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Exodus 11-12 – The Passover: Old Testament Celebration or New Testament Revelation?

When people say, “Should we be celebrating the Passover?” I’m telling you why because Christ is our Passover. We’re not sitting down at a table recounting the deliverance of the children of Israel, although that should be told. We are standing and proclaiming the deliverance of God’s children out of the bondage of sin. ♪ ♪ ♪ The Passover is described in Exodus 12, after the nine or depending on how you reckon it, ten plagues; nine or ten, depending on your reckoning have been unleashed and afflicted on the Egyptians with little effect. Then God directs Moses to declare this firstborn; that all the firstborns must die in the land of Egypt, man, and beast. This would eventually break the Egyptian hold and let the people go under Moses’ lead. Now I always think this is interesting because there’s a lot here and this is where you might say to me when I taught on the Sabbath, “I can’t exactly see the connection,” because for some people who have not spent enough time in the word, they may not. But here you cannot miss it. So between the death of the firstborn and the institution of the Passover, you have some great clarity here on what God is doing. Now imagine this. Imagine you are enslaved in Egypt’s bondage and imagine that you were born in Egypt. You just didn’t get there. People were born there for a couple of hundred years. So you would A) not have the frame of reference. Most people think, Oh, they were, they were celebrating certain ceremonies already while they were in Egypt.” No, they were not because all of these instituted feasts happened after, either the night that they were liberated or onwards, but there was nothing before that. There was, there was no law given before that. So there was no keeping of customs per se as we have them recorded here. And why that’s important because we begin to see in these practices how there is no way that while they were in Egypt’s bondage, they could have known too much about God. They couldn’t have. So imagine if you were in bondage, you’re in Egypt, and you see all these plagues hit. Now to me, you know, you could say, “Well, one might be a fluke.” You know, and you might see the second one. You say, “Well, that’s odd.” And a lot of people try; I love this, have you ever watched these documentaries where they make rational excuses for miracles of God? Do you ever see that? (Yes ma’am.) “Oh, well, you know, it, it had to be that on that day there was a, a fire bolt of lightning that came down that turned the whole place into ash, and there couldn’t be a God involved in it.” So it’s interesting that here there are too many events for the children of Israel to just go, “Huh,” like, “I’m not sure I can believe in this God” I mean after you see all this stuff, and then God gives the instructions and says basically in a nutshell (we’re going to read the passage in a second), but basically in a nutshell, “All the firstborn are going to die in the land of Egypt unless you heed what the directives are to apply the blood, a specific thing to do, which is taking an animal into your house on the tenth day,” would be in your household for four and a half days; call it that, because the sacrifice that would be the Passover lamb would be sacrificed between the fourteenth and the fifteenth day of the month, and the blood would be applied. And there’s a whole prescription for how to do this. Now imagine you’ve seen all of the plagues fall. You’ve seen everything happen. The water turns to blood, the frogs; you see it all. So when God says, “Apply the blood as I’ve instructed you,” I think for the most part, even if you didn’t know who God was, you’d have enough of fear, maybe you might have the mindset like the Egyptians did of the plural gods, but you’d have enough of a mindset to know after seeing all this to do it. Not because you know who God is, but because you see there’s some type of power at work. I’m trying to say that maybe the children of Israel in Egypt’s bondage didn’t know as much as we tend to think they did about God. So that’s important. The second thing is that this event takes place on the first day; as I said, it falls between the night of the fourteenth and the fifteenth. And we will read the procedure for this speaks volumes about what God was trying to convey for something not just practical, but also prophetical. Let’s take a look. I want to read through the eleventh and twelfth chapter because it paints the picture, and I think without that it might be hard for some people that they are not familiar. So Exodus 11 says, “And the LORD said unto Moses, Yet will I bring one plague more upon Pharaoh, and upon Egypt; afterward he will let you go hence: when he shall let you go, ye shall surely thrust; he shall surely thrust you out hence altogether. Speak now in the ears of the people, and let every man borrow of his neighbor, and every woman of her neighbor, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold. And the LORD gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians. Moreover, the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh’s servants, and the sight of the people. And Moses said, Thus saith the LORD, About midnight will I go out amid Egypt: and all the firstborn of the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sitteth upon his throne, even unto the firstborn of the maidservant that is behind the mill; and the firstborn of the beast,” so anything firstborn, anything and everything firstborn. “There shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there was none like it, or there will be nothing after it like this. But against any of the children of Israel shall not a dog move his tongue, against a man or beast: that ye may know how that the LORD doth put a difference between the Egyptians and Israel.” And this is very interesting because here God is not yet; I’m sorry to say it like this, God has not yet had the bad taste in His mouth of these rebellious, stiff-necked people who simply would not do what God said. But here obviously they do. He’s, so He’s now saying, “There’s a difference between the Egyptians and Israel.” Later it will be, “Moses, they’re your people,” right? (Laughter.) “And all these thy servants shall come down unto me, bow down themselves unto me, saying, Get thee out, and all the people that follow thee: and after that I will go out. And he went out from Pharaoh in great anger. And the LORD said unto Moses, Pharaoh shall not hearken unto you; that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt. Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh: and the LORD hardened Pharaoh’s heart so that he would not let the children of Israel go out of his land. And the LORD spake,” There’s no chapter and verse here, I’m just going to go right into it. “The LORD spake unto Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you.” Kind of interesting, by the way, that means that they had to have been reckoning time according to the Egyptian reckoning of time, because God says, “Now there’s a new way to reckon time,” and it’s here. “Speak ye unto the congregation of Israel, saying, In the tenth month; In the tenth day of this month they shall take every man a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, a lamb for a house: and if the household be too little for the lamb, let him and his neighbor next unto his house take it according to the number of souls, every man according to his eating shall make your count for the lamb.” I like that, that’s the fact that God is saying, “If there are too few of you, you can join together with your neighbor, and this can be an act done together with your neighbor.” “Your lamb shall be without blemish, the male of the first year: ye shall take it out from the sheep, or the goats: and ye shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month: and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening. And they shall take of the blood, strike it on the two side posts of the; and on the upper door post of the house, where they shall eat it.” So God’s very clear, the door, the sides, and the top to be covered with this blood. “They shall eat the flesh in that, in that night, roast with fire, and unleavened bread; and with bitter herbs, they shall eat it. Eat not of it raw, nor sodden at all with water, but roast with fire, his head with his legs,” so you get the idea. God is saying, “This is how I want it done.” “Ye shall let nothing of it remain until the morning; and that which remaineth,” if there’s anything left over, you’re going to burn it completely. So there’s not going to be anything left over. “Thus shall ye eat it; with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, staff in your hand; you shall eat it in haste: it is the LORD’S Passover,” so a couple of things are said here. You know, this is probably the original dine and dash, okay, probably, but God’s giving the instructions, so I guess it’s okay. But I want you to look at something. So when we looked at the Sabbath, it was the Lord’s Sabbath. Here it is the Lord’s Passover. Now, in Judaism, even today, every year, if people are adhering to this and they’re still keeping a Passover, they are recounting this whole passage in what is called a “Passover Haggadah.” It’s a little book that kind of chronicles the Passover/Exodus story if you will. And then there is the main meal, and it’s very interesting because if you, if someone were to analyze, and many people have, but if you were in your own time to analyze, you could see that a lot of the things that are being consumed at this Passover Seder, actually have some correlation to the New Testament as well. So it’s kind of interesting. They correlate in many ways to Christ because Christ, as Paul says in the New Testament, Christ, our Passover. So here are the instructions. Verse 12 begins, “For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt will I execute judgment: I am the LORD.” So the first thing that’s going to happen is all the firstborn are going to die, and those who remain, they will see that it is the Lord that is doing this thing. “And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the house where you are: and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you when I smite the land of Egypt. And this day shall be unto you for a memorial, and you shall keep it a feast to the LORD throughout your generations; ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance forever.” Remember, I just said to you last week, anytime you read that in the Old Testament, it means that it is attached to a prophetic fulfillment in Christ pointing to or around either Christ coming in the flesh or His return. Here, this is talking about and pointing to Christ in the flesh of Him laying down His life. And what we are to do in the New Testament, we are told basically to partake of the Lord’s Supper until He comes, the cup representing the blood, and the body, if you will, the roasted lamb for strength. Some people talk about the wafer that people use, the round wafer which is, was never a part of anything. It’s just broken bread, that’s all. Broken bread, that’s unleavened, that’s all. “Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread; even the first day you shall put away leaven out of your houses: for whosoever eateth leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that soul shall be cut off from Israel.” That’s a pretty sharp thing to say. So if you’ve got leaven and you consume it, it says you’re cut off from Israel. “And the first day there shall be a holy convocation, and in the seventh day there shall be a holy convocation to you; no matter; no manner of work shall be done in them, save that which every man must eat, that only may be done of you. And you shall observe the feast of unleavened bread.” So very interesting that the prescription is here telling us basically and goes into the Feast of Unleavened Bread which a lot of people, including the New Testament, you’ll read where people tend to say “eight days of Passover,” which is not so. It is Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and you can kind of follow the feasts that are clustered together within that period, including if there are Sabbaths involved. “So seven days shall there be no leaven found in your houses: for whosoever eateth that which is leavened, even that soul shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he be a stranger, or born the land.” So it doesn’t matter who you are, if you eat leaven, you’re toast, all right. (Laughter.) “You shall eat nothing leavened; in your, in all your habitations; you shall, you shall eat unleavened bread” So here Moses calls out for the elders of Israel, says to them, “Draw out and take you a lamb according to your families, kill the Passover. Ye shall take a bunch of hyssops,” imagine a cluster of what would be like branches that have leaves on them, so to speak, “dip it in the blood that’s in the bacon and strike the lintel in the two side posts with the blood that’s in the bason: none of you shall go out at that door of his house until the morning.” So I find it interesting, because here it says, “The LORD will pass through to smite the Egyptians; and when he seeth the blood upon the lintel and the two side posts, the LORD will pass over the door, and will not suffer the destroyer to come in unto your houses to smite you. And you shall observe this thing for an ordinance to thee and thy sons forever.” So again, when God says forever and ever, you’ve got to look at this dispensation that would come to a close. So whatever it is that God says is forever has a prophetic fulfillment to it. We know, of course, the prophetic fulfillment is in Christ. So the next question somebody may ask, because we’re trying, we’re trying to build the foundation for this message, is a lot of people will ask this question, which the answers are in the Bible. I think it’s kind of strange that people do not recognize, for example, that Jesus would have celebrated the Passover. There’s always this argument, would He have, would; of course He would have. His parents both adhered to the prescribed way that was being kept for hundreds if not thousands of years. And you read first in Luke 2, and I believe it’s about verse 40, where He was with His parents during the Passover. And that’s the time where He is left behind, and they don’t realize that they’ve left Jesus behind. That’s the first case of child abandonment (laughter) recorded in the Bible. And then the next one that we encounter is in John’s Gospel, the opening of John’s Gospel, where it talks about when He went into the temple when Jesus went into the temple, it was during the Passover at that time when the money changers were sitting. That’s, that particular instance happened, or that scenario happened during the Passover. There are all of these so subtle messages there, because if you think about it, Christ who is our Passover, and Christ knowing that he was the Lamb, John declared, “Behold the Lamb that taketh away the sin of the world.” But think of this, He’s going into the temple on the Passover seeing the money changers, and if you can kind of wrap your mind around this, we have that scenario ongoing still today, because instead of being about our Father’s business, there are people that are- I just talked about this regarding the flag, you could make it money, you could make it the flag, anything that doesn’t belong. And this is why He turned over the tables and chased them out of the temple. And this is why I won’t stay quiet about these things because it is the same principle. You cannot let the world come in and run its affairs inside the house of God. You can’t do it, you can’t let that happen. You let, you let it happen once, you see what’s happening everywhere else. So with that said though, the instructions show us clearly that Christ kept the Passover with His parents, and then thereafter; there’s no reason not, to come up with the idea that He did not. And then we see from the apostle Paul’s writing when he talks about, and I just mentioned, Christ our Passover. So remember I described in the reading, it is the Lord’s Passover and Christ becomes ours. And just even that subtle distinction tells you why when people say, “Should we be celebrating the Passover?” I’m telling you why because Christ is our Passover. We’re not sitting down at a table recounting the deliverance of the children of Israel, although that should be told. We are standing and proclaiming the deliverance of God’s children out of the bondage of sin, which is on a much greater scale than the exodus out of Egypt. If you want to put it in that, in those terms, that’s why we’re talking about Old and New relevance. Now the other thing that I like about this is that, as I said, if a person’s still not sure about the correlation between Old and New, we have all of these different things being said. The Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world, that is in Christ, or Christ is our Lamb. Even the details, when we get to the New Testament, of seeing kind of the preparation. And the reason I think that God said on the tenth to bring this lamb and look at it, see it, take it into your house; I want to use a strange term because I’m, I’m exaggerating now, but imagine looking at this, having to look at this animal, knowing this innocent animal is going to be slaughtered. And you’ve got to look at this thing for the next four and a half days. You’re looking at, its sweet eyes or its, whatever it’s doing, and it may be cute or it may be not cute, I don’t know, but you’ve got to look at it. That means that there is a connection to it. It’s not just an animal that was going to be killed, something that would become dear to you, almost hurtful to sacrifice. And these are, I guess, lessons God was trying to paint in pictures to show us the sacrifice, what the sacrifice of Christ was to our heavenly Father is, and we tend to just, I think a lot of people just take it very cheaply because it’s so disconnected from us. We don’t have that same proximity. That’s why I said, a person should develop a relationship with Christ and get to know Christ and know the word, and it would give you a better sense. And I, I’m going to be at a lack to describe this, so indulge me for a minute and forgive me because I’m at lack to find the right words. But this is why for some people, when they start reading the Bible and they see that Christ didn’t just die for the sins of the world. I told you John 3:16, “God so loved the world; God so loved”- you put your name in there. And when it becomes personal to you, you are now entering into this kind of; we’ll call it personal acquaintance like the people had to do by bringing the lamb into their home. When it becomes personal to you that something had to die in your stead, it all starts to gel and suddenly we go from going through the motions of religion to having a relationship with Christ. And these are very important concepts, which believe it or not, as simplistic as it is, most people get lost right there. They think, “I come to church; I’ve got to check the boxes. I’ve got to make sure that I, I pray properly, that I do the right things, that I say the right things.” That’s all the minutia; I’m sorry to tell you, God’s not interested in it at the get-go. Those are details that you work out with Him. But understanding and having that relationship like the children of Israel had to do with that lamb and bringing that lamb into the home, having to look at it, and then knowing you’re going to have to sacrifice it. So everything here, by the way, comes with a price. Now God tells them to roast the lamb whole, to not break a single bone. And I need to say a comment here because I’ve said many times about Christ, a broken body for a broken people. And I never meant it in the context of somehow his bones were severed, but all that was put upon Him, the sins of the world laid upon Him; in that respect, broken body for a broken people. And along with the bitter herbs and the unleavened bread and this meal, as we just read, was to be consumed basically in a state of ready-to-go. When God says, “Okay, one, two, three, eat,” right? It’s almost like “Eat as much as you can. You’ve got 30 seconds to do it. Okay, it’s over. All right, let’s go.” And I’m not saying it was like that, but imagine you would have had a sense of urgency. Something, you wouldn’t be sitting back, oh, I’m stuffed. I can barely move. You know, when you’ve eaten too much, right? It wouldn’t be like that. It would be more along the lines of, I’m, I’m, I’m ready to go. And if, as I said, I just read, there was any lamb left over, they were to completely burn it. And I’m assuming, by the way, that that act of completely burning what was not consumed was to make sure that the surviving Egyptians did not partake of the sacrifice. You could say, “Well, that’s kind of bad.” But no, this was punishment upon the Egyptians, and specifically Pharaoh, but punishment upon those people. So God didn’t want any commingling. It’s going to be completely burned. We’re done with that. Then there is the manner of partaking, which is equally strange, as I said, not just ready to go, but God describes things such as; sorry, these are the details that God gives. For example, if someone was not circumcised, they could not partake in the Passover. And you might say, “Well, okay, well, they weren’t, they weren’t circumcised necessarily in Egypt.” Now, hear me out. Circumcision was instituted with Abram circumcising all the people in his family, his household if you remember that passage. So they would have been practicing circumcision. That would have probably just been something that traditionally, whether or not they knew about God or not, something that would have just been traditionally done. So when God says, “If somebody is not circumcised, they cannot partake of the Passover,” it’s essentially saying, “Not in covenant with Me, you cannot sit down and partake. You can’t even”; sorry to say it, “not in covenant with Me, you can’t be saved.” You think about how you might apply, what I just said, into modern terms, not circumcised by body part; the heart. And then again, it’s all of what I call peeling back the layers of the onion because this story is so familiar, you can just kind of sit back and go, “Yeah, I know the story.” But you look for the minute details and you begin to see how God was basically putting flesh and blood and painting the picture of Christ so perfectly that I don’t know how people could miss it. Another passage describes if a person became ceremonially unclean, that is, they came in contact with a dead body or touched something that would have made them unclean. God said, “You still must keep the Passover, but you will keep it on the following month, on the fourteenth day of the following month.” In other words, see, this is what’s amazing. God didn’t just say, “Okay, well, if you miss this time, you’re done,” but a special dispensation for those people who, whether they did it on purpose or not became unclean, couldn’t partake. And God says, “Okay, you can do it the following month if that’s your condition.” So God made a way for every person to be able to participate, no matter if your family’s too small, then you join with your neighbor. I mean, He’s; you can see all the provisions. I love the fact that it’s almost like God thinks of everything here, sometimes too much detail, but anyway. We’re going to see that as they move from Egypt into the wilderness, this Passover will be kept, but they’re no longer sacrificing in their dwelling. So the place of sacrifice for the Passover will no, it’s no longer necessary to apply the blood as previously to your household. Now it becomes something to be performed at the Tabernacle and eventually, it’ll be performed at the temple. So these are important because it tells you that, you know, we, we tend to think of God giving a prescribed way and then it’s locked in, but even there you can see God modified it as they went from being in Egypt’s bondage and needing to show the sign for the avenging death angel, basically to pass over versus perpetuating and celebrating in perpetuity, which means no longer; no reason to paint the doorpost. You’ve got to bring your Passover sacrifice to the door and there it would be sacrificed. Again, you go to the New Testament, Christ is called what? The Door, so we take all of these pieces and realize God’s been saying the same thing for a long time. We just have been very hardheaded to not listen. That’s okay, as long as the lights come on eventually, that’s okay. On the fifteenth, the sheaf of firstfruits of barley, the new harvest would be offered as a wave offering along with a yearling, as a burnt offering, the prescribed meal offering (we just went through the offerings), two-tenths of an ephah of flour and a drink offering, a quarter of a hin of wine. So you’ve got the prescribed offerings around the pass, around the Passover as well, not just the Paschal lamb, but all the other steps involved in offering. And did it matter to God? It did. Here’s where God starts looking to see if people are keeping His ordinances. Kind of interesting. Each of the seven days of this feast, a goat was offered as a sin offering, two young bullocks, a ram, and seven yearling lambs were offered as burnt offerings after the continual sacrifice. So it’s a lot of offerings and a lot of blood and a lot of burning of stuff, just a lot. On the seventh day, the Sabbath rest, a holy assembly brought the festivities to a close. That also signaled that the morrow which would begin at sundown, leavened bread could now safely be consumed in the household. Now if you read the celebration for Unleavened Bread, even though I’m on the Passover, you’ll read several instances, where we are right now, Leviticus, I’m sorry, Exodus, both in Exodus 23, 34, and Leviticus 23, and Deuteronomy 16. You’ve got those references, so if you want more information on that, read it there. Now, for the language part, the Passover or what is commonly Hebrew, Pesach, obviously refers to or signifies “to stride,” “to spring over,” or “to spare.” And what’s interesting is if you look, this is a this is The Englishman’s Hebrew Concordance of the Old Testament. Thank you. Let me get my little pointing stick here so I can show you. So you’ve got the word here, so you can see it, Pesach, it is the Lord’s Passover, we just read that. But I want you to look at what’s above it because as you know, Hebrew usually works with the three root consonants. So you can see the three, the vowel points are underneath, but here take a look from Pesach to Pesach, and here we have, for example, “I will pass over,” and here it is “the Lord’s Passover,” so you can see the proximity, it’s just the vowel points of the, of the words themselves that change. And I point that out to you for two reasons. One is to show you how easy it is to blur things up in Hebrew, but also to show you the correlation between passing over and the word Passover; they’re the same. If we take the feasts or the set times, I think there are seven: Passover, Feast of Unleavened Bread, Firstfruits, Pentecost, Trumpets, Atonement, and Tabernacles; that is seven. And seven is important. Now these feasts don’t get into the mindset of thinking, “What does it matter to me?” because it does. Because as we study these feasts, for example, as I said, the Passover correlates to Christ and Christ’s sacrifice for us. The Bible says, “For sin comes death.” The wages of sin is death. So without the blood, you know, again, there are people who say, “Well, Christ is not the only way.” Well, if you’re going to read this book, sorry to say it, you’ve got to just, make your own decision. Don’t take my word for it. But if God says the only way that these people can be saved is by applying the blood and moves into the New Testament, says, “The only way these people can be saved is by them applying the blood.” Now it’s to the heart, to the mind, to your thoughts. Don’t think for a second that, these things don’t matter with God. They do. Now the right of redeeming the firstborn was a constant reminder to the Israelites of all generations that the firstborn belonged to God. So wiping out the firstborn of Egypt was a way of saying, “Not only are these people cut off, but they are none of Mine” You might say, “That’s pretty brutal,” but again, I digress to something I just said earlier. You know, could you imagine? And I often entertain this. One pharaoh- you know how much I love history and many of you are into a lot of this history as well. One pharaoh, out of all the pharaohs, turned Egypt into a monotheistic society. And I’m still not certain, even though you can see the hieroglyphs and you can see all of the reliefs, I’m still not sure that there was not an influence in some way, shape, or form by prior history to not go to the thought process of monotheistic God by what all is recorded here. And don’t think, by the way, people say, “Oh, well, this is the only record of this happening.” No, there are, there are scant records within Egypt’s documentation of these events. So do not be fooled when people say, “Oh, there’s no record at all outside the Bible.” Yeah, there is actually. And someone who’s into studying Egyptology will tell you that there are several references to this event that we’re referencing within their records. So I like the fact that you know, when you want to shut somebody up, there’s a, there’s a wonderful way to do it. Just tell them the truth, right? (Laughter.) So we know after the death of the firstborn, they’re pretty eager to get the children of Israel out of Egypt, like, “Okay, go already. Now, before anything worse happens, get out of here.” And we have the plague of the firstborn, God’s way of putting on display, if you thought, for example, that turning the water to blood was nothing but a magician’s trick when your loved one dies, there’s no magic trick there. You know they’re gone. It was God’s exclamation mark, “If you don’t believe Me now, if you don’t believe Me now, if you don’t- well, finally, you’re going to believe Me when you’re first of your family and the first of your animals are just laying there lifelessly.” It was God’s way of saying exclamation marks and mic drops, okay? So just checking to see if you’re awake, (laughter) but, all right. The other thing that I like to say is in all this, you can go back. There is a pastor who’s been prolifically posting messages online and, you know, he’s wearing his colored scarf and he says, “This is made up. This is all fabrication.” Listen, you can believe whatever you want. You can believe you’re a leprechaun too, okay? That’s fine. That’s your prerogative. But here’s my issue. If you’re going to make those types of statements, you better be ready to back up your words. “Well, how do you know that this is not made up?” Well, here’s the deal. When you start reading what God said to Abram and He tells him, He says very point blank. This is early on, He says to Abram, “Thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not there’s, shall serve them,” wonder who that is, huh? “And they shall afflict them for four hundred years, and also that nation whom they shall serve will I judge. And afterward, they shall come out with great substance.” You tell me, it says, “But in the fourth generation they shall come out, they shall come thither again.” So you tell me, and that is the event that happens hundreds of years before this, “Let my people go,” and Moses leads them out. Again, if, if we’re making up a story, there would be some really, we’d have some great flow and there wouldn’t be any, any missing places, but there’s a gap of some kind. So God makes this statement, then there’s a gap. We don’t have any clue what’s going on until it happens. So if you’re going to make up a story, you think you might be, if you were writing and making this up, you would perpetuate. So you’d have Abraham repeat it, then you’d have Isaac repeat it, then you might have Jacob repeat it. No, it’s just repeated to Abram and memorialized for us, and then we have the event that happens a couple of hundred years later on the pages before us. So I’m not inclined to believe that. If I wanted extra-Biblical proof, I told you, to go look at a lot of things that you can trace in Egyptology that will lead you to confirm what the Bible’s saying. So I’m not inclined when people talk about it as a good story. Something is being told to us in the celebration of this event. It’s shadow and type that gives us hope, which is if God spared these people, and listen carefully because it’s so subtle, you can miss what I’m going to say. If God spared these people that they did not know who He was necessary, okay, they might have been referring to the God of Abraham or the God of Isaac or the God, but they didn’t know who God was. They could not. They were in Egypt. And for a couple of hundred years, I said this last week, you see how easily this country has changed just in the last 50 years, how people are forgetting things, how because people have ripped down monuments to great historical figures, there’s a future generation coming that will say, “Christopher who, Columbus? What is that? Who is that person?” They won’t know of it. And that’s going to happen sooner than you think, a generation. Okay, how many of you here will say something like referring to something that maybe was a ’70s TV show and nobody around you knows what the hell you’re talking about? (Laughter.) “Uh, what is that?” Or, okay, do you want to go for the easy one? Here’s the easy one: an old-fashioned telephone with a cord that’s tethered to a wall. Show that to a teenager and ask them, “How do you use this?” (Laughter.) Do you think you have tech problems? I watched a video of somebody staring at the phone going, “I don’t know. I’m not sure.” Okay, you do have problems here. My point is they would not have known. We tend to forget that. So it’s really important to see that God opened His heart to a people that were not well acquainted with Him, to save and deliver them. Does that sound familiar to you at all? (Yes ma’am.) God opened His heart to take someone in that was not familiar with Him, and did not know too much about Him. And I think that’s probably most of us at different stages in our life. So tell me where you think this has radically changed, where God’s changed. He hasn’t. And the principles that are here are still the same. The thing that we have of being in Christ and looking to Him and the blood applied to our circumcised hearts, if you will, is the fact that we know from the words spoken by Christ memorialized in this book, we are saved, we are forgiven. And the Bible even goes on to say that “Whosoever believeth, faiths, trusteth in Him shall have eternal life.” So we even have much better promises. Again, I hate to repeat what I said last week, but the book of Hebrews talks about how much better Christ was over everything in the old dispensation, how much better. We have clarity, we have certainty; we have the whole record laid out for us. That’s why I don’t understand, I’m sorry. I will never understand why it’s so difficult for people to just sit, take 30 minutes to listen, or read the Bible. That doesn’t mean that instantaneously you’re gripped. It doesn’t mean you have understanding. I’m sure people are sitting here that for some of you it’s like, “Oh, I know this story like the back of my hand.” Other people are hearing it for the first time. My point is that God will, for the degree, for every step you take, God’s taking 10 steps towards you, and His approach has not changed. So when we talk about these concepts, they had to celebrate the Passover as a mandate. They were mandated to. Now I’m going to ask this question, which should be rhetorical, but let’s see. How could we look at what Christ did and feel somehow mandated? Like it’s mandatory? No, I want to tell people because I want to share with them the greatness of what I know Christ has done. But this is, again, it’s another one of these issues and I’ll try not to take up too much time here. But if you understand, we’re not mandated, yet we should be, okay, you had a great meal last week. It was the best meal you’ve ever had. Do you have to be mandated to tell somebody that was the best meal you had or if it truly was the best meal, you know what? My guess is you’re probably, “Oh my God! I had this food. It was so amazing, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah,” and you bore people with it, but you go on about how great it was. Well, if Christ is that great and better than a meal, you don’t feel like it’s a mandate. You feel like, you feel sorry for people who don’t know what you know and you want to share it. And this is another part of this; we’re not under that mandate. And when people say, oh, you have a duty or something, no, freely and desirously to share that good news that Jesus Christ is the Passover for us. He is the blood applied and He’s not just as the Passover was, a passing over, but how about a washing, a cleansing and eradicating of sin, past, present, future; much better than any blood applied to a door. And again, the type is Christ is the Door. That’s what the New Testament talks about. So unlike our brothers and sisters in antiquity, I don’t think you need to have a mandate to tell people about the goodness of what’s happened in your life. Now, that’s to say we don’t do testimonials here. Some people say, “Oh, you should have people stand up and do testimonies.” And I’ve told you, we don’t do that because everybody has one. It’s like other body parts, everyone has one, (laughter) all right? But what I want us to focus on here is the importance of making this connection. I think every, Christian for the most part knows Christ our Passover. That’s, seems to be clear, right? But when we talk about the Lord’s Supper, the table of the Lord, to help us to remember; remember Paul’s words, “Do this in remembrance of Him, basically until He comes. So we are keeping the Passover in that sense a memorial, the memory of what Christ did in laying down His life and being our Paschal Lamb. So there are these connections we make when we talk about, by the way, the Passover. Some people use the word Christ’s “Passion,” which is Christ’s suffering for us. And I think the other thing that gets missed in all of this, I just mentioned this in the opening of the message, how we are seemingly facing a lot of challenges as Christians in America, persecution to various degrees, some of it is just verbiage, others harmful; bodily harm. Just remember something, that is pretty much the price of association and, and has been since the beginning. You know, people thought, “Oh, this is outrageous!” Well, do you think that they were saying that while they were crucifying the disciples? Same, why did they crucify them? Why did they put them to death? Because they wouldn’t say what the world wanted them to. Think about it, nothing has changed; this is why I keep going, don’t say this is antiquated. Nothing has changed! They killed Christ for that. They killed His disciples for that. “Say what we want you to say, be as we are, and we can all get along and we’ll all have a great time.” The disciples said, “No,” and it cost them their lives. So we have to kind of be mindful when we say we are under a light affliction if you want to call it that. That’s nothing new. And by the way, that will continue, it will get worse as the days come to a close. We know that God’s word talks about tribulation, the great tribulation. I don’t know what you think that means, that word means, but tribulation means something bad, not something good will be poured out upon the earth. And then of course I’m not going to get into it now, the great debate as to whether Christians will be here or not. You know, I’ll settle that for you: it doesn’t matter. If you’re trusting Christ, it does not matter. You know, people, people get caught up in this, “Well, I, I want to, I want to know, I need to know.” How about you get to know that you know who you’re serving, and where you stand with Him, the rest of it will be taken care of. You say, “Well, that’s not an answer.” Well, it kind of is because the argument will go on with as much ambiguity as people like to talk about. Now I’ve heard people say we won’t be here. Some people said we will, but that’s a message for another day. The important thing is to keep faith and trust Him and to see that He is indeed our Passover. We don’t need to be celebrating something that God said is now over. That way of celebrating has been done away with if you will. In Hebrew, the word “leaven,” I need to touch on this, is châmêts, literally meaning “sour.” Leaven usually, yeast or baking powder is added to produce fermentation, especially in bread and dough, which causes it to rise. As the leaven sours the dough, tiny gas bubbles are released producing the dough to rise. So God said, “All leaven is to be removed from your households, not a drop or speck to be found. Period.” And leaven is usually associated with sin. Now this is the thing that people get stuck on. So modern Jewry, today’s Jews who are celebrating, go through a procedure. That procedure for the set time of Passover would be to clean your entire house. I’m all for spring cleaning, by the way. That’s great. Everybody should do that one time a year, spring cleaning. (Laughter) But the idea is to wash your walls, wash your windows. Every part of the home is scrubbed down meticulously with the idea that everything in the home possibly has been contaminated all year round by the leaven that might have been in the house. And I, I kind of think of it this way and I want you to approach this kind of to see how these two are different. So for the modern Jew, it’s about working to get the leaven out of your house. For the Christian, the only way the leaven is removed is through Christ, not through works. So you can see two distinct ways. This is more of works, “We’ll work to remove. We’ll get rid of it.” And there are, trust me, there are a lot of Christians that think- God, I was preaching somewhere. I think I told you the story. I delivered a message to the potter’s house, in a prison somewhere. And then the chaplain who was a butthead, okay, he was. He came up after all the work I did and told the inmates, “Yes, and you have to pick out all the impurities in the clay.” Okay, if you can do that, you’re God, okay? And I’m not. So anyway, my point is we can’t. So you can just see the juxtaposition between the old way that says, “Keep working, keep doing something to clean” versus You are made clean through the word, you are made clean and washed through the blood of Christ. There’s no work in that. It’s faith and trust in God. And I love that when you put the two side by side you realize there’s no amount of work I could ever do to take the leaven out of this container called Melissa Scott, nor of yours. So I think it’s pretty amazing when you see the grace of God to say, “That’s not the way, but faith in Christ gets it done.” Last but not least, I want to talk about this because it sums up everything that I’ve been saying. We talk about Christ as the Lamb. He was, it was pointed out, the Lamb, “Behold the Lamb that taketh away the sin of the world.” This is the other mystery, I will never understand. Yes, I understand that cultures, you know, I’ve taught comparative concepts in religion, but I’ve never understood this. In all of the, we’ll call it the pantheon, the whole picture of all the deities, there is not one deity; not one like Christ. And hear me out, don’t say, “That’s racist”” or that’s, whatever you want to call it. There isn’t. Look for yourself. Buddha couldn’t completely cleanse inside and out. The person had to work at achieving the state within themselves. You go through all of the world’s religions. There’s only one person who makes these claims that He, there’s something wrong with the world. His death is going to make a right, that in His death you might live, all of these statements. There’s only one. Look for it yourself, not; sorry, not the prophet Muhammad, not Joseph Smith. There isn’t, there isn’t any. So this is what I, I guess for me is frustrating and I don’t understand. I might say somebody doesn’t understand the concept of sin, both as I described in the offerings, the state of being born in fallen Adam, and the fruit thereof. But if I understood that I was trapped in essence, in my ways, both in my condition and the fruit of my condition, you told me that the only way that I could ever get well was to look at this Paschal offering in Christ and see that He didn’t just cover, He took away, He removed, that I- He died, that I might live. It’s, it’s baffling to me that people will not take a second look at this, and baffling to me, that people still want to celebrate something that cannot cleanse the inside of you. It can perhaps act as a covering in your mind, but it could never remove. It could not do what Christ’s offering as the Paschal Lamb could do. So it’s baffling to me when I see people that whole cloth, they reject, they refuse and I think to myself, it’s okay, your day will come. Not because I wish you mal or malice or ill will towards you, but your day will come. There is not a person; sorry, there’s not a person who gets out of here alive and I don’t mean this building, I mean life. So you figure out quickly, some will get to know Christ as an insurance policy just to check the box, just to make sure and others say, “I want to know more about this Person,” and others say, “I want nothing to do with Him.” Well, the category that says, “I want nothing to do with Him,” I don’t think I have to describe their fate. That will be up to God. I’m not, I’m nobody’s judge, but to the category of people who’ve even looked to Him, entertained, glanced, it’s mind-boggling to me that you can’t take 30 minutes to look and see the uniqueness of Christ that not only is He all of these offerings, is He all of these set times in the fulfillment, but He offers to us something that God did not offer to the children of Israel nor for hundreds of years until the coming of Christ, and that is something that the law could never do. Paul spells it out clearly; this law could only bring death, but truth, peace, and grace by Jesus Christ. With an add-on to something, not one person in this book apart from Adam and Eve who were given eternal life at the beginning, there’s not one person in here until the coming of Christ who can talk about eternity and being with God forever until that time. So what I’m saying to you is if there was ever a message that I said to you, it’s important to know who He is. This is why Easter, which is our Passover, Christ our Passover, is so important. It is the center and circumference. It is the middle, the outside, and the middle of Christianity. Without it, you can’t even make your way into the church. And not seeing the center point you’re never going to find your way to anything else. He solves it all by you focusing on Him in faith, recognizing He died that you might live. And if I could just even say one final thing on this, one last thought because I, my time’s up here. If you examine everything that’s in the passage we looked at, and there are accompanying passages which you can kind of study side by side, you will see that in all of this, even under a concept of law which here was not yet given in Egypt, the, the law had not yet been given, but even in the giving of the law, look carefully and you will see God’s grace. When He says, “Okay if you can’t celebrate it on the fourteenth of that month, you’ll do it the next month,” He makes provisions. If you’re too poor to offer, you can offer the least of the offerings. He included everybody. There wasn’t a person in the camp; if you were too poor, you could take from the gleanings that people left mandatorily behind for the poor. God included everybody. That was God’s plan all along. Now, with our free will, we mess it up. So this is why I said to you, now God says, “You can all come,” and we can all partake of that Paschal Lamb which is Christ, but I’m telling you something. God is not begging for you to come in. He’s looking for people that will look to Him, look at this word and say, “Wow, I never, I never recognized that was for me,” not for the world, not for the camp, the congregation, for me. And when it becomes personal, it will begin to matter to you. When it becomes personal, you’re getting to the point of that acquaintance with the Lamb and then suddenly the Lamb is slaughtered. And all you can look at is recognizing God prescribed a way for you and me to live that in times past would have only been a temporary method. All of these saints, guess what? They all still died. And this is why the Bible talks about when Christ died and speaks of Him going to preach to the departed souls, I think some were so committed to God’s program that He sent Christ to preach to them and to deliver them. We don’t have to wait for that time. We can act now and look to Him now. Now, I know, as I said, a very simplistic message, but very important. These set times, if people will take, the time to read through what the Passover means, how it can be applied in the now, not as an Old Testament dispensation, but as a shadow and type, and all of it points to Christ. Please do not tell me that you can read this book and not see how God was so gracious, not just to the children of Israel, but in giving us this complete Old and New Testament to be able to look at the whole thing and not have, not have any place to say, “You know, well, God didn’t do it there. No, God didn’t do it there.” No, God did it in here. And then you close the book and you recognize when you know who Christ is, God did it 2,000-plus years ago and He did it here as well, no longer the exterior, the works, the performance, but all by faith in Christ. So these set times, maybe for some, oh, it’s an, it’s an Old Testament celebration. No, it’s a New Testament revelation of what God was revealing in a shadow or a type, Christ being the substance. That’s my message. (Applause.) You have been watching me, Pastor Melissa Scott, live from Glendale, California at Faith Center. If you would like to attend the service with us, Sunday at 11 am, simply call 1-800-338-3030 to receive your pass. If you’d like more teaching and you’d like to go straight to our website, the address is https://www.PastorMelissaScott.com ☃☂ Watch The Video Below To Find Out How YOU Have Been Programmed To Study The Wrong Way All Your Life And Because Of This, YOU Have Achieved Far Less Than What You’re Capable Of!

