THE POWER OF CITIZENS KNOWLEDGE

Genesis chapter 4










Today we are walking in: The Power Of Citizens Knowledge







Today we look to the word-KNOWLEDGE- H847 da'ath--knowledge, perception, skill, discernment







The Torah testifies.....................




Exodus 31:3




And I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom,and in understanding, and in knowledge, H1847 andin all manner of workmanship,






The prophets proclaim..................




Isaiah 33:6




And wisdom and knowledge H1847 shall be the stability of thy times, and strength of salvation: the fear of the LORD is his treasure.









The writings bear witness.............



Job 34:2




Hear my words, O ye wise men; and give ear unto me, ye that have knowledge.







The Power of Citizens’ Knowledge




You can have a PhD in everything and still be stupid. It is not enough to learn information and understand it. You have to know how to apply what you have learned if you want to gain the highest level, which is wisdom.

In other words the secret to a full life is not getting more knowledge of facts. People think they can get happiness if only they can learn enough truth. The Bible has this to say about such people who are, “always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:7). Knowledge by itself, even when the information is not false, but true, is only the first step on the way to wisdom.




Knowledge is important, however, because it does need to come first. You need knowledge in order to get understanding and comprehension. Finally after you have grown in both knowledge and understanding, you are ready for wisdom.




Not only is wisdom the highest of the three, it leads us straight to the throne room of the Kingdom of the Most High. Another verse in the Bible puts it this way: “Yahusha HaMashiach, who of the Most High is made unto us wisdom (1 Corinthians 1:30). Notice it does not say that Yahusha HaMashiach is made unto us knowledge. Knowledge is only step number one. Yahusha HaMashiach is made unto us wisdom because His presence leads us into the full application of all truth and righteousness, in which our knowledge can come into play.




Knowledge Comes First




The fundamental importance of knowledge can be illustrated by a well-known story, Here is another version of it:




An elderly couple won first prize in a raffle: a free ten day cruise. They had never been on a cruise before. In fact, they had never been anywhere, and they did not know anything about travelling. They had lived in the same dirty little house for decades and they had always pinched their pennies.




When they found out that they had won, they were so embarrassed. They did not know what to do. So they packed up a pitiful bundle of clothes, went down to the dock, and boarded the cruise ship. They showed their tickets, and the ticket-taker let them in. The man and his wife wandered around the decks of the ship, just taking everything in. They had never seen so much beauty. They had never seen people dressed so well. They had never seen so much activity. They had never used an elevator before.




They were shown to their cabin which was on one of the highest decks, second from the top. When they got into their room they touched their bed. They touched the floor. They ran their hands along the wall. They looked through the window and just stood there in amazement, It was like Heaven.




After they had settled in, they took out some crackers and cheese and packets of Kool-Aid. They mixed up a cool drink and just sat on the bed looking out the window as they ate. They were so excited to be on the ship.




Day after day it was the same. They would peep out of their door at all the well dressed passengers running past and they would close the door again and say, “Yippee! This is wonderful!” They would look out the window and see the ocean and say “Oh this is just like Heaven.” And they would enjoy some of their crackers and cheese and drink some of their Kool-Aid for breakfast, lunch and dinner three times a day.




After five days passed the captain became concerned. Two more days passed and he had never seen them in the dining room. Nobody had seen them at the clubs, at the shows or anywhere on the decks. What had happened to those two people? He thought that they had probably died there.




On the ninth day, the captain became so uneasy about them that he sent one of his assistants to check on the couple. He knocked on the door. “Come in!” There they were, sitting on the floor on a sheet from the bed, eating on the floor.




Wrappers from their crackers and cheese were all over the floor. They smiled up at him. “We are so thrilled to be on this ship. Thank you all, sir for showing us your hospitality.”




The assistant just stood there in the doorway in shock. He did not know what to say when he realized that these people had never left their room for nine days.




Finally, he gulped and said, “Excuse me, madam and sir, were you in this room all along?”




“Yes, we are so happy. Thank you so much for allowing us to have this room. It’s been wonderful.”




He caught his breath and asked, “You never came down for breakfast, lunch or dinner?”




“Oh, no, you see, we couldn’t afford that. We are just glad to be on board.”




