BORN INTO CITIZENSHIP

Genesis chapter 4













Today we are walking in: Born Into Citizenship










Today we look to the word- CHANGE- H2015- haphak- a primitive root; to turn about or over; by implication, to change, overturn, return, pervert:—become, change, come, be converted, give, make (a bed), overthrow overturn), perverse, retire, tumble, turn (again, aside, back, to the contrary, every way).












The Torah Testifies…………….






Genesis 35:2




Then Jacob said unto his household, and to all that werewith him, Put away the strange gods that are among you, and be clean, and change H2015 your garments:




Leviticus 27:10




He shall not alter it, nor change H2015 it, a good for a bad, or a bad for a good: and if he shall at all change H2015 beast for beast, then it and the exchange thereof shall be holy.





Leviticus 27:33




He shall not search whether it be good or bad, neither shall he change H2015 it: and if he change H2015 it at all, then both it and the change H2015 thereof shall be holy; it shall not be redeemed.












The Prophets Proclaim………





Jeremiah 2:36




Why gaddest thou about so much to change H2015 thy way? thou also shalt be ashamed of Egypt, as thou wast ashamed of Assyria.






Zechariah 3:4




And he answered and spake unto those that stood before him, saying, Take away the filthy garments from him. And unto him he said, Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with change H2015 of raiment.






Malachi 3:6




For I am the LORD, I change H2015 not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.










The Writings witness……………





Job 14:14




If a man die, shall he live again? all the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change H2015 come.






Psalm 102:26




They shall perish, but thou shalt endure: yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change H2015 them, and they shall be changed:






Proverbs 24:21




My son, fear thou the LORD and the king: and meddle not with them that are given to change H2015:













The Most High has been our Abba from before our birth. Yahusha is His firstborn Son, and the rest of us are meant to be Yahusha’s younger brothers and sisters. “He is the image of the invisible Most High, the firstborn over all creation” (Col. 1:15). You do not talk about a “firstborn,” you know, unless other children are born after him.




Another name for Yahusha is the Word:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with The Most High:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with The Most High, and the Word was The Most High. He was in the beginning with The Most High” (John 1:1-2). This Word is the One who speaks words of life into each one He calls into His Kingdom.




I hope you know that you can’t earn your way into His good graces. Kingdom citizenship is not like membership in the Kiwanis Club, where good works count as membership points. Many people make the mistake of thinking that citizenship in the Kingdom can be obtained through good works. They visit the sick and send money to Haiti. They attend church for fifty years straight. They take communion at six in the morning on Sundays and they sing in the choir. But none of that gets them into the Kingdom. It does not even crack the door open!




You can’t become a citizen or a member of the family of The Most High by good works or by association with His family members or even by longevity. You can try for ninety years and you will still be an illegal immigrant when you die! The only way to get into the Kingdom is to respond to an invitation. With the ears of your spirit you hear, “Come,” and you respond to it by leaving behind your old ways of doing things and coming Home.




It is just like physical birth; you leave behind the confines of your old existence and you enter into the endless possibilities of new life. The difference is that this birth is a birth of your spirit. In the words of Yahusha: “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6).




The bottom line is this: you must be born into the Kingdom if you want to become a part of the family of the Firstborn.




Free At Last From The Power Of Death

Rebirth means shaking free of death’s grip once and for all. Remember that in the Garden there was no death-at first. But when Adam sinned, death came into the picture. That is why the Bible says, “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). The world is filled with death. Death is the final punishment. We do not want to think about it.




But back in the Garden, Abba had already set in motion a plan to rescue the people He had created from their own sin. But to accomplish the plan, somebody would have to die. He asked His sinless, firstborn Son to do it. Then everyone who would accept the substitution could escape the punishment of death.




In other words, The Most High decided to apply the penalty of sin and death to Himself. In The Most High’s courtroom, you and I were condemned to death. But the Judge said to His Son, “The judgement on these kids is death. I want you to go to jail for them and to be executed instead of them.”