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It Was God’s Plan to Dwell Among Us

foreign [Music] from the get-go God planned to dwell Among Us and as you travel through the scriptures you you see it’s not this Tabernacle wasn’t a new thought it may have been a new way of expressing God’s prescribed method with man but not new in the concept of dwelling among him [Music] lift holy hands coming to this house. Watch The Video Below To Find Out How YOU Have Been Programmed To Study The Wrong Way All Your Life And Because Of This, YOU Have Achieved Far Less Than What You’re Capable Of! ꆛシ➫

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The Sabbath Was Fulfilled in Christ – The Tabernacle Through the Eyes of Christ #16

Jesus says, "Rise, take up thy bed and walk." Remember it's a Sabbath day. "Immediately the man was made whole, took up his bed, and walked. On the same day was the Sabbath. The Jews therefore said unto him that was cured, 'It is the Sabbath day; it is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed.'" Are you serious? Are you freaking kidding me? You just got healed and you guys are going to criticize me for dragging my bed. What, you want me to leave my bed here so that I'm going to have to come back? Maybe I'll be crippled in the journey back again, getting back here to get my bed. I would have told them to go pound some sand. ♪ ♪ Leviticus 23, "And the Lord speak unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them concerning the feasts of the Lord, which ye shall proclaim to be holy convocations. And these are my feasts. Six days shall work be done, but the seventh is the Sabbath of rest, a holy convocation ye shall do no work therein; it is the Sabbath of the Lord in all your dwellings.

These are the feasts of the Lord, even holy convocations, which ye shall proclaim in their seasons." And then goes on to talk about Passover, Feast of Unleavened Bread, and so on. But I want to start with the Sabbath. For most people, they just, who are not in the know, think Sabbath Saturday. But actually Sabbath traditionally would start Friday at sundown, go through Saturday until Saturday sundown. So that would be the full Sabbath. That's how time also was reckoned for the Sabbath like that. So it's important to understand that the Sabbath and Sunday are two different things. But I want to kind of explore this a little bit more because there's a lot more to the Sabbath. Sabbath, when I say that, it's not like Sabbath, it's exciting. Right? No, it's not exciting at all. Okay, let's just be clear. I'm even aware it's not an exciting subject. However, when you study it and you're looking through the lenses, you put on those glasses and you see Christ, it does get exciting because it's no longer an old dispensation.

So we know that as God created the heavens and the earth and everything that's in it, including and on it, including man. And it says that God declared the seventh day to be the day of rest. And the observance of Sabbath was in essence a confession or an acknowledgement to the God of all earth. See, we have this wrong. Even modern Jewry tends to err on this side that thinks it's a rest from our labors, but it is not. In fact, the intention of the original implementation of this day was to get us to stop, one day to really stop everything we are doing that would be for self and self-purposes and to solely and strictly focus on God's completed and finished acts and work that He did.

So we tend to make this mistake of forgetting essentially what the Sabbath is. And when God says He declared that day a Sabbath, it is because, listen carefully, because this is in this statement, much is revealed. God ceased from His work. So He created, He did all this, He makes Adam, He ceases from His work and He declares this day to be special to Him. First and foremost, it's not special to man, although when it gets implemented in the law, it becomes somewhat of a mandate.

But there's actually good reason when you begin to pick this apart to look a little bit deeper as to why God would designate this particular day. God had a plan from the beginning. Now the way that plan was expressed, that changed over time and for various reasons and purposes, which are laid out for any person who will read it abundantly clear. Think about this. The people were in Egypt's bondage. They were in Egypt for over 430 years, not 430 years of bondage, but they were in Egypt from the time that Jacob and his children arrived and started living in Goshen to the time that they were in bondage, to the time that they were set free, 430 years had passed.

Now you tell me if we don't read about Jacob father Jacob, Israel. We don't read that. He understands where the Sabbath is. Now he may have, God may have told him, but there's no implementation of it. So think of it this way, much of what we learn when the children of Israel come out of Egypt's bondage will be new to them. We tend to just think, oh yeah, well they must have been celebrating or they knew that in Egypt, but how could they have known that in Egypt when so much time had ela…, sorry, just take a look at our country okay, from the founding of our country until now, has this country changed radically, almost like turned on its head upside down? And that's not 430 years. So imagine what another 200 years of this country in existence could be, right? Never mind. So what I'm saying to you is that's what you have to remember when they were in Egypt.

We automatically assumed that when they came out, they had a frame of reference. They did not. In fact, much of what God said and did had not been seen before. The instructions had not been heard before. Think about this. If you spell certain things out in a law-like manner for people who do not know, who have complete ignorance, you have just given them something to live by. So we look at the Sabbath and there are things that we can glean and understand about the Sabbath. For example, as I said, you've got to go back to the Genesis account. But the thing that's kind of crazy if you think about this is that when we look at the Sabbath, there is almost in some places a covenant attachment, much like circumcision, but different. Remember God gives the order to Abraham, which was before the law, that then will become refined in the law to circumcise every male child on the eighth day.

But prior to the giving of the law, there was no law per se to circumcise. That was a sign of a pact between mankind, whom God had chosen, and God. So the Sabbath almost becomes a covenant in a different way. If you think about it that way, the covenant is almost by design, forcing the individual every single day of the week to stop if they didn't do it in the week, which I would find it very hard to believe living around this tent and being confronted with much slaughter and worship all day long. I don't know how you would not think of God, but the Sabbath was implemented as another way to get man to say, "Stop what you're doing" and focus. Focus on worship, on praise for what God has done in creation, for what God has done in deliverance, and so on. We don't tend to think of the Sabbath that way. Now, whoever broke keeping the Sabbath basically broke covenant with God, and that's why you'll read that in certain places it says that for someone who did not adhere and follow the Sabbath, they could be punished by death.

Now that's pretty severe if Sabbath is only intended to be a day of cessation from work. That's pretty severe. Why would you impose such a harsh penalty, but if it's to get the individual to look Godward, then I can see it. It makes complete sense. It was at Mount Sinai that the observance of the Sabbath would be instituted after God made a covenant with the people. Now, if you to turn in your Bibles to the book of Exodus. I want you to check something out. Again, it's a thing we've all read commonly and we've seen it many times, but there's something very unique about the fourth commandment in the Decalogue or in the Ten Commandments. Exodus 20, remember Christ said, "I did not come to destroy but fulfill the law," right? So everything must be fulfilled in Him, and some of these things by the way end up getting nailed to the tree, which Paul aptly puts out there. But this is interesting.

Of all the things that are reiterated in the Decalogue, you begin at verse 8, Exodus 20, verse 8, "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." Now first mistake is English readers reading that and thinking somehow, purification, ritualization, ceremony. How about, "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it set apart," for Him, right? That's first. "Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath" of who? "Of the Lord thy God. In it thou shalt not do any work thou or thy son, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger, that is within thy gates.

For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them," that is in them is and rested the seventh day, wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it." So it's interesting that that takes up 1, 2, 3, 4 verses, and the rest of them are just, you know, "Honor thy mother and thy father, thou shall not kill." So this is expanded upon.

That tells you there's something more there we need to, we need to figure out. If you will, turn with me just a few pages to Exodus 31. And Exodus 31 beginning at verse 12. "And the Lord speak unto Moses, saying, Speak thou also unto the children of Israel, saying, Verily my Sabbaths," plural, "you shall keep; for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I am the Lord that doth sanctify you." Now, remember what I said about when God says a memorial or in perpetuity, when He uses those words, there is a, there's always going to be a deeper double or even triple meaning to what's there.

So when God says, "for generations," usually that's where you're going to look for the underneath part that's going to take you into the New Testament somewhere, because when God says forever it usually means forever. All right, verse 14 says, "You shall keep the Sabbath therefore, for it is holy unto you. Everyone that defileth shall surely be put to death." Again, isn't that harsh if it's just simply a day of rest? "For whosoever doeth any work therein, that soul shall be cut off from among the people." Oops.

Six days may work be done, but in the seventh is the Sabbath of rest. Holy to the Lord, whosoever doeth any work in the Sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death. Now, let me help you out here a little bit, because the Sabbath obviously as we'll see is in Christ. The writer of Hebrews explains that to us clearly, and I'm going to show you some other places where we get great clarity. But let me reread this again and make a commentary. Six days may be done, work may be done, but in the seventh is the Sabbath of rest. Holy to the Lord, whosoever doeth any work in the Sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death. We in the New Testament, I'm just going to cut to the chase real quickly, because I'm going to be referring to this throughout the message. We in the New Testament are Sabbath-ing daily in Christ, not one day a week, but every day. So to stop and be recognizing Him in all things, we are Sabbath-ing daily. So whoever works in the Sabbath, I want you to make that more modern application to whoever's trying to work their way in versus looking at Christ's finished work and resting in it.

He says, "Here shall be surely put to death." In other words, this is what Paul highlights about the works of the flesh versus the works of the Spirit. So if you're trying to sort this out, we begin by seing that there are sub-texts right here in the text that we should be mindful of. "Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations for a perpetual covenant." So the writer of the Hebrews says, "These things are about to decay, to pass away, or they have served their purpose and their time." That's right.

There's your key that there must be some secondary or tertiary meaning to the Sabbath," perpetual covenant. God doesn't make a covenant and then break it. Now, the same verbiage is used in the New Testament when they're sitting down. He says, "This blood," basically, the cup of the new covenant. So there's never a time when God says, "I'm, I gave a covenant and then I destroyed it." No, this actually the unfolding of of the fullness of what God promised back there.

Don't think it's some… God ripped this up and he started anew. It doesn't work like that. So what we have here is also a problem of interpretation. As I said earlier, the problem we encounter with interpreting it from English, "A Sabbath does not mean rest because of exhaustion or fatigue, but rather to cease." And in fact, there are other meanings to this word, which I will get to in a minute, but a celebration of God's work being completed in creation. But at Sinai, it's more than just ceasing. What we're going to see is a reminder, the first Sabbath given to a people who had been brought into a covenant by God's salvific action. And I say that for one purpose, because if you turn to Deuteronomy 5, this is your time to do a little bit of work.

I know it's painful, to turn the pages, but bear with me. Alright, so in Deuteronomy 5:12, "Keep the Sabbath day to sanctify it, as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee." So not personal preference. God said, "That's that. You're going to do it six days. Thou shalt, thou labor and do all thy work." But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. Again, it doesn't say it's the Sabbath of the children of Israel. It's the Sabbath of the Lord thy God, not your Sabbath. You don't get the Sabbath, it's His, and you get to participate in it. That's a novel idea, right? The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord, of the Lord thy God. In it thou shall not do any work, thou nor thy son, thy daughter, thy man servant, thy maid servant. I don't know how you control an ox or any of your animals from not working. And by the way, they considered the act of reproduction working. So I don't know when your animals got frisky on the Sabbath.

What did you do? Holy cow! Wait it's going to get worse. Nor thine ox, nor thine ass. Don't know what to tell you if the shoe fits where it, nor any of thy cattle. So you know, God goes to great lengths to tell you that He doesn't want anybody doing anything, and you better get your animals under control, right? I don't know, I still don't know how you do that. Sit Nellie. All right. Nor thy stranger that is within thy gates, that thy man servant and thy maid servant may rest as well as thou. So everybody, no exceptions. But here's the key to what I want to point out to you, which is in addition to something we just read. Verse 15, it's almost as though God attaches the Sabbath in connection to this.

And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand, and by a stretched out arm. Therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day. It's almost as though in reading that 15th verse attached everything, it's as though God is saying, because of my, God speaking, not me, because of my efforts, because of my work, because of my endeavor, because of all that I've done for you, including bringing you out of Egypt, you are to keep this day. So he adds to it a salvation component, and that becomes important for us in the New Testament. I'm not there yet, so give me a chance to catch up, but you can begin to see that God is attaching some concepts to the Sabbath. Deliverance is one of them. The children of Israel identified with God, with Yahweh, by sharing in the Sabbath, which was to be a time of refreshment, if you will, but refreshment in the Lord, worship.

But the instructions to keep the day holy or set apart, reveal the greater purpose simply than just ceasing from the labor temporarily. The day was set aside for worship, devotion to God, not for self-serving purposes. And I'm going to repeat a lot of things, but they need to be repeated. One more point to all this, which I just said, but you can't, I can't say this enough, it shall be a Sabbath to the Lord. So the preposition there to implies possession. Whose Sabbath was it? The Lord's, exactly. This is what makes me go batty, is when I hear people talking about the Sabbath, and they don't even include the fact that God said it was His, not theirs.