He said, “You never came out of the room to enjoy the entertainment and extras?”




“Oh, no! We could not afford that, either.”




Realizing something was wrong the man asked to see their tickets. “Yes, sir,” the woman said as she went to her purse, took out her ticket, and handed it to him.




He looked at the ticket and said, “Didn’t you read your ticket? Didn’t you realize that your ticket gave you access to everything on the ship: all the food you can eat, all the clubs, all the games, all the swimming pools, all the Jacuzzis, all of the spas, all the saunas? You could have had everything, for free….”




But by the time they finished talking, the ship came back to the dock. It was too late. They did not know in time.




When I first heard that story, it reminded me of the Most High’s cry to humanity in the book of Hosea: My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge--chapter 4 verse 6. I thought of the Kingdom of the Most High, because it is the same with the most of us, where the Kingdom is concerned. We do not know much of anything about it, even those of us who know we have got a free ticket. So we sell ourselves far short of all that the Kingdom offers. We skip right over the words of the Bible that explain the many ways the Kingdom works. We are as ignorant as new babies about the citizenship we have just been born into.




Now when you and I were real babies, we certainly did not know anything at all about our citizenship. Being born here in the United States, I did not know a thing about the country for a long time. I was just a baby, blank. After a while, I began to learn things. As time went on, I began to understand what it meant to be a citizen of the United States. It took a long time to understand my citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven.




How many people go their whole lives without understanding their country, Heaven? Too many do not even know there is something to know about it. They could enjoy full citizenship, but they know nothing about how it works, what rights and privileges it brings, nothing about it’s laws. They stay ignorant all their lives and live on the equivalent of cheese and crackers.




My desire is for everybody to throw their cheese and crackers overboard and walk down to the buffet so you can enjoy the journey as much as the destination. The whole Kingdom is at your disposal: did you know?




Law And The Prophets Fulfilled




All the knowledge contained in the pages of the Old Testament could not fulfill the Most High’s promises of restoration of the Kingdom until Yahusha came. As soon as He drew His first human breath, that knowledge--much of which was prophetic foreknowledge--began to grow full of wisdom. Yahusha explained: “The law and the prophets were proclaimed until John. Since that time, the good news of the kingdom of the Most High is being preached, and everyone is forcing their way into it” (Luke 16:16).




The Law and the Prophets were not superseded when the King arrived on the planet’ they were fulfilled in Him. They represented the knowledge about the Kingdom, and Yahusha brought the application of that knowledge.




If you skim the various books of the Old Testament, you will understand what I am saying here. Start with the ‘big five’ books, which are known as the Pentateuch (meaning “five books”): Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. In these books, the ceremonial laws that the Most High gave Moses are laid out in great detail. Next we come to the book of Joshua, which describes the people of Israel after they had come into the Promised Land. Joshua’s job was to settle the people and teach them the ways of the Most High’s Kingdom. As we proceed through the books of the Old Testament, the Kingdom story unfolds.




Every prophet, every judge and every king in the Scriptures had something to do with preparing the way for the coming of the King. The judges and kings (the Law) embodied justice and the divinely human rights of the Kingdom. The prophets glimpsed the future and pronounced that a Maschiach would come. Together, they represent the Law and the Prophets. Who were some of these people?




After the book of Joshua, the book of Judges gives us a picture about the judges of Israel, men and women like Deborah, who took over the army and routed the invading enemy to protect the people who were being attacked. All of the judges of Israel exercised their power to ascertain and establish the rights of the citizens of Israel. The short book of Ruth appears next because it describes the lineage of the Mashiach, naming His earthly ancestors. First and Second Kings introduces us to one of the greatest prophets of all time, Elijah and his disciple Elisha. Both of them demonstrated the extreme power of the Kingdom of the Most High more than the other prophets did. In fact, Elijah came to represent the very term “prophet” better than anybody else, just as Moses represented the term “law.”

First and Second Samuel gives us a look at that time when people of Israel started asking for their first king. The Most High wanted them to wait because He would be their King, but they would not wait. They wanted to have an earthly king like the other nations did. The prophet Samuel anointed Saul to be king, but Saul did not carry the crown with honor. Next came King David who pleased the Most High and ruled a long time, giving us many illustrations of the Kingdom of the Most High. The psalms of David wrote about are all about Kingdom living. (Psalms are songs that show us how glorious the Most High, the King is.) Besides establishing a kingdom that would become the model for understanding the Kingdom of Heaven, David himself was part of the lineage of the Mashiach.

