Infinite Fellowship Ministries

The Shekinah Glory Of God – Part 2: Sermon By Bishop Gobanga

Then the cloud covered the tabernacle of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter the tabernacle of meeting, because the cloud rested above it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. Whenever the cloud was taken up from above the tabernacle, the children of Israel would go onward in all their journeys. But if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not journey till the day that it was taken up. For the cloud of the Lord was above the tabernacle by day, and fire was over it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel, throughout all their journeys.

Exodus 40:34-38 (NKJV)

The Shekinah glory is the visible manifestation of the presence of God. It is the visible representation of the localized manifestation of the presence of God.

In Hebrew, Shekinah means to settle, to inhabit, to dwell. It is used to refer to birds when they are nesting.

The physical manifestation of the presence of God was a time space continuum. This means that the presence of God could be seen.

The presence/Shekinah glory of God was basically a vehicle of Jehovah God in a 3D world.

During the Israelite pilgrimage from Egypt to Canaan, the Tabernacle Moses was the resting place of the manifest/localized presence of God. It was the ordained localized place of worship.

God cannot be contained/constrained in a physical building or to the temples we build on earth. He is an eternal God. However, in any temple of God, there is the abiding glory of God.

Eden is the original mountain of God. The Garden of Eden has a revelation of God. The glory of God did not only happen only at the Tabernacle but also in Eden.

Understand that wherever the Shekinah was made manifest, it was an indication that there was a transaction and relationship between God and humanity in an intimate way- an intimate and affectionate relationship. It was the sole purpose of God revealing this glory to us. Throughout the Bible, God had always had a desire to have an intimate relationship with humanity. This is the same that God desires for us in our times. God is not interested in making us feeling good or for us to move in our giftings. He is interested in an intimate, relationship, fellowship and communion.

The reality is what manifest forth from the experience. From the cloud. God is looking for people that are not mesmerized by manifestations or people who feel the evidence of His manifestation. He is interested in people who embrace the reality within the cloud and walk in what the He has spoken.

God dwells in people. We are the temple of the Holy Spirit.

The Davidic Tabernacle is a type of the New Testament temple, which is the Church. The Church where its major focus is the people not buildings.

God in is the midst of them that are gathered in His name. The gathering is not meant to be nominal but these that are gathered must be of one mind and heart. They must be united. He is interested in individuals who are ready to intercourse with the Divine, to ruminate on His mysteries.

God can visit a congregation and only transact with a few people in the congregation. This means that God is interested in individuals not multitude. He is not in the business of transacting with multitudes but with transacting with they that are of a broken and contrite heart. He dwells with the broken and contrite.

For thus says the high and lofty One—He Who inhabits eternity, Whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, but with him also who is of a thoroughly penitent and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the thoroughly penitent [bruised with sorrow for sin]. 

Isaiah 57:15 (AMP)

Unless the glory of God inhabits the temple, the building is of no value that temple becomes an architectural edifice.

The Shekinah glory of God’s presence did not come to an empty building but to a building with a people who sought after Him.

The temple served the purpose to house the presence of God. This was what the Davidic temple was for.

The Ecclesia is the New Testament temple, the church. It is made up of people.

God wants His localized presence in INFEMI in Nairobi to be multiplied and experienced in other places in the world.

Phillip was a deacon that was sent to Samaria. The early Church had refused to move from Jerusalem and God allowed for persecution to happen for the gospel to spread for the glory of God.

God dwells in a vessel, not a man or a woman.

But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also [utensils] of wood and earthenware, and some for honorable and noble [use] and some for menial and ignoble [use]. So whoever cleanses himself [from what is ignoble and unclean, who separates himself from contact with contaminating and corrupting influences] will [then himself] be a vessel set apart and useful for honorable and noble purposes, consecrated and profitable to the Master, fit and ready for any good work.

 2 Timothy 2:20-21 (AMP)

We are more concerned with buildings, expensive buildings, more than people. People are more important than a building, because we are a type of the heavenly sanctuary. The heart a type of the holy of holies, the body the outer courts while the mind is the inner courts and the will is the holy place.

God is interested in you. The Shekinah Glory of His presence is more interested in you.