Just saying, okay. So this is kind of at the core. If we understand it's the Lord's Sabbath, at the core of why people were not to pursue personal care or taking care of their own issues, but rather to take time, opportunity. I hate when people do this, because I've heard people say a divine appointment. It's a very cheap televangelist type lingo. But if, if that's what resonates with you, an appointment with God, I hate to say that. But in matters pertaining to God, God, you know, if you read through what God says, He's a jealous God, well He wants, He wants the recognition. You might say, well, you're, you're humanizing God, you're anthropomorphizing Him. But think of it, that's why He said, I'm a jealous God, you'll have no other gods before me, and I want you to acknowledge Me.

Just stop for a second and think about this. God knew that these people, although He rained down the plagues and He brought them out of Egypt with a deliverer and He gave them a structure and a system and a society and purpose. He still wanted them to acknowledge Him. Now you might think, well that sounds kind of like, eh, but if you think about it, God risked a lot by just trying to deliver these people, even though they essentially went into Egypt's bondage by a prophetic word, which was foretold to Abraham, which was made good in, obviously in Jacob and his children.

But the point here is this and simply put, failure to acknowledge God. So God says, "I'm not going to wait for you to do it spontaneously, that may never happen. I'm going to orchestrate a day where you will be forced. I command you," imagine that, "to recognize Me in all that I've done." And that kind of gives you a nutshell of why the Sabbath would have been instituted at this point. Okay? We're not in to the New Testament yet. So the Sabbath obviously prefigured something greater than a day declared. And unfortunately the children of Israel, if you know their history, and I've taught on this enough, did not receive the fulfillment of the anticipated rest. They did not. And the reason why is that many of those that, the vast majority of those that came out of Egypt rebelled. And what did God do? It says, "God srew their bones in the wilderness." So many of them did not enter into, we'll call that their promised rest. At Massah and at Maribah, if you remember, the children of Israel tested God and there He swore.

That's kind of interesting that they would not enter into his rest. Think about that. I mean, again, if we're so familiar with the book, it could be like, you know, I just said like, how's the weather? But if you're reading it and you go back and you read the chapter where God says, "You will not enter into my rest." That's almost like that. If I was one of those wandering in the wilderness, I'd be a little bit taken back that God just declared that I'm not entering into His rest. That's a big problem. Based on, of course, their disobedience and their rebellious nature. Turn with me to Matthew 11, so we can start putting some New Testament flesh and blood on this. Matthew 11, and then we'll be in Matthew 12, but Matthew 11, something really important here, and I'm going to show you the beginning of obtaining the rest that God was prefiguring in the Sabbath is actually, begins to be realized here in the words of Christ. Matthew 11, 28 says, "Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you who learn of me, I am meek and lowly in heart, and you shall find rest in your souls. For my yoke is easy, my burden is light. Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." That word, Strong's 373, is a word called anapauo ana, "up", and pauo, you'll recognize menopause. Pauo, to pause, to cease. All right? And this word occurs in different places, but this is the first time that we begin to unfold a little bit of what this means, and don't think that you know exactly what it means, because it's, it's actually kind of complex. Let me look at the 12th chapter with you. So just a few verses later, the 12th chapter of Matthew begins, and this might help us to start gleaning some info here.

"At that time Jesus went on the Sabbath day through the corn, and his disciples were hungered and began to pluck the ears of corn and to eat. When the Pharisees saw it, they said unto him, Behold thy disciples, do that which is not lawful to do upon the Sabbath day. But he said unto them, Have ye not read what David did when he was a hungered, and they that were with him? How he entered into the house of God and did eat the showbread, which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for them which were with him, but only for the priest." Did you not know about that? Or have you not read in the law how that on the Sabbath days the priest in the temple profaned the Sabbath and are blameless? "But I say unto you that in this place is one greater than the temple.

But if he had known what this meaneth I will have mercy and not sacrifice, you would have, you, you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath day." In those words something is said that we could read right by and not take into account, which is Jesus is saying, I am the Lord of the Sabbath. I can do what I want. I, I establish the rules. I make the rules. I say, and my say is, this whole passage, think of it, the Pharisees saw it and they began to say, look what they're doing. Now that tells you a couple things. It does tell you, and people tend, again, I love this, people tend to forget that Jesus was born into a life of Jewry, that he would have been part of the ceremonialism and all the things that His parents did, including the Sabbath.

So it's interesting that in front of these religious people he says, I am basically the Lord of the Sabbath. And what is even more interesting than that is we're constantly discussing this. It's a constant discussion. I hear people discuss this all the time about Saturday versus Sunday. The discussion is not about the day of the week. That's the problem. So the Sabbath didn't move to Sunday. I'll just spell that out. We have something different that's happening here and we'll need to get to the book of Hebrews for me to explain this, but Sunday was set aside to commemorate a new event. Sunday was set aside to commemorate the Lord's rising from, from the grave. And if you look at what Paul says in much of his writings, you can kind of see that that is the implication. We have something brand new that happened here.

No one ever was celebrated from coming out of the grave, living, preaching, being around the disciples and then ascending. So something new set the tone for Sunday. But do not make the mistake again, which most people do, which is Sunday is the Lord's day. It is indeed the Lord's day, but so is every other day the Lord's day. And then people say, well, I couldn't keep up with a God who demands my attention for every day of the week. Wow. Okay, it seems to me you may not really be that interested in knowing about God then because someone who's interested, that becomes an integral part of your life, not just a Sunday type thing. So let's park that though we'll, we'll come back to it.

So something that Jesus says in, in one of the Scriptures. He says, "Man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath for man." Again, what does the church world for the most part do? They claim the Sabbath as their own. Again, it's this warped, you've even got groups. And again, I'm going to take flak for this, but I'll say it because I must speak the truth unpopular as it is in these days. Seventh-day Adventist, Seventh-day Baptist, and there are many Sabbatarians within Christendom. They follow Christ, but they also impose the keeping of Sabbath. And if you read the 1689 Baptist Confession, there is an article on the Sabbath or following the Sabbath.

And this is the question that has come up honestly in my mail, in letters to me more often than I can count. So here's the problem. The first introduction, as I said, until the giving of the law. So the introduction, if you will, of the Sabbath, which is in creation, until the giving of the law. The Sabbath's about God's finished work and from Him ceasing from His labors. I've already said that, so that's one. But then with the coming of Christ, something radical does not, it's not that it changes. It's the embodiment. The Gospels record, for example, if you'll turn with me to Luke 14. So again, similar passages of things, but with nuances. "Came to pass as he went into the house of one of the chief Pharisees to eat bread on the Sabbath day, and they watched him." They were just waiting for him to do something that they could comment on and disagree with, right? Which still goes on to this day.

"Behold, there was a certain man before him which had the dropsy. Jesus answering, spake unto the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, 'Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath day?'" And I love this because he knows the answer. And remember, he is Lord of the Sabbath. So this is kind of like a trick question. It says, "They held their peace." Yeah, it's interesting how to shut people up, right? "He held their peace and he took him, healed him, and let him go, and answered them, saying, 'Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fallen in a pit, and will not straightway pull him out on the Sabbath day?' And they could not answer him again to these things." Then he puts forth a parable and the passage goes on.

But the point is here, I think, I want you to really think long and hard about this, because he just heals a man, sends him away. Later on they're going to condemn him for this act. But instead of talking about healing, he says, "If your animal falls in the ditch on the Sabbath, wouldn't you get it out of the ditch?" And this telegraphs to you part of the problem within Judaism. Still to this day, it's called box checking, okay? So God said, God gave this order. So here's a poor animal suffering in the ditch. Oh, it's the Sabbath. I got to wait until, until sundown. Well, that poor thing will probably struggle and die in the ditch. What's better, to rescue and save that which is dying and risk the ramifications from God or leave it there and be cruel to that thing, which is basically what Jesus is showing in healing the man.

But that also he is Lord of the Sabbath. Bet you never heard a message like this. It's going to go in every direction to bust most people's ideologies of the Sabbath. Now, as I said with the coming of Christ, we read this passage and we see, they go silent. What do you do with this? And I guess they couldn't reply to any of what he said, because the reality is it would make you callous against God's creation and care for God's creation.

It would also make you, if you weren't willing to help your fellow man, think about this, because there's all these, "Love thy neighbor," right? Well then, "I'm conflicted. Which law do I adhere to, the Sabbath or the loving the neighbor," right? Jesus says, "Put an end to that." And he did, and that's why they were silent. This was also a way to begin ending the ceremonialism. I want you to also think of that. See, Jesus for His short lifetime incarnate would have most definitely participated in many of these holy days and set times. And out of His mouth He utters these things as if to say, "This is coming to an end. It's coming to a close." And it would, the closure would be realized at His resurrection. So you've got to put all this together. Now, you've got to something else that happens. It's a similar passage in John 5, but now you get the full impact of Jesus' healing.

John 5, "And these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water, for an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, troubled the water: whosoever then first, after the troubling of the water, went and stepped in, was made whole of what's over disease he had." So it's kind of like musical chairs for healing, right? "And a certain man was there which had an infirmity thirty-eight years. Jesus saw him lie, knew that he had been now a long time in that case, and said unto him, 'Will thou be made whole?' The impotent man answered, 'Sir, I have no man when the water is troubled to put me into the pool, but while I am coming another stepeth down before me.'" So in essence I'm too messed up to get down to where I need to be, so it's a vicious circle and I can never get well.

Jesus says, "Rise, take up thy bed and walk." Remember it's a Sabbath day. "Immediately the man was made whole, took up his bed, and walked. On the same day was the Sabbath. The Jews therefore said unto him that was cured, 'It is the Sabbath day; it is not lawful for thee to take up thy bed.'" Are you serious? Are you freaking kidding me? You just got healed and you guys are going to criticize me for dragging my bed. What, you want me to leave my bed here so that I'm going to have to come back? Maybe I'll be crippled in the journey back again, getting back here to get my bed.

I would have told them to go pound some sand. He answered them and said, "He that made me whole, the same said unto me, 'Take up thy bed and walk.' Then ask they him, 'What man is that which said unto thee, 'Take up thy bed and walk?' And he that was healed wist not who it was, for Jesus had conveyed himself away, a multitude being in that place. Afterward Jesus findeth him in the temple and said unto him, 'Behold thou art made whole, sin no more lest a worse thing come unto thee.' The man departed and told the Jews that it was Jesus which had made him whole. And therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus sought to slay him because he had done these things on the Sabbath day." Let me just pause and say one thing. See, it wasn't that they cared more about God and God's Word. They cared more about their ceremonialism and their box checking. They did not care for love thy neighbor, love thy brother, their brethren, but just box checking. Therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus and sought to slay him because he had done these things on the sabbath day." And as a sidebar, if God, the Father disapproved of what the Son was doing, I'm sure this would have been laid out plain, but there's, there's good reason in here.

Jesus answers them, "My Father knoweth worketh, my Father worketh hitherto and I work." In other words, this is of God. "Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him because he had not only broken the Sabbath, but said also that God was his father making himself equal with God." Now listen, you know, if I met somebody and they did something miraculous like that, and then they said that they were equal with God, I might just have to pay a little bit of attention because miraculously they did what no one else could do.

But no, their thing is kill him, right? So I don't know. It just, it's, it almost appears at face value kind of nutty that they couldn't see this. The other thing that I think is, is kind of tragic here is people do not understand the Sabbath laws were, as I said, a shadow, a type, that there could be rest from trying to enter into the kingdom. And by that I mean how many tried to work their way in to try and do good, to try and perform, whatever it is.

But the new covenant we are taught, Christ did all the work. We rest in Him and His finished work. So not a Sabbath to be performed in ceremony, but one that clearly shows what we need. For that, you turn to Hebrews 3. And I'm going to start at verse 7, and I want to show you a couple of things here. Of course, in this passage the writer of Hebrews is saying how Jesus is superior to Moses. And starting in the seventh verse, I'm just jumping in the middle of things, so don't fault me for that, because there's, I've got to show you some things here. "Wherefore as the Holy Ghost saith," verse 7, "today if you will hear his voice, harden not your hearts as in the, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness. When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years.

Wherefore I was grieved with that generation and said, 'They do alway err in their heart, and they have not known my ways.'" And that, read the Old Testament, it's plain as day. "So I swear in my wrath, here it is, they shall not enter into my rest." And I want you to see that that word right there, 2663, is katapausis, pauosis and katapausis, anapauosis, they're all derivatives of pauosis to cease or to pause, from the same word I orginally described. "They shall not enter into my rest." "Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief and departing from the living God. But exhort one another daily, while it is called today, lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.

For we are made partakers of Christ if we hold to the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end. While it is said today, if you will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation. For some, when they had heard, did provoke, howbeit not all that came out of Egypt by Moses. But with whom was he grieved forty years? Was it not with them that had sinned, whose carcasses fell in the wilderness? And to whom swear that they would, should not enter him into his rest," there's the word again, katapauosis, "but to them that believe not." So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief.

And if you read into the fourth chapter, it talks about this, "Let us fear lest a promise being left of entering into his rest," there it is again, "and if you should seem to come short of it. For unto us the gospel, was the gospel preached as well as unto them, but the word preached did not profit them." It didn't do anything. It made no change, made no difference, did nothing, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it. For we which have believed do enter into rest, as he said, I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest." Although the works were finished from the foundation of the world, for he spake in a certain place of the seventh day on this wise, and God did rest the seventh day from all his work.

And in this place again, "if they shall enter into my rest," seeing therefore it remaineth, that some must enter therein, and they to whom it was first preached entered not in because of unbelief." Again, he limited a certain day saying in David, "Today, after so long a time, as it is said today, if you will hear his voice," third time, "harden not your hearts. For if," not Jesus, but Joshua had given them rest, that's what it is, reads in the Hebrew, I mean the Greek rather, "then would he not afterwards have spoken of another day, there remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God." And if you read in your margin, it says, "a keeping of a Sabbath." But read on and it tells you it's not a day like we understand the Old Testament was.

"Let us labor therefore to enter into that rest," to enter into that rest, "lest any man fall after the example of unbelief. For the word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow it is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight, but all things are naked and open unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do." So if you read that passage, what is essentially saying is as we faithe, as we trust Christ for our salvation, for his finished work, for eternity, for entering in and it could keep going. We are entering into that rest.

It was a promise given at the beginning. It is a perpetual covenant, if you will. That covenant, the shadow was introduced in a day. The substance was introduced in the person and the reality after the resurrection becomes a daily, if you will, recognition of God's acts, activity, his creation, his finished work that we never had either in the law or after the law anything to do with except to be focused on him. Remember I said to you, Jesus takes the law, thou shall not kill, but I say unto you, or it is written, thou shall not kill, but behold I say unto you, if you hate in your heart, your as guilty as a murderer. He took the law and put it on a much higher level, but then says it's all fulfilled in me. You know, you no longer have to perform rituals.

So the Mosaic Sabbath, what Moses issued to the people, a shadow, prefiguring what could not yet be understood in a person. How would you explain this? See this is what I'm saying to you, God had sound reason for introducing himself, his ways and his words to these people who, as I said, for all the time in bondage would have had no frame of reference.

And then out of bondage wandering in the wilderness for 40 years and then for those who did indeed enter into the land, whatever time there that passed again, God was chronically, if you will, re-educating people over and over and over and over again. Hence, having the tabernacle in the middle of the community was a good way to keep reminding people to stay focused. This is why if you look at America, most cities, most major cities in America always had a church in the center of town, patterned after what? The Old Testament. If you had this religious entity that invited people, we'll call it an institution in the middle of town, it would remind people in their comings and goings of God.

Good luck with that now. But anyway, all right, more on this. In Romans, and I think it's Romans 14, but let me turn there and I will tell you if I am right. Yes, Romans 14, Paul says, "Let him that eateth despise, let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not, and let him, let not him which eateth not judge him with eateth, for God hath received him." And then he goes on to say. "one esteemeth one day above another, another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind." And why is that important? Because he's talking about observances, whether we should adhere to a day or not. And it seems obvious to me here that if you look at the early church, you've got a collection of people.

You've got a ton of people who were formally following Judaism. You've got the Gentiles, the pagans. So it's very clear to me that Paul would use this type of language to address both Jew and Gentile or Jew and pagan. For the Jew would have been confused, "Well now what do I do now? Do I follow this?" Or do, really if you want to think about it this way, the confusion has gone on for 2,000 years, people are still confused. And by that, it's self-evident when I say seventh day Adventist, Sabbatarians, they're still confused because that one, setting aside of one day for a Sabbath came to an end. And we who are of the New Testament disposition, we are Sabbathing daily in Christ. And Sunday is the Lord's day only for this reason. Paul explains this and he says, "On the first day of the week," blah, blah, blah, "it's gathering together what was newly formed, which was the church which didn't exist until Christ basically rose and ascended." The church did not exist technically until the day of Pentecost, if you will.

But Paul wrote in a way where both Jew and Gentile could understand that these days became irrelevant actually because there was something more on the horizon for us to process. And if you want to add to that, don't just think, "Well, I just read something and it's not perfectly clear." Turn to Colossians, because there Paul does not hold back and I think he spells it out even clearer there. So in Colossians 2, first in verse 7, where he says, "Roited and built up," boy, this is so scribbled up, I can barely read it, "Rooted and built up in him and stablished in the faith as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving, beware," here it is, "beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world and not for Christ." You keep reading verse 16, "Let no man therefore judge you in meat or in drink or in respect of a holiday, holy day, or of new moon, or of the Sabbath days which are a shadow of things to come but the body is of Christ." A shadow of things to, he spells it out right there.

How could we miss this? How could people miss these days, these set times, shadows of things to come and the thing to come was Christ and when we begin to understand how He fulfills them. So I just explained to you, Christ replaces that singular day. Now I can see why some people would go for this angle. I'm just going to tell you, because I tell you everything, all the different dimensions of this. If God created in six days and the seventh day He took rest, there was something new that did happen with the last Adam coming out of the grave.

So you could say, in fact, in Christ was a new creation made and the creation essentially has begun anew in Christ in that we have eternal life through him. We're no longer stuck in the mold of fallen Adam for the rest of our lives. So the argument being, well, if He's the Lord of that new creation, then we should honor that day by, and then they go to a Sabbath. But that actually contradicts what Paul is saying, what the writer of Hebrews is saying, it actually contradicts everything. Because if He is a new and living way and He is put on display in the flesh who He was, not in the flesh previously, then creation hasn't been reinvented. It has been rescued and reconciled back to God. So if we talk about Sabbath-ing in Christ daily, the Christian does not have a Sabbath day. Sorry to bust your bubble. All right, follow this one. Just to, I just, I want you to leave here and be crystal clear on this, and that's why we're going to spend a couple more minutes.

In Acts 15, they had a council decide what would be required of the Gentile believers. If you read this 15th chapter, they're talking about circumcision. What should be required of those that come into the church who are not basically part of the old dispensation? And it says here, verse 5, "There rose up a certain sect of the Pharisees which believed, saying that it was needful to circumcise them, and to command them to keep the law of Moses, and the apostles and the elders came together to consider this matter." So this was being discussed. Everything that I'm talking about, believe it or not, was being discussed. What they came away with is this in verse 19.

And then there's one more in, in verse 29. Verse 19, it says, "Wherefore my sentence is that we trouble not them which from among the Gentiles are turned to God, but that we write unto them that they abstain from polutions of idols from fornication and from things strangled and from blood." And then if you read on, it, there's a reiteration in verse 29, "that ye abstain from meats offered to idols and from blood, from things strangled, and from fornication, from which if ye keep yourselves, you shall do well, fare ye well," and they were dismissed.

If you read this absolutely, unequivocally no Sabbath mentioned, no Sabbath is imposed on the church. They were talking about should the men coming into the church be circumcised or not. And that, they made a decision. This is what they came up with and that was it, that they abstain from meats, offered to idols, from blood, and from things strangled and fornication. That's it. That's what they walked away with. Tell me where you read, you need to keep the Sabbath as a Christian. Do you read it anywhere? (no ma'am) All right.

My sound effects are gratis for you. All right. So, when we discuss these set times, as I said, it's important to see how Christ fulfilled these in a diversity of ways. And the argument of Saturday or Sunday I think that's going to be clarified. So, it's almost like this, and you'll forgive me for this analogy, but people who are ardent Sabbatarians, who are dogmatic about the Sabbath to keep the Sabbath, they're like people who are dressing up and putting on their uniforms to go and slay saber-toothed tigers that are extinct. Go do it if you want, but it serves no purpose.

And in fact, it falls under the category of empty ritualism, which has no purpose, especially if you're doing it with an old dispensation mindset and not Sabbath-ing daily in Christ, because that is the interpretation. Don't take, again, don't take my word for it. One more place for us, and then I will try to be done. Turn to Galatians. Galatians, Paul kind of, I think here might actually put the nail in the coffin, perverbally, so to speak. Chapter 4 and verse 9, Galatians, "But now, after you've known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereon to ye desire again to be in bondage?" Does that not sum it up for you? "You observe days, and months, and times, and years. I'm afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain." And then he says, "Bretheren, I beseech you, be as I am, for I am as ye are, you have not injured me at all." So he's saying there, "Hello, be as I am, is not act like me, look like me, be like me, but I don't," Paul, Jew of Jew, tribe of Benjamin, Pharisee of Pharisee, "I do not do these things.

You should not do them either." Essentially, they do not have any place in our worship in the old mindset, in the old dispensation. Now, when I go back to Leviticus 23, because I'm going to bring this to a close, what leaps out at me so abundantly clear is something that God says to Moses at the close of verse 2. He says, "These are my feasts." He doesn't say, "These are yours." He says, "They're mine." And if they're His, He has the right to ratify them. He has the right to whatever He wants to do with it. So it's not as though He canceled the Sabbath. He showed you this is the shadow, but this is something you must look at because the thing that is the substance will come in the future. Christ is over here, and He puts on full display the meaning of everything that I said to you regarding My feasts. Now, God starts with the Sabbath, moves to the Passover, unleavened bread, and so on, and we'll be looking at these set times in the coming weeks.

The thing that I want to reiterate here is people sometimes think that the most crucial thing that they can do in their faith is to check the boxes. I leave you with this one thought. These are the words of Christ. And I've repeated them so often, you should know them by heart. What's the one singular thing that Christ will be looking for when He comes? He says, "Will the Son of Man find faith?" Not Sabbatarians, not people practicing the old dispensation was for a time. And just to kind of close this on a really kind of positive note, things even in our lifetime serve a time, serve a specific thing. So, for example, when we first, people first came to this country, horse and buggy was the method of transport, right? Now, if you saw horse and buggy going right here on Glendale Avenue, you might think, "Oh, there might be some festival going on somewhere, but that would be out of the normal.

We don't use horse and buggy anymore." And in fact, you know, everybody's trying to push for driverless cars and technology and blah, blah, blah, right? Now imagine, this is a poor analogy, but this is what it's like. Imagine that you've got a whole swath of Christians, and I'm not talking about the Amish, that's a different story, but you've got a whole swath of Christians that want to use the horse and buggy because they think that's the most effective means of transport when here we are and we've got vehicles you can actually get in, you don't have to pick up the poop, there's not the need to carry, you know, amounts of hay or whatever you get in your car and you drive yourself, but there are still people that want the horse and buggy. Now, I'm not saying the horse and buggy is bad, but it served its time.

Guess what? Methinks that God somewhere back in, you know, we tend to think man's innovations and man's creations and man's doing this, but how about God, maybe God had the mind of all of this that would come to fruition, which man takes credit for, that God just saw a better way. And the writer of Hebrews analogizes that to say Jesus is superior to all these things, a better way. So when we look at the Sabbath, hopefully, hopefully I've clarified, if I haven't, I would like you to do something. If you still have questions on the Sabbath, because you know how much I love questions, I love to ask them.

So if you still have questions about the Sabbath, please take the time to write me so I can figure out what I missed and whatever I've missed, I'll come back if you can get them in the mail quickly. I can answer them in the next message or two if I've missed anything that doesn't clear this up, because this one along with some others, when I see the confusion, it drives me crazy. If you know that this is no longer part of our faith and it was just a stepping stone to get to where we are, and that's understood, we're in a good place.

But if you keep saying, "Must have the old. Must keep celebrating the old. I must tell you the old," you've got a problem in not knowing exactly what Christ did for you and what exactly, when He said, "It is finished," what He finished. So hopefully if that's not clear, you'll write me, you'll let me know. I'm looking forward to a few questions. Alright, with that being said, that's my message. You have been watching me, Pastor Melissa Scott, live from Glendale, California at Faith Center. If you would like to attend the service with us, Sunday morning at 11am, simply call 1-800-338-3030 to receive your pass. If you'd like more teaching and you would like to go straight to our website, the address is www.PastorMelissaScott.com.

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Leviticus 5 – The Trespass Offering: Only God Can Forgive

Have you ever met anyone that actually gave their life for you that, I'm not talking about our great American soldiers. I'm not talking about our law enforcement. I'm talking about have you ever met someone personally come into contact with that gave their life for you? And my answer is there's only One and that's Christ. ♪ ♪ If you have been listening for the last few weeks, you know that we've been looking at the tabernacle in the wilderness, the furniture, and we've moved on to the offerings. So everything that is in, around, and about the tabernacle, kind of moving through the book of Leviticus a little bit. And we've seen when God gives the instructions to Moses, He starts with what is close to Him. And I, for some reason I thought this was so clear because it's been said so often and I see a lot of, in the messages, people are getting this a little mixed up here.