Even the two books of Chronicles, which records the history of the political and military activities throughout the years, give us some insights into the Kingdom. When we read 1 and 2 Chronicles, we learn about good kings and bad kings, that worked out well and kings that did not, kings pleased the Most High and kings that failed to please Him, kings that built cities and kings that destroyed them. The kings became so corrupt that the Most High began to send a series of prophets. Starting with the book of the prophet Ezra, we hear a common theme. It goes something like this: “Even though your kings and your countries are messed up, there is another King coming. He will set things right.”




In the midst of all the kings and prophets, we have the book of Nehemiah, which is a book of restoration and hope. Nehemiah was neither a king or prophet, but he was a strong leader who fulfilled a vision to rebuild the city of the Most High, Jerusalem. His accomplishments have never been equalled.




Not only do we see kings in the books of the Old Testament, we also see some queens. Queen Esther was one of the greatest leaders in history, male or female, and she exercised her authority well to preserve the seed of the Mashiach. He was going to come through the nation of Israel, and Esther preserved the people, who were in the minority at the time, from utter annihilation.




The book of Job is an unusual one. In terms of Kingdom, Job teaches us that no matter what the Most High does, He is right. His Kingdom cannot be stopped by adverse conditions or by human stubbornness. Job shows us that the Kingdom of the Most High is durable.




The book of Job is followed by King David’s book of Psalms, after which was written by King Solomon, the son of King David. He wrote the book of Proverbs to show readers how the Kingdom life is supposed to be. Tradition tells us that he also wrote the book of Ecclesiaties, which makes fun of the way people try to live without the Most High. The summary of that book would read something like this: “Everything is a meaningless waste of time, except obedience to the Most High. Live the Most High’s way and you will live a long life.” The third of Solomon’s books is called the Song of Solomon or the Song of Songs, and it is a long poem about the love between a man and a woman. In total contradiction, King Solomon did not follow his own advice even though it has been preserved for us in the Bible. He lost his kingdom because of his own sin. His loss does not contradict the knowledge and wisdom of the books he wrote for us. It only underlines for us the reality that the Kingdom of the Most High is based on righteousness because if you decide to ignore the King’s instructions, you will lose what He has given you.




After Solomon, the Most High stopped using kings to explain His Kingdom; from that time forward He used the prophets exclusively to tell people about it. We have seventeen separate books, most of which were named after prophets whose words are in the books: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations (also written by Jeremiah), Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi. These prophets demonstrated the power of the King even as they predicted the coming of the Maschaiach.




The book of the prophet Malachi is the last book of the Old Testament, and it ends with the announcement:
Malachi 4:4-6 King James Version (KJV)

4 Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments.

5 Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord:

6 And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.

The Most High was closing out all of the centuries of prophecies by saying, “There is someone coming before Me to introduce Me to everybody.” He was referring to John the Baptist, who would announce the Maschaich, Yahusha, and who would come in the tradition of the great Elijah.

This is how all of the books of the Old Testament, from Joshua to Malachi, deal with the announcement of the coming King. They saw ahead into the future and they announced the Kingdom.




After Yahusah did come, live and work on earth for thirty-three years, suffer crucifixion and rise from the grave, He was walking down a road with some of His old friends. At first they did not recognize Him, because of course they thought that He was dead. As they walked, He went through the Scriptures with them, explaining, probably in more depth than before, that the early scriptures had to do with the coming Maschiach. When He finished, their eyes were opened and they realized He was the one talking with them. (This account can be found in Luke 24:13-34).




The Law and the Prophets

Yahusha had established these lines of connection well before that time. I have always been highly interested in something that happened on what we now call the Mount of Transfiguration. (This account is told in three of the Gospel books Matthew 17, Mark 9 and Luke 9). Yahusha took three of his disciples up on a mountain, While they were with Him up there, who should appear out of the air by Moses and Elijah, who had long been dead.