Yahusha said, “I will go to jail for them. But is there any other way to do this?” Abba said, “No Son. It is either them or you.” And the Son agreed to do it. The Son, who was every bit as much The Most High as His Abba was, came to Earth as a man. He did it so that people like you and me would be free from the execution order. The Most High’s universal justice would be satisfied. It is as if you were sentenced to die in the electric chair and it is almost time for them to throw the switch when someone comes in and says, “You can get up and walk out of here. Go ahead. I will take the sentence for you.” And He sits down in your place.




Have you ever thought about it that way? Have you ever realized that Yahusha would have never died at all, even to this day two thousand years later, if He had not carried our sin to the crucifixion stake when He died? Sin is what brings death, and Yahusha did not have any sin at all, none. He was perfect. He was The Most High.




But He went to the crucifixion stake carrying our sins. Because of His overwhelming love, He shouldered the punishment for not only your individual sins, but for every sinful act that ever happened. The prophet Isaiah wrote that His body was so marred that it was hard to recognize Him as a man anymore. (See Isaiah 52:14) Sin did that to Him. He was carrying all of our evil thoughts, our broken hearts, our diseases, our injuries, our wickedness. He did it to restore His Father’s sons and daughters back to His family and to citizenship in His Kingdom.

The whole Old Testament leads up to the time when Yahusha came to do that. People do not like to read parts of it, because it is all about blood sacrifices. Even back in the Garden, the first thing The Most High did for Adam and Eve was to kill an animal so they could have clothing made out of its bloody hide (see Genesis 3:21). They had covered themselves with fig leaves.But leaves are not a good covering. Leaves do not have blood.




From that day forward, people began to offer living creatures to the Most High as a sacrifice for their sins. All through the Old Testament they kept offering goats, sheep, heifers, doves and more. Adam and Eve’s sons, Cain and Abel, tried to work the sacrificial system. Cain brought an offering of vegetable produce from his fields, but Abel brought a lamb. (See Genesis 4:3-7.) The Bible says that The Most High was displeased with Cain’s offering, but He received Abel’s offering. That does not make any sense to us unless we understand how The Most High sees it. In His perfect system of justice, blood (death) compensates for sin, because sin is punishable by death. Cain’s produce did not have any blood in it.




However, killing an innocent animal as a sacrifice is not the same as killing an innocent man. The penalty for sin was on humans, so The Most High needed a sinless human offering to serve as the ultimate payment for sin. Yahusha was that offering. And now, if we accept what Yahusha did, these words can apply to your own lives:




We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as HaMashiach was raised from the dead through the glory of Abba, we too may live a new life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin--because anyone who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we died with HaMashiach, we believe that we will also live with him. (Rom 6:4-8 NIV)




In other words, once He died, nobody else had to die. His death paid for all that sin. In fact, it is as if He made it possible for us to be born anew. Now we can live forever, as if we never sinned even once.




This is the salvation story. If you want to make it your own story, you need to be reborn. Just as both water and blood are involved in natural childbirth, both water and blood were part of HaMachiach’s death (see John 19:34), and they signify every new life:




For whatever is born of The Most High overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world--our faith. Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Yahusha is the Son of The Most High?




This is He who came by water and blood--Yahusha HaMashiach; not only by water, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who bears witness, because the Spirit is truth. For there are three that bear witness in heaven: Abba, the Word, and the Ruach Hackodesh; and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness on earth: the Spirit, the water, and the blood; and these three agree as one. (1 John 5:4-8)




Born Into Citizenship




You know you cannot be born for your children and you can’t be reborn for them, either. Just because their parents are in the Kingdom of The Most High does not automatically put them in.




A religious leader who talked with Yahusha had been born into the religious community. He was in charge of the synagogue and I am sure he knew the books of the Torah by heart. But when he met Yahusha, he knew he needed something more.