So when we talk about this, there are the offerings, the five offerings that are listed in Leviticus. God starts with the burnt offering and moves on to the meal offering. And then we go to the peace offering. Then we have the sin and trespass. Now, I've said to you, God starts with what is dear to Him. We cannot start at the burnt offering when we come into the realm of even trying to understand, like many of you coming into the church and learning about God. It takes so long for us to even comprehend this: sin and trespass. I've said this to you so many times, you've probably heard this from other people, when people say, “I'm basically a good person.” Nah, all right, so that tells you right away, anybody who utters those words coming into the church tells you they haven't even begun the level of understanding. But the reason why this is important, in the Old Testament when it says, “God starts first with what is near and dearest to Him,” this offering was considered a sweet saver, wholly ascending to God for God, no other, perhaps maybe the only part left off, as I've said, was the skin given to the priest possibly.

I'm not sure of the details on that, but I can say this is completely offered up to God. We come into the church and we cannot even start here. Now I've been in churches and I've been to places where new Christians, so excited, so on fire, think they've arrived at the burnt offering. They're wholly dedicated. They've offered themselves like Romans 12. They've put themselves out there offering themselves to God. But the reality is, until this is crystal clear, we're dealing with two things.

The condition; and I used the word last week, the “congenital condition” you are born in. That is fallen Adam. That means a beautiful cute little baby that comes out the gate, “Ah, la, la,” all cute and everything, all full of wants and whatever else. Not━you say, “Well, how could, how could you look at that baby and say the baby's a sinner? Agh!” right? But we're talking about the condition in which that child was born. And the fruit as we live, as we go, as we have our life, the fruit of that nature brings us to the trespass. When I say this, so much insanity here, and you've heard this over the years, people think sin, “I do or I don't do, I haven't done this, I don't kill bugs, therefore I'm not a murderer.” But the reality is that two things, one, Jesus took that, He took the Ten Commandments and He lifted them up, basically putting them on steroids and said, “Don't think anymore about the commandment of not killing.

Think about if you have hate in your heart, you're as guilty as the murderer.” So it's important that the starting point, you know, I've got people that tune in and they listen, they are, some of them are very dear friends of mine, acquaintances, people that have curiosity, and I'm standing here talking about this, and unless it's something that makes them feel warm and fuzzy, it's discounted or they tune it out. But this is why I said to you, why it's hard to populate a church, because when you start teaching, it requires; Christianity, true Christianity is for the thinking person, not the person who wants to go, “Ugh, ugh,” all right? So, and I say that mockingly, but that's the truth. There are way too many people that want to go to church to feel good emotively, but they've not even grasped this problem, which is, I was born, I was conceived, I came out as a baby in a sin condition, and then as I live, as I breathe, as I have my life, the fruit of that nature that I, the condition I was born in produces this.

So I don't set out deliberately to do things that are an offense against God, but that is what we're dealing with. And failure to even start there, so people are getting this confused when I say, I'm trying to show you how we relate to these burnt offerings, meal offerings, peace offerings, sin and trespass. And when you see them laid out properly, you recognize, yes, they were God's prescription for the children of Israel in the wilderness, but they also represent the pattern in which we come. They also represent Christ. There's so many, as I've said, so many different focis to this, but the one I'm pointing out right now is how it applies to us.

So if your starting point is to understand God sets out to show what's important to Him, what's most nearest and dearest to His heart, something that could be wholly offered up to Him. Yet when we come and we start, God lets us start at this end, sin and trespass, to figure this out; required offerings, commanded offerings. I am not talking about offerings we make now or any type.

We're looking at this, so please stay on the page, all right? Now with that being said, I've said to you, I previously noted this, I think last week, sin and trespass are not sweet savor and that's important. That gives us a clear distinction between the last two offerings and the first three. Sweet savor could be considered something that's pleasing to God, that's acceptable to God. In fact, I even used the word probably more for this offering, the burnt offering than any other offering, is essentially that the fact that it was wholly consumed, ascended, and God said, “It's a sweet savor,” is what I'd also call an “acceptance” offering. So it's important to understand and distinguish between these offerings and how, how it matters to us and the application. It's not just learning about what they did and why they did it, but you begin to see and understand with great clarity there is a lot more here that God was so gracious even in this age of law to basically make inclusions for every person in the community and He's still doing it.

This is the thing that's mind-boggling and I will just say this one thing and I'll move on. If all of our unique population that does not identify in the old-fashioned or traditional way would stop for a minute and think about this; I don't care what you say, society may reject you. A lot of people feel they're normal or their, their sexual preferences stand in what we call “standard” and can still be hated. Figure out real quickly there's only one Person you have to be right with in life and that's God.

And God can show you the way of approval. You don't need other people. So if, you know, these people that identify and say, “But no one approves of me,” well maybe it's because you don't approve of yourself and your, your own truth gives you away, but it's concealed in a lie and delusion. So that's all I have to say about that. Anyway, so we, we see though the importance of recognizing this that God made provisions for all people. Now what we're going to look at today is the trespass offering and there's something really very important about the translation and understanding of the fifth chapter. So you'd like to turn there to the fifth chapter of Leviticus and this is what becomes really important. So if, for example, if a person wronged or robbed God, or wrong, robbed or wronged his neighbor, it was considered a trespass and this is what we deal with; what somebody has done.

I urge you to go through this very carefully because this, I touched on this last week and it can be very confusing because some of this sounds like if I said sin is unintentional acts, the trespass seems to have intent, but it's hard to figure out in some of these areas if they could still be considered “unintentional” and you'll see as we get in there, it can be very confusing. So let me first start by reading, fifth chapter of Leviticus: “And if a soul sin, and hear the voice of swearing, and it is a witness, whether he hath seen or known of it; if he do not utter it, then he shall bear his iniquity.” Now unfortunately we're dealing with a translation that can be rather hard to actually understand the way it's written. So those who withhold evidence are guilty and there's an implied situation here based on the Hebrew rendering that the time has passed since the act was committed and any person who was privy or a witness who did not come forward, they were essentially under oath to do so and didn't.

“The voice of swearing” or making an oath seems to point to giving testimony in a legal sense or matter. So you need to read this very carefully because otherwise if you're reading it with a colloquial; or I'm sorry, with a more modern thinking or interpretation, “hear the voice of swearing” like what, so some profane words? That's not what's being meant here. So you can look that up if you're able to look it up in a Hebrew lexicon, you'll see what I'm saying. So here's what's interesting. If a person began to feel guilty about the act that they committed, they would come forward because they were essentially under an oath to do so, and then they would have to basically say their issue, which we will label now as the first time we're reading about “confession.” Hold that thought for just a minute because people will take off on all kinds of tangents with that word “confession.” Second verse, “Or if a soul touch any unclean thing, whether it be a carcase of an unclean beast, or carcase of an unclean cattle, or carcase of an unclean creeping things, and if it be hidden from him; he also shall be unclean and guilty.

Or if he touch the uncleanness of a man, whatsoever uncleanness it be that a man shall be defiled withal, and it be hid from him; when he knoweth of it, then he shall be guilty”" There's all these kind of nuances in here. So if a person became unclean, did not cleanse or purify themselves in the prescribed manner in the allotted time, they would become ceremonially unclean by one of two ways, either coming in contact with a dead animal, the carcass of a dead animal, or coming in contact with an unclean person and/or a dead person. Those would defile and make you unclean. Now if you want to know more about this, you, on your own time, you can go to Leviticus 12-15, it kind of elaborates on it. I don't want to spend too much time. The next one, verse 4, “If a soul swear, pronouncing with his lips to do evil, or to do good, whatsoever it be that a man shall pronounce with an oath, and it be hid from him; when he knoweth it, of it, then he shall be guilty in one of these.

And it shall be, when he shall be guilty of one of these things, that he shall confess,” there's the first time we're reading it, “that he hath sinned in that thing: and he shall bring his trespass offering unto the LORD for his sin which he hath sinned, a female from the flock, a lamb of a goat, of the, a kid of the goats, for a sin offering; and the priest shall make an atonement for him concerning his sin.” So what we have here, basically beginning at, I'm going to say verse 5: “the law of confession.” Now this has gotten so out of hand and misunderstood, so I, I don't want to spend too much time on it because I have taught in abundance on this subject.

So if you are not in accustomed to listening to me and you say, “Well, what have you taught about confession?” Go on the website, try and find it there. Now's not the time for that, but what I do want to say and what's really important is this is the first time we're seeing that and I want you to look at a pattern that will emerge from this confession, and it is definitely not how we understand it today. So let's kind of let this unfold here. Okay, when a person came to the reality that they were guilty by committing an act and they felt badly or remorseful or for the act or acts, the first thing for the guilty to do was to go and confess what they had done.

And this is what's fascinating. The word for “confess” here, oh, you're going to love this, the word for “confess”━okay, I got to ask this question: How many people have been listening for say twenty years? Okay, so you're going to be familiar with this Hebrew word, and if you're not, I'll explain it; don't worry. But there was a joke, a little bit of a joke when the late Dr. Scott was teaching in a passage and he introduced to you the Hebrew word yadah. And we kind of made fun of that from Jerry Seinfeld, you know, “Yada, yada, yada,” right? But yadah is not; remember Hebrew is ambiguous and can have shades of meanings, so in context of where we're looking at “confess,” and I'm not going to get into too much detail because I don't want to lose people here, but it's in the Hithpael, perfect, and the vav in front of it in Hebrew reveals the concept of sequence.

And this becomes important. So the Hebrew, we can't see it here, but the Hebrew gives you an idea of confession, the word “confess” occurs in a sequence of things. That's number one. Number two━this is what I said you're going to love. If you look up this word in the lexicon, you will be in for big surprise because yadah can mean, in Hebrew can mean “to know.” So just so you know, this, whatever, whatever your secondary words or your vowels might be at the end, I'm not quite sure your consonants rather, but yadah; something like that. But if you were looking at this in any Semitic language, throughout all Semitic tongues, you would find it having all of these different meanings except for Arabic. The Arabic word is not yadah, but idu. In the Hebrew, it occurs a hundred; I'm sorry, 1,058 times in the Old Testament, but listen to all the variations. And I, I shouldn't say “all.” I enlisted ten for the word, but there's a lot. So when, when it says “confess,” look carefully at the word because that yadah word should mean “to know.” So when a person confesses obviously it means what it means, but also that you “acknowledge” that you have done the act or acknowledged that you need to declare something.

But it can also be, yadah; not in this context, “to be quiet,” “to be humiliated,” “to leave alone or reject or neglect,” “to punish”" “to say farewell or send away,” “to flow,” or “to sweat,” “to destroy,” it can also connote “obedience to seek and/or to call,” from that one singular Hebrew word. So you might say, “Well, I'm glad we're dealing in English here,” but don't be too quick for that. The reason why I bring this up is because some of you that look up words might get a little bit confused here. So the best way to understand behind “to confess,” which I've given you the breakdown in the English: con, “with,” fess, “to declare” a declaration of sorts. But if you were wanting to get this clear here, it would be yes to, “to declare,” but also “to acknowledge,” like to acknowledge to self, that lets you then declare aloud, so just a little note to self. Now, verses 7-13 in this passage kind of shift gears a little bit, but manifold instructions here.

So 7-13, “And if he be not able to bring a lamb, then he shall bring for his trespass, which he hath committed, two turtledoves, or two young pigeons, unto the LORD; one for a sin offering, the other for a burnt offering”" Remember I said, the offerings could occur side by side? There you have it. “And he shall bring them unto the priest who shall offer that which is for the sin offering first, and wring off his head from his neck,” he's speaking about the birds as small items, “but shall not divide it asunder: and he shall sprinkle of the blood of the sin offering upon the side of the altar, the rest of the blood shall be wrung out at the bottom of the altar: it is a sin offering. And he shall offer the second for a burnt offering, according to the manner: and the priest shall make atonement for him for his sin which he hath sinned, and it shall be forgiven him.” And you're going to see that.

I'm going to deal with this towards the end of the message, “and it shall be forgiven him,” because it's repeated multiple times. “But if he be not able to bring two turtledoves, or two young pigeons, then he that sinned shall bring for his offering a tenth part of an ephah of fine flour for a sin offering; and shall put no oil upon it, neither shall he put any frankincense thereon: for it is a sin offering.” Now I know we're still dealing in sin, and I told you we're talking about trespass, but I'm show; I want to show you something for a reason here.

Understanding the connection between this verse, which goes on to talk about the trespass shows you, there are connected thoughts here. So although they are for two distinct things: unintentional, unbeknownst, and then what we're going to look at, because we'll get an idea of, beginning at verse 14, of the trespass offerings, what is involved. But I want you to; I want you to see something here. I did not read this last week, I don't believe, which is God makes provisions, and this is for the sin offering, and He'll also make the provisions in the trespass offering for anyone of any walk of life, of any standing. And that's what I love about God. If you read that now and say, “Well, that's great for the children of Israel,” but think about in today's society how people are constantly making excuses about how they either can't come to God, or they can't come to church, or they can't, can't; and that's all psychological, blah, blah.

That's all it is. There's no rhyme or reason, it's, it's, it's rationale or rationalizing what you don't want to do with every reason under the sun. But the fact of the matter is anybody who takes the time to read, even in this book, Leviticus, which is full of legalese, God says, “I've made a provision no matter what your standing is.” Now you might say, “Well, how would the poor person? A poor person doesn't have a lamb or a goat, but how would they bring fine flour?” Well, remember there's a provision in the law for very poor people to go and glean the remnants of what's left in the field.

Remember, they're supposed to leave over some stuff and the poor people can go and glean that, but they'd still have to work to take whatever they've gleaned in the field and turn it into fine flour. So it's not as though they just went and freeloaded off of somebody else's crop and then said, “Oh, here God.” they still had to produce it with their own hands, turned it into flour, and then present it. So there was still some work involved which connects the fact that in this category of sin and trespass, there is something of, we'll call it accountability for your acts or your actions, your deeds, whatever. Okay, so I love the fact that that's what this spells out. Now if we turn to the trespass offering, we're going to see differences that will emerge.

One of these concepts is “restitution.” We have not seen that before in, in the offerings. There was no mention of restitution, restitution. Now, Leviticus 5 and beginning at 14, “The LORD spake unto Moses, saying, If a soul commit a trespass, and sin through ignorance,” and remember I said to you, now you've got these words occurring together so it may be a little confusing, but I'm going to try and sort this out for you. “If a soul commit a trespass, and sin through ignorance, in the holy things, in the holy things of the LORD; then he shall bring for his trespass unto the LORD a ram without blemish out of the flocks, with thy estimation by shekels of silver, after the shekel of the sanctuary, for a trespass offering: and he shall make amends for the harm that he hath done in the holy thing, and he shall add the fifth part thereto, and give it unto the priest: and the priest shall make an atonement for him with the ram of the trespass offering, and it shall be forgiven him.” So now you've got a whole bunch of concepts lined up together, but there's something real important that was said in here that we can just read by, and that is a mention of two things.

One, “If soul commit a trespass, and sin through ignorance in the holy things.” So here, the trespass; note this carefully, is against, the trespass is against the things of God. We're not talking about something else; the holy things, so it's directly connected. Let's just say it's a high holiday. Failure to comply with the laws of the holiday would be sinning. If it was a sin of ignorance, it would be sinning. A known sin probably fall in the category of trespass, that you didn't comply with the prescribed actions of what was required of you. And that would require an offering not only of animal, but also a rest━if you want to call it that a restitution offering: money. Now here's the other thing that we're introduced to for the first time in Leviticus, “a fifth part shall be added.” It would be great if they explained what that fifth part is.

So I'm going to try and do that for you, and hopefully I don't confuse you even more. In order to understand this, I'm going to take you somewhere else where it'll, it's embedded in a passage, and it'll maybe make more sense. So the passage that I'm going to look at will be in Genesis, but basically, let me give the background for those people who are not familiar, my newer listeners. Joseph, who was Jacob/Israel's favorite child, his son, that son Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers. His brothers hated him because he was his father's favorite. You remember many even who aren't reading the Bible would know about Joseph's coat of many colors. That was made by Jacob, his father given to him, and others hated him, not just for the coat, but for dreams that he said he saw and the interpretations thereof.

He just was not loved by his brethren, period. So they sold him into slavery. He ends up getting carried off into Egypt and being put in prison in Egypt. You think perhaps he's just going to rot there. Anyway, we know that he, while he's in prison, the Pharaoh has dreams. No one can interpret them. Joseph interprets the dreams. He's basically let out. Those dreams and their interpretations come to pass exactly the way Joseph said, and for that, the Pharaoh of Egypt places Joseph second in command, only second to Pharaoh, gives him his special ring which would be the sign of royalty or royal authority, gives him standing. And so we have all of that going on. Of course, we know that in, in this particular passage, there are seven years of plenty, seven years of famine, and when the famine does hit, Joseph's father, Jacob, and his brethren come to Egypt. When it is disclosed and found out that Joseph is alive, he, he's not dead as was supposed by his father, we have this incredible, the family is reunited, everybody's happy, right? Kind of.

All right that's the background now, first book of Scott; I just gave you the summary. So let's turn to the passage I want us to look at, which happens in Genesis 47. So with all that background, now the seven years of famine hit. There was seven years of plenty, feast. Now seven years of famine hit. Chapter 47, verse 20, “Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh,” he bought it all, “for the Egyptians sold every man his field, because famine prevailed over them: so the land became Pharaoh's. And as for the people, he removed, he removed them to cities from one end of the borders of Egypt, even to the other end thereof.

Only the land of the priests bought he not,” so the priests' portion was not touched. And it says here, “For the priests had a portion assigned them a Pharaoh, and did eat their portion which Pharaoh gave them: whereby they sold not their lands.” So the priests were the only ones in Egypt, Egyptian priests that were able to keep and maintain what they had. “Then Joseph said unto the people, Behold, I have bought you this day and your land,” so both you and your land are owned by the government. Never mind. “Lo, here is seed for you, and you shall sow the land.” So basically Joseph says, “You are owned. Your land and yourselves are owned by Pharaoh, but here is seed for you, and you will go sow the land that no longer belongs to you. You're going to have to basically work for it now.” “And it shall come to pass in the increase,” when it yields, when your crops grow, then “ye shall give the fifth part unto Pharaoh, and four parts shall be your own.” Remember, I'm trying to explain to you the fifth part.

So this becomes interesting because the fifth part, what he's saying here essentially is an imposed tax. And if you're not sure about this, please for you who read Hebrew and can even limp through the lexicon, look this up. This would be analogous to essentially a 20 percent levy or tax. And so he says, “The fifth part unto Pharaoh,” let's call it, let's call it for right now in more understandable terms, 20 percent, “and the fourth part shall be your own, for seed of the field, for your food, and for them of your household, and for your little ones.” So I want you to see how that's working. Now he's very clear about this. He says, “In your increase.” Now remember, the law was not yet given here. So there has to be an understanding. Remember what is before the law usually continues in the law. It's refined in the law, and somehow we come out on the other side in the New Testament. This tells you, these people basically sold themselves and their land. They're given seed to sow on the land that's no longer theirs.

And when the increase comes, they will give a fifth part, essentially 20 percent of what has come out of that to Pharaoh and the fourth part they can keep. That's the easiest way to explain this. Now here there was no wrong or injury done. If you want to put it that way, there's no law. There's no, there's no way to catalog because as I said, the law was not given. And where the law was not given, sin cannot be imputed or charged to somebody's account. So turn back to Leviticus so we can read that again because now you've got to add something here. You might say, “Well, what? What's, what's the point?” All right, well, the first thing, I need to point this out because otherwise all things will not make sense. Remember, this is “trespass in the holy things.” And for trespass in the holy things, the prescribed offering would be a ram without blemish, shekels of silver, and “amends for the harm he hath done to the holy thing; in the holy thing,” adding a fifth part, essentially 20 percent, “and the priest shall make atonement for him with the ram of the trespass offering, and it shall be forgiven him.” So I want you to think of it like this.

We might be looking at things like “trespass in the holy things,” failure to bring your firstfruits, failure to dedicate your firstborn child, or sort out the first of anything that is within your possession failure to bring the tithe, failure to keep vows of offerings, and I could go on. So this was, and you've got to read this right because otherwise you can come up with all kinds of ideas that are wrong. “If a soul commit a trespass, and sin through ignorance, in the holy things,” I just gave you an idea of what that might be, but it could probably extend to a lot of other “holy things,” so in that regard, essentially think of this. It is an offense done against God. Not only is there an offering of a ram without blemish, which means blood will be spilled. Not only is there shekel, silver money being paid, but then there's also included in here the fifth part, which means essentially 20 percent tacked on to whatever you're offering. Now the reason why this is kind of mind-boggling is because if you think about it, there is no as of yet; we're going to read on, but as of yet, the first thing that's addressed is “trespasses against the things of God.” Hold that thought.

Verse 17, “And if a soul sin, and commit any of these things which are forbidden to be done by the commandments of the LORD; though he wist it not,” so there's kind of an explanation, a little bit of, we're talking about he wist it not, yet he is guilty. He didn't know. It sounds again; this gets a little bit confusing.

Did he do it out of ignorance? Did he forget? Was this a non-deliberate act? And that's what this sounds like. “He wist it not, and yet he is guilty, he shall bear his iniquity. He shall bring a ram without blemish of the flock, with thy estimation, for a trespass offering, unto the priest: the priest shall make a moment for him concerning his ignorance wherein he erred and wist it not,” that explains it to you, “and it shall be forgiven. This is a trespass offering: he hath certainly trespassed against the LORD.” So we're not done here, but I want you to see something that is very important, and that is when God said, “On such and such a day I want you to do this, and I on such and such a day when you do this, I want you to do that,” very easily because there were so many prescribed things to do, it would be, it would be very easy for a person to miss.

How many of you have by accident, by unintentionally, you missed a credit card payment? You didn't intend to, but you did? Oh, good, I'm not alone, all right. What I'm saying is you didn't mean to do that, yet there, there are consequences. It's going to hit your credit report, and unfortunately it's a stain. So it, I don't mean to diminish the things of God, but I'm trying to say something that you didn't know and yet should be common knowledge. Guess what? This is the wonderful thing about God. God realizes our frailty and our frame, knows we can't remember and do it all, and makes provisions for that.

If that is not an image or a picture of grace in the Old Testament, I don't know what is. Let's keep going. “The Lord spake unto Moses, saying, If a soul sin, and commit a trespass against the LORD, and lie unto his neighbour,” so I want you to read that one really carefully, because that bears something we tend to not think about.

In this book, lying to your neighbor is also sinning against God. So it's important to understand the depth of things that are spelled out here, which is why when you go and you read a passage like Matthew 6 that talks about forgiveness, it becomes vitally important, important to have this underneath it all to know where God was coming from in the first place when He talks about sinning against God and sinning against your fellowman, because the sin against fellowman we tend to marginalize or minimalize, but it's still a sin against God. You're reading that right there. So, “lie unto his neighbour in that which was delivered for him unto him to keep, or in fellowship, or in a thing taken away by violence, or he hath deceived his neighbor; or hath found that which was lost, and lieth concerning it, sweareth falsely; in any of these things that a man doeth, sinning therein: then it shall be, because he hath sinned, he is guilty, and it shall, that he shall restore that which he took violently away, or the thing which he had deceitfully gotten, or that was delivered him to keep, or a lost thing which he found, or all that about which he hath sworn falsely; he shall even restore it in principle, and add,” here we go again, “the fifth part more thereto, and give it unto him to whom it appertaineth, in the day of his trespass offering.” So get this, on the one side, as trespass committed against God in the holy things, restitution is required in forms of offering the shekel and the fifth part.

And here we have, on the other hand, wrongs committed essentially against fellowman, and we still have a fifth part, that 20 percent is going to be tacked on there on, on top of the person's offering. Now you and I may think, “Twenty percent, eh, that's not a lot,” 20 percent would be a lot. Don't kid yourself, okay? “He shall bring his trespass offering unto the LORD, or ram without blemish out of the flock, with thy estimation, for a trespass offering, unto the priest: and the priest shall make an atonement for him before the LORD: and shall be forgiven for any thing of that, in all that which he hath done in trespassing therein.” Okay, let me go back to my notes, because I've got a lot of stuff here that needs to be kind of a little bit of a simplified version of what we just read.

So there are details in what I just read put in plain English: A person's property rights may be violated by someone else unlawfully, seizing them, stealing them, taking what's not yours, failure to report, lost or found property, or giving a false testimony. And when the guilty party came forward to confess, they would bring an offering, a clear revelation to the individual's remorse and repentance, not like, “Okay, now I got to do this.” It would be the display of remorse for the act, and it all ends, of course, as you can read with, “and it shall be forgiven him.” Now this is what's important. When Christ gave His life for ransom for many, the fullest satisfaction was made for both man and God. In other words, Jesus takes care of all of this, and on top of that, put into the category the things you and I would not consider actually or define as a sin or a trespass.

You know why? Because we're living in different times. You know, it might have been if we went back into the Puritanical times, certain things, you know, if you read enough history, you know, certain things would have been a sin. This would have been a sin: a woman wearing pants, right? That would have been a sin, and, and it would have not just been a sin verbally; it would have been a sin where you're ostracized in the community. There's a whole litany of things within the church; we're not talking about in the world. So it all depends. This is why I say to you, you've got to read this very carefully to see that God was never trying to squeeze the life out of somebody, but trying to point and show and reveal our need is much more than any animal offering could ever do.