Why those two? Because they represent the Law and the Prophets the most completely. Yahusha did not take His disciples up on the mountain in order to show off His power. He went to have a meeting to pick up the baton. He went to close two books so He could open another. As He said in Luke 16:16, the Law and the Prophets were preached from the time of Moses to the time of Yahusha’s forerunner John the Baptist. Those are the only two things that could have been preached. But they pointed toward the Kingdom, which arrived on the scene with the Son of the Most High, Yahusha.




In other words, everything before John was reference notes. When Yahusha came the Law and the Prophets. He was fulfilling them. The law-givers, law-keepers and the prophets had fulfilled their duty. They had completed their assignments. The Law and the Prophets are vitally important, because they lead up to something greater, the Son of the Most High Himself. Yahusha said:
Matthew 5:17-20 King James Version (KJV)

17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.

18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

19 Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

20 For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.



The Application of the Law and the Prophets

Yahusha came to earth to set the people of the Earth back on course by bringing His Kingdom, to fulfill all of the predictions and the foreshadowings that had come since the time of Adam. The prophets had spoken about a coming King. All of the earlier earthly judges and kings had portrayed Him to some extent. Suddenly He was here, and He won back men and women everywhere, inviting them to become His brethren, citizens of the Kingdom in the fullest sense.



Far from being as limited in scope and power as a new religion, His mission was to restore the Heaven, to the Earth. He came to render the application of the Law and the Prophets, to bring divine wisdom where only knowledge and understanding has been before. Here, listed for you, is a list of what Yahusha’s coming means for us. Yahusha came to Earth: to restore the government of the Most High. Isaiah 9:6-7 King James Version (KJV)

6 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

7 Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.

*to bring back to Earth the laws of that government. Every country is built on laws. The Kingdom is built on the Most High’s law as given to Moses.

*to bring the values of Heaven. Every colony reflects the values and culture of its parent government, and the Kingdom of the Most High is no exception.

*to bring the citizenship of Heaven. Once you get citizenship you get all the others and once you get all the others, you have citizenship.



So when Yahusha said to the people, “Repent, for the Kingdom of the Most High has arrived” (Matthew 4:17) He was saying, “Change your thinking, because another country has come back to Earth. It used to be here when Adam was alive, but Adam got rid of it. The prophets have been telling you that I would be coming, and now I have come. The reason I came is to bring that country back. That country is called the kingdom of Heaven.”



Adam’s Loss, Yahusha’s Gain

Because of what Adam did, human beings lost touch with the lifestyle of Heaven. Instead of living the high life, they started living the low life. Instead of living a life free from sickness, they became prone to sickness Instead of living a life above depression, people live under it. Humans lost the lifestyle that Adam and Eve had enjoyed in the Garden.



I am convinced that Adam never used to worry. Probably, he used to talk to the trees, walk on water, and speak to the fish. Why not? He had dominion over them. And when the Second Adam came, bringing back the original government of the Most High, He too spoke to trees, walked on water and spoke to fish.



When Adam sinned, the Most High consigned him and his children to toil in difficulties:
Genesis 3:17-19 King James Version (KJV)

17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;

18 Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;

19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.



Yahusha turned this around. He modeled a stress-free (sweat-free) life. He showed us that in the Kingdom lifestyle there is no pressure to give you high blood pressure. When the men fished all night and caught nothing, He willed fish into their nets (Luke 5). When we wanted to get rid of an unproductive tree, He did not have to sweat and use an ax to cut it down. He just said to it, “You will die,” and the tree withered overnight (Matthew 21:18-22). When His men were in a boat that was sinking in a storm, He walked on water to save them. (Matthew 14:22-33, Mark 6:45-52 and John 6:16-21). He had complete dominion over the fish and the trees and the storms and everything else. And that is just part of what it means to have Kingdom dominion.



Knowing Constitutional Rights



Before you can step into dominion you need to know the ways of the Kingdom. The first kind of knowledge you need is a knowledge of your constitutional rights in this new country. What rights have you been guaranteed under this government? How can you expect your life to be? How should you behave; what laws do you need to know about?



Because the Bible is like the constitution of the Kingdom of the Most High, that is where we need to go to find out our constitutional rights. The Bible is like a contract or a covenant between the King and His citizens, and it tells us how to maintain our legal status. Of course we cannot follow its guidelines if we do not know what it says.