“Yahusha,” he said, “I would like to enter the Kingdom. What should I do?” Yahusha answered and said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of The Most High.” Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?”




Yahusha answered, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of The Most High. That which is born of flesh is flesh, and that which is born of Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus answered and said to Him, “How can these things be?” Yahusha answered and said to him, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and do not know these things? (John 3:3-10)




Yahusha told Nicodemus that the only way to get into the country of the Kingdom is the same way he got into the nation of Israel--through birth. No paperwork. No waiting. Of course this confused Nicodemus. It did not make sense to his theological mind.




So Yahusha explained to him that his body was not him. His spirit was. His body was just a house for his spirit. His body had already been born. Now it was his spirit’s turn. And just as a highly educated ruler of the Jews should already know that the best way to natural citizenship is through birth, so he should know that the way to enter a spiritual kingdom is through a spiritual birth.




A person cannot work for Kingdom citizenship. You do not have to pass a test or reside in a certain place for a specified length of time. You do not have to observe rituals, keep traditions, or follow rules. You cannot become a legal citizen of the Kingdom because the King likes you. You must be born anew in your spirit by the power of the Ruach Hakodesh.




The word Yahusha used is “see.” He said that unless Nicodemus was born again, he would not be able to see the Kingdom. The Greek meaning is “experience.” In other words, until he was born anew, he would not be able to experience the Kingdom personally. No one can understand a country unless he has been in the country, and no one can enter the Kingdom country to experience it unless he gets born again.




Now Yahusha isn’t saying that being born again is what we might call a “religious experience.” It is a process, a pathway. In fact, this is the only time in the Bible that he mentioned being born again. Most of the time, He simply preaches that the Kingdom is here, now; the Kingdom has arrived. New birth is the avenue to citizenship.




Nicodemus was not making fun of the idea when he asked about entering a second time into his mother’s womb. He was taking Yahusha seriously. He was willing to try the impossible if only he could get into the Kingdom. He knew that no one would be able to tamper with his citizenship if it came through being born, because spiritual birth cannot be reversed any more than a physical birth can be reversed. As Yahusha’s disciple Peter wrote: “For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable. Through the living and enduring word of The Most High” (1 Pet. 1:23, NIV)




How would Nicodemus know he had been reborn? The same way you and I know--because we have the Spirit of Yahusha inside our spirits. Yahusha’s disciple John answered that question this way:




This is how we know that we live in Him and He in us: He has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Yahusha is the Son of The Most High, The Most High lives in them and they in The Most High. (1 John 4:13-15, NIV).




When you become a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven’s colony on Earth, the King sends His Governor (the Ruach) to come live in you.Your body is like the governor’s mansion.




Rebirth does not come with thunder and lightning and earthquakes. You may not feel anything or hear anything. No angels may appear to you. But that does not mean it did not happen. The Ruach Hackodesh comes and no one sees Him. Then you walk into your house and suddenly all the sins you used to enjoy make you feel guilty. You have changed. The Kingdom of The Most High has come in. Now you do not like the same things anymore.




Your citizenship in the Kingdom does not give you a physical sign, but it does change your disposition. A heavenly lifestyle comes with it. It starts right in the midst of wherever you live now. You do not have to wait for Heaven. (Heaven is not the King’s primary intention for your life, or I think He would kill us off right away after we are born again so we can go straight to Heaven.)




Once, some Pharisees asked Yahusha when the Kingdom of The Most High would come, and He replied, “The kingdom of The Most High does not come with observation: nor will they say, ‘See here!’ or ‘See there!’ For indeed, the kingdom of the Most High is within you” (Luke 17:20-21). No one sees it happen when you are born as a citizen. When you are a citizen you do not advertise it with signs; you advertise it with life and culture. You do not have to tell people that you are a believer, because they should be able to tell just by being around you. You have been reborn of the Spirit of The Most High!




