Every time God speaks to us, He is always speaking to us for a transformation, for a change from a state to another state, because God has already made a principle, which is universal in its application; that if you don't change your state, you can't change your experience.
And when we talk about being, what does it mean? I am sure many of us are familiar with the verb "be". Being is like the present participle of be. If we look at the meaning in the dictionary, it talks about the nature and the essence of the person. That is why we say this person is a human being, the nature and essence of that person is that he exists now, he is present now. I also came across a definition that I found very interesting, it talks about the quality of the existence not just the state of existence as it were but it also talks about the quality of the existence.
So what is the quality of your being? Are you just being, or there is a quality, what is the quality of your being? Our anchor Scripture will be taken from Obadiah 1:17-18.
17 "But on Mount Zion there shall be deliverance, And there shall be holiness; The house of Jacob shall possess their possessions.18 The house of Jacob shall be a fire, And the house of Joseph a flame; But the house of Esau shall be stubble; They shall kindle them and devour them, And no survivor shall remain of the house of Esau," For the LORD has spoken.
Obadiah 1:17-18 (NKJV)
It said "but on Mount Zion". On Mount Zion is a different experience. Mount Zion is a different place. Mount Zion talks about a specific location. He didn't say but on a Mount, it could have been Mount Horeb, or Mount Gilgal or one other Mount but he was specific, on Mount Zion, "specific location;"
“there shall be deliverance”- this is what you will encounter at this location. "Deliverance"
And I want us to note the word "be", "there shall be," it will exist. That means it’s not a forgotten experience; in Mount Zion is a perpetual experience of deliverance. You can't come to Mount Zion and find something different from deliverance, you can't come to Mount Zion and find something different from holiness. It is a permanent experience, perpetual in nature.
It says "there shall " it talks about the fact that it’s not on probability, it’s not there might be deliverance but on Mount Zion there shall be Holiness, there shall be deliverance and when this experience that is perpetual in nature happens on Mount Zion, there is something that will come out of it.
It said ‘the house of Jacob shall possess their possession’, where? On Mount Zion! So there is no other location for possessing your possession than Mount Zion. Mount Zion is the place that brings you to deliverance, that brings you to holiness, which eventually results in possessing your possession. And we are going to look at all this as the Holy Spirit leads us. And in verse 18 it talks about the house of Jacob. It said “and the house of Jacob shall be a fire on Mount Zion, the house of Joseph a flame".
We have been talking about Mount Zion, what is this Mount Zion? Somebody must be asking, you are talking about the location that brings this experience, what is this location? What does it entail? What is special about this location? Let's go to Hebrews 12 and let us see what Mount Zion is. Mount Zion is described very well to us in Hebrews 12:22-24.
22 But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels,
Hebrews 12:22-24 (NKJV)
So, Mount Zion is not just an anyhow location, it is the city of the living God, that is the first thing we have come to realize about Mount Zion?
Number two, it is the heavenly Jerusalem. Remember he said ‘you have come to Mount Zion’, now he is explaining Mount Zion to us, this place Mount Zion, what does it mean? What does it consist of? What is special about Mount Zion? He said number one, you have come to the city of the living God, you have come to the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, that's Mount Zion.
In Hebrews 12 verse 23, and 24;
23 to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, 24 to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel.
So, for you to experience deliverance, and holiness which will eventually lead you to possessing your possession, you must come to Mount Zion.
Mount Zion is a place where you can be delivered, where you can be holy, that is the place that guarantees you to possess your possession. And he explains to us here what Mount Zion is. Have you come to God? Have you come to Jesus? Have you come to the company of God? Have you come to the city of the living God, have you come to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant?
Until you come to Mount Zion, your deliverance is not guaranteed. Until you come to Mount Zion, your holiness is not guaranteed. Until you come to Mount Zion, you cannot possess your possession. And you will look at it, that this is the state of Mount Zion, the state of Mount Zion produces the state of the house of Jacob from Obadiah 1:17. So what you come to determines who you are and it determines what you have.
You ask yourself ‘daily, who do I go to? Daily, where do I go to? Daily, to what do I go to? If you read the earlier verse of Hebrews 12 verse 18 to 21 it says "for you have not come to the mountain that you may be touched, that burned,” because previously in that chapter of Hebrews 12, it talks about how the children of Israel were dreading the presence of God, because that mountain could not be touched, it was fearful but Mount Zion is no longer fearful, Mount Zion is simply coming to Jesus and when you come to Jesus, your state changes, your experience changes.
Listen to Podcast: The State of Being: The Prerequisite For The Blessing
I want us to see this experience in Luke 8. There is a very interesting story there that will make us to understand better what the Lord is saying to us. In Luke 8:27, I am very sure many of us are familiar with this story. There was a mad man at Gadarenes and the Bible says;
Luke.8.27 – And when He stepped out on the land, there met him a certain man from the city who had demons for a long time- note the description of this man, this man was possessed with demons for a long time.
The Bible says ‘And he wore no clothes, nor did he live in a house but in the tombs’.
This man’s address was the tomb; he did not live in a house. He wore no clothes so he had no possession. He was possessed by where he was and what had encountered him. He was possessed by demons. When Jesus asked the demons ‘who are you? What is your name?’ They said ‘legion, for we are many’, so the experience of this man was as a result of the state of his being. He was been possessed by demons so he wore no clothes, he had no house and he was existing in the midst of dead people, in the tomb. So because he was possessed by demons, he had no relationship as it where, he had no possession among the living. His experience was death, we wore no clothes. When you see a human being walking on the road without clothes, what do you call him? You will say this man is mad. That means this man is not supposed to be amongst us. That is the state of his being, why? because he is possessed by demons.
But let us see the experience of this man from verse 35;
It says in Luke 8:35 –‘Then they went out to see what had happened’,-this is after he had encountered Jesus, this was after this man had come to Mount Zion, after he had come to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, see his experience in this verse
‘and came to Jesus, and found the man from whom the demons had departed’, -I love that word, the demons had to depart, so until you depart from where you have always been, and you come to Mount Zion, your experience cannot change. Until you depart from where you have always lived, who have always had you, your experience cannot change.
After the demons had departed, look at his location now, it says "he was sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind and they were afraid"
What a change of state, his location had shifted, he was no longer in the tomb, and he was now sitting at the feet of Jesus. Before he had no clothes but now he was clothed. And the Bible says "and in his right mind and they were afraid"
Luke 8.36 – They also who had seen it told them by what means he who had been demon-possessed was healed.
Luke 8:38 – Now the man from whom the demons had departed begged Him that he might be with Him. But Jesus sent him away, saying,
Luke.8.39 – "Return to your own house, and tell what great things God has done for you." And he went his way and proclaimed throughout the whole city what great things Jesus had done for him”.
Obadiah 1:17 says ‘but there shall be deliverance, holiness, and the house of Jacob shall possess their possession’ that means that possession was theirs in the first place, they lost it, but on Mount Zion, you regain your possession. Jesus said ‘return to your own house’ that means the man had a house before. But he was dispossessed of his house because he was in a wrong location and he was in a wrong state of being.
His house was his, but he was in the tomb that's the same way some of us are going through experiences that God has not marked out for our destiny because we are in a wrong location because we are in a wrong state of being. Until you shift, there is a blessing hanging over your life, hanging over your destiny that would not be yours until your state of being changes, until you come to Mount Zion.
When this man came to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, Jesus said to him in verse 39, ‘return to your own house and tell what great things God has done for you and he went his way and proclaimed throughout the whole city what great things Jesus had done for him’. This man was able to posses his possession because he came to Mount Zion. He encountered deliverance, he became holy and he was able to possess his possession.
Enough of complaining, enough of murmuring, have we truly come? Do we truly come daily to Mount Zion because Mount Zion is the place of change, deliverance, holiness and a place where we truly posses our possession on a daily basis. Don't say ‘I come to Mount Zion, I come to Jesus, Jesus knows I come to Him’. How many times do you come to Jesus? Do you come to Jesus when you have problems? Or once in a blue moon? Once a week, only on Sundays, only on Mondays, only on Wednesdays, how long do you come? because the degree of your visitation, degree of your coming is the degree of your victory.
So, if you are once in a life time victorious believer, check how you come to Mount Zion, if you are once in a long time blessed believer, check how you come to Mount Zion. You also come once in a long time, maybe when it’s time to cross over to a new year, and you say ‘you know what! I think this time I need to go to Jesus’. Until we change the state of our being. We can't connect to the blessing. Who you are determines what you attract.
I want us to look at the story of Jacob. Jacob was a supplanter. The Bible says when he was born, he was holding on to the heel of his brother Esau. So, he came to the earth and he was given the name, Jacob, supplanter. That was his name. So every time you see Jacob and you call him his name, you call him supplanter. So it was who he was and it was also his experience. Even though he was blessed and a prophecy had gone ahead of Jacob that the elder will serve the younger, the younger did not know how to connect with the blessing, because he didn't come to Mount Zion and he had to supplant, what does it mean to supplant? It means to cunningly take advantage of another person.
So, he was always taking advantage of situations, taking advantage of people, so he took advantage of Esau. When their father was to bless them, the mother quickly said to him, ‘go and get what your father requested, I will make a meal, put on the skin of Esau so that your father will not know it’s you’. That's how he got the blessing but after he got the blessing, the question is; how did he live? He lived as a supplanter, because his being had not changed, the blessing did not materialize. So he went to Laban his uncle and he was serving and Laban supplanted him. He reaped what he sowed.
Until he had an encounter with the angel of the Lord and his name was changed from Jacob to Israel, he did not walk in the fullness of the blessing. So when we are talking about the house of Jacob possessing their possession, we must understand it. We must understand the background from which this Scripture was written. The house of Jacob was the house that was blessed, the blessing had come, the elder shall serve the younger, it was already proclaimed. God loved Jacob and he despised Esau, the blessing was already on him. And that's why when you look at that Obadiah that we read it says ‘the house of Jacob shall be a fire’ but until you come to Mount Zion.
So until Jacob encountered God in Mount Zion and he wrestled with God, and his joint was shifted, and he had a shift in being, his experience did not change. For all his life he ran away from his brother Esau thinking Esau wanted to kill him until after that encounter, just like the Bible says in proverbs 16:7 ‘when the ways of a man pleases the Lord, He will cause even his enemies to be at peace with him.’
(To Be Continued)