This can be a problem in any country. Have you ever read the constitution of your own country? The average person never does it. We have no idea what is rightfully ours, so we can’t even argue for our rights for a legal standpoint. We do not even know when we have been deprived of something that belongs to us by law. (Have you noticed that most politicians are lawyers? They know something that the rest of us don’t know, and they use that to their advantage.)



A person who knows the law cannot be manipulated, and this applies to the Kingdom of Most High just as much as it does to other countries. The greatest example of this occured when the hasatan tested Yahusha in the wilderness. How did Yahusha win? He quotes Scripture. (Matthew 4:1-11, Mark 1:12-13, Luke 4:1-3.) He did not resort to rebuking the hasatan or binding him or casting him out. He just spoke a few words from the book of Deuteronomy and whipped the tempter.



The reason Yahusha knew what to say is because He had immersed Himself in the written Word of the Most High and the Spirit brought the rights words to His mind when He needed them, just as the Spirit can do with us if we too read the Bible often and with understanding. Reading the Bible gives you legal power.



Prosperity Guaranteed



Knowing what the Bible says will keep you from taking matters into your own hands. It will help you to trust the King to take care of you. Most of us have been raised in a society that teaches us to depend on nobody but ourselves. We learn how to protect ourselves and how to hang on to what we own. We find it hard to submit to any, and we do now want anybody else to run our lives. When we come into the Kingdom of the Most High, we must change our minds and hearts or Yahusha can’t really help us very much. Yes, we pray and ask Him for help--and then we got to help ourselves. Our contingency plans are proof of the power of the spirit of independence. We pray and then we answer our own prayers. That is our old culture.



Yet dependence is to our prosperity. Remember how Yahausha condemned the man in the parable who said “I have made myself rich! I must build more barns to hold my wealth.” (Luke 12:16-21) Knowing what the Bible really says--is the key to our dependency.



When I say that, I am not advocating the prosperity doctrine that some people preach. You can’t just “name it and claim it” because you happen to want something nice. There is no such thing in the Bible as a prosperity doctrine. Yahusha never taught prosperity. He never had to, because in the Kingdom, it is irrelevant.



In the Kingdom, prosperity is a byproduct. When we seek first the Kingdom, all the things we need in order to prosper and flourish will be supplied for us. Getting into the Kingdom comes first, and that places you in a position of completed dependence.



This bothers people, especially us Americans, who see dependence on the Most High as a copout. We do not appreciate the value of dependency. We do not understand that the lower you go before the King, the higher He lifts you. The lower you go, the more He exalts you. The Most High is the King of the Universe. He owns it. The more you humble yourself before the Owner, the more you can expect to be exalted. Yahusha said, Matthew 23:12 King James Version (KJV)

12 And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.



You know why more miracles happen in countries where the spirit of independence is not strong? Because in those countries, people do not have an alternative Excedrin to take. When you get a headache in a remote village in Africa, you need the Most High. You can’t get medical help. But in independent-minded cultures, miracles do not happen as often, because people have their own contingency plan in their back pockets in case prayer does not work. When your trust level is low, your Kingdom life will be almost zero.



Stability Guaranteed



Those of us who have lived in the Caribbean know what happens when hurricanes come through. The only tree that does not fall is the palm tree. When the wind rips every other tree out of the ground by its roots, the palm tree will just bend down, even touch the ground, and come back up like an elastic band.



In the same way, citizens of the Kingdom, the people who have been planted in Kingdom soil will flourish in any kind of difficult circumstances. They are “the righteous,” the ones who know the right way to live, the way of Kingdom:
Psalm 92:12-13 King James Version (KJV)

12 The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree: he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon.

13 Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God.



When economic problems come and wipe out everybody else, the Kingdom citizen will bounce back. Kingdom citizens are under a different system of government that works for them. Kingdom citzens are like the Hebrews that the Most High took out of slavery in Egypt (Exodus 7-11). The Most High made the plagues attack all of the people who were not His chosen people. He can do that because He owns everything. He can tell a locust to eat only the crops of the Egyptians and not the crops of their slaves. To them as well as us, the Most High says, “If you obey me, I will be your Most High God.”
Exodus 15:26 King James Version (KJV)

26 And said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the Lord that healeth thee.