God cannot be perceived by the five senses. The things of the spirit are spiritually discerned. Consecrated things are for consecrated people. They are they that God can use to handle His presence. They can handle divine things. They have divine capacity to handle divine things. When you touch the Holy things of God when you are unholy, you either die or go mad.

The practice of the once-a-year ritual of atonement that the High priest carried out once a year, is now supposed to be looking at the New Testament transaction that Jesus Christ that executed at Calvary, happening in your heart.

The omniscient eternal presence of Jehovah, is a heavenly manifestation/orchestration. It is not earthly. Jesus did not reveal himself with an earthly light. The physical discernable Shekinah must be distinguished from that that can only be perceived.

That which is physical must be distinguished from that which is theophanic. The theophanic manifestation is different from the glory cloud. The theophanic manifestation is God revealing Himself out of the cloud. He speaks out of the cloud. The voice out of the cloud is more important than the cloud in itself.

The Angel of Lord manifests Himself from within the cloud. But the cloud is not important, what is important is that which has been vested within that which has been made manifest.

Jesus manifested himself in a different way to the children of Israel. The Israelites expected Christ to come in a particular way but God came in another way and they missed it. Moses and the burning bush. This is because people get used to manifestations and become familiar.

The cloud is the tangible presence of God. We ought to embrace what you see in the cloud not the experience in itself.

Most Christians even as much they are filled the Holy Spirit they are unable to walk in the manifestation of the glory of God, because of the self-life. It is possible to know the Bible but still be self-centered. We cannot walk in the glory of God when we are self-centered. Self will hinder you from manifesting that which is of Christ. Self denies anything that does not exalt itself and thus denies the Lordship of Christ.

Self is a key hindrance to the move of God in your life. It impedes the Lord from moving in your life. Being self-centered will not make you Spirit-centered.

God is not interested in do’s and dont’s. He is interested in people who are carriers of the presence of God.

The glory will not live in a person that is not sanctified. The glory resides in the sanctified person. Glory seals the pattern.

God wants us to come to the place Jesus becomes preeminent in our lives that is when the Glory will be present in our lives. But until Jesus exercises His preeminence over the soul of your life, the glory of God cannot be made manifest. Christ is the pattern and form.

But when the proper time had fully come, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born subject to [the regulations of] the Law, all arche-type are fulfilled in Christ. He is the angel that appeared to Moses in the burning bush. He is Melchizedek that received Abrahams offering. 

Galatians 4:4 (AMP)

Jesus did not come with brightness of light but in the flesh. The word incarnate. The incarnation of Christ is the fulfillment of all the foreshadowing in the Old Testament – the Shekinah in the Old Testament. These manifestations were a shadow of the penultimate Shekinah in the person of Christ.

He manifested himself in flesh. Jesus Christ is supposed to be a manifest of God our Saviour.

And the Word (Christ) became flesh (human, incarnate) and tabernacled (fixed His tent of flesh, lived awhile) among us; and we [actually] saw His glory (His honor, His majesty), such glory as an only begotten son receives from his father, full of grace (favor, loving-kindness) and truth. 

John 1:14 (AMP)

We saw His Shekinah glory, the fullness of the manifestation of the glory of God. Christ dwelt – tabernacled – with us. He fixed His tent with us and we saw His glory. We saw His Shekinah. Jesus is the epitome of every kind of Shekinah. Christ is the Shekinah of the church. Everything that we read about in the Old Testament was a foreshadowing of the coming Christ.

[But these offer] service [merely] as a pattern and as a foreshadowing of [what has its true existence and reality in] the heavenly sanctuary. For when Moses was about to erect the tabernacle, he was warned by God, saying, see to it that you make it all [exactly] according to the copy (the model) which was shown to you on the mountain. 

Hebrews 8:5 (AMP)

Jesus is the summation of the prophets and the law. He fulfills all.

For it was in Him that all things were created, in heaven and on earth, things seen and things unseen, whether thrones, dominions, rulers, or authorities; all things were created and exist through Him [by His service, intervention] and in and for Him. And He Himself existed before all things, and in Him all things consist (cohere, are held together). He also is the Head of [His] body, the church; seeing He is the Beginning, the Firstborn from among the dead, so that He alone in everything and in every respect might occupy the chief place [stand first and be preeminent]. For it has pleased [the Father] that all the divine fullness (the sum total of the divine perfection, powers, and attributes) should dwell in Him permanently. And God purposed that through (by the service, the intervention of) Him [the Son] all things should be completely reconciled back to Himself, whether on earth or in heaven, as through Him, [the Father] made peace by means of the blood of His cross. 