Keep in mind that the sacrifices under the law activated or effectuated the temporal remission of punishment, but they could never cleanse the soul. And this is why when you read Hebrews, you go and you read the chapter where it says, “Neither the blood of bulls or goats could not cleanse a guilty mind.” So you could transfer. Remember I said that you've got to place your hand on the animal's head and it's one of those vicarious things. You could transfer, but that would not cleanse the inside. You'd still be walking around with the knowledge that even though that act would basically quell the punishment, the inside of the person was never at peace. You could not be at peace knowing that you have offended God. So there's a lot more to this.

I think the Israelite who sinned and incurred the penalty of death, for example, provided it was not a premeditated, willful, and deliberate act, would obviously bring the prescribed offering. But I don't think even there they thought, “Oh, and this absolves me completely.” It would absolve you of the punishment in the temporal sense, but could never cleanse. That's why I love what the book of Hebrews says. The shedding of blood was required, and I know a lot of people, this drives a lot of people mad, and they don't want to hear it. But God was driving home a point that if we were focused enough, we would look at this and we wouldn't say, “Oh, the bloodshed and oh, the carnality of it all, the,” when I say “carnality,” the flesh being torn down.

But rather we'd look at this and we'd say, “God knew that we needed Christ, we needed the sacrifice of Christ as a full, complete sacrifice to cover it all, to take it away.” And I'll say this one other thing, because I've said this in the past. I don't even think when we interpret the word kaporeth, the covering, which we've looked at on the Ark and many other places; I don't even think that's an adequate word for Christ's work. Do you know why? Because He just didn't cover us; He cleansed us. This, what we're looking at, would be a covering. The actual fullness of Christ's work is something that is cleansing to the core, but you'd have to read the book to see that.

You'd have to read the book to know it. So now that I've painted all this picture, I want us to look at several things that are repeated several times. Starting in the fourth chapter; don't turn there; verse 20, verse 26, verse 31, verse 35; the fifth chapter, verses 10, 13, 16, 18; and in the sixth chapter, verse 7, “it shall be forgiven him,” or “it shall be forgiven them.” The Hebrew word for “forgiveness,” this word is sallâch. I think that's what I'm wanting to write: sallâch, maybe. And there's a whole bunch of words that would be attached to this word. This is what's important. You know, I give you the details, but I want you to see something. This, this word occurs 46 times as a verb in the Old Testament, but there's something really important here. The only one who grants sallâch is God. What's my point? We make the mistake, and I; most of you who are listening to me know this, but I've got a whole host of people who have not heard this before.

The priest here did not dispense forgiveness. The priest here did not have the ability to dispense forgiveness. Only God could forgive; even the Pharisees and the Sadducees in Jesus' day said, “Only God can forgive sin.” And this Hebrew word is used exclusively of God forgiving. So anyone who reads this and takes that as a template and spins it into the modern realm of Catholicism that the priest can absolve you; I'm sorry, but that is just not the case, that will never be the case. No human can absolve another human of the acts, sin or trespass. Sin is your condition, but trespass is anything committed against God. No one can do that except God. God's willingness to forgive is much more, if you see what I see, and I've highlighted them.

You know, you go around and you, the green is where it says “it shall be forgiven him.” That was important for me to highlight that, so that every time I open this book, I do not forget that even here within the confines of the law, God had abundant mercy and grace to provide forgiveness to grant that to His people. I love the fact that, for example, when Nehemiah reminds God of God's past mercies, and if you examine, he's praying for something, he's petitioning, and he's actually petitioning God for something he didn't do, but the people did. And that got God's ear. But only God━do you see what I'm trying to say? It can't be us. We can pray, we can petition, we can ask, but only God has the power, and God did take Nehemiah's words, honored them, kind of a cry for forgiveness and mercy to the people, and that is what opened the door for God to open the heart of Cyrus to let the people to come back.

So you kind of got to see it in proper perspective. You've got the same thing, by the way, if you look at Amos, when he's praying, you know, he's praying about these locusts, and you think about it, he's praying for the people to be forgiven, essentially, to take, to take away this; it's a vision, by the way, it didn't yet happen in, in his time. And God reassures him, basically in a nutshell; I'm giving you the quick version; that all is, all could be, or all would be forgiven. So it's important to see the subject of forgiveness even in the law through the prophets is very, very clear. And there's a formula here. So check this out. The person who commits sin or trespass must bring their offering, there must be shed blood; it's as if God's saying, “I gave you a lot.

I freed you. I gave you life. I gave you all, everything that you could possibly need or want, and you've sinned against Me essentially. It's going to cost you.” And now we can't even imagine that that cost is nothing compared to the cost of Jesus dying on the cross for us, but God says, “Nevertheless, it's going to cost you.” And I don't care what anybody says about this part here. The reason why I'm highlighting all this is because no matter what the people did, it took a long time before God gave up on the people, their apostasy, their complaining, their chronic issues, which if you read just the Pentateuch, you can see these people were, instead of being grateful and going back to God in thanksgiving, they were pretty much a stiff-necked, ungracious band of people.

For God chose them out of a unique group of people, that He chose them, He didn't choose other people, and yet they could not get this. And yet in spite of all that, He still forgave them. He still forgave them. But once we've turned from the Old Testament you understand this. And you get into the New Testament, and we've studied those words for forgiveness, the major Greek words for forgiveness you begin to see God really hasn't changed. The, we'll call it the harshness or the legal binding things, yes, those are, those are not there anymore. But if you read enough, and we've studied these words, for example, the Greek word, aphiemi, which is “to let go, to cancel, to remit, to forgive”; aphesis, which is “to release, to pardon,” it connotes cancellation of debt.

Paresis is another word occurring one time, “to let pass,” or “to let go.” You've got in the New Testament, aphiemi used 142 times; 47 of them are found in Matthew. I mean, if you kind of break it down, you see there's a lot of that concept woven into the New Testament wherever you look. And the importance of this is to understand that when you get to the New Testament, forgiveness of sins, of debts, of trespasses, it's used in a very general context. No longer do we have, we'll call it the details, but it still must be maintained and understood.

Christ takes care of both the condition of man; our condition, our Adamic fallen nature, our condition, our congenital condition, and the fruit of that life lived, which is the sins we commit. And don't go down the pathway and say, “Well, I don't drink anymore, I don't smoke.” Those are, I wouldn't even, tell you the truth, those are the easiest things because they're the obvious things, but what about the things that are not obvious that people tend to forget and gloss over? Think about that, it's a good one. So what we have here is the Old Testament where what we're studying actually shows us that God's grace and God's willingness to forgive was always there, and the method.

Okay, you can say, “Well, God made a prescription, and dah, dah, dah, dah,” well, the prescription for the New Testament was that Jesus must go to the cross and die, that He'd also resurrect. And remember the connection to what Paul says. He says, “If Christ is not risen, our faith is vain, and you are yet in your sins.” This is why it's vital to understand for every person listening to me, the front, center, circumference, anywhere you want to, at any angle, is the Resurrection because without the validity of the Resurrection, everything else crumbles to pieces, including the forgiveness that, the forgiveness of sins, right? So it's important to understand that.

Now, I want you and I to approach the subject of forgiveness now a little bit differently. When you go back and you read this, I don't want you to look at, “Well, those were the children of Israel, the Israelites in the desert.” They have the same disease we have. They, they suffered from the same things we suffer from, and that is basically spiritual blindness, spiritual ineptness, the inability to understand God, God's ways, God's words, God's wishes, God's desires. We struggle with the same problems and it's pretty simple if I may say so.

The offerings point us. So if we take all these offerings and you can say, “Okay, lift away the,” we'll call it the grossness of the offerings for just a minute, because you can't remove it. And what the offerings show us for us, an application to us, we come in already from the get-go offending God. I don't care who you are, I don't care how great you think you are or how bad you think you are. You come in already offending God from the beginning in the holy things. Now, remember there is no law now. The law's been fulfilled in Christ, but how many times have I said to you, people who think they're fulfilling the bare minimum think they'll make it in? They've checked the box; they think they'll make it in, “Oh, I've done the minimum I, I've require to do.” That might be, if that's your mindset, you still don't have a relationship with Christ.

The minimum that you can do is recognize; it's like saying, this person died for me. Don't make this a generic picture of the world. This person died for me. Do you, have you ever met anyone that actually gave their life for you that, I'm not talking about our great American soldiers. I'm not talking about our law enforcement. I'm talking about have you ever met someone personally come into contact with that gave their life for you? And my answer is there's only One and that's Christ.

So when you come to that real reality, not the lip service version, you come in recognizing you've offended God right at the get-go, and then I see my condition. Once these two things have been dealt with in Christ, I begin to be able to have fellowship with God, because that's what the peace offering is. The peace offering is shared; God, the offeror, and the priest all partake.

I'm able to, because of understanding my status, my state of being and the fruit of my state of being, I'm now able, because of the offering now, I'm speaking in the New Testament, because of the offering of Christ, I'm able to have fellowship with God. I'm able to, if I can keep making the journey in my walk and keep faithing, I'm able to get to the mindset of the burnt offering, which is what the apostle Paul was saying in Romans 12, to offer yourself wholly, a living sacrifice to God. You get to that point of recognizing, yes, the burnt offering is Christ, it's also us. And everything in between is a picture, a portrait. So you can get hung up on, “Oh, I can't read that,” because whatever, or you can look at this and say, “God had a roadmap even here in the Old Testament to show us what life would be like for the spiritual and faithful in the New, and it hasn't changed.” The beauty of this is even embedded here, “it shall be forgiven.” We know when we get to the New Testament mindset, this is why this really bugs me when people say, “Well, you know, it's very difficult for me because,” and fill in the blanks.

If God said, “I forgive you, it shall be forgiven you,” then I recommend you take God at His word. There are several psalms that are beloved for most of this congregation. Psalm 103 talks about the forgiveness of God being as your sins are removed as far as the east is from the west. And in another place it talks about, in the book of Micah, your sins being basically thrown into the abyss of the sea, never to be seen again. That is the forgiveness of God. And when one receives that forgiveness, let me tell you what happens. The devil may still come and whisper in your ear, people you used to know may say, “Yeah, sure,” and point their finger at you, but you won't━I will reiterate this. You have one Audience to please, and it's not me. It's God. And when you get that right, everything comes together. Even the faltering and the “Kind of; I'm not sure exactly.” When you're focused on that one Audience, and that's the most important Person, this will all fall into place and you'll understand one thing: God is not against you.

God is for you. All these people that say, “Well, I can't come to the church, because,” those are manmade ideologies that keep people out, the whole, “You've got to clean up before you come in here.” We've never looked at anybody and said anything other than sinners are welcome, but you've got to start with the right place. Don't come in here with your baggage and don't come in here with your ideology and tell me you're okay, when most of us coming in can't even figure out we've already sinned against God. Choose words wisely. We've already sinned against God in our activities before we even came into the church. Don't try and put a halo on it. Recognize it, and the confession part comes when you talk to God. David did that. David had a priest by him, by the way let me remind you, prophet and priest in Nathan, and he may have conversed with him, but when he made that bold declaration in Psalm 51, he's talking to God; he's not talking to an intermediary: “Against thee, O LORD, and thee alone have I sinned.” So if there's a takeaway, all of these point, all these offerings point to Christ, help us understand the New Testament.

If there's another takeaway, it's that only God can forgive. No man can, no one can, no man or woman can forgive sins committed against God. And finally, we serve a forgiving, loving God. What He does want though is He wants us to be honest both with ourselves and with Him. And when that happens, the floodgates of real blessings of knowing Christ begin to happen. So for all those people who say, “Well, what's the point in studying this?” I hope you recognize that there's great value. Now if you go back and you look at these and scrutinize them, because we didn't read every verse in here and there's much more I could have gone into, I want you to see something. As people say, “Well, it's Old Testament” yeah, it's Old Testament, but it, the beauty is that if you look carefully, you're going to see Christ on these pages, even within the book of Leviticus.

Now that's pretty darn special and pretty amazing that God would include that as something for us to recognize, see, and learn from. So hopefully this, this has is gelled with you all. And while I was sitting here and finishing my notes, I couldn't help but think about this. You know, we used to sing a song here, which speaks to my heart greatly, “I would love to tell you what I think of Jesus, how I found in Him a friend so strong and true. I'd love to tell you how He changed my life completely. He did something that no other friend could do. No one has ever cared for me like Jesus.” And when you really get that in your mind, everything else will change.

And that is that He cared for the people back here. He cares for the people today, and if we could only wake up to that and fortify ourselves in that knowledge, there's really nothing that the Christian, that the believer cannot do in Christ. That's my message. You have been watching me, Pastor Melissa Scott, live from Glendale, California at Faith Center. If you would like to attend the service with us, Sunday morning at 11am, simply call 1-800-338-3030 to receive your pass. If you'd like more teaching and you would like to go straight to our website, the address is www.PastorMelissaScott.com.

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Leviticus 4 – The Sin Offering: Provision for Our Unintentional Sins

We've been looking at the offerings. So there are five offerings. They begin in the book of Leviticus, the burnt offering, the meal offering; your Bible may say “meat,” but we are calling it the “meal offering” because, just think of it this way. The “meat offering,” we don't use that term in English anymore like they did when they were writing the King James. So there is no meat in the meat offering, so it's better to just say “meal,” right? That's easier to remember. Peace offering, sin offering, trespass offering. So in the burnt offering, the meal offering, and the peace offering, these all fall into a category we call “sweet savor.” What's interesting is if you read in Paul's writing, and I'll just read it to you because it's just one small verse, but he uses that terminology, “And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour.” So even Paul made that connection; he makes it many times over.

But what I mentioned about this is important, and I'll, I'll give you the details a little bit later in the message. But when I said to you that Noah and Abraham's offerings could not have been sin offerings, is that what's attached in those texts is it was a sweet savor to God as it ascended. So anything that is “sweet savor” or labeled that way is never associated with a sin offering. So that's why I said that. I can back up things that I say. As previously mentioned also, everything in God's program mattered. It still matters, by the way, and there's still people making substitutions to their own demise. Then there are some, we'll call them refinements to the burnt offering. For example, in Leviticus 7 and verse 8, it says, “And the priest that offereth any man's burnt offering, even the priest shall have to himself the skin of the burnt offering which he hath offered.” So that's another important, there's just so many of them sometimes I think, you know, it's easy to let these things kind of pass and slip through the cracks, but here, even this, so the priest would get to keep the skin of the burnt offering.

So think of it this way, the skin could be used for a myriad number of reasons. I'm assuming, I don't know all the different customs of the day, but I'm assuming that a skin could have been used from anything, we'll call it functional, like maybe covering a seating area or part of your roofing, your housing, but generally speaking, skin across the board is used as some type of a covering, whether it's on a human or placed on something else, it's a covering.

And I found even this to be amazing because what was the burnt offering? Something that ascends up, wholly offered to God. In way of description, it personifies Christ's ministry on earth, right, wholly dedicated to God, ascending upward. But think of this, the skin that was offered, the New Testament says we are clothed in Christ's righteousness. Well, if the skin represented that which was offered as a type of Christ, imagine that this, this covering, if you will, that would have been given to the priest is almost a representation of being clothed with God's righteousness, except it's in the shadow, not in actuality. In actuality it's Christ. In shadow it may have been this skin. Now, I'm reading, I'll tell you what I'm reading between the lines and perhaps adding. This is speculation, but I think that there's reason to attach that there because it seems like, well, imagine how many burnt offerings, morning and night would be offered every day. That's a lot of skin.

Just think about it. You know how many people are in the camp night and day? That is a lot of skin. It's a lot of blood and it's a lot of skin. By the way, probably a lot of smoke too, if you think, no, I don't know. I think we maybe do a lot of caricatures about this. We see what fire in general looks like. You know, somebody's making a backyard barbecue; it's not going to be black smoke. But you're burning a whole entire animal. What do you think that's going to look like? Don't answer. All right, so in the meal offering, we saw, as I said, it had no meat in it, and the main ingredients in that offering: fine flour, frankincense, oil. So the big difference between the burnt offering and the meal offering, as I said previously last week, the burnt offering is a life offered up. And the meal offering, let's just say, was the fruit of that life. So life offered up, wholly consumed, and what's brought to the altar for the meal offering is what we as humans, you know, oil doesn't make itself.

Just, you know, does anybody think you just go out and say, “Ah, rain oil,” we have to make it, right? Like fine flour has to be pummeled. And so it's, it is the fruit or the labor of one's work versus the life that was offered. And I'm hoping at some point this will click with some of you because it's so hard sometimes to adequately convey a concept. But this one is so crystal clear to me. In the meal offering, we kind of get the idea overall of bread or cakes. And I know it's like it's, it's just a little bit around lunch time, so I start talking about bread and cakes, and in about five minutes I'm going to hear tummies going, grr, grr, grrr! (Laughter.) That happened last week or the week before and I was like, wow, it works, (laughter) all right.

But bread being the staff of life, of course and what we see in the meal offering, it's the ingredients that are placed in there give us a description as I referred to the fine flour. Immediately, I don't think fine flour sifted, I think of the bruised One. I think of Isaiah 53, “He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities.” If you think about it that way, the, the pulverizing, the beating, the smiting that would produce flour from its original state into the state it was in, somehow this is very representational of suffering, specifically the suffering of our Lord. So we can put some flesh and blood on that and see how we might understand it better.

I mentioned the, in the fine flour, no unevenness. Probably the most simplistic way to describe that is there is no change in Him; He is constant, remains the same. That's that concept of flour that is not lumpy or inconsistent; full of inconsistencies. Another difference between the burnt offering and the meal offering I described was the washing of water in the inward parts on the burnt offering versus the oil on the meal offering, but both are descriptive. Of course, the water as the word of God, washing the inner parts, we understand that through the New Testament, washed with the water inside.

It's what comes out of a person; it's already in you that defiles you when you, the Bible says when you open your mouth, but that's why you are constantly to wash your mind with the word of God, the oil on the other hand in the meal offering, representative of the anointing of the Holy Spirit. The meal offering was to be made with salt and emblem of course of perpetuity or preservation and also used against spoiling or corruption. So again, in Him, in Christ, there was no sin; there was no corruption. Let me just stop right here. In fact, I wish I could, there was a pause button so I can take a sidebar and I don't lose everything I've said. You know how often, how many of you have heard, usually it comes around Easter time, that Jesus had a wife, Jesus wed Mary, Jesus had sex, He had children with Mary – how many have heard that? Okay. So just so we can put things in perspective, if the Old Testament is basically revealed or expounded in the New and we read about no corruption, no blemish, no anything.

And listen carefully, sex does not defile a person but in the biblical realm of understanding that would be considered defilement and uncleanness if one was not married. Therefore, again, you either take this whole book and take it, parse it, try and mull it around and then you can say to the, to the people out in the world, “You're full of it; you don't know what you're talking about,” because if you want to go down the pathway that Jesus succumbed to impurity or temptation, then you're saying that all of this that I'm describing and the rest of the book cannot describe Him and He cannot fulfill it.

And that's a lie. So what I'm saying to you is if somebody actually scrutinizes this book enough and you're looking for shadows, types and clarity, you can know that He had to fulfill the offering of, without blemish, which means without bodily defect but also without corruption, which means anything that would have been immorally making Him impure in any way, shape, or form. And in this case, in biblical days, having sex without being married would have constituted what I'm describing. So that's why I'm saying to you, just un-pause now, come back to where I was. So this is why it's important to study the whole book. You can dispel a lot of stuff that is basically thrown at us to make a mockery of our faith.

That's all. You know, they mocked Jesus on the cross. That wasn't enough. They have to kill, still keep mocking Him all these years later. So that's the way they do it. But anyone who's reading this, a light will go on in what I'm saying to you because He is described as the Lamb of God that takes away sin of the world. Well, how could He fulfill that perfect offering if He Himself was not perfect and impure or corrupted? So save that for another argument in another day, but I just wanted to put that in there. All right, if the burnt offering represents the God-man relationship, I've said to you the meal offering and even the peace offering and probably more so the peace offering represent the other side of the Decalogue, the other side of the Ten Commandments, the fellowman-to-man relationship.

Why do I say that? Because the burnt offering offered on the altar was wholly offered up to God, the skin given to the priest, but that's almost like a sidebar, but everything else going to God. For the meal and peace offering, especially in the peace offering, you've got the offeror, God, and the priest all partaking. That's fellowship. That's communion right there. So if you split the first three offerings, the burnt offering to fit into the man-God relationship of the first five laws of the Ten Commandments, and the other five go into the meal and peace and the man-fellowman relationship where you see fellowship and communion, again interesting that the whole thing is fulfilled in Christ. Remember what it says about Christ and the law, “I did not come to destroy the law, but to fulfill it,” and in Him, indeed, He did fulfill both sides of the Decalogue to God and to man. All right, when we look at the peace offering, which we started to briefly, it too is classified as a sweet savor, but there's, as I said, something unique.

If you can read it in your own time, because I do not think time will permit for me to go through that text, but you will definitely see what I'm referring to as communion or fellowship of all persons or parties involved in that offering. The offeror feasts on the meat of the altar very much analogous to we who, and be very careful about how you interpret what I'm about to say, feast on the body of Christ. That's not eating, that is enjoying or partaking by reading, faithing, understanding all that Christ is and does for us. So in that respect, we are partaking of the body of Christ; we are, we make up the body of Christ, the church, but in the respect of the offering. We see man satisfied in Christ.

Through this offering, the offeror is actually feasting with God. So it's almost a circular bringing the offering, the offering is offered, the priest gets to participate, the offeror gets to participate, God is the, obviously, the intended recipient in full, but all get to be included in this offering. So there's something there that's very, we'll call it communal-like, which is kind of neat because you don't think of an offering as a fellowship or a communal activity. All right, the priest, remember I said to you in every, each of these offerings, you've got to peel back the offeror, the offering; the offeror, the person, the offering, the item, and the priest.

And in many ways, Christ will fulfill one or more of these, not just the priest, but a lot of times you can see double and triple meaning in things. So we can see fulfillment that occurs, for example, the priest who is our high priest Christ, but He's also our mediator. The Scripture says Aaron; you've got to follow this one, Aaron and his sons, or Aaron and Aaron's sons, the priest's children, his family get to partake.

So think of it this way, if you're going to make this extra complicated, we're trying to make shadows and types and look at the reality. So Aaron, the priest, his children, they all get to partake. We are heirs and children of God. So it's the same, if you look at all of these different types, they're the same; they lead us down the same pathway. This is why I get frustrated when people say, “Oh, that's the Old Testament. I don't want to read the Old Testament.” Well, you're missing out on a lot, because this fills in a lot of blanks that if you said, “Well, I don't fully, I, I'll read the New Testament, but I don't get all the nuances.” The nuances occur here, and then when you start reading it again, you go, “Why didn't I see that before?” because it needed to be pointed out.

All right, the peace offering could be a thanksgiving or better put praise offering, and that would be more like glorifying God. But it could also be done as a vow or a voluntary offering, which could correlate to service to God. So my hope is these are all concepts that are very generic that I'm putting out, but hopefully in your own time and your own studies, you'll go and kind of dig a little bit more, because once you start digging into what I'm saying, you're going to find all kinds of things that correlate. So the peace offering, one of two, understood in one of two ways, either as a praise, thanksgiving, which would be for us in New Testament times glorifying God, or as a vow or voluntary offering, which could be analogous to service to God in our time.

The law of the peace offering is found in Leviticus 7, verses 11-38. It's pretty lengthy, and it kind of gives you all of the minutia of the offering, in your own time, if you will. But there are two things I want to point out that are itemized here within these verses. And one of them speaks of the fact that Aaron and his sons received as their portion of the peace offering the breast and the shoulder of the animal. And again here, there's beautiful pictorial images put forth; the breast always in Scripture being represented as the heart, the place of emotions, the place of care, empathy, concern, and the shoulders, what would be basically analogous to power or carrying a load, the burdens, if you will.

The priests in this day were a microcosm. They could not even achieve what Christ is to us. But think of it this way. The New Testament says Christ loved us and He died for us. You see, even if you go back into the Old Testament, nomenclature of El Shaddai, the breasted one, the one who yes, at in Him all sustenance, everything is found. But that's not just the nourishment, if you will. It also flows to the needs, our emotional and spiritual needs. He can provide all of that. So think of the breast that way. The priest's portion was that, the priest's and his sons'.

We are the children of God. This is also ours to partake. We receive the love of God. We may love God, but we receive the love of God. He loved us first and gave Himself for us. And the shoulder portion, which in human terms, not in animal terms, but in human terms, the shoulder is usually representative of power or burden bearing, and He is that to us as well. So even in these offerings, the symbolism is powerful. And you go back and you read these chapters where there's all this kind of very dry, boring detail, but when you start to see Christ there, you start to think, this is, it becomes a little bit more like, yeah, I can see the details that maybe in reading the New Testament one can understand, but we'll say the full details or the coloring may not be there. They're here. That's where you find them. Okay, so now we're going to approach the sin offering. And this is the other thing that if I could have one wish in life, it would be this, that I could stop hearing people say this – that they came to the Lord and now, you know, they've been set free and they sin no more.

We are sinners. We have two problems. We are born in the blueprint. You come out of the gate messed up. It's the best way I can say it. That is the condition we are all; you know, if you want to go out there and deny it and, “Nah, nah, nah, nah!” go ahead. But that's what it is.

See, this is what makes me sometimes smile like the cat that ate the canary. Everybody wants to justify, well, they want to seem superspiritual and rationalize their behavior. But if you really go back to the thought process of, we are born in this blueprinted fallen state. A baby is beautiful and innocent, but a baby is born in that state too. It doesn't just, okay, now the baby quit being cute at the age of seven and it's no longer – no, it doesn't work that way. You came out of the gate, fully contaminated in the blueprint of Adam, and the only cure for that is coming to know Christ and what Christ did and faithing in Christ. So you've got the condition of man. It might be easier to say this like this: you're born with a congenital problem. It's called Adam's nature, fallen. That's our congenital problem. Everyone born into this universe has that congenital problem. Now don't come and argue that you're okay; that's the condition of humankind, and then separate it with the fruit that is produced from that nature.

The fruit from that that is produced from that nature is what most people get hung up on, “Well, I don't drink and I don't smoke and I don't cuss and I don't do this and I don't do that, blah, blah, blah,” right? And they're hung up on that and they, you can talk about that until you're blue in the face, but that's not going to excuse you from your congenital problem.

You see what I'm saying? So two things must be dealt with and they're both dealt with in Christ, but in the laws they were separated. Now how can we be sure that what I'm saying is correct? Because I always want to make sure that we're so crystal clear on these things. So if you turn to the fourth chapter in the book of Leviticus, just follow what I'm going to read. I'm trying to figure out if I want to see how this is done in the NIV here for just, just give me a second. I want to see how what they call it before I start reading.

Four, oh, okay. Well, I actually like both of these terms, so we're starting in a good place. I'm going to read both of them to you. “The LORD spake unto Moses,” this is the King James, “the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, If a soul shall sin through ignorance,” if you're interested the Hebrew word is shegâgâh, okay. You're going to find this word repeated “through ignorance.” The NIV, very interesting, “The Lord said to Moses, Say to the Israelites, When anyone sins unintentionally and does what is forbidden in any of the Lord's commands.” So the sin offering, now there are some minute details. So this is very generic, don't, don't get all crazy on me if some of you know the minute details, because we're looking at the more generic concept right now, through and through will be unintentional through ignorance, sinning through some; you did not know, “Oh my God, I didn't know.” Now, by the way, this focus on the sin offering is not so much on acts committed, I'm going to read it to you in a second, but on people.

So I want you to think of this, the first category of people that are being addressed in the sin offering are the priests, “If a priest that is anointed do sin according to the sin of the people; then let him bring for his sin, which he hath sinned, a young bullock without blemish unto the LORD for a sin offering,” okay? So the first category is priests. In fact, let me just give this a breakdown quickly if you want to write it in your margin. The priests are being addressed in verses 3-12, the congregation in verses 13-21, rulers 22-26, and in verses 27-35 it is the common people, whatever that means.

I don't know what difference with the congregation, common people. I'm assuming it means people outside of the congregation. Although I was scratching my head and thinking, if you lived in the desert around the tabernacle, I'm not sure how you could be a common person, maybe a random traveler. I don't know. Don't ask me. I didn't, I didn't write it. I don't know. Never mind. That, that will hit you later. Okay, so you can see people are being addressed over and over again, but it starts with the priest. This is very, very, very- this point is probably the most important thing I want to talk to you about right now.

God who approved of these priests, who chose, who let them be anointed, and yet they could still sin a sin of ignorance; unintentional breaking of some law. Now, ask yourself, what could that be? Because they're not exactly laid out; they're not spelled out. It doesn't matter. I'll tell you what matters. What matters is that God started, if you look at it, He's got priests, congregation, rulers, and people.

But He addresses the priests first. This ought to tell you, we have to stop this nonsense. There is no pastor, man or woman, that is perfect. That doesn't mess up daily and perpetual. I don't care how holy and spiritual they sound, or they look like, or they talk. We're all human. Get, get that and we're good. There's nothing worse than people putting a pastor on a pedestal, which puts extra pressure for somebody to have to feel like, “Well, I've got to, I've got to walk above the line.” No, I don't. I walk the same line you do, because I'm human like you. And I probably make more mistakes and more mess up than you do and they're not, they're not intentional. They're not evil by design. But we have to stop this idea somehow; and what, what the line between ignorance, unintentional, and blatant blasphemy and intentional sinning, different story.

Well, we can come back and talk about that later. But this is unintentional: “I did not know”" We're not talking about “I knew, but I'm just going to say I didn't know when I get busted,” because God knows the difference. He starts with the priest and listen carefully to what is said here, “If the priest that is anointed do sin according to the sin of the people,” that means; just indulge me in this, that means if this person should happen to engage in ignorance like any other person.

And this is why I get very angry when people say, “Well, pastors need to be held to a higher standard.” There's a difference between my stewardship responsibility to the church, to God, the management of assets and money and responsibility versus being a human being that can and does make mistakes. And I do them all the time. Does that make me less to say that in front of you, to admit it in front of you? Absolutely not.

It makes me one hundred percent human and relatable and not somebody who's up here playing church, but saying, “This applies to me as well as anybody else.” Now, if you go through these line by line, I want you to notice something. So I addressed the priest and it gives the prescription for the priest bringing his offering, all right? Then you keep reading and it goes down to, “And if the whole congregation of Israel sins through ignorance, and the thing be hid from the eyes of the assembly, and they have done somewhat against any of the commandments of the LORD concerning things which should not be done, and are guilty; when the sin, which they have sinned against it, is known, then the congregation shall offer”- now you tell me, if the children of Israel did not have, did not yet have the law given to them, Moses is up in the mount, they want something to worship.

God had not yet uttered the words that would become absolute. He had spoken the words to Moses. We know that. But in terms of application, tell me that you can hear something once and go, “Mm, got it.” Sometimes yes, but a lot of times you need to hear things repeatedly. Now it surprises me that the people would have to hear, “Thou shall have no other gods before me. I'm a jealous God.” All the things that God said He did not want them to do. But we tend to, again, we caricature the law was given and then they went, “Okay,” and they went out and they practiced it all, right? Wrong. Think of how many people may have vaguely heard, some didn't hear, some didn't even care to listen, so it would be very easy to take the incident of the golden calf, which happens in Exodus 32, I believe, and put that in the category (even though in my mind's eye they had to know it was wrong), but that could be possibly a concept of whole congregation falling into sin.

I, I don't know how else to describe this one, but I can tell you if you keep going and you read about the ruler, it says the thing, the same thing, “When a ruler hath sinned, and done somewhat through ignorance,” so that key word or “unintentional” is repeated throughout everything that is pertaining to the sin offering, all right? So I want you to kind of just put a note there.

If there's one word to label at the head of chapter 4, it is “ignorance” or “unintentional acts,” so that way when you're flipping through it, you can see that's, that's the big header. Now there are, there are micro-definitions here that we can glean elsewhere, not here. But what's important with this is we see the classification, so God deals with priests, He deals with congregation, He deals with rulers, and then He deals with the common person. And I think the reason for putting in the rulers and common people, I was reading, it's an old-timey booklet and they have a lot of kind of quips. It's “Sermonic Saplings,” I think it's called. But it's a contribution of a whole bunch of authors.

Normally I'd give you some credit, but I think this one was actually anonymous. And how this was described, I think, was pretty adequate. It said the difference between the ruler and the common person might be as such. Think of the ruler as the big clock in the center of town that everyone can see for miles away and the common person simply is wearing their own personal watch. So whatever the ruler does, it's seen on a large scale, whether, if that's a good definition or not, I'm not sure. But to say basically, one would be much more obvious probably and made known to more people than just the common average person.

And it's also interesting; I don't know why they did this though, “the common people sin through ignorance.” So again, we may be discussing the difference between congregation and congregant, or we may be discussing congregation which includes congregants and all other people. I'm not sure. I tell you what I'm not sure, I'm not sure. In any case, if you read through this chapter, you will find one thing. There is no description of the acts committed, only people being addressed: priest, congregation, ruler, common people. Okay, so pretty important to kind of put that in perspective. Now, I also urge you to notice something else which is kind of important. If you're looking at this section, chapter 4 is 35 verses. If you compare that to the burnt offering at 17 verses, the meat offering or meal offering at 16, peace offering at 17, and the trespass at 19, this section covers the most, has the most verbiage in it.

And interestingly enough, it gives you the least detail on what these unintentional sins are. It's kind of interesting. Okay, this offering would be offered with and during all feasts, Passover, Pentecost, Trumpets, Tabernacle, Yom Kippur, which is a category all of its own, which we will talk about. And it would be offered, this sin offering would be offered in the same place as the burnt offering, which is kind of, think about it, if you think that the burnt offering is something good and wholly ascending to God, and this is designed for unintentional, “Oops, I didn't know,” being offered in the same place. That's pretty spectacular. That's one. The burnt offering, of course, was voluntary, but the sin offering was mandatory, not discussable.

The burnt offering, as I said, ascended up. And if you read about the sin offering, it is poured out and downwards. They, these are kind of some differences between the two. In the burnt, meal, and peace offering, sin is nowhere in sight, but in the sin and trespass, they are expiatory in nature, meaning it would be required minimally, if you go back to the instructions here, it says in, for example, “For the priest he shall bring the bullock unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation; and he shall lay his hand upon the bullock's head.” So expiatory in nature, usually also in a vicarious way, so by the laying on of hands, it is the transference, if you will, of guilt, whether it is known or unknown, onto the animal, so expiatory in nature.

The other thing I said previously. The burnt offering, the meal offering, and the peace offering were technically, in their technical terms, acceptance offerings. Now, I need to clarify this because somebody will twist my words as they usually do. I described Christ as being a burnt offering in that His life was laid down, wholly offered to God, but He did not need acceptance of God the Father. So when I say it's an acceptance offering, the offeror offering, essentially as it went up in smoke, it was appeared to be fully accepted by God. So I need to, I needed to make that clarification in case somebody goes back to the, “I accepted Jesus” mindset, which I've told you, it doesn't work that way.

I don't care how you- some people just want to pound their fists, “Aw, blah, blah, I accepted, I,” well that's fine. You can, you can accept in your mind, but He decided long ago whether you'd be in or out, okay? That's an easier way to put it, like way back there, before I was even conceived, God said, “I, I want that. I want that which is going to be called Melissa down the line, somewhere in the, in the future, that's Mine.” And maybe to others He just said, “Meh, whatever.” (Laugther.) Transcribe that! (Laugther.) Okay. Okay then; still trying to get serious, all right. A large part of the problem here is that when we discuss sin and trespass offerings, we get so hung up on wanting to classify the sin, put that in the trespass category, but we get so hung up on wanting to clarify, itemize, label that, that which people do, which is okay, you want to do that.

I don't do that, but if you want to do that, but probably the more important thing to, the starting place is to consider the nature. Without understanding that, I am sorry, I don't care who you're listening to as pastor, who's, or if you're self-educating yourself, you will not understand what's wrong with you and why you need Christ if all you can do is produce a checklist that says, “I, I did this, I did that,” because sin inherently, before you can commit an act, as I called it, and it's perfectly designed this way, a congenital problem.

Something that you had from birth, in your DNA, it is, that's the way you came out. If you are not willing to address that, you can't even get to the problem of your trespasses. So I am a sinner. I know I sin. The fruit of my congenital issue are the things I do. And the only remedy for that, there's only one. Now when I read; this is the tragedy. When I read, these folks came to the door and they offered their offering and vicariously by the laying on of hands, it could have technically given them, I would call maybe a sense of momentary relief, but this is why it had to be done on such a regular basis, because it's what the book of Hebrews says. How could that ever wash and cleanse you on the inside? How could it ever free you from the contamination that's called sin as nature? How? It cannot, it could never.

That's the problem is when you, when you think about this, God laid all this out to teach the people, essentially, this is going to sound weird, but this was all teaching the Old Testament saints about God before Christ was in the flesh, but teaching about Christ's work. So failure to understand from the get-go, I came out with a problem. I don't even need to do anything. The initial thing, the condition, my nature needs fixing, but I can't fix it. Only God can. Now God could have done so many different things here, but He chose to do it through animals, teaching a principle that a life must be laid down and sacrificed, that blood must be spilled. There's a whole litany of things that you could parse through this, but it's teaching us something about us. Failure to grab hold of this lesson, Christianity 101; you know, there are people sitting in churches this morning and whatever their, their pastor, minister, priest, whatever, spoke with them, but I highly doubt that this is a concept that is being reiterated on a regular basis to people who come into the church.

And as I said, that's part of the problem because failure to not know exactly who you are and what's wrong with you produces people who are confused. Just go out in the world and you'll find it. There's a lot of confusion out there. That's because people are even confused; the, the argument, I've settled this in my mind, there are people who still want to talk about, “Well, we evolved.

We, we're, you know, we're a product of evolution.” You can argue that all you want, but if you really want to sit down and have a knockdown drag out with me, I'll take you up. And I think I can prove to you that your argument, which you have been indoctrinated with, you, you may not want to call God “God,” but there was a supreme Creator, however, whatever name you want to put on Him. And He wasn't going, “Okay, let's see if we combine the A and the B and the C, we'll come out with D.

And D will be the new specimen that will evolve into D1, D2, D3.” It doesn't work like that, especially when you get into analyzing what we've, we grew up, we all probably grew up on this. You know, the chart that shows the chimp-like, ape-like, you know, we're going from this, “This is how I wake up in the morning, this is me.” There's evolution for you! “So I wake up in the morning, (laughter) midday, I've evolved; I can stand up straight.” We all grew up on that. The problem is when you start looking into DNA and you find out what's in your DNA will tell you that you and I have been fed a lot of stuff under the guise of “science.” Oh, who am I talking to; you guys already know this, you know, “Follow the science.” Yeah. How did that work out for you? So what I'm thinking here is this, you know, if, if we really take hold of concepts like this, being born in a congenital state that has a problem and the cure to that is Christ, then what I'd say to you is talking about how good or how bad or, or whatever it is you want to add to the conversation is, it's going to be nonsensical if you're not willing to deal with what you are first: fallen.

That's why Paul wrote, “All have sinned and fallen short.” Can you imagine that? A man who's so steeped and well versed in, there was only Old Testament at the time and he says, “All have sinned, all have fallen short.” Even he could figure that out. I wonder why in this day and age people cannot see that, but let's leave that for another day. All right, so in the classification for the way animals are presented in this offering, as I said, if you remember in the burnt offering, I told you that God made provisions for poor; rich to poor, so bullock all the way down to turtledove.

In the, in the meal offering, it's described by way of, I hate to say it, by cooking ware, right? Like if you, maybe if you're rich, you had an oven, but if you were a poor person, you might've just had a pot or a pan, which probably gave birth to that expression, but anyway. All right, a couple of really smart people here, following my humor. The rest of you, I'll wake you up when it's over. But even in the sin offering, we have different categories all the way down to God saying, “If you can't offer an animal, you can bring an ephah of flour,” which is kind of interesting. Of course, there would be in the sin offering, there would be no oil and no frankincense. Now think about this, the sin offering, acts committed unintentionally out of ignorance; no oil put there. No Holy Spirit guiding, right? And no frankincense, and I talked to you about frankincense, how when it's heated or burned, it releases its fragrance, but here in type, it also is a type of holiness, righteousness of God. So in neither one of these, you; it kind of goes to make sense, it's intuitive to say that in, in this sin offering, neither oil nor frankincense would be used or appeared as their types.

If you are being guided, now listen, if you're being guided by the Holy Spirit and you live and walk in the Spirit, you can still make mistakes. You can still do things unintentionally. But for the application, making the distinguishment between sin and trespass, just kind of keep that there. It'll help you to remember the differences between these offerings and what they represent. The blood being sprinkled upon the altar of incense made it clear that until this portion of the offering was completed, in essence, every other aspect of worship ceased. That's kind of interesting. Now take it from another page in the Bible. You remember when the whole camp was stopped? Actually, it happened several times, but the one specifically I'm thinking about is in that famous passage where the whole camp is stopped to find the item that was stolen. Do you remember that? (Yes ma'am.) So nothing could go forward, although that was an intentional act, but just say that everything stopped, everything ceased.

So you could try and go from that angle or you could say it the other way, which is a lot of times not so much for unintentional, but usually for things that we do premeditated; we thought about it and we did it. Usually that builds a wedge between you and God in your communion, in your fellowship, in your- you notice somebody who stops reading the Bible, who stops praying, who's less involved, it becomes easier and easier to do that, and actually the wedge gets bigger and bigger and bigger if you let it be because God is not forcing you, and we always have this propensity to go to the easy way, “It's easier this way.” So all of the sacrifice that was going on had to be completed before anything else could be resumed. The sprinkling of the blood now, I just said on the altar of incense, but they also sprinkled blood depending on who offered on the brasen altar. That restored the children of Israel. The sprinkling of blood upon the altar of incense was for the priests. So there's all these little details involved there.

And you might say, “Well, that's weird; a brasen altar for the children of Israel?” Well, think of the brasen altar, the place of, we'll call it judgment, justice, whatever, versus the altar of incense. And you might say, “Well, that's kind of unfair. So basically the priest's offering is almost like pray to be forgiven versus the average person or the congregation that's still going to judgment.

That's kind of unfair,” but that's the way God prescribed it. We also have to deal with the fat, the fat of the offering. The higher the categories of offerings, the fat was burnt upon the altar. When I say the higher the category, the highest quality of offering, the fat would be offered on the altar. The lesser categories, not much detail is given. It's almost like God was saying, “Oh, you get down to that, there's a little bit of fat, oh, who cares? I'm not even going to talk about it,” right? So I don't know if that was intentionally, if that was unintentionally or intentionally omitted, I don't know. But the fat represents, we'll call it the life force, the vitality, the spiritual health of the being or the individual, if you want to put it that way. So it would essentially signal that it was accepted by God. So even though it is not a sweet savor, that portion of the offering being offered up would be like saying, “Okay, all has been accepted,” like, “Okay, everybody's happy now, you can all go home.” The body or the carcass is cast without the camp.

Once more, the lesser offering doesn't specify what to do with it. So perhaps one area of confusion that I need to address if I haven't confused you enough today is in the higher categories of sin offering, and it's called as such, a sin offering, as I said, no act or trespass is mentioned. In the lesser categories, we read some, sometimes the offering is referred to as a trespass offering and other times a sin offering. That's why I said, I gave you the generic perspective, the whole, but they're minute details. So sometimes you're going to find when you're studying this, sin offering on the lesser degrees may be referred to as the trespass, and they sometimes get almost confused or interchangeable, so just note to self, if you read, don't get confused about that.

And I would highly suggest something. You don't need to go out and buy a Bible. Go online if you don't have- I'm sure most of you have multiple versions of Bibles at home, if you don't have The 26 Translation, go online. There are places like; one of the sites is like Bible Hub, where they've got side by side translations and versions. And it would be very, very helpful, especially for people who wrestle with reading through these passages. Go on there and find a version that you actually can read through, like a breeze, because that's going to help to give you the nuts and bolts. Don't worry about, “Well, this said, this here,” get the gestalt of it first, and then come back to your King James to read and fill in the details. I think that's going to be extremely helpful. Okay, I want to go back to one or two last things before I wrap up here, something interesting that I found when I was studying for this fourth chapter sin offering.

Take a look at this. So, for the priest, it says, “The priest shall make atonement,” I'm sorry, for the congregation, it says, “The priest shall make atonement for them.” For the ruler, it says, “The priest shall make an atonement for him in his sin.” For the common person, “The priest shall make an atonement for his sin which he hath committed.” It's almost like as you get further down the road, we have a greater elaborate- not so much, it doesn't tell us what the sin is, but we have a greater expansion.

So, it goes from just making “atonement for them,” “for him and his sin,” and then “make an atonement for his sin which he hath committed,” almost as if; I hate to say this, but almost as if the magnifying glass has been turned up exponentially on the common person, not so much on the priest, the congregation, and the ruler. I think that's pretty fascinating. Why? Because it will be the bulk of the common people who won't know anything or not too much about God, who would be the most likely to do those unintentional things, so it's kind of interesting the way God's word works that out. I think it's very interesting. So, probably the last but not least here, as I said, I'm going to bring this to a close, is if we look at all of these, and we'll, I think I want to go back and put in some more detail for you because we; sin and trespass, as I said, are probably the, the heaviest categories for us to wrap our minds around and be clear about.

But I think the big thing for me is when I consider what today's society is peddling as- we don't talk, no one talks about sin anymore. No one does, and that's pretty obvious. You know, people can be outraged and they can pound their fists, but you know, an example, for example, of what just happened here in California, some of you who like the Dodgers, you may like sports. I don't; personally, I'm just giving you my opinion. I don't care for that. But I don't care for seeing a bunch of people with painted faces pole dancing on a cross. That's blasphemy. That is to anyone who actually even has a modicum of understanding.

That's the highest disrespect that you could show to my faith, to my Lord. I'm not saying worship the cross because we don't. That's the instrument that He died on. That's all, but still making a mockery of it. So you might say, “How do you apply what you're talking about, which is so disconnected from today's society?” I'm telling you. People who have no God, who are indoctrinated and they make up, they make up as they go; it's all accepted.

It's, it's accepted whether it is intentional by design, which I think in the case I just mentioned it was, but some of them are completely unintentional, and done out of complete ignorance because there is in this universe seemingly, in the world we live in, much less God. Even when you think about it, there were, apparently there were some mass baptisms that occurred a couple of weeks ago in California based on the Jesus movement and the movie and everything. People went out in droves. When I was reading the article, the article told me- I, I love the idea that people came out in droves and it was a mass baptism. That's amazing. But I, I would have really loved to have been there maybe about a couple of minutes walking distance from where these people were baptized to ask them, “Do you know what you just did? Do you understand what you just did? Do you know why you just did it?” because the article told me that the bulk of the people could not have known; something very rote and robotic. That to me is an unintentional lack of understanding theologically of what you're doing and it's your responsibility.

If you can't figure it out, find someone who will tell you, and don't just say- I never tell you, “Take my word.” I tell you, “This is what I'm saying, now you go look it up and you go find the, the backup to what I'm saying.” The foundation is there. You do the research. I never want someone to say, “Well, you said this and,” no, go, go check out what I'm saying. And this is why these lessons, although they seem far removed, they are not. They're very applicable to today. Often sins against God, whether intentional or unintentional out in the world are just trivialized. They're marginalized. There are no consequences. For me, I think the bigger thing is if I would put a label on the fourth chapter of “unintentional,” I'd also attach to it if it was possible to understand that maybe unintentional sins may have been a lack in their day as well as ours of morality, of just being decent. But that's for the reader as you parse these verses to figure out, not for me to micromanage in your thoughts.

But what I want to say to you is there's so much in here that helps us, anybody who's struggling to figure out “What's wrong with me? Why am I not making progress with the things of God? How come I'm not advancing?” start here. Maybe the foundation of your starting point wasn't clear enough. And I'm going to say it for the last time. Your congenital problem affects your behavior and the fruits of that behavior become sin that people check the box on.

They become more worried about that than about dealing with the nature. And this is why this book helps us to understand there are two different concepts. They blend into one, but two different concepts that must be understood separately to understand how much of God's grace, how great a God we serve, that He would make provisions not just for the things that you can check a box on, but He also made provisions for things that you had no clue you were doing. That's a pretty remarkable thing. Now while most people have some premeditated bad ideas about God, “Well, God just hates everything and He's just a killjoy,” how about the God that was gracious enough to say, “If a soul sins unintentionally, unbeknownst to you, here's provision I've made for you because I know what your condition is.” That tells me I'm in really good hands with the God I serve because He recognizes there are things that I may know absolutely, I've been schooled on and there are things that I may not know.

And He takes all of that into account and says, and by the way, He didn't say it here, but the words tell me, even here, God loved the people. He cared for the people. Now we have the full book and we know the full thing and the full picture is this. God says, “I know you're not perfect, but I need you,” the believer “to understand one thing: this is flawed. You may have been created perfectly in Me, but this is flawed by nature, by the blueprint, and then everything else that happens after that, they both have to be dealt with.

And if you can understand that,” God speaking now to us, “I can help you to deal with things you know about and things you don't, because I'm the God that forgives.” And if you read carefully, very interesting, many times over here, “And it shall be forgiven them,” verse 20, “And it shall be forgiven them,” verse 26, “And it shall be forgiven him,” verse 31, “And it shall be forgiven him,” and the last one, verse 35, “And it shall be forgiven him.” So even there God was speaking and we have something and someone infinitely better in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

We too, not only shall be, but have been, and that's the most blessed state to be in. If you want to hear more, be here next week. That's my message. (Applause.) You have been watching me, Pastor Melissa Scott, teach live from Glendale, California, at Faith Center. Service starts at 11am and all are welcome. If you'd like to attend, simply call 1-800-338-3030 to request your pass.

If you'd like to listen, watch, and learn 24 hours a day, simply log on to our website at www.PastorMelissaScott.com There you will find teaching from the Old and New Testament, from the ancient languages of Heberw and Greek, word studies and perhaps, if you stay tuned, that nagging question you've had about the Bible. Something that you've wanted to know will be answered. I hope you come out and join us Sunday morning, service starts at 11AM. See you here..

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The Burnt Offering and Christ’s Acceptance of Us – The Tabernacle through the Eyes of Christ #12

You have a lot of people who erroneously make this statement, “I accepted Christ.” Hmm? Haven't you heard that? I have said many times, you didn't accept Him. You may think you've accepted Him, but He accepted you when He went to the cross and died for you, and you were not yet, but your name was spoken before the foundations of the earth. He accepted you. You have a choice to accept or reject, this is true, but He accepted you. The offering, first and foremost represents Christ's acceptance of us. ♪ ♪ We have been looking at shadows and types in the tabernacle that point to the work and ministry of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We saw how God delivered a people out of Egypt's bondage, gave them instructions while they were in Egypt when they came out and continuously along the way. But I'd ask you to take notice of something.

Big difference between the instructions given to the individuals living in Egypt where God basically said to the; for the household to apply the blood on the doorpost and the lintels and then in doing so when the avenging angel or the death angel saw the blood, it would pass over. Big difference between that, which was basically something done for the entire body of people, family or servants living under the roof versus the children of Israel being brought out, out of Egypt and learning how to have fellowship and communion with God in a place of worship.

And so, the first one is pure deliverance, just straight deliverance, there's no strings attached except for applying the blood, nothing else. But the second, leading them out, a lifestyle of devotion and worship. Now we, that's kind of like a bird's eye view of looking at the story in two parts. But think of it this way, this is kind of where the modern church has derailed.

The modern church focuses on the outreach of delivering people, right? “Gotta get people saved, gotta go out and witness to them,” right? All that stuff. But fail to do the second part, which just like God did, there's the pattern right there. People are delivered out of Egypt's bondage. They probably knew that they were slaves under harsh labor but didn't know what it all entailed. Now they get out and they're delivered and they must learn to worship, to practice God's ways. Well, that's the church's problem. We're seemingly experts at going out and trying to “seek and save the lost,” even though that's God's job.

But not so expert in educating, showing people, teaching them that second part, the relationship part. It's not enough to say, let's go and preach the word. It's teaching people how to make the application, how to have the relationship, just like the children of Israel. And that started with God laying out first and foremost what He would prescribe for the children of Israel. And then eventually this would be a, we'll call it a universal application, the Ten Commandments, for example. And then after that there's a whole litany of things that God prescribes. The book of Leviticus starts the laws of offerings, which we're going to be looking at. And this is why it's crucially important not just to look at the tabernacle and how everything in the tabernacle functions, how it relates to Christ, but also understanding the offerings, because if the offerings are properly understood, again it gives a fuller perspective. You know, I can tell you about the altar, the brazen altar, and what would be offered on the altar.

But failure to tell you about what and how and why kind of leaves you with the mechanics without the, the heart or the guts. So that's what we're going to look at. And here the laws of offering kind of come with three parts to them: the offering, the offeror, and the priest. And I will show you how many times in each case of these three things I just said, Christ is in there somewhere in some capacity or fulfilling all of them: offering, offeror, and priest. The book of Hebrews says something regarding Christ, “A body hast thou prepared me as an offering,” His offering, the ultimate offering. So in the context of that, that He might obviously offer Himself up to reconcile us to God. And this is where it gets a little weird because we know without it being specified, it's not spelled out in black and white terms, but just think about it. Only the high priest, for example, could take the blood into the holy of holies and sprinkle the blood there; only the high priest alone.

So when, twenty years ago when I wrote that, what I called it “a little diddly,” Lamb of God, it didn't have necessarily a theological wondrous background. But in that song that I penned, I said that Jesus took His blood to heaven to cleanse an angel's band. Now the principle there may be a little bit caricatured, but the idea is there. Just like the priest only, the high priest alone being able to bring the blood and sprinkle it in the holy of holies, only Christ could bring His blood. And if you think about it, the people who passed away in the Old Testament sense, when it says He went and He ministered, they were awaiting the promise but died before it. That's what the book of Hebrews talks about.

So at some point in some theological way, He had to have taken either by Himself or by the act of Him laying down His life that His blood did cleanse those who were, who were already passed and those who were still considered unclean, not yet washed in the blood. So there's kind of all these interesting things. I didn't, by the way, I didn't have that great theological mindset, but it made sense to me when I was putting the words down, which I know now, looking back, I was just the hand in the pen for God to say, “Okay, write this down”" And I, I'm saying that because I cannot take credit for something that just, it flowed out of me, not of my imagination, but obviously of God kind of directing.

And that is the same mindset in the offerings. Now we see Christ as innocent, without spot or blemish, a sweet savor to God, while He carries the sin that was laid upon Him, bearing it, dying for it. So the offerings laid out in Leviticus, you've got the burnt offering, the meat offering, the peace offering, sin, and then trespass. And there are a few oddities along the way, but when God laid this out, it's very interesting that He started with the burnt offering, and obviously ends with sin and trespass. That's how God started. When we come to God, we can't even; we can't even understand what the burnt offering is. I'll explain in a minute. We come, when we're ready to approach God, we come by way of the sin and trespass, like guilty conscience, “How do I make this right? How do I fix the problem?” Not “How do I worship?” or “How do I submit?” So we do things in the reverse. God sets it up that way, just like I showed you with the tabernacle.

You've got to come through the door, and what was obviously should have been first in the instructions for us would have been build the structure, make the door, but God started first with Ark of the Covenant where His presence would be. So it's always, if you read the Bible properly, God is usually starting with Himself or His ways or His thoughts and then gets to us.

So it's important to study it in that way as well. So before I get to discussing the burnt offering, and if you want to turn your Bibles to the book of Leviticus, the word “offering,” first of all, if we look at the etymological side of the word offering from Old English, “the presenting of something to the deity.” If you look this up in an etymological dictionary, offering, the word “offering” is right beside it. It says, “the presenting of something to the deity; a thing presented,” from the verb offre, “to present in worship,” from ob, the prefix o, b, which is “in the direction of or to,” and ferre, not “fairy,” but ferre, “to bring or to carry,” from the root b, h, e, r, “to carry or bear children.” Actually that word, b, e; b, h, e, r, “to carry or bear children,” brought about the word bern in, I believe in Scottish or in Irish.

I just, that just came to my mind as I'm looking at this, “to bring forth a child or a baby.” The idea expressed in the Hebrew when we get to a concept of “offering” is the word qorbân, a “presentation” or a “gift.” The word that we're going to encounter over and over again, qorbân, has several different tentacles to it, but attached to it is for the burnt offering, the word, the Hebrew word 'ôlâh, “to ascend.” The Septuagint renders 'ôlâh, which is being rendered “burnt offering.” The Septuagint renders it olakautoma, where we actually get our word for “holocaust: to ascend up,” all right? So these qorbân would be brought to God's dwelling place, the tabernacle either delivered to the door, at the door, not entering in, but at the door, or in the court to become appropriated or consumed by and in the service to God.

Three classes of qorbânim, and I put the -im at the end because that makes it plural. One, of dedication for the sanctuary of God, better called the “gifts of dedication.” Two, for the maintenance of the servants of God, which would include firstfruits, tithes, and firstborn. Three, for God Himself, or what is referred to as the “altar sacrifices,” where everything presented is completely consumed to or used for God, and this last class, some of these are even called “most holy offerings.” So there's kind of this class inside, and then there's going to be a breakdown of different classes inside the burnt offering. The law of burnt offering, or 'ôlâh qorbân, defined as wholly consumed to God upward, and in contrast to other offerings, was a sweet saver offered for acceptance. And I'm going to have to explain this by reading the text to show you what I'm talking about.

So we'll read the text in a minute. So in this way, the burnt offering is different than the sin offering. It was also, the burnt offering required a life, so it's different than the meat offering. And then, of course, there are offerings. For example, the burnt offering was a sweet saver offering, as I just said, like the meat or peace offerings belonging to a class offered on the brazen altar, where here, we are not talking, for the burnt offering, sin is not the theme. And there is an extreme amount of confusion. If you read commentaries, there are a lot of people confused about this. The burnt offering is not an offering for sin, and I'll explain why in a minute. The sin and trespass offerings were consumed not on the altar, but usually on the ground, right outside the door. And there there's a big difference there. And we'll detail these as we go through them one by one, because I think there's a lot of homogenized ideas that just, we just kind of mix it together and “Oh, it's offerings,” right? Some of these would be portions designated for the priest to eat, for example, but in some cases, the blood would have to be taken, and that blood would be taken by the priest and sprinkled.

Now, in the burnt offering, Jesus is the fulfillment in that He wholly and completely offered Himself for us. But as I said, not as the sin or trespass offering, that comes later, but as completely accepted and pleasing to God. So some of the characteristics of this offering: perfect, voluntary; when I say “vicarious,” be careful, it's not vicarious as in a substitution. I'll explain. Slain by the offeror, blood sprinkled, and wholly consumed, except for usually the skin that sometimes would be held back. And there are, it seems like God wasted nothing here. Now, In Leviticus, we are given the instructions, the how, but we're actually not told why. Think about that for a minute. Okay? Why sin and trespass, that makes sense, right? That's obvious, I hope. Yeah? Okay. But this offering, it doesn't give a why.

It doesn't say why. Now, if you read carefully, and I'm going to read this right now, and I'll probably reread it again because we have to go to Genesis in a minute, so because I asked you to turn to Leviticus, I'm going to read Leviticus. “And the LORD called unto Moses, and spake unto him out of the tabernacle of the congregation, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, If any man of you bring an offering unto the LORD, you shall bring your offering of cattle, even of herd, and of flock.” And I want you to notice something.

Unlike the prescribed requirement in Egypt to apply the blood, which was considered a corporate application for your family, here this particular offering becomes singular. “Let him, let him, let him offer a male without blemish: he shall offer it of his own voluntary will at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the LORD. And he shall put his hand upon the head of the burnt offering, and it shall be accepted for him.” Now, I want you to focus in on that “it shall be accepted for him.” And the rest of that sense is to make an atonement for him, but do not be confused that “atonement,” the word, the Hebrew word there, Strong's 3722 is kapporeth, but do not make the mistake of thinking that this instruction as you're reading it in English means atonement the same way as sin and trespass, and I'll explain why in a minute.

So just kind of note to self, keep that there, but the more important words is, “it shall be accepted for him.” Okay, now, why am I saying this to you? Because burnt offerings occur, the first place we find them is in Genesis 8. So after God tells Noah to build the ark and tells him that He's going to basically flood the earth. So after the waters abate, Noah emerges. And it's very interesting because it's not as though God said, “Noah, I want you to follow these instructions. Noah, I prescribe or I mandate.” Listen carefully, I'll read it to you. You don't have to turn there if you don't want to, but it says, “Noah went forth,” that would be Genesis 8:18.

I'll read it to you, “Noah went forth, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives with him: every beast, every creeping thing, every fowl, whatsoever creepeth upon the earth, and after their kinds went forth out of the ark. And Noah builded an altar unto the LORD.” I don't read anywhere where God's voice is recorded saying, “Noah build Me an altar so you can sacrifice.” It doesn't say that. So whether God spoke to him or whether this was what we would carry out in the New Testament mindset of an act of God's Spirit leading, but it says, Noah took, “Noah builded an altar unto the LORD; took of every clean beast, of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar.” Now take a look at something because I, those of you who read Hebrew that I've taught, I highlighted this in my Hebrew Bible so you can see here. So he sacrificed, and you can even see in the word sacrifice, ve-yal, “and he sacrificed,” and here we have 'ôlâh, “burnt offerings.” So it's right there. You can't miss it just in case somebody says, “Well, the English isn't translated properly.” It's there.

So here, this one is unsolicited. God didn't say, “Do this.” We don't have a record. Maybe God did, but we don't have a record of that. We only have a record of Noah coming out of the ark with his wife and his children, and offering of “every clean beast, every clean fowl, offering burnt offerings on the altar. And the LORD smelled a sweet savour; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite, any more, every thing living as I have done.” Now, what's interesting here, and I want you to think about this, the burnt offering here cannot be an offering for sin. It cannot. Why? First of all, there was no law yet, so the definition as we understand it had not yet been given. No, we saw the act, for example, of brother against brother, Cain and Abel, killing his brother. But again, there was no law yet given that said, “Thou shall not kill.” So all we have are acts of individuals, which for certain we know there had to be some type of a moral compass, because even in the act of brother killing brother, we have a reaction.

We have a conversation between the individual and God. But here, something very unique, which is God has already smote the earth with water. So if there was an idea that man was evil, that verse I just read 21 says, “I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth.” That expression has to encapsulate the mindset that God knew evil had not been eradicated. Why? Because we're going to see it in the offspring of Noah, and we're also going to see it in Noah himself, so the idea here has more to do if you listen to God's words, He says, “I will not again curse the ground any more.” There's almost a covenant concept behind the burnt offering. I'm not saying it is covenantal in its entirety, but there's this, “I will not again,” almost like an a promise or an oath from God, and then, the last part of that chapter says, “While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold, heat, summer, winter, and day and night shall not cease.” So, and then it goes on to God will then give a covenant of the rainbow.

But it cannot be a sacrifice that Noah made for sin, and I'm going to explain to you why. And the best way to show this to you is to have you turn to Genesis 22, because when you see the background of the burnt offering, it makes a lot of sense. Otherwise, how can we properly understand this offering if we just simply read the text I read to you that says, “Accepted and shall essentially be an atonement for him,” and it's automatically assumed that if this is wholly consumed to God, something wholly offered to God, that somehow because the word “atonement” appears, it has to be in balance with sin, but it is not. So, let me show you again. Genesis 22, “It came to pass after these things,” you know the story really well. God speaks to; He tempts Abraham and says unto him, basically, “Take your son, your only begotten son, son of promise, not the son of flesh,” so Isaac, “go into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon the mountains of which I will tell thee of.” So, just so you can see it with your own eyes.

If you can recognize the ayin, lamed, chet, those are your words for 'ôlâh, “burnt offerings.” So, God says, “Take your only begotten son and offer him as a burnt offering, wholly consumed up to God,” right? And you know the rest of the story. The rest of the story basically is they're going up the mount. They tell, or Abraham tells, the servants, “Wait here, we'll be back.” They go up the mount. Everything's all ready, and then, of course, when God saw what was in Abraham's heart, that he would have carried out the act of sacrificing the son of promise, Isaac, the angel basically calls to him, his hand is stayed. He turns around, there's a ram caught in the thicket, and God provided another offering in place of Isaac.

Now, again, this could not have been a sin offering. So, you have a problem if you're going to read the opening passages of Leviticus and read “accepted” and “atonement for,” and I'm going to show you why when you look at the sin offering. There you have something coupled. You may have a burnt offering coupled with a sin offering because there are, there are different dimensions of the offerings, but the burnt offering itself can only be again once more; watch what happens, as he, “Abraham lifted his eyes, looked and behold him, there was a ram caught in the thicket,” that's verse 13 of the twenty-second chapter, “Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son. He called the place Jehovah-jireh: in the mount of the LORD it shall be seen. And the angel of the LORD called unto Abraham out of heaven the second time,” and again, if you can't see it, there's a kind of covenant concept going on here, “and said, By myself I have sworn, saith the LORD, for because thou hast done this thing, and not withheld thy son, thine only son: that in blessing I will bless thee, in multiplying I will multiply thy seed.” There's, there's a covenant given here that will be fully understood as you go through the record to show that the seed of Isaac would produce the seed of Jacob that would lead to Christ.

So you can never think of the burnt offering, regardless of how the wording is in the opening chapters of Leviticus, just by using these two examples alone, that somehow this is a sin offering. But if you're still not convinced, I want you to look at something else. If you turn to Exodus 10; at least we're going in the right direction. This is Moses speaking to Pharaoh. “And Moses said,” Exodus 10 verse 25, “And Moses said, Thou must give us also sacrifices and burnt offerings, that we may sacrifice unto the LORD our God.

Our cattle also shall go with us; there shall not be a hoof left behind; for thereof must we take to serve the LORD our God.” So you can see right there, it's not that we must go and sacrifice these animals as burnt offerings as an offering for sin. Again, the law had not yet been given; an understanding of God's intent or prescription had not yet been understood. And even after the giving of such, I don't think it was understood. You have one more incident, again, there's no concept of something being offered for sin in this passage. Simply Moses is petitioning Pharaoh. Then you have in Exodus 18, you have Jethro, Moses' father-in-law. Take a look, “Jethro, Moses' father in law, took a burnt offering and sacrifices for God: and Aaron came, and all the elders of Israel, to eat bread with Moses' father in law before God.” If you read this whole section, there is no mention here somebody sinned or something happened. So this was the way things worked. And then, of course, as I said, you can see there is a pattern.

So, I think I've shown you enough here. So let, let's go back to Leviticus for a second, Now the intriguing part, as I said, is this offering becomes personal. The offeror offers his offering to the priest, and the priest basically, the involvement of the priest for this particular offering except for one category of it. If you brought of the herd a bullock, of lamb, or goat, the offeror would actually have to slay the animal, and the priest would take the blood. The only exception is the turtledove. That was basically done by the priest probably because it was so small, and to spare the blood, all right. But if you keep reading this, there were appointed times for the burnt offering what would be made every day, morning and evening: every day. That's a lot of burnt offerings. An additional burnt offering was to be offered each Sabbath day, the beginning of each month, at the celebration of Passover on the fourteenth day of the first month with the new grain offering and the feast of weeks, at the feast of trumpets, on a sacred day in the seventh month, and for the celebration of the new moon.

Many times, here's kind of this attaches to what I was saying, the burnt offering many times was done in conjunction with either sin or trespass offering. The offerings offered in Leviticus 5; so let's look there, 5, so for example, this particular section, “He shall bring his trespass offering unto the LORD for his sin,” that's verse 6, “which he hath sinned, a female from the flock, a lamb or a kid of the goats for a sin offering; and the priest shall make an atonement for him concerning his sin.” So God's really specific when it says “atonement,” specifically for sin, but there would be a burnt offering offered alongside this particular offering. It's not abundantly clear in the English, but reading in the Hebrew makes it crystal clear. Then you've got an accompaniment also with the sin offering, the freewill offering, the sheaf offering, and the new grain offering. They all could be combined, so you could offer an offering of one and offer a burnt offering in conjunction with that.

The burnt offering was also required for certain times, such as, for example, the cleansing of a leper, the healing of a leper, if a man had an issue of discharge from his body, or if a woman had just had a child, the burnt offering would be offered. Also, the Nazarite, who unintentionally made himself ceremonially unclean by coming in contact or touching a deceased person, or when a member of the camp, this is the kicker, when a member of the camp would unknowingly break one of the prescribed laws of God, they'd have to offer a burnt offering for the entire camp. So there's exceptions, there's all this minute detail, but it cannot be, again, I'm going to repeat this, even though I've just given you details that seem rather interesting.

Some of them are for people who were unclean, but they're done in conjunction with other offerings, they're not burnt offerings alone, and that must be understood. Burnt offering would also be required for the consecration of Aaron, the high priest, as well as those in the Levitical line. Remember, we separated out all the different priests and all their different functions.

The Levites would have to have a burnt offering for consecration as well. All right, three types of offerings in this class; from the herd of bulls, the offering from the flock, an offering of birds. Now, this is what I love. God provided a way for every person amongst the children of Israel to participate. Now, if that doesn't tell you God's insight to see that we don't all have the same blessings, we don't all have the same allotment in life, so think about how valuable, for example, the bullock would have been, because we're not talking about an old animal or a maim or lame animal. We're talking about what would have been considered the best, the youngest without blemish, without flaw, the strongest, the one that you'd probably want to keep for yourself, right? It goes like that.

So, what I love about this is even in the class category, for the bullock, for example, symbolic of strength, laboring endurance, or if you were going to go from the flock, the lamb, and it's innocence and its willingness to submit, kind of, again, all of these can be tied into the gospel, animals that are analogous to each Gospel record, or we could put them as symbolism. So, the ox, or the bullock, rather, as a symbol of strength; the lamb, the willingness to submit, if you will; the turtledove, harmless paradox of the lowliness of Christ, and another paradox, which is the lowliness of a turtledove that's able to be humble and low, but also take to the sky. So, there's all these different pictures in there, but within these offerings, again, you've got these specific class categories, and I always think to myself, interesting, right? You would, if you had it, you would have to offer up your best bullock, for example, right? But a turtledove, let's just say you had no possessions, you could easily, I'm sure not so easily, but you could, you could get a turtledove.

You could find one. There's probably an abundance of them. So, God's saying, “There's no excuse for anyone to not be able to participate in what I've prescribed,” It tells you right here, God is saying, “I don't care what walk of life you come from. I don't care what little or what much you have. Everybody who comes into My realm will learn to worship My way, which means you don't come into My presence empty-handed.” God made provisions for every walk of life, and expected by the way, with no exception.

So, when people say, “But I don't have,” or “I can't participate,” or “You don't know,” yeah, I do actually, and I realize that it's, that's like saying, “You know, I'm going to make, I'm going to give you an excuse that I can't,” and the same people who make those excuses are the very people who will argue down to the last moment of their breath about how giving in any way, shape, or form is legalism and the law. So again, I'll just say this for those who are stout-hearted, if you call yourself a Christian, that means you are a follower of Christ, a little Christ, likened to Him, He lives in you or His Spirit lives in you, and He was the greatest Giver of all times, and He's not asking you to go and die on a cross. But if you think about it, Paul said it; we are to present ourselves a living sacrifice.

And the key words in that verse in Romans 12 are “wholly acceptable,” which ties right back into what this, actually, this offering means. Bear with me, because there's a lot of little minutia here to go through. So, let me recap before I go forward. If you remember, in Genesis 8, there were no instructions, not that we know of, not that we have. Noah builds an altar, he offers burnt offerings, there is no mention of sin, and God, for all intense purposes, has dealt with the sin by flooding the earth. That's not really true, but it was caused by the evil that was in man's heart. Genesis 22 is a completely different concept, “Take your son,” the key words in that passage, God was wanting to see, “tempt,” what was in Abraham's heart. Would he carry through? And both of those references have some, as I said, a form of some type of promise or covenant, “I will not again flood the earth.

Here, a ram is presented for you to offer in place of your son, now that I know that you will obey me. And in his seed of this child that you were supposed to offer up, but I provided another sacrifice, in his seed the whole earth will be blessed.” So, you can never look at this and think, offering for sin. Now, remember what I said to you, the key words in the verse 4, “it shall be accepted for him.” And when you're reading that, don't think “it shall be accepted for him to make an atonement for him,” and think immediately “sin.” Think about it this way, and I'll just say it, and then I can keep going.

Think of the burnt offering as God's offering of acceptance, something that was pleasing to God, something that was laid down completely, and in the eyes of the offeror, knowing it would be completely consumed for God. Now, you tell me when you get to the sin offering, and you read about the sin offering or the trespass offering, how they cannot be the same thing. So, it's difficult, but let me say it this way. You have a lot of people who erroneously make this statement, “I accepted Christ.” Hmm? Haven't you heard that? I have said many times, you didn't accept Him. You may think you've accepted Him, but He accepted you when He went to the cross and died for you, and you were not yet, but your name was spoken before the foundations of the earth. He accepted you. You have a choice to accept or reject, this is true, but He accepted you. The offering first and foremost represents Christ's acceptance of us, and you've got to read it that way and see it that way.

Then there's some interesting details in here, but the main thing I want to, I want to show you is this. In the case of the burnt offering that is attached to the sin offering, it's always in conjunction with forgiveness. So, if you went back and you read, let's see if we can find an example for you. I think I read one of them. Yes, “Make an atonement concerning his sin,” and then if you read on it'll say somewhere over and over again, “and it shall be forgiven,” “And the priest shall make an atonement for him as touching his sin, that he hath sinned in one of these, and it shall be forgiven him.” So, that's Leviticus 5 and verse 13, and that is within the sin offering, sin and trespass offering. So, what I'm trying to say to you is that sometimes you'd have two offerings done, because remember the burnt offering is morning and evening, and then in conjunction with these other offerings. It doesn't necessarily spell out, but you'd have the offering that was prescribed for sin and trespass. You'd also have the additional burnt offering, or it could be offered alongside in conjunction with.

That's probably a better way to say it. Unlike the offering of meat or meal offering, as some refer to it, frankincense or grain or corn were offered here; for the burnt offering, a life. And again, if you start reading carefully, it says that the offeror shall bring it of his own will voluntarily. So again, remember I said offeror, offering, and priest. So here, when it's speaking of this concept willfully or voluntarily, unlike sin and trespass, where you had to, it was required of you. Here, this is a voluntary offering, wholly consumed, and then of course we can see these concepts appropriated in the New Testament in a diversity of ways, and I'll explain, because sometimes we just, we, we get caught up in one vision, which is “You are to present yourself a living sacrifice; that must be the burnt offering,” but how about, think of it from the inside.

You remember in Matthew 22, Jesus is asked, “Which is the greatest of the commandments?” And He says, “The first one is summed up like this, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, thy soul, and all thy mind. This is the first and basically greatest commandment. The other one is to love your neighbor.” If you think about it, heart, soul, mind, the complete entity of the individual is consumed with God, and there you can make the connection between what is wholly offered to God must have the insides filled with the concepts of God, in order to present oneself. This is why I'd say this, this is why there are so many, I'm nobody's judge, okay, but this is why there are so many impotent Christians. I just want you to stop and think about this. It's like having the best sports car in the world and having no gas in it. You're going to go nowhere, unless you carve out the bottom and do Fred Flintstone, okay? You're going nowhere. Same thing, unless you are filled, that can let the person present themselves and serve God completely.

That doesn't mean that your mind, by the way, is 24 hours a day always consumed with God. It just means; I've used the example of a teabag, being steeped in the word of God. Well, that infusion that takes place, if a person is infused with that word they are essentially wholly committed, consumed to God by His word. So you get, you get the imagery of burnt offering in different ways.

Most people think it's just, I present myself, but you cannot present yourself, as Paul said in Romans 12, without being inside, the inside has to be representative of what the outside is doing. And I think that's one of the bigger disconnects that I have seen within the body of Christ. This is why I start off by saying, most churches do the work of delivering out of Egypt, but they do not want to do the work of teaching the worship practices, of learning God's ways, of understanding things, that a person may actually be filled with the knowledge and therefore able to be, in any capacity, not just as a pastor, in any capacity as a servant of God and a child of God, a burnt offering wholly consumed for God. As I said, that doesn't mean 24/7.

I'm, I am not, if you think I'm the person that sits around and 24 hours a day, all I do is talk about God, you're a lunatic. And anybody who says that they do, I don't know, I can't speak, but I'm going to say I highly doubt it, okay? You're thinking about food at least once or twice a day, and other bodily functions. Don't tell, don't, save that for somebody who's going to believe that skubala, I don't, okay? But what's interesting is that even Christ Himself, you don't read that He had multiple missions. “I must be,” even as a child, “I must be about my Father's business,” and later on He says, “I came to do the will of the Father,” wholly consumed inside with a mission that translated to the outside. As I said, this is a disconnect. Do you remember I taught on a word one time, I probably drove a lot of people crazy. Do you remember I taught on this word, this Greek word homologia, where I said it's basically things that meet, your, call it belief or faith, at the juncture of behavior, where they coincide or where the juncture is.

This is representative of that, and most people, if they even get this concept, will go into, and I'm sorry, but I've met these too, where it's like so well versed in what this says that I can “Polly-wanna-cracker,” tell you, but it's just words, it's, there's nothing in here. I've met those people. God bless them for thinking that's the way, but that's not the way. And the most natural thing that I can say is, the more exposed you are to this word, the more steeped you are, the easier the concept is to understand what it means to be a burnt offering to God, and that you're not burning yourself up or laying on your stove.

You are━I don't know, I just have to say that in case, you never know in this day and age, if somebody identifies today as a piece of pizza that needs to be reheated or something. I don't know. Anyway, all right, I want you to take a look at something else, instructions given for the burnt offering, very interesting, and it is for the offerings that would come of cattle, of herd, but not, not for the bird offerings, okay.

Verse 8 says, “And the priests, Aaron's sons, shall lay the parts, the head, and the fat, in order upon the wood that is on the fire which is upon the altar: but his inward,” innards “and his legs shall he wash in water: and the priest shall burn all on the altar,” to be burnt, “a burnt sacrifice, an offering made by fire of sweet savour unto the LORD.” And this is what's interesting, the catalog here head, fat, inwards, legs. Yes, it's describing the procedure, but the takeaway, if you want to make an appropriation to this, you are, you and I are not animals, but head, where the thoughts are processed; fat is analogous to the seat of emotions or feelings, our thoughts; the inward parts, again, same thing; legs analogous to our walk.

So you could talk about that and say, for example, the inward, the innards and his legs shall he wash in water. That concept we can take right into the New Testament and say, “We must be washed with the water of God's word.” And that process, I just described it, lets you present yourself. Otherwise, how can you? You wouldn't know that. It's not something that you go, “I think I want to present myself today.” It's from it with inside, something that God fills you with.

So I love the fact that even in the offering instructions, there are concepts there. He, “and he wash in water,” again, representative for us as an appropriation to the Holy Spirit that washes us, or what is said in John, “You are made clean through the word,” and the Word that spoke that word, the Logos, Christ speaking, also said, quoting another Old Testament passage, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” So if you think about it, it is interesting that the washing part comes in there. Why not wash the head or the fat, but it says, “But his innards and the legs he shall wash in water.” Those might be considered to the one doing the washing, or to God, unclean until they are washed by water. In our case, we are unclean until we're washed in the word, or washed in His blood.

You can make all these connections, they're there. The only exception where this is not applied, as I said, is the turtledove offering, and I think that's because of its size, and because, again, you wouldn't slaughter it in the same way. There'd be too much, not enough blood to offer if you did it the way the rest of the animals were offered. I know it's kind of gruesome, but we're studying this because it's in the book, so that's what we do. There's every part of this book, the things we like, and the things we may not be so fond of. We study them all. Now, if you read all the way through, He finishes giving all the instructions and the instructions just end with the same thing it started with. In verse 17, “The priest shall burn it upon the altar, upon the wood that is upon the fire: it is a burnt sacrifice, an offering made by fire, a sweet savour unto the LORD.” So don't think that this first offering, even though it, it's self-evident, for anyone who's been here any time listening to me, I don't think that you could assume that this is attached to a sin offering.

But I want to make it clear it is not. Just because of that verse 4 in there, people will do this thing and say, “Well, there it is.” Better to focus on the word “accepted for him” because that's the essence of the burnt offering. And that's why God starts there. It's not as though God says, “Okay, you've sinned and you're a sinner. Now come and offer a burnt offering.” There was something that the sinner needed to do first, which is basically vicariously lay his hands on the animal that was going to be slain for that person's sin and trespass. And then they could go and offer the burnt offering. There is a pattern to all this, and there is a pattern to the way people come into the church and worship.

When those instructions, so don't think that this is disconnected from our worship practices today. When those instructions are followed and understood, what it represents is two things, maybe three. First and foremost, that as we come into the church, as we start learning, we're not even able to understand the concept of what is acceptable to God because we don't even know Him. So there's no way that you could come in and just say, “Yeah, I'm here to offer my burnt offering.” You don't even know about God. You don't even know about yourself. You don't even know how corrupt and perverted and fallen you are, and I am, so I don't want anybody to think that I'm talking down to you I'm included in the same boat as you. You come into the church, you start learning. And how many times have you heard me say this is the utterance of most people when they are new Christians or first in the church, “I'm basically a good person.” How many have heard that? “I'm basically a good person.” No, you're not.

None of us are. That's not self-abasement. That's exactly what the Bible says, so it's impossible for the person that just comes in to recognize that they are not a good person. Note, the self and the flesh says, “But I'm good. I haven't done this and I haven't done that,” and they've got their checkbox, right? So you can't get to the burnt offering, and the burnt offering isn't about you accepting God. It's about God accepting you. And in an appropriation, if you want to put it into a New Testament appropriation, there's multiple levels for this. So let's sum this up so we can close out the message. The first and probably the most important one is the burnt offering in itself being offered must be Christ, okay, as the Offering.

Why? Because He laid down His life voluntarily, He said, “I lay down my life; no man, take it that I lay it down on Myself, and I'll take it up again,” basically. That's number one. So He has to be the Offering. He's also in the offeror. He was not a sinner, but all sin was laid upon Him. So in that way, we identify with Him. There's the process of identification. Now when we come, we are accepted into the Beloved for one thing and one thing alone. That's our faith in Christ. The minute we come to a saving faith, He indeed died for my sins. I can look to Him. He is the Author and Finisher of faith and all the things written of Him in this book being the Architect of faith. I can stand before Him knowing I have been accepted in the Beloved.

And the idea of the verbiage that people use, “Ah, I accepted Christ in 1979,” okay, and I'm assuming that He went to the cross then too in '79 when you decided to accept Him. Or let's put it a better way. There is a church that decided, I'm sure you know about this, the Mormon church had many rules of who they would let in and not let in. And I think in 1976 or 1978, a revelation occurred that black people should be allowed into the Mormon church because before that they said God didn't allow that. Just think about that. These are the ideas that get things messed up. Where people start making interpretations and they're erroneous. God says, “These are all my children. I made them all.” Now, free will allows you the right to say, “No.” Free will allows you the right to be malicious to another person and basically prosecute for your faith or be angry or reject.

That's free will. But the burnt offering tells me something and demonstrates something right down to my understanding of what happens when I'm open, I have received of God. I then can present myself as a living sacrifice accepted, not just acceptable, accepted by Him. So in that case, in that description, I too become part of that in, in my commitment. Now you can say, “So how is it all of these things? How can the burnt offering represent all of this?” It does. In fact, you're going to see that along the way as we look at all these offerings, they carry the weight of a diversity of meanings. And I know when I say this, people are going to be saying, “Well, but the burnt offering should just be considered like a love gift, right? It's, it's free,” and that could be interpreted that way. But define what “lov”" is first before you put that “love gift” on there, because I've been around ministry now too long to hear people use the term “love gift” and it's got strings attached to it.

No thank you. So this offering basically is, I take, I take the item, whatever it is, it's no holding back. Now I'm going to ask you a question because now this, it has to be applied on the personal level. There's no crime. There's no sin in what I'm about to say, but it requires honesty with the self. How many can say━don't answer me. It's something just to think about. How many can say, “This is me. I have placed myself before God holy and completely”" And I can tell you something, human nature says, “There's a part of me I have to keep. There's a side of me.” There are very few people who are willing to just put it all there and leave it there.

Why? Because there's this fear of, “What if, and what will I become?” And I'm telling you something. You find out something about God real quick. Just like Abraham offering up or willingly, willfully going along in obedience to offer up Isaac. You find out real quick that God is not wanting to put you in some box and manufacture Christians. He's looking for people to trust Him. And when that trust is free-flowing, something amazing happens. Now I don't think that in my years, in my experience, I have not heard God speak audibly to me and say, “And you'll be blessed,” and whatever words that people profess that they hear and that they may hear things. I'm not going to say how they hear them.

They may hear them. But what I am telling you is that for the person who's really trying to understand the burnt offering, the burnt offering has to be attached to two concepts that I read and shared with you out of Genesis 8 and Genesis 22. Out of Genesis 8, I think there had to be on the part of Noah, although it doesn't say so, there had to be an element of gratitude that he survived, that he was spared, that he was delivered.

So you could say, “Well, isn't that a type of sin?” No, the flood did that. The flood took care of that. And the fact that God accepted him as the patriarch, if you want to call it, to start over. And you've got the same thing going on with Abraham in a different way. But if you think about it, God said the instructions were, “Take your son, the son that brought you so much joy, the son that I promised you, the thing that I said you would have that you and your wife laughed at, that you now have. Take that and offer it up completely.” Now think about it. How many of us have come to our own Mount Moriah moment? Just think about that. Don't answer it, because the burnt offering, the understanding of the burnt offering is nestled between those two passages. And you could say to me, “Well, but the rest of it is the law. The rest of it is this.” Yeah, and as we go and delve into the meat, the peace, the sin and trespass offering, all of their functions will become clearer. Once you have the gestalt, you don't have to have the micro-details.

Once you have the gestalt of the offerings, you begin to see God's pattern over and over and over again, not in these oddities of slaying animals, but of Him basically telling us of some dimension, some work, some part of the ministry of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It's embedded here in all of these offerings in some capacity, and I hope if you will keep listening, I will show you. But for right now, that's my message. You have been watching me, Pastor Melissa Scott, live from Glendale, California at Faith Center.

If you would like to attend the service with us, Sunday morning at 11am, simply call 1-800-338-3030 to receive your pass. If you'd like more teaching and you would like to go straight to our website, the address is www.PastorMelissaScott.com.

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Moses Is a Type of Christ; Honor Your Father and Mother

What is your idea of honoring the person who gave you life? Because that answer will also help you understand your relationship to God. ♪ ♪ What I want to do is talk a little bit about the story, if you remember, of how the children of Israel came to be in Egypt's bondage. I don't want to get into great detail about this, but if you remember before they were enslaved in Egypt, the children of Israel were prospering and multiplying, so much so that when a Pharaoh who rose up who knew not Joseph, that means Joseph had already died and some time had passed. That Pharaoh was afraid that the Hebrews would become so mighty a people that he stripped them of their freedom and enslaved them. That's kind of a real simple and quick way to breeze through multiple chapters of Exodus. The Bible says the more they were afflicted, the more they proliferated and reproduced and had, they were prosperous even in their captivity. Although they prayed and they prayed for deliverance, in order to stop the population from growing as fast as it was, Pharaoh ordered the midwives to kill every Hebrew male-born child.

The midwives━there's all these little sub, sub-stories. One day I want to go into doing messages and sub-stories within the messages because there's so much there. The midwives feared God and not Pharaoh, so they refused. And I love that. You know, listen, sometimes being disobedient is a good thing. And there's a, there's a perfect case in point of being disobedient. They completely disobeyed Pharaoh and they, they said, “We're, we fear God, not you.” So they kept basically letting the babies live, but Pharaoh gave the order to kill all Hebrew male babies at birth. In the midst of all this, probably one of the most familiar stories, probably even people who are not Christians or Jews or faithing people know the story of the child Moses who is born to mother and father, mother Jehoshabed, father Amram. And he is born during this period where the edict is given to kill all of the firstborn, first it was firstborn and it was all the male children.

And so it's kind of interesting. A set of two people, the foundation of godly parents who would go to whatever lengths they could to protect their child from the evils of the world and the edict of death. Jehoshabed, it's kind of interesting, that's the mother of Moses, she saw that her baby was beautiful. It even interests me that the Bible repeats that three times in different places, that she saw that the baby was beautiful. That prompted me to kind of read between the lines and I think the deeper meaning is not simply that she saw that her child was beautiful as in an attractive child before God, but rather wrapped up in the thought is that the child was given some unique role in life.

But how could a mother know that? All right? I think every mother, every father, every parent looks at their young baby and thinks, “The world is before you; you might go seize it. What great things you might achieve,” but who could know? We don't know. The other thing that I think is it's tragic in today's society, we don't hear of people wanting to dedicate their children to the Lord anymore, it's very few and far in between that say, “I wish to dedicate.” Meaning, even if I do it, what would, what would happen to the child? There's a lot less of that. In fact, in the early years, formative years of this country, almost every child born in this country was dedicated to the Lord. That's kind of an interesting thing if you think about how things have changed. Now the Bible says if you train up a child, specifically in the faith, in the ways of God that he or she will not soon depart, even when they're older.

And I think we tend to make that into a caricature sometimes. I think what it is, is what we are instilled with in those formative years. Whatever that is, it could be the food we eat, the language around us, praying, God, anything that a child is exposed to. It doesn't mean that they are going to adhere to it through the course of their life. But as you get older, you'll find yourself usually reverting back to things that you may not even be aware were implemented and put into your brain in those formative years. So nothing could be more important than raising a child with good, godly values. And I believe that the family of Moses, if you take a look, I'm not going to say that they knew everything because there wasn't a revelation as we know it, but they had some form of worship, of faith. And I say that because if you take a look at Jehoshabed specifically, she had a plan. And think of this, the plan was so risky to hide, to try and hide a child for three months.

Now I know some of you here have babies and have had babies. So you know how difficult it is to keep a baby silent. So if you can imagine that, and you know we tend to caricature this a bit, but if you can imagine each time that baby would cry, the reaction that she must have had to kind of hush it and shush it down and get it to shut up, right, “You're going to draw attention and probably get us all killed,” right? So you've got that going on for three months until obviously she couldn't hide the baby anymore. And of course, you know the story. They built that little ark and they pitched it inside and they put the child inside the basket. Think of this, because we seldom pick this story apart, but all the things that had to align for Jehoshabed's plan to actually work. I want you to think about this right down to the most minute thing. You know, we tend to go back to Cecil B. DeMille's depiction of this event and think that here Miriam was going around the bulrushes and moving the basket along.

Do you realize that the impossibility of that, especially in the Nile? If you don't know what's in the Nile, then stay ignorant, but I highly doubt that a person would be smart enough to step into the Nile and meander around. So the, just the gentle stream had to be moving in the right direction at the right time, at the right flow as the daughter of Pharaoh, the princess, was bathing. All of these things had to align. There had to be some, we'll call it some real markers to say God's hand was in this. And then of course, you know Miriam is right there and points out that there's the child there; brings the child in and points out that the mother might be able to be found. I don't know how that's so miraculous. Find a mother that can nurse this baby, and it just so happens to be Jehoshabed, right? A great coincidence that happened here. Now there are people that would say that Jehoshabed's actions, how could a responsible, good, godly woman put her child at risk? But she really had nothing to lose if you think about it if, if the edict was given for children to be murdered, to be slaughtered, she had nothing to lose but by trusting God.

And I don't want anyone to think that trusting God is just simply wishful thinking in prayer because God really had to be in this. Think of everything that could have gone wrong including, by the way, that basket meandering off to the other side as the Nile's quite wide. It could have drifted off to the other side. There's so many different things that could have happened. I will say this; Jehoshabed had to be very brave if you consider the time that she lived in. I've said this before; do not get mad at me. The time, this particular time that we're looking at, women had one role and that was to produce children and to raise them. To step out of that box could be death for any reason. You could be stoned to death and killed for any reason. So she was a brave woman if you consider the time she lived in, her plan, which had to have been ordained by God. Consider that Moses may not have known the identity of his parents until a little later. So remember I quoted, I paraphrased the Scripture of Proverbs 22, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is older he should not soon depart.” Very interesting that Moses kind of made a full circle back to concepts that he didn't spend the formative years learning, if that makes any sense to you, because we know he was given up when he was three months old and then nursed by his mother for as long as she could.

So in that space of the three months plus the nursing period is all that the mother could have given to the child in terms of, even though the child's just a baby speaking to the child. So it's interesting that we have a full circle on Moses' behalf coming back to the faith that he truly couldn't have possibly known deeply, but was at least exposed to by Jehoshabed. So you've got to think about that. And the other thing that I would say is important is if you think about their whole family. Now Moses' brother Aaron, who would become the first high priest of Israel and his sister Miriam, who was a prophetess and a musician, they all are under this umbrella, if you will. So I think it's kind of fascinating. Moses' story, if you will, at best, is interesting on so many levels. My interest today is actually not Mother's Day. I'm pointing out Jehoshabed because it just fits neatly here. But my message is actually more about Moses being a type of Christ. And I'm going to show you in a few minutes here how much so by Scripture, how much so when you can see the parallels in Scripture.

But what I do want to point out is that Moses, we know, was not God. He was just a human, not; unlike Christ who was man and God, Moses, just a man, all human, one hundred percent human, and interesting. And I will keep repeating this until enough people hear this. Do not, you know, we, we lift people out of the Bible because God highlighted them. But please never forget something, especially for those people who grapple with forgiveness, their issues of past or even present that they seem to fumble on perpetually. God chose Moses. He didn't choose Moses because he was perfect. He didn't choose Moses because Moses wasn't a sinner. Moses killed a man. Moses was trained; Moses was exposed out in the world. If you think about it, Egypt is analogous to the world in all the ways of the world being surrounded by the opulence of Egypt. That whole surrounding, if you will, was, we'll call it the foundation that this person grew up in. So never say that God can't take a person from where they were found and make them something else. Remember my message? “I'll make you fishers of men.

I'll make you something you're not.” That's what God does. This is my whole issue with the people who are fundamentalists or perfectionists who keep going down the same rabbit hole of, “You must be perfect and you must be”━good luck preaching that in this day and age because you've got, it seems every person is either suffering from some form of mental illness or a complete denial of God, which makes for a lot of societal issues we're now having to reap from. So what I'm saying to you is all of this comes back to a very important thing. I'm focused on Moses, by the way. Now I've moved a little bit away from the moms, and that is understanding God's ways. And clearly, if we take a look and we were to put Moses and Christ side by side, they are not the same.

But if you start analyzing, because this whole series in the tabernacle have been shadows and types, we're going to go through some of the Scriptures and I've prepared a good amount of them if you'll come here. I've prepared a good amount of them. If you find, if you're reading this and you see typos, don't shoot the typist, all right? I never said I was a good typist. So we may have you search out, some of these have been condensed because of long lengthy passages that I didn't want to have to write out, but Moses on this side, Christ over here.

And so I put down, for example, here Psalm 105:26, Moses is called “his servant”; Christ in the New Testament is called “my servant.” Psalm 106, Moses is called “his chosen”; God speaking about His Son says “I have chosen” in Isaiah 42. So you can kind of see I've put these. He's referred to, Moses is referred to as “priest” and where there is no personal or pronoun before it, it's simply a reference to show you. So you'll find the scriptural references that I put up here in Deuteronomy 33:4, and 5, “king”" Acts 17. So again, the columns Moses and Christ; if you take a look, Exodus 3:3, “shepherd,” John 10, we know Jesus is referred to many times as “the shepherd,” “the good shepherd,” even “the great shepherd.” “Mediator” in Exodus 33, “one mediator” in 1 Timothy.

“Intercessor,” both of them, you can see the scriptural references. In Acts 7, Moses is called “deliverer” and “ruler,” in Romans we have Christ being referred to as “deliverer” as well as 1 Thessalonians 1:10. And again, “ruler” here, Moses, the same passage, and Christ referred to in Micah. It's kind of interesting, this is what I told you, you cannot, if you start doing these type of studies, you cannot separate Old and New Testament. You cannot. There's no way. You can see how tied together they are and the more you study this, this is what's mind boggling to me. The more you study these, the more you realize that God not only had a plan, but a lot of these are shadow and type or mirror of each other. Only you can see Moses exemplified this as all human. Christ comes as the Son of God, condescends, and takes up a lot of these roles or passages.

It's very clear and as we get into them, you'll see more and more. So here we have the reference, the male children to be cast into the river, Exodus 1:22; the children of Bethlehem to be slain, Matthew 2:13-16. You start seeing the similarities and you start recognizing that there's no error even in the shadows and types pointing to Christ. Hebrews 11 speaking of Moses. So the top one will be Moses, the bottom one will be Christ; “by faith he forsook Egypt,” Hebrews 11, “Out of Egypt I have called my son,” Matthew 2.15. “He endured as seeing him who is invisible,” Hebrews 11:27, “He that has sent me is with me,” or in essence “you will not see the Father; if you came to see the Father, you're going to see Me,” you've got the same concepts. “He supposed his brethren would have understood, but they understood not,” Acts 7:25 speaking of Moses, “his own received him not,” John 1. The rest of these Scriptures they keep just adding on to this, “Who made thee a judge and ruler over us?” That is in reference to Moses, straight out of the Old Testament and then here in the reference to Christ, “Who, who made me a judge or divider over you,” Luke 12.

“This Moses whom they refused, the same did God send to be a ruler and deliverer,” Acts 7:35, “God hath made the same Jesus whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ.” And the Scripture references are right there beside each one of these. “He sat down by a well,” Exodus 2:15, “Jesus therefore sat thus on a well.” I condense these so you see the dot, dot, dot. I didn't want to write it all out. It's a lot to write out. “He looked on their burdens, make them rest from their burdens,” Exodus 2:11; “Come unto me, I will give you rest,” Matthew 11. “Let my people go,” Exodus 9, the passage out of Isaiah 61, this is, Jesus quotes this in, or at least part of it in Luke, “to proclaim liberty to the captives.” “All shall bow down themselves unto me,” Exodus 11, reference to Moses/voice of God speaking; “And at that time, at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow,” reference to Christ out of Philippians 2.

“How long shall this man be a snare unto us?” Exodus 10, the people that wanted to stone Moses; “a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense,”1 Peter 2:8, reference to Christ. “Certainly I will be with thee,” Exodus 3:12; “he that hath sent me is with me,” John 8:29. Do you see the parallels? Pretty crystal clear and the list is very long. I only chose the ones that I chose here, but this is what I'm saying to you. As you start analyzing these, and there are some that are much closer than others, you realize that God was not saying, “I'm just going to keep reinventing and trying something new.” No, this was the plan all along, except that God at some point, seeing a stiff-necked and disobedient people, recognizes; Genesis 3 tells you all you need to know. That is really where we see God's plan spelt out. Most people think, “Well, there was the Old and then there was the New.” God had it all mixed together all at once, so sorry to burst some of the bubbles of people out there who say, “Aw, I can only read one Testament.” Okay, well then you should only be wearing one shoe.

“This is the finger of God,” Exodus 8:19; “If I with the finger of God,” Luke 11:20. “Moses stretched out his hand over the sea,” Exodus 14:21; if you remember this passage, “What manner of man is this that even the winds in the sea obey him?” Matthew 8:28; 8:27. “The people thirsted there for water,” Exodus 17; “If any man thirst, let him come unto me,” John 7. “Almost ready to stone me,” something that was going on, the people, again, disappointed, mad, angry at Moses, Exodus 17:4; “They took up stones to cast at him,” John 8, referring to Christ.

“Spring up, O well,” Numbers 21:16-8; “The water that I shall give him shall be a well of water,” and if you read the rest, it's springing up. So you've got these great parallels. “Moses brought their case before the Lord,” Numbers 27:5; we have the reference to Jesus in 1 John as an advocate with the Father. “Who is on the Lord's side, let him come unto me,” and then, “He that is not with me is against me.” So top, Moses, bottom, I repeat again, is Christ, and you can see these parallels very clearly.

The man, Moses, was very meek, Numbers 12; Christ says, “I am meek and lowly in heart.” You've got these parallels. The parallels come down to Jesus being the embodiment. He's not speaking of the reference to another. He is that. Moses could not say he was that, but Jesus comes and He basically becomes all of that in Himself, not speaking about somebody else. There is where we see shadow and type breakdown. “When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down,” Exodus 32; “my Lord delayed his coming,” Matthew 24. “I took twelve men of you,” Deuteronomy 1:23; “He ordained twelve,” Mark 3:13 and 14.

“Seventy men of the elders of the people,” Numbers 11; “The Lord appointed other seventy also,” Luke 10. Behold the cup of the covenant; “Behold the blood of the covenant,” Exodus 24; “this is the cup of the new covenant in my blood,” Luke 22. “So Moses finished the work,” Exodus 40; “I have finished the work,” John 17. “I have pardoned according to thy word,” Numbers 14; “even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you,” Ephesians 4:32. “According to all that the Lord commanded him,” Exodus 40, verse 16; “even as I have kept my father's commandments,” John 15.

“He made known his ways unto Moses,” Psalm 103; “the Father loveth the Son and showeth all things that himself doeth.” In Deuteronomy 33:1 we have a parting blessing and then from Luke 24:50 and 51, “While he blessed them; While he blessed them, he was parted from them.” “Let the Lord set a man over the congregation which may lead them out and bring them in, that the congregation of the Lord be not as sheep with have no shepherd”" and of course