Obedience To The Law--The Key To Privileges




After your rebirth, you learn how to be a citizen of this Kingdom by obeying the laws of the land. As we have already made clear, the Bible is like the constitution of the country, and the Spirit helps you understand what it says and apply it. The Ruach Hakodesh will also help you understand how the Kingdom works.




With Him living inside you, you will be able to tell the difference between true citizens and those who are pretending to be citizens of the Kingdom. Plenty of people believe that Yahusha was a good man and a famous prophet. But do they believe that He was the Son of the living Most High? Not a son, but THE Son? Do they submit to His commands?




Obedience to His commands is impossible without the help of the Ruach Hakodesh, you know. Just try this one, for example, without The Most High’s love inside you:




Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. (Matt. 5:44-45).




Love your enemies, do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High. (Luke 6:35)




The Most High does not leave it up to you to select from a buffet of beliefs and doctrines. His way of doing things is clear. Sometimes people criticize citizens of the Kingdom. They say we are too narrow-minded. Yes, we are narrow-- and narrow is the way that leads to life! (See Matthew 7:13 and Luke 13:24.)




What is that life like? Joy-filled, stress-free and a lot more. It includes a whole lot more. “My Most High God shall supply all your needs according to His riches…” (Phil 4:19). I want to wait until later for a longer discussion of the rewards, privileges and benefits that come with being a law abiding citizen of the Kingdom.




Citizens of the heavenly Kingdom obey the divine King, just as citizens of any earthly kingdom must obey their king. Those of us who live in democracies fail to comprehend this. We are used to criticizing our leaders as we get ready to vote them out of office. We are accustomed to negotiating and cooperating, because in a democracy you do not obey an authority as much as you cooperate with it.




You do not negotiate with someone who owns you and everything around you. You change. He does not!




Turning Around




When you declare that Yahusha HaMashiach is the Son of The Most High, your Lord and Savior, you turn your back on your previous “lords,” whatever and whoever you used to follow. You have been adopted as a full member of the royal family now, and you do not need to live like an orphan anymore!




This turning is called teshuvah. Yahusha considered it the only option when a person gets confronted with the Kingdom of The Most High. repeatedly, He said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt 4:17).




Now, even if you have been considered rich in the world’s eyes, I hope you will be glad to trade your so-called riches for the priceless treasure of the royal house! One rich young man did not want to do it:




A man came up to Yahusha and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?”...Yahusha replied….“If you want to enter life, keep the commandments.” …”All these I have kept,” the young man said. “What do I still lack?” Yahusha answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come follow me.” When the young man heard this he went away sad, because he had great wealth.

Then Yahusha said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matt. 19:16-17, 20-23, NIV)




This man knew he needed something, even though he had everything the world could offer: money, a powerful position, youth and a healthy body, good morals and religion. The trouble was, he could not part with his wealth. If only he had been able to understand that he did not own any of it in the first place. If he had been able to understand that he did not own any of it in the first place. If he had turned it over to the Kingdom government, he would only have been giving the government back its things.




It is impossible for a person to call Yahusha Lord and own anything. If He is your Lord, He owns you and everything you possess. There is no private ownership. So you cannot come to Him and say, “I want to submit to Your government. I want You to be my King and Lord”--and still hold onto your money, your land, and your business. When The Most High asked the rich young ruler to give it up, it was not because He needed it. You cannot give The Most High something He owns already! He was testing the man to see if he thought he owned it. Apparently, he did.

The man did not understand wealth in Kingdom terms. Wealth in the Kingdom is not measured by accumulation; it is measured by access to what you need when you need it. Wealth in the Kingdom is for distribution. Kingdom citizens are conduits, not reservoirs. Instead of collecting and keeping everything, they give it away to others. As they give it away, more comes to them. Peter, after he listened to this conversation between the rich young ruler and Yahusha--then Peter answered and said to Him, “See, we have left all and followed You. Therefore what shall we have?”