Colossians 1:16-20 (AMP)

And Moses said, I beseech You, show me Your glory. 

Exodus 33:18 (AMP)

In essence, Moses was saying, “Show me Christ”. Christ is the answer to the prayer that Moses made. That prayer could not be answered at that time but his plea was fulfilled in the New Testament. The Shekinah glory of Jesus Christ is not just to be seen with the eyes, it is also to be experienced. Indeed, our covenant is based on better promises.

And all of these, though they won divine approval by [means of] their faith, did not receive the fulfillment of what was promised, because God had us in mind and had something better and greater in view for us, so that they [these heroes and heroines of faith] should not come to perfection apart from us [before we could join them]. 

Hebrews 11:39-40 (AMP)

But as it now is, He [Christ] has acquired a [priestly] ministry which is as much superior and more excellent [than the old] as the covenant (the agreement) of which He is the Mediator (the Arbiter, Agent) is superior and more excellent, [because] it is enacted and rests upon more important (sublimer, higher, and nobler) promises. 

Hebrews 8:6 (AMP)

The Jewish leaders of old did not know that they were in perilous times externally, because internally, there were things that had not been aligned. The outer challenges was a type that expressed the challenges that they were facing internally.

The Pharisees were more concerned about what the Messiah would do externally in light of their external situation. That is why they missed Him. We ought to focus on God not as the Saviour of our external circumstances but as a King who will rule the hearts of men. The Messiah did not want to rule in Palestine but in the hearts of men And that is why Jesus said to Pontius Pilate that His Kingdom was not of this earthly world.

People missed out on Christ because their concerns of the Messiah were more external than internal. If we focus on external manifestation of the glory of God and miss out on the truths revealed in the spirit and establishment of the government of the Lord in their hearts.

Pilate answered, Am I a Jew? Your [own] people and nation and their chief priests have delivered You to me. What have You done? Jesus answered, My kingdom (kingship, royal power) belongs not to this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My followers would have been fighting to keep Me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, My kingdom is not from here (this world); [it has no such origin or source]. Pilate said to Him, Then You are a King? Jesus answered, You say it! [You speak correctly!] For I am a King. [Certainly I am a King!] This is why I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the Truth. Everyone who is of the Truth [who is a friend of the Truth, who belongs to the Truth] hears and listens to My voice. 

John 18:35-37 (AMP)

God will move in ways that we do not expect and unlike what we’re used. So we should not be captivated by noise and external experiences, but on the inner working. Your spiritual antenna must be sharp and finely attuned to the Divine.

We cannot take over the promised land when we cannot conquer the inner man. We will not take the gates unless we have the government of Christ in our lives. He needs to be enthroned in our hearts.

Fruit is a type of glory. It confirms that the tree was planted in good soil. It is the fruit that tells of the nature and health of the tree. We know a person that has the glory of God by their fruit. Leaves are gifts and talents. Whoever is full of the glory of God will produce not just ‘leaves’ (talents and abilities) but fruit (character).

And on the banks of the river on both its sides, there shall grow all kinds of trees for food; their leaf shall not fade nor shall their fruit fail [to meet the demand]. Each tree shall bring forth new fruit every month, [these supernatural qualities being] because their waters came from out of the sanctuary. And their fruit shall be for food and their leaves for healing. 

Ezekiel 47:12 (AMP)

A good farmer knows how to prune leaves to maximize on a harvest of fruit.

Any branch in Me that does not bear fruit [that stops bearing] He cuts away (trims off, takes away); and He cleanses and repeatedly prunes every branch that continues to bear fruit, to make it bear more and richer and more excellent fruit. 

John 15:2 (AMP)

Jesus ascended to the right hand of God. Right hand of God is the hand of power and glory. We can only access the right hand to the extent that we abide with Christ

And He raised us up together with Him and made us sit down together [giving us joint seating with Him] in the heavenly sphere [by virtue of our being] in Christ Jesus (the Messiah, the Anointed One). 

