The O.J. Simpson trial was hailed as the trial the century. He was charged with the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Simpson, and Ron Goldman. The outcome of the trial was that OJ was found innocent of the crime and set free. This was a surprising verdict that is debated to this day. What I remember most clearly was the drama that surrounded to trial as evidence was presented by both prosecution and defense attorneys.
The judge in that case was Lance Ito. Many have criticized his overseeing of the trial. They complain that he allowed into evidence things that should never have been allowed and that he was swayed by the publicity generated by this high profile trial. Regardless of all this, the fact remains that during the trial, Judge Ito had the final word.
The same is true in the courts of heaven. The judge who sits on the throne of the courts of heaven has the final say. In the courts of heaven there can be a multitude of witnesses, evidence being presented in cases being petition, but only the judge of righteousness determines the verdict. His verdicts are always just and true. We see this in first Kings 22:19 – 23 when micaiah begins to reveal what he saw in the courts of heaven concerning Ahab in his destruction.
Then Micaiah said, therefore hear the word of the Lord: I saw the Lord sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing by, on his right hand and on his left. The Lord said, will persuade Ahab to go up, that he may fall at ramoth gilead? So unspoken this manner, and another spoke in that manner. Then a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord, and said, I will persuade him. The Lord said to him, in what way? So he said, I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his profits. And the Lord said, you shall persuade him, and also prevail. Go out and do so. Therefore look! The Lord is put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these prophets of years, and the Lord has declared disaster against you. – One Kings 22:19 – 23.
As the Lord was hearing from the host of heaven around the throne, there was a debate on how they can make Ahab fall. Ahab had led Israel into wickedness and the Lord was ready to judge him. The Scripture says that one said they could do it this way and another could do it that way. Then a spirit came forward during the proceedings and declared that he would go on be a lying spirit in the mouth of Ahab’s profits. The Lord on the throne passed a sentence. He said, go on prevail.
What an awesome glimpse into the court system of heaven. In this Scripture, there are many voices in the court giving ideas and testimonies concerning what should be done. But when the Lord was afraid to make the decision and pass judgment, it was the Lord who sits on the throne as judge who rendered it. The Lord is the righteous judge who does all things well.
Father and judge
It is quite interesting in Hebrews 12:23 that the Lord is revealed as – the judge of all.
Hebrews 12:23 – to the Gen. assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, the God the judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect.
He is not revealed as our father, our Savior or our King. He is revealed as the judge. The reason for this is that the Scriptures are revealing the court system of heaven and he has judge has the final word in place. He is in fact all the things previously mentioned and much more, but he is the judge of all because he renders verdicts, judgments and sentences that bring order and justice.
I want to make a statement here that is at the core of this book. It is our job as individuals and the church to grant God, as the judge of all, the legal right to fulfill his fatherly passion. We should remember that God is a father. In his heart, he carries dreams, desires and longings for his family, just as earthly fathers do. He lost to see these desires of his heart towards his family come to pass. God is also the judge of all homeless render legal judgments in righteousness and holiness. As we have discovered, there can be legal issues that hinder his fatherly desires being fulfilled. God will never compromise himself as judge in order to fulfill his fatherly desires. To do so would make him less than God. Therefore, it is our job as his people, his ecclesia, to put in place the legal precedents needed for God to legally fulfill his desires as a father.
Removing the legal right of the enemy
One of the best ways for me to explain this is through a personal experience. There was a lady very close to her family that was diagnosed with breast cancer. When this lady was 13 years old, prone mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer she died at just 43 years of age. The disease had spread in her body just as it was now spreading in her daughter’s body. This friend of ours was 43 when she was diagnosed and also had a 13-year-old daughter. The parallels were astounding. I knew we were dealing with a generational, family curse.
When she was on her deathbed, her husband called me and asked if I would pray for her. I went to her home where there were already other people gathered at her bedside praying for her. I placed my hand on her head and as I began to pray I felt the father’s passion to heal this woman. It was unmistakable. I felt this many times before in many situations and I knew it well. I prayed the best prayer I knew how to pray. I prayed with the unction and the power of the spirit of the Lord. Was in a natural prayer, it was a supernatural one. Yet, 12 hours later, she died. She died at age 43, leaving behind a 13-year-old daughter, exactly as her mother had done! What a tragedy. It was only much later that I was able to explain why this had happened. At the time of my prayer, I did not know that this lady and her husband had connived to steal resources that belong to someone else. This activity of dishonor and thievery had opened the door for the family curse to come upon her life.
