not lord it over you. Why? "Because you are not under law but under grace," amen. And time and time again, though this is the commission that is strong in my heart, I believe that ministries and different ministers in the offices that Christ has given to the church, every one of them has a certain assignment given by the Lord to bring forth certain truths that has been lost. Now, in my case, all right, it is to bring back Jesus to the centrality of the church, amen, to the centrality of your lives, and to preach the gospel of grace, to restore that gospel the way Paul preached it in the very beginning. For the lack of it, we are seeing infirmities. We are seeing moral weakness and failure in the body of Christ.
Let me tell you this. Even people ending up in adultery, whatever the condition it is, all right, it is because of a wrong believing. We focus so much on wrong behavior that we miss the deeper root, wrong believing, amen. Not believing that your old man has been crucified, that we are not dealing with the old man anymore. But instead of that, we are dealing with the old man. We talk about him all the time. We make him like... now, by the way, I'm not referring to your father, young people. I'm referring to your flesh, that part of you that wants to sin, that old you which is gone, amen? But his lifestyle, his principles, his thinking, his emotions are still there because you have lived in it for a long time, amen? So sin in the flesh is still there. We call it the flesh, amen. It is a mistaken identity.
So the devil wants you to identify yourself with that identity, and that is a case of mistaken identity. That's not who you are. That's a false identity. You are not sinful. You were a sinner. You got born again, and when you are born again you are created in righteousness and true holiness. And all the people said, "Amen". So because you... or for lack of revelation, because of a lack of preaching, we cannot blame the people. Pastors and leaders that are watching, we cannot blame the people. The people believe what is being taught, amen. For the lack of preaching the word of Christ, not just the Word of God. The Word of God can be any part of the Bible. You say it's the Word of God, right? Yes, but every Word of God is inspired, but it must be translated, especially the Old Testament, into the Word of Christ. You understand? The way Jesus did it on the Emmaus Road.
When Jesus taught in the Emmaus Road from the Old Testament, because that's the only Scriptures they had back then, what did Jesus do to the two? He expounded in them the Torah, the Prophets. He expounded in them those Scriptures, the Old Testament Scriptures, things concerning Himself. And it did something to them. It warmed their hearts. It revived them spiritually. It also did something to them physically. It reinvigorated them after having traveled from Jerusalem 7 miles to Emmaus. After receiving that washing of the Word by Jesus during that journey, they went back another 7 miles. Something happened to them physically as well. And that happened on a Sunday because the Lord was demonstrating.
Why would the Resurrected Christ, with so many important things to do after You are risen from the dead, I'm sure Your priority number one on the first day, have so many things that's very important to do instead of just spending time with the two walking back. And they are discouraged, they are dejected. Why would Jesus spend time with them? I believe to show all of us what we need to do on a Sunday, because He rose from the dead on a Sunday. He's showing us, and have you noticed that in the Bible, He appeared to the disciples Sunday to Sunday? Even after He rose from the dead, there is no record exactly that He spent time with them. It does say that He spent time with them those 40 days, right? But what was shown us in the Gospels is that the appearance of Jesus to the disciples is from a Sunday, to another Sunday, to another Sunday.
So people say, "Well, those are Sunday Christians". We better be a Sunday Christian. That's why we worship on a Sunday. The Jews, they work and then they rest. That's the Old Testament style, amen. But the New Testament has come. A new covenant has come. Now we enter into rest. The first day of Jesus'... the Day of Jesus' Resurrection is our first day. We enter into rest, then we can work, amen. That's true also of our spiritual life. Only when we enter into rest, we can work. Are you with me so far?