Ephesians 2:6 (AMP)

When the Bible says that Jesus ascended to the right hand of the Father, it means that He ascended to the place of power and authority. Everything that the Lord wants to do, confirm and confer is at the right hand and if we are seated with Christ in the heavenly places, it means that we are seated with Him at the right hand of the Father. It means that whatever comes to Christ from the Father, comes to us the Church. We have access to it as the Church.

Jesus humbled Himself and endured shame of the Cross for this. He underwent process.

We are not to just claim who we are but we are to become.

God wants us to enter into the many dimensions of Christ in Him. The several progressions of His reality. The reality of His person. The convergence of His nature. The fullness of this nature – the interplay of His nature. The reality itself is that the glory God lives within the context of relationship, and not without. God wants us to come to the place where we know His Son Jesus Christ.

For now we are looking in a mirror that gives only a dim (blurred) reflection [of reality as in a riddle or enigma], but then [when perfection comes] we shall see in reality and face to face! Now I know in part (imperfectly), but then I shall know and understand fully and clearly, even in the same manner as I have been fully and clearly known and understood [by God]. 

1 Corinthians 13:12 (AMP)

When we exalt one aspect of God, we miss out on the rest.

The glory of God has to factor in the process you go through in life. The glory of God factors in everything, even your mistakes. Even the ones that you are yet to make. The purpose of God cannot be held hostage by your mistakes.

For a righteous man falls seven times and rises again, but the wicked are overthrown by calamity. 

Proverbs 24:16 (AMP)

Neither experiences nor our actions can qualify us, it is God who qualifies us. Everyone has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. It is the grace of God via Christ Jesus that qualifies us.

The glory of God comes not to commune with your pain and but with your person. God will never manifest Himself in my attitudes. Jesus came to deliver us from pain and from attitudes and He wants us to manifest His glory. He wants to manifest Himself via your character. God is only glory when you do the right thing. God is glorified in our character.

An experience of His glory is not the glory itself.

The doctrine of Jesus Christ requires that you love on them that hate you. He requires that you go against the grain. Perfection comes when we go against the grain. When we move/operate beyond your feelings, the opinions of men or whether people celebrate you or not. All these will usher you into the glory of God.

Our heart position is that we take instruction from the Lord as sent out ones – apostolic ones.

If you think you are holy, you need to meet the glory of God.

In the year that King Uzziah died, [in a vision] I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and the skirts of His train filled the [most holy part of the] temple. Above Him stood the seraphim; each had six wings: with two [each] covered his [own] face, and with two [each] covered his feet, and with two [each] flew. And one cried to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory! And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who cried, and the house was filled with smoke. Then said I, Woe is me! For I am undone and ruined, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts! Then flew one of the seraphim [heavenly beings] to me, having a live coal in his hand which he had taken with tongs from off the altar; And with it he touched my mouth and said, Behold, this has touched your lips; your iniquity and guilt are taken away, and your sin is completely atoned for and forgiven. 

Isaiah 6:1-7 (AMP)

Bad company will hinder us from showing and experiencing the glory of God.

If there be a place of struggle in your life, spend more and more time in the presence. The presence of God melts all struggles in our lives like wax. God the Holy Spirit will Himself lay His Hands on that area and disengage you from the struggle. We are to cooperate with Him and work with Him when He does so. It may be painful, but it will be worth it.

The hills melted like wax at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the Lord of the whole earth. 

Psalm 97:5 (AMP)

God wants us to look forward to His habitation with man where the glory of God is what lights the earth and the New Jerusalem.

Then he showed me the river whose waters give life, sparkling like crystal, flowing out from the throne of God and of the Lamb Through the middle of the broadway of the city; also, on either side of the river was the tree of life with its twelve varieties of fruit, yielding each month its fresh crop; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing and the restoration of the nations. There shall no longer exist there anything that is accursed (detestable, foul, offensive, impure, hateful, or horrible). But the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and His servants shall worship Him [pay divine honors to Him and do Him holy service]. They shall see His face, and His name shall be on their foreheads. And there shall be no more night; they have no need for lamplight or sunlight, for the Lord God will illuminate them and be their light, and they shall reign [as kings] forever and ever (through the eternities of the eternities). 

Revelation 22:1-5 (AMP)