Proverbs 26:2 says that occurs has to have a cause to alight.
Proverbs 26:2 – like a fleeting sparrow, like a flying swallow, so a curse without cause shall not alight.
Curses are pictured as sparrows and swallows flying around and looking for a place to land. They cannot land unless a legal right allows them to land. This woman had a curse in her family, that was circling her and looking for a legal opportunity to land and afflict her. She had actually confessed, pro-fast and done everything she knew to do, to keep this away from her and her family for years.
When she and her husband opened the door to this curse through their dishonor and thievery, the curse now had a legal reason to be able to land on her. micah 2:1 – three shows what happened in this situation.
Micah 2:1 – Walter those who devise iniquity, and work out evil on their beds! Good morning like they practice it, because it is in the power of their hand. They covet fields and taken by violence, also houses, and sees them. So they oppress a man in his house, a man in his inheritance. Therefore thus says the Lord: behold, against his family I am devising disaster, from which you cannot remove your neck; nor shall you walk heartily, for this is an evil time.
God says that if someone who has been granted power through trust, uses that power to steal way inheritances, a disaster can come upon them that they won’t be able to escape. This is what happened to this lady and her family. As a result of her participation in these deviant practices, the devil had a legal right to afflict her with a family curse. The devil was legally allowed to take her life even though God’s passion was to heal her. The only way that the Lord could have healed her was if she had repented of that which she had done. Then the power the curse would have been broken and God as judge could have fulfilled his passion as father, legally.
Remember, God cannot compromise himself as judge to fulfill his fatherly passion. We must grant him the legal right as judge to satisfy the desires of his heart as father. Otherwise the devil wins in God loses, even though his passion is always to do is good. When we grasp this principle, we will stop asking, why didn’t God do something? Whenever something bad happens. God cannot intervene into we give him the legal right to do so. His passion is always the blast, heal and show mercy. This is why James 1:16 – 17 tells us that it is God’s passion always to do good.
James 1:16 – do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, it comes down from the father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.
When we read in Scripture that something evil was done by God, my own personal opinion is that God did not do it, he simply had to allow it legally. When the devil has a legal right to perform evil, God must allow it unless someone comes to the court of heaven to contest that right.
Let us look at the example of Job. God did not kill Job’s children, afflict him with sickness or take away his help. Satan did. God did not want this to happen, but same presented a case showing his legal right to afflict Joe. His accusations against Joel concern the motives of Job’s heart. Job 1:9 – 11 we see Satan telling the Lord that Joel was only serving God because God had blessed and secured him so much.
Job 1:9 – so Satan answered the Lord and said, this Job fear God for nothing? Have you not made a hedge around him, around his household, and around all that he has in every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. Now, stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, he will surely curse you to your face! It appears that everything is judged and evaluated in heaven. Even when we are doing everything right, the devil can still question our motives. This is what through Job into his tribulation. This tells me that we need to allow the Holy Spirit to, not only empower us to walk rightly, but also from a pure and clean heart. God had to allow these afflictions until Job said things in order and rescinded Satan’s legal rights. Once Job did this, God rendered a judgment that restored to Job twice what he had lost.
When evil occurs, we should always look for the legal right that allows it. When we do, we can come from legal to the court of heaven, deal with the legalities and shut the door and evil.
This principle explains why intercessors so often feel the passion of God in their prayer and yet nothing seems to change. It is very possible to feel what God feels, experiences desires and be unable to move anything in the spirit realm. Knowing God’s heart and being able to administer it legally are two very different things. If we want to see God’s passion manifest on earth, we must get things legally in place. The devil always resist God and us with legalities. Lord will not override his own judicial system to grant his passion. He cannot. We must step into that system and grant him the legal right to fulfill his passion. Repentance – the missing key
In Matthew 16:18 – 19 Jesus said that the governmental people, his ecclesia, that he would build, would use keys of authority to set in place legal things and remove legal things so his kingdom purposes would be done.
Matthew 16:18 – and I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
The church or ecclesia has been given keys to bind and loose. As I shared in a previous chapter, the words bind and loose our legal in their nature. We, as God’s individual and corporate people, article into the courts of heaven and put binding things in place so God can legally fulfill his father’s passion. We are also to loose or dissolve contracts at the devil has in the earth realm that allow him the legal right to kill, steal and destroy. He has to have a legal right to do it, our job is to remove that legal right from him. We do this through repentance for ourselves in our history and the history of our nations. Anything that the devil is doing in the nations is because our sins in the sins of our generations have granted him the legal right to do it. When we repent, we are removing his legal right of operation. We are breaking the devil snare. Second Timothy 2:25 – 26 tells us we break the snare and set people free through repentance.
Second Timothy 2:25 – in humility correcting those who are in opposition, if God perhaps will grant them repentance, so that they may know the truth, and that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will.
Notice that God grants repentance. Repentance is a legal activity that affects the courts of heaven. When I repent and come into agreement with the testimony of the blood in the other voices, the accuser is silence. The snare he has fashioned is broken, and we can escape. We are no longer bound to him to do his will, but are freed from his oppression. He no longer has a legal right to torment and terrorize us. When we repent, we grant God, as the judge of all the legal right to render verdicts from his throne in agreement with his kingdom purpose.
The judge of all is waiting on us to give him no legal right to manifest his goodness.
The mandate of the ecclessia
Genesis 18:20 – 21 shows us that God himself went down to Sodom and Gomorrah to examine the cries and evidence before him that demanded judgment.
Genesis 18:20 – and the Lord said, because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grave, I will go down now and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry against it that is come to me; and if not, I will know.
Somehow or other the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah had reached the throne of God. This cry it was presenting evidence that the city was worthy of judgment and destruction. The Lord went down to investigate validate the evidence that had been given. Lord does something very interesting. He brings Abraham into the equation. Genesis 18:17 – 18 shows that God shares with Abraham what is about to happen.
Genesis 18:17 – and the Lord said, shall I hide from Abraham what I am doing, since Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him?
A casual reading would cause us to think that God is just sharing information with Abraham because he is his friend. This is true, but there is a much deeper reason why God shared this with Abraham. He brought Abraham into the equation because God was seeking a legal reason to show mercy. He knew that Abraham would seek to give God a legal reason to show mercy. Genesis 18:22 – 26 shows that Abraham is seeking to give God a legal reason to spare this wicked place.
Genesis 18:22 – then the men turned away from there and went toward Sodom, but Abraham still stood before the Lord. And Abraham came near and said, would you also destroy the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there were 50 righteous within the city; would you also destroy the place and not spirit for the 50 righteous that were in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing as this, display the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous should be as the wicked; far be it from you! Cannot the judge of all the earth to write? So the Lord said, if I find in Sodom 50 righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes.
Please notice that Abraham petition God on the basis of him being judge and judging righteously. God agreed with Abraham and said he would not destroy it for the sake of 50 righteous. Abraham continued to petition God as judge and finally had it reduced to 10 righteous man. The Lord said for the sake of 10 righteous man he would spare the city and territory. Genesis 18:32 – 33 shows this legal exchange taking place.
Genesis 18:32 – then he said, let not the Lord be angry, and I’ll speak but once more: supposed and should be found there? And he said, I will not destroy it for the sake of 10. So the Lord went his way as soon as he had finished speaking with Abraham; and Abraham returned to his place.
God was looking for a reason to be merciful and new that Abraham would endeavor to give it to them legally. I’ve heard many people say that Abraham stopped too soon in his intercession. This is simply not true. In the culture of that day and in Jewish culture, tendon notes the smallest number that constitutes a government. God said that if he could find 10 righteous man, smallest number that could represent government, for the sake of those 10 he would spare the city. We sometimes think we need the whole of population to repent, or at least a majority, to receive God’s mercy. All we actually need is a governmental representation of the population to petition the courts of heaven for mercy instead of judgment.
This is the job of the ecclesia. To be that governmental representation who can operate in the court of heaven to secure blessings from heaven for a nation and a generation. God will spare nations for the sake of the ecclesia within it, if we are righteous thinking carry recognizable, governmental authority in the courts of heaven. God is looking for a reason to be righteous and show mercy. It is our job as his people to get things legally in place so as judge he can fulfill his fatherly passion.
The Lord is judge of all. He is also our father who desires to bless us and released to us our inheritance. Mainly become proficient in his courts so he legally has a right as judge to bless are going out coming in. This is the passion of the father’s heart.