NIGHTWATCH FOR EUROPE week beginning Sunday July 6th 2008
‘Could you not watch with me for one hour?’ (Mtt26: 40)
WELCOME TO THE NIGHT WATCH FOR EUROPE
This week I am preparing the watch guidelines in the Ardennes. I am here taking part in the 9th annual event for the intercessory movement Les Messagères led by Domi Kamuanga of Brussels. During this time I shall be speaking on the role of the church in reconciling the nations to God by accessing the power of the cross to deal with corporate sin. As this is a vital part of intercession that the Holy Spirit is restoring to the church we will spend this week’s watch praying into the relevant biblical material. Thanks again for your feedback on the Europe African Reconciliation Process, some of which we will include next week.
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If you are receiving this material unexpectedly it is because someone has suggested that you may be interested to join in. If you do not want to keep receiving it please inform us immediately and we will stop sending it to you. We want to let those of you who are newcomers know that we are very pleased to have your partnership in this watch. We are simply asking for a commitment of an hour a week some time between 9pm and 6am whatever time zone you are in.
We will send you a brief outline for prayer each week according to the prophetic direction coming from the contemporary prophetic movement in Europe. You will not always agree with everything in the watch material. Go with what you can and trust the Lord to help you with the rest. This Nightwatch began in November 2003 and we are looking to carry on until the end of September 2008 after which there will be a transition into a different form of intercessory support. If you have to miss an occasional watch it’s OK as the rest of us will carry it. We are ready for eleventh hour workers for this final three months!
THE CONTENT OF THE WATCH FOR THE WEEK BEGINNING SUNDAY 6th July 2008
1. THE POWER OF THE CROSS TO DEAL WITH PERSONAL SIN (10 minutes)
We are all familiar with examples of Jesus preaching the gospel to individuals. Think of the woman at the well, the woman taken in adultery and the thief at the cross. We know that because of the cross, salvation is available to individual sinners. This is how we found our own salvation. Probably the most well known example is Nicodemus. Remember that when he failed to understand the new birth Jesus said:
"As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes in him will have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” (Jn3:14-16)
Spend time reflecting over these verses and thanking God your own salvation.
2. JESUS ADDRESSED CORPORATE SIN TOO (15 minutes)
Many of us have somehow missed the many instances where the Lord addresses the issue of corporate sin, such as the sins of the Pharisees, the lawyers, the rich, the city of Jerusalem and the Jews. Spend time considering the following statements:
"Woe to you Pharisees! For you love the chief seats in the synagogues and the respectful greetings in the market places. Woe to you! For you are like concealed tombs and the people who walk over them are unaware of it." (Lk11:43-44)
"Woe to you lawyers as well! For you weigh men down with burdens hard to bear, while you yourselves will not even touch the burdens with one of your fingers. Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets, and it was your fathers who killed them. So you are witnesses and approve the deeds of your fathers; because it was they who killed them, and you build their tombs.” (Lk11:45-48)
"Woe to you who are rich, for you are receiving your comfort in full.” (Lk6:24)
"Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling.” (Mtt23:37)
“So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him … You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” (Jn8:31 and 44)
Note that these are sins of whole groups of people made up of individuals. It is possible to repent of individual sin without touching these wider issues. So Nicodemus, a Pharisee, became a secret disciple, but he was still part of a whole group that Jesus identified as needing repentance. Pray and reflect over the way that it is possible for a Christian to be a racist, an oppressor or an idolater without recognising it. We are part of social groups and nations that are guilty of these things. Jesus died for these sins too. (Paul picks this up in his letter to Titus where he makes clear that strongholds in one nation can connect to strongholds in another (cf. Titus 1:10-14).
3. JESUS EXHORTED HIS DISCIPLES TO PREACH REPENTANCE AND FORGIVENESS TO THE NATIONS (10 minutes)
“Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and he said to them, "Thus it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” (Luke 24:45-47)
We have tended to apply these verses only to the repentance and forgiveness for individual sin that we are used to. We have assumed that this reference to preaching to the nations means individuals in the nations. It certainly involves that, as in Jesus’ words in Matthew 28:18-20 where mention is made of baptism and discipleship. But consider prayerfully what this might involve if Jesus was referring to nations in the same way that he focussed on the sin of groups in the scripture passages above.
4. THE SOURCE OF JESUS’ WORDS IS IN HOSEA CH 6 (15 minutes)
There is in fact only one scripture that Jesus can be referring to in Luke 24:45-47 above when he says “Thus it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day.” (Only the Old Testament existed in those days of course.) This scripture is Hosea 6:1-3 "Come, let us return to the Lord. For he has torn us, but he will heal us; he has wounded us, but he will bandage us. He will revive us after two days; he will raise us up on the third day that we may live before him. So let us know, let us press on to know the Lord. His going forth is as certain as the dawn; and he will come to us like the rain, like the spring rain watering the earth."
Take time to pray and meditate over the surprising fact that Jesus understands his cross as fulfilling a prophecy that is not in the singular but the plural, not firstly about the individual but about the corporate. Hosea chs 4-5 give us the context for this. “Listen to the word of the Lord, O sons of Israel, for the Lord has a case against the inhabitants of the land, because there is no faithfulness or kindness or knowledge of God in the land. There is swearing, deception, murder, stealing and adultery. They employ violence, so that bloodshed follows bloodshed. Therefore the land mourns and everyone who lives in it languishes along with the beasts of the field and the birds of the sky, and also the fish of the sea disappear.” (Hos4:1-3)
So the context is the corporate sin of Israel and its impact on the whole land. Hosea prophesied that the Lord would end the destruction with a corporate resurrection on the third day. Jesus understood his death and resurrection as fulfilling the death and resurrection of Israel and together with them the death and resurrection of the nations that they were called into being to bless. So he concluded that repentance for forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
5. THE TASK OF THE CHURCH IN ACCESSING THE POWER OF THE CROSS (10 minutes)
Prayerfully consider the following: Two things happen when we identify and repent of corporate sin. Firstly we come out from under the power of it when we identify with it and repent of it. Our repentance connects us to the cross where Jesus bore the sin of his nation and with it all the nations. We are raised with him and become a new creation, a new humanity living in his kingdom. But secondly, now that we are reconciled with him, becoming part of his body, our repentance and forgiveness is intercessory. For we have now become a redeemed remnant of that group or nation for whose corporate sin we have repented. So if we recognise and have the courage to repent of and repudiate the sin of our group or nation then we immediately become the intercessors for our people together with the Lord. We stand in the gap for their sin, connecting them with him through the cross and called and able to seek changes in their behaviour and destiny. When this happens more room will be made for the kingdom of God, more people will come to Christ and our nation will be saved. This is what the church is supposed to be for!
Jesus frequently stated that it was necessary for him to be killed and raised again on the third day. Jesus identified with the sins of his people so completely that he was willing to go the cross for them. This is why he could preach so strongly against their corporate and national sin. The church of Jesus Christ is called to identify so strongly with the sins of the groups and nations of which we are a part that we are willing to pay the price of standing in the gap prophetically or literally in order to carry the sins of the people to the cross. Then we too can be a prophetic voice warning against the corporate sins of the people without condemnation or hypocrisy.
