Joseph Prince - How To Live A Long And Healthy Life

This excerpt is from: Christ-Consciousness Brings Life (18 Jul 2021)

Now, something very interesting that happened that I'm very fascinated by is the fact that Adam had the sentence of death passed on him the day that he sinned. God says: "Dying you shall die". Yet, he was not executed immediately on that day. Adam died 930 years after. It took some time. So even this discovery that you are the righteousness of God in Christ, you might see no difference at first in your body, right? But by the same token, once righteousness is there in your spirit, it will manifest in the days to come. Hallelujah! Have you noticed something else? That the people during Adam's time lived hundreds and hundreds of years and then later on, pre-flood they can live like 400 over years, 500 over years and all the way, just before the law was given, they lived long lives!

So from Adam to Moses, there was sin, of course! Sin came in through Adam and upon all his descendants but until Moses, they lived long lives. So in other words, until the law, there's something very interesting that the Bible tells us in Romans 5 here. In Romans 5, it says: "Therefore just as through one man (that's Adam), sin entered the world and death through sin, and thus death spread to all man because all sinned". Watch this now! This is very important for you to catch. "For until the law". Until the law means until the law came in, "sin was in the world". We all know that it came from Adam. Sin was in the world, but there was no law yet. God did not give the law yet. "For until the law came, until the law entered, sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses". Moses is a representative of the law. "Death reigned from Adam to Moses".

Now, friend. Look up here. This is very interesting! So from Adam until Moses, until the law came in, there were men who lived during this time, there was sin in their lives but they lived long lives. Now we can talk about the changes in the environment, changes here, changes there. But you know what? There was a lot of good environment still, good food yet. Even after, during Moses' time, and all the way down. So here, you find that these people from Adam to Moses, until the law came in, they lived long lives. Even though they had sin. Why? There was no law. Where there was no law, "by the law is the knowledge of sin". In other words, they were not conscious of their sin. They were not conscious of their sin.

Now, don't forget. The institution of blood sacrifice, in other words, the picture of Jesus. Everytime someone sinned during that time from Adam all the way down, they'll bring a sacrifice to God. It's a picture of Jesus, the innocent dying for the guilty, the lamb dying for the sinner. Amen. The sinner will lay his hands on the lamb and then put him on the altar, kill him and then put him on the altar and that's a picture of the sinner's death. Therefore the sinner escapes death and all the sacrifices in the Old Testament was actually to avert physical death. God gave them another stay of execution. In other words, they will not experience death because of that sin. Even though sin brings forth death but because of the sacrifice, they will not die. Therefore even during this time from Adam to Moses, until the law came in, man had that sacrifice. But notice that the Bible says: "Death reigned". There was sin, there was death. But if you look carefully at this time in the Bible itself, you find that during this period, men lived long lives.

So I submit to you. And the Bible clearly tells us during this time, there was no law. The law was not yet given. Until the law, men lived long lives. Even though they had sin, even though there was death but i think that death was kept at bay. I submit to you, friend. When you remove sin-consciousness from the life of a believer, you are actually extending to the believer. That's the word. You are extending life for that believer. Hallelujah! Amen. I believe, I really believe with all my heart that condemnation kills. And that's one of my series I did many years ago when God gave me this word: "Condemnation kills but the Spirit gives life". Just like how 3000 died at the foot of Mount Sinai. Condemnation. And Paul himself calls that the ministry of law, ministry of death, ministry of condemnation. Condemnation kills! Don't allow it to come into your heart. Don't allow it to come into your life and in all your relationships with your family members, with your loved ones, with your children, with the people around you. Amen. Do not extend condemnation.

For some reason, people who are under law, they always have this condemning spirit. Just like the Pharisees during Jesus’ time. They are marked by condemnation. They are marked by fault-finding. It's no surprise that even a sermon like this, there'll be people who are fault-finding. Amen. They'll find fault especially with this gospel of grace. Amen. Why? Because it rubs them the wrong way. They don't like it. "You're taking away from me any sense of my own achievement, and righteousness. You're taking away my self-righteousness". Now they won't say that. "Are you saying there's nothing for us to do"? That's what they'll say, okay? "If there's nothing for me to do," then in other words, "then how can I get credit or glory"? Friend, listen. Listen carefully. In heaven, it will not be us worshiping God with these words: "Worthy is the Lamb and me". You are not in the picture. I've said it before and I'll say it again. And I say this reverently: "If God wants all the glory, let God do all the work".

