As believers, what is it that we have in Christ? What is that hope that we hold onto? What is that living hope that we hold onto come rain come sunshine? What is that thing that keeps us going, that to the world its foolishness but to us, it’s the life that we live? It’s the very essence of our being. And I pray the Holy Spirit will usher us into this experience this morning under his leadership in Jesus name.
When we hear the word premium, what comes to mind? I am sure many of us that use cable TV are familiar with the word premium. For those that use DSTV, they say DSTV PREMIUM, what does it mean? When you have this package, you have access; what they are saying simply is when you subscribe to this package, you have access to all that is available in DSTV. That means what DSTV has, you have access to all of it but there is a limitation because you only have access to what DSTV has. That is why the premium package of the world is limited. When they say unlimited access, it is unlimited to the degree of the one that has the access.
But what is the true premium package? When we talk about premium, it’s expensive. For you to have access to premium, its costly, you have to pay dearly, it’s not cheap. You go to some organizations, they will tell you, we have different packages, especially when you go online and maybe you want to subscribe to a particular thing or something; they say we have standard, then we have premium, some will even say we have free trial.
Then we have different other packages till you get premium, then they give you different names like platinum, gold, silver, name it but what they are saying at this point is that you will enjoy the best. This is our superior quality. So when we talk about premium, we are talking about something that is heavy weight, something superior, something that is the finest of what is available, something that is the latest. Usually when you get to enjoy a premium package, you will notice that every new channel comes on premium. Every new service comes on premium, so it is the latest. So when you are looking for the best, unlimited, you want to access premium.
I got a definition of premium that I love that we will be using as our working definition. It says premium is something or someone of greater and superior quality. And we will be starting our observation from Hebrews chapter 10. We are going to look at it, why do we talk about the premium package of Christ? Why do we say Christ is of superior quality? Why do we say Christ is of greater quality? Why do we talk about Him being the finest and the latest? Why do we refer Him as the heavy weight?
Hebrews 10:1-4, we want to see what the standard was, what used to exist and the limitation of what used to exist. In verse 1 it says;
1 For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with these same sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect. 2 For then would they not have ceased to be offered? For the worshipers, once purified, would have had no more consciousness of sins. 3 But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year.
Hebrews 10: 1-3 (NKJV)
So in this particular verses, we are open to what the standard was, what used to happen, this inferior experience, this old experience, when people will come year after to come and offer sacrifices, and he said in spite of the fact that this sacrifices remove the consciousness of sin, but for a moment and a limited time, he said in this sacrifices there is reminder of sin every year. They are reminded of their sins, they have to come back.
Hebrews 10:4 “For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins”.
‘It is not possible’, so in the old order, there was a package available that reminded people of sin, that only purifies them for a season, for a limited time, they come back to their starting point. That was the package that used to exist.
Then in verse 5, he now said;
Hebrews 10:5 “Therefore, when He came into the world, talking about Jesus, when Christ came on the scene He said: "Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, talking about God but a body you have prepared for me”
Let us pause a little bit there, verse 1 to 4 told us about a package that men prepared and brought before God; the cattle and those sacrifices they offered, bulls and goats were prepared by men, so it’s of inferior quality. It was prepared by men and was brought before God, but he said here “but you have prepared a body for me”, so the body of Jesus was not a body prepared by men, but a body prepared by God. Can we see the difference in the quality? Already we see that in the standard package, bulls and goats prepared by men was what were offered but in Christ, a body was prepared.
Listen To Podcast: The Premium Package In Christ Jesus: How To Discover All That God Has Called Us To Be
When the angel came to Mary and said to her “blessed are you amongst women, God has chosen to birth through you a divine agenda. You will have a Son; His name will be called Jesus for He will save His people from sin”. And Mary asked, because if Mary had not asked that question accidentally we would have thought that Joseph was the father of Jesus and Mary asked “how will these things be, knowing that I know no man?” And the angel said “the Holy Spirit will overwhelm you, the Spirit of the Lord will overshadow you. For what will be born of you is a holy thing.” That is a body being prepared by God.
That is why you will see people like Christiana that marry Cynthia, they cannot have children why because, it takes the sperm of the man to fertilize the egg of the woman to have a child so there has to be a male female relationship but in this case, there was no male female relationship, there was a divine relationship between the woman that God had chosen and the Holy Spirit so, the interconnection prepared a body that was not formed by man. So, when Jesus was saying a body you have prepared for me, He was saying the truth.
The body was prepared in the womb of Mary, by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit. So God prepared a body for this sacrifice. Anybody could have died for the sins of the world. John the Baptist, through Elizabeth and Zacharias could have died for the sins of the world but a body had to be prepared.
6 In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin you had no pleasure 7 Then I said, "Behold, I have come– In the volume of the book it is written of Me– To do your will, O God.”
Hebrews 10:6-7 (NKJV)
So it is God’s will that the body prepared for Him, be a body for sacrifice.
8 “Previously saying, "Sacrifice and offering, burnt offerings, and offerings for sin you did not desire, nor had pleasure in them" which are offered according to the law 9 then He said, "Behold, I have come to do your will, O God. He takes away the first that He may establish the second”.
Hebrews 10:8-9 (NKJV)
Jesus came to do away with the standard; the premium package is not in existence with standard package. In other words, Jesus came to do away with the inferior by bringing the superior, Jesus came to do away with the standard that He might become the premium to us and we will see how that many of us have not fully come into the premium package of Christ, we are still holding on to the standard because it’s not just by saying Jesus is Lord, it is not just by saying you know what? I have premium. If you want premium and in all you do, you cannot explore, you are not ready to switch on to all that is available in the premium, it is a waste. It’s not enough to have received Jesus, it is not enough to say yes, Jesus is Lord, I believe and I receive it. If you don’t walk in all that Jesus has come to deliver for you, you are wasting the package.
Imagine if you have a premium package on your DSTV and all you watch is African magic family, and you begin to complain that the TV is boring, they are not doing anything new, whose fault is it? Is it the fault of DSTV? No! It’s your fault, you chose not to explore, you chose not to change channel and you chose not to go to other things that are available. That is what we want to look at, what is available in the premium package of Christ? I want us to look at 1 John 5:11-13
1John 5:11“And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son”.
This is the testimony, this is the good news, this is the latest thing in town; God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His son Jesus.
1John.5:12 “He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life”.
Do we see it? It’s very clear, this life is the premium package in Christ, God has given us this testimony, He has given us eternal life and this life cannot be found in any other decoder. This life you cannot access it anywhere else, this life has always existed. It’s just like the satellite, the Holy Spirit was explaining this to me, and was using so much of cable TV to explain to me, there are channels all over the satellite, there are different waves going on, channels all over the place, but it is the kind of decoder that you have and the kind of dish. It is the way your dish is positioned that determines the channel that you can receive, and guess what! Those that did the decoder are not foolish, they blocked some channels until you pay. When you pay, then it is unblocked, then you now have access to it.
The eternal life we have in God has always existed in God, from the garden of Eden we had access to this life, when God created man He created Him to enjoy life in abundance, so that life always existed. When man sinned, He chased man out of the garden, He said “lest he put His hand on the tree of life and partake thereof”. So, God denied access, but now God is granting us access back, and the only way we can gain access to the fullness of this life, is through His son Jesus.
Let’s look at 1 John 5:11-13 again,
1John 5:11 “And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son”.
1John 5:12 “He who has the Son (has this decoder) has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life”.
Even though the life exists, you don’t have access because you don’t have the son. So there is no two ways about it. You have the son, you have life. You don’t have the son, you don’t have life. When you have a particular decoder, you have the experience that that decoder brings. Now DSTV in trying to collect money from people, they now add explorer one, explorer two, they now put other features, latest features and unlike DSTV, Jesus is not like that, He is once and for all upgraded for us.
When you have access to Him, you always have the latest downloads, latest revelation, latest information on what is happening in heaven because the Bible says “He is seated at the right hand of the Father” where He streams information for us directly; direct access, latest information comes from Jesus to us directly via the Holy Spirit. So, if you have Jesus, you have the life of God. Without Jesus, you don’t have access to life but many of us believers say ‘of course, I have Jesus’. You have Jesus, you have received Him as your personal Lord and savior but how well are you maximizing Jesus in your life?