So Yahusha said to them… “Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for My name’s sake, shall receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life.” (Matt 19:27-29)




Wealth in the Kingdom is family wealth, and every member of the family inherits all of it. To make a play on words, you could say that Kingdom citizenship is inherent-because the citizen inherits everything in the Kingdom.




The rich young ruler hung onto his money and possessions because he thought he was wealthy. He was poor, compared to the barefoot Teacher he was talking to.




Membership To Citizenship




When the rebellious, Prodigal Son came back to his father after spending his inheritance, his return marked his reinstatement into the family. (I told the rest of the story in a previous teaching; it is one of Yahushas’ favorite parables.) He trudged into view of the family homestead, and he spotted his father running towards him. His father fell on his neck, kissing him, overjoyed at seeing him again after having assumed he was dead. The son had thought about what he would say:




And the son said to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight, and am no longer worthy to be called your son.” But the father said to his servants “Bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet. And bring the fatted calf here and kill it, and let us eat and be merry; for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” (Luke 15:21-24)




The son would have been content to work for his father as a servant. He was so ashamed and broken that he would have been glad to be allowed to be a member of his father’s household, housed and fed with the working servants. A servant is not a member of the family.




But the father would not hear of it. His son had come home! The one who had rebelled and who had run away had returned. He welcomed him back into the bosom of the family and gave him certain items of clothing to prove it.




“Bring out the best robe, “ he said. And he covered his dirty, worn-out robe with the richest garment in the house. He put new sandals on his feet. And he brought out a ring.




The ring is significant. When a king wants to give somebody government power, he gives the person a ring. The ring represents power and authority of the government. This ring was the symbol of family authority , royal authority. By slipping it onto his finger, the father was declaring that he was now far better than a member of his household. He was restored to the full status of a son. As a citizen-son he could now use the family name again, and he now had full family rights, full access to everything the family owned.




Claiming Citizenship




As soon as the rebellious son turned toward home, in teshuvah, it was as if he was reborn. He has been born to privilege, but he had rejected it. He failed to appreciate it. As a result, he had to go the long, hard way around before he could return. You can be sure that this time, he stayed.




In many ways, we are all like the Prodigal Son. We squander the resources our generous Abba gives us. We think we can do a better job of managing our lives if we turn away from Him. We were born to privilege, but we take matters into our own hands.




I always say a sinner is really a saint who does not know he is a saint. What if nobody had told us that we could return home to our heavenly Abba--it would be as if Prince William had been separated from his parents and spirited away from England at birth, kidnapped. Let’s say somebody brought him to the Bahamas, and he lived on one of the islands with a man and woman who claimed to be his parents. As a baby, he would not know any better.




He would grow up enjoying the things his village enjoyed, thinking it was wonderful. He would think it was a great life-fishing, eating coconuts, running up and down the beach. He would not know that he was royalty. He would not know the kind of wealth he could have at his disposal. Unless someone came to tell him.




Let’s say his real father, Prince Charles finds out where he is living and sends his only remaining son, Prince Harry, to get him. You can see the connection here--your real Father in heaven sent his only Son to fetch you back into His Kingdom, when you did not know at all that you were royalty and that you had a place waiting for you in the Kingdom.




Prince Harry suffers all the difficulties of the trip. He bumps along the rutted roads, endures the sand flies and mosquitoes, sleeps out in the open under palm trees. Finally he reaches the village where his brother lives and he locates the young man. Can you imagine him trying to explain who he is and why he has come?




“My father? That’s my father over there under the coconut tree.” “No, that’s your stepfather…” Imagine trying to convince this young man that he is a multi-billionaire. It might take a long time. But if he could convince him to leave behind the village where he grew up, he could step into the inheritance that had been waiting for him all those years. He could claim his position in the royal family and spend the rest of his life doing what he was created to do.




None of us can work our way into the position that the Son so freely offers us. All we can do is surrender to the offer. “Yes, I will come with You. Just tell me what to do. Your Father is my Father. I say yes.”




Have you said yes yet? It is never too late, Fiveamprayer!!!