In fact, God delights in that. Even right now, a ministry of grace is supply-conscious, which means I must be supply-conscious. As I am preaching. Amen. Because you don't want to hear Joseph Prince talk out of his own mind. You want the Holy Spirit talking through him. Amen. And I'm supply-conscious. The more I'm supply-conscious, the more I see the Lord supplying me with the words, even the illustrations, and it becomes life. But if I am demand-minded, in other words, "I better be good at this. I better make sure I don’t fail in this or that. I better make sure that I got it all together" I'm demanding from myself. And that results in stress. Distress. You know, there'll be a death in some form and I believe that believers, some of them are dying before their time, not because of their genes. Of course ever since Adam's sin, death is in the gene, okay? But what I'm trying to say is that you see all these people from Adam to Moses. Until the law came in, even death was in their system. Amen. They are sinners and yet, it seems like death cannot seize on them as long they were not sin-conscious because there was no law during this time.

And people think that you must know the law to become holy. No, friend. You must know Jesus to become holy. We walk as He walked. Amen. We focus on Him! There's a new commandment from Jesus. It's not the same as the old commandment. No, the only thing is like talking to a man who is hungry. "I command you a new commandment. Eat"! How hard is that? Amen. In other words, we have passed from death to life because we love the brethren and He tells us: "Love one another as I have loved you". And yet you see sometimes, it's sad to see so much fault-finding, finger-pointing finger-wagging, judgmentalism and condemnation in the body of Christ. We are not out here to fight against one another. Friend, we are out to reach out to the world with the gospel of grace, the only gospel there is. Hallelujah! The world needs to know that God is not looking at all the filth and mess and sin. God is calling them home. Amen. Do you clean yourself before you take a bath? Amen. No, you go to the bath and then you clean yourself.

A lot of people are trying to clean themselves before they take a bath. Jesus is the bath! Come as you are. He will transform you! "As many as received Him". Receive first. "To them He gave power to become sons of God". Hallelujah! It is all Jesus, my friend. Praise the name of Jesus. Hallelujah. Thank You, Lord Jesus. And it's so interesting, when I saw this that, that during this time when the law was not given yet. Until Moses came, until the law, alright? Men lived long lives, hundreds of years. And then from the time of Moses, when the law came in, they died. By the way, remember I told you just now what God said to me many years ago? That from Egypt to Sinai, no one died. Well, post-Sinai, the same sin (murmuring) which no one died before Sinai. From now on when they murmured, they died. When they complained, they died. When they murmured, they died. What's the difference? They are now under law. Under grace, no one died from Egypt. God brought them out by grace. Unmerited, undeserved favor, faithful to the covenant of Abraham which is totally a covenant of grace. Unearned, undeserved but then they boasted in themselves and the result is death.

You see what the law was designed, death comes with the law because of this. Paul says it in Galatians 3: "Cursed is everyone who continues not in all things". Notice "in all things". You can't just choose what you are able to keep and you discard the rest. No, you must keep all to be righteous, alright? Like James says: "If you offend, you break one law, you are guilty not of the one you break. You're guilty of all". It's like a necklace of pearls, alright? When one breaks, the whole thing comes unfurled. Listen, my friend. If you do your best, it's not enough. Under the law, you must do everything in the law or else you're under the curse. But friend, the following verse in Galatians 3 says: "Christ has ransomed us, redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. For it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.’"

So Christ took that curse for us and then the Bible says: "We don't live by the law, we live by faith". In fact, if you look at Galatians, the opposite of the law is actually faith. Faith and law is always contrasted. And the Bible says that: "The righteous by faith will live". I love that! "The righteous by faith will live". In Romans 1, we read that in this way. And you can read both ways actually. You can read it as: "The just, the righteous shall live by faith". I used to think of that like people who are believing God for their finances and all that. When they are in full-time ministry, right? "The righteous shall live by faith". But actually the essence, and I think a few of the translators brought that out clearly, it's actually: "The righteous by faith. The righteous one by faith will live". The more you believe you are righteous by faith, you will live! Hallelujah!