OUR FATHER SENT HIS SON TO DO AND TO TEACH

In Mathew chapter 5 verses 25 - 26, the Lord Jesus introduces a new concept into the code of expected behaviour among His people.

When one has an outstanding debt, obligation or liability, the Lord tells us to expedite the resolution of the matter with a view to settling it out of court before it is turned over into the hands of the court. 

25 “Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still together on the way, or your adversary may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. 26 Truly I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.

What the Lord is describing here applies to both the corporeal and spiritual realms.

In court systems of men and in the court systems of the spirit world, the legalistic mechanisms process cases through like machines and once we get fed into one end as a defendant, we are subject to the nature of the judge's view of our case and we may be found guilty or liable and we may then be handed over to the enforcers who may use imprisonment to extricate from use what is due.

The councel of the Lord is do everything in our power to bring swift resolution to any issue that is being held against us.

In spiritual matters, this means that we must offer resolutions for offences that we have caused as soon as we can and to transact in spiritual terms to atone for or restitute what is required.

If we let cases linger, they can be brought forward for litigation at the most importune times. An example of where the adversary pressed a case at a time that caused maximal damage is when a devastating drought descended on the land Israel while David was king.

Decades before, David's predecessor, king Saul, broke a vow that Israel had with the Gibeonites. 

Even though the vow was centuries old and the infraction the Saul commited against the terms of the vow was decades old, the adversary of Israel pressed the case against Israel by the imposition of a severe drought.

To bring a resolution to the matter during David's time, it cost the lives of seven people from the family of Saul because the Gibeonites demanded the killing of Saul's descedants in order to release Israel from their infraction.

The drought was the prison that Israel was put into and they were not released from the prison until they had paid the last penny.

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