And see what the Scripture says in verse 13 of 1 John 5,
1John.5.13 – “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know”- so he wasn’t talking to babes, he was talking to believers here, he said you may know, and the same word is coming to us “that you have eternal life”-this same word is coming to us- that you may know that you have eternal life, the life you have is not ordinary, the life you have is not common, the life you have is not standard, it is premium in Christ, and the Bible calls it here eternal life, an everlasting life
“and that you may continue” -I love that word, that you will continue and not stop “to believe in the name of the Son of God”
How many of us have received Jesus and have stopped believing in the name of Jesus? We have ‘commonised’ it, we have become familiar with it, we are so used to it that we are denying the power thereof. Some of us have become believers that wear a form of godliness and have denied the power thereof because we have not come to continue and that’s why I am always excited seeing young believers that just gave their life to Christ, they are always hotter, they are always more believing than brethren that have been in the faith for a long time.
Many of us don’t continue, the same fire and zeal that you had when you first believed you don’t continue in it because everything they told us about Jesus that is true, we wanted to test it, we wanted to try it, we wanted to experience it. What happened to that hunger and that thirst, what happened to that desire and passion to explore God?
It’s just like a child that just got a new toy. He says ‘wow! See this robot, it can move’ and we are excited. Many of us that’s how we were, we explored it, ‘God said I can raise the dead, I want to do this or that’. We had that initial passion and zeal then suddenly you will say ‘I’ve always had this robot, let it be there, it’s no longer exciting,’ we throw it aside, we keep looking for what is not missing.
What we have in Christ is a premium package, fully loaded, heavyweight if only we can sit down with Christ and continue to believe, continue to believe in His name, continue to explore all that is therein in Christ. What happened to your excitement about the Lord? What happened to your excitement about prayer and the word of God, the zeal that you first believed, is it still the same zeal now? Or you are just tuned to one channel and you are just watching; there is more in God.
Don’t stick to one channel and be watching and get tired, explore the power and the life of the Spirit. That is why it is called eternal life, you can’t exhaust it. So what happened to your passion? What happened to your zeal? What happened to that excitement that you used to have? What happened to that time when you will run to the place of prayer to hear what God has to say? What happened to those times that you will run to the word to experience the depth of the word? Have we now ‘commonised’ the premium package in Christ and made it standard? It’s premium, always premium, something special, something new and something latest.
I want us to go to Revelations 5 from verse 11,
We have looked at the holistic package, eternal life. Let us also look at what is also imbedded in that life.
11 Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne, the living creatures, and the elders; and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands, 12 saying with a loud voice: "Worthy is the Lamb who was slain To receive power and riches and wisdom, And strength and honor and glory and blessing!"
Revelations 5:11 -12 (NKJV)
Seven fundamentals and seven pillars of true experience in Christ; and the heavens, the elders and angels bore witness to this truth. These seven fundamentals exist in Christ Jesus, “deserving is the Lamb that was sacrificed”, He was sacrificed that we can receive these seven fundamentals that are crucial in Him. Everyone that comes to Him has eternal life and in this life, there is power, honor, riches, blessings, strength and wisdom. Let start by examining, how many of these fundamentals have we fully experienced in Christ? How many of them are exist and are working actively in our lives?
We need to examine it, its part of the premium package that is in Christ. He was slain for us to receive power; there is power in His name. Have we continued to believe in the power in the name of Jesus? Have we continued to believe in the riches in the name of Jesus, the wisdom in the name of Jesus, the strength in the name of Jesus? In the honor and blessing in the name of Jesus? Have we continued? Or we have stopped believing?
You will say when I became born again, they told me ‘life in Jesus is sweet oh, anything you want, God will give you but that has not been my experience’, have you tarried enough? Have you stayed enough to enjoy all that there is in Christ? They are available in Him and they are true. That’s why when we started, the Holy Spirit made us to understand that faithful and true is His name. He is faithful to receive all these for us. Faithful and He is true to them.
The Bible did not say Jesus is seated at the right hand of God playing, it says “He makes intercession for us, He mediates on our behalves” so that our lives can produce and show all these. Are we tired of believing? Have we stopped believing or do we continue to believe? Are we of them that lay their hands on the plough and look back and are unfit for the kingdom or we are of them that hold on and continue until our souls are saved? Which category do we fall?
The sacrifice of Jesus, the quality of that sacrifice, the superiority of that sacrifice, how heavy that sacrifice is, John 3:16 says “for God so love the world”,-note the word “so,” it talks about the extent. “He gave” -God sacrificed Jesus for us. Jesus was so precious to God and God sacrificed Him for us and because of the quality and superiority of that sacrifice, we are entitled to a premium life in Christ but how many of us have taken that life for granted? How many of us will God look down and say this person is actually living for all that Christ died for, or He looks at us and just say this person has just wasted all that is in Christ. It cost God, Jesus to have this life, how well are we living it? How well are we exploring it? How well are we making full proof that His sacrifice is not a waste? If we don’t respect the sacrifice, then we can’t unlock the secret that is locked in the sacrifice.
And I will be closing with this,
John.14.27 – Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.
Peace I leave with you, then He said my peace I give to you, and He now compared it, He said this is not a standard peace, this is not a world peace, this is not a common peace, this is premium. My peace is different, it’s premium, it’s special, it’s different, and it’s pure. He said that is the kind of peace I give you.
He said ‘don’t be afraid and don’t let your heart be troubled’. The question is; is your heart troubled? Are you afraid? You have not received the peace of God, you have not received the peace of Jesus. You can’t have the life of Jesus and don’t have His peace, you can’t have access to Jesus and not have access to His peace. One of the first fundamental proofs when you have given your life to Christ and made Him your personal Lord and Savior is peace. Your heart is not troubled, you not afraid, you are stable, you are at peace, you can’t explain it, you feel a joy and you believe everything is alright, it is the first proof that you have received Jesus as your Lord and savior. But now a believer, you have received Jesus as your Lord and savior, are you still at peace? Is the peace of Jesus ruling and reigning in your heart? Are you agitated?
I love the way amplified puts it;
“Peace I leave with you; my [perfect] peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be afraid. [Let My perfect peace calm you in every circumstance and give you courage and strength for every challenge.]”
John 14: 27 (AMP)
Are you unsettled? Have you lost your boldness? Are you fearful and intimidated, agitated and disturbed? Something is missing. You have discontinued in believing in the name of the Lord which brings peace. When the peace of a believer is tampered with, his life is tampered with. When you lose your peace as a believer, you are gradually losing your life because embedded in that life is peace, that’s what Jesus exemplified in His ministry from the beginning till He died. Peace! So much so that there was storm on the sea, Jesus calmed the sea, He said peace be still, and men wondered that who is this man that even the wind obey Him?
When the disciples were troubled and there was a raging storm, He was sleeping. When there was no food for 5 thousand men apart from children and women to feed, He was not agitated, He was not disturbed, He said ‘what do you have, bring it’ and they were still worried. ‘5 loaves and two fishes that’s what we have, see the crowd’ but He was not disturbed. That’s the life we have in the premium package in Christ. A life of peace, not a life of agitation, that’s why the Bible says I have not given you the Spirit of fear. The Spirit of Christ is not the Spirit of fear and agitation, but I have given you the Spirit of power, of love and of a sound mind.
As a believer, your mind must be sound, I find peace here as the stability and focus in our orientation and lifestyle. When we have stability and focus at all times and we have it as a lifestyle then truly we are at peace. It’s not the peace of the world like Jesus said the peace that surpasses all human understanding, the peace that surpasses human limitation because where the peace is sourced is limitless; in the life of Jesus, there is no limit to it. That’s the same way the depth of our peace is limitless.
It’s time for us to access all that is in the premium package of Christ. Enough of taking for granted the sacrifice of Jesus, it’s time for us to become all that God has called us to be, to live life in full, to live that eternal, abundant, everlasting life on earth, to show the world the peace of Jesus that rules and reigns in our hearts. That’s how we can preach Him, teach Him, show the world who Jesus is and I pray the Lord helps us in the name of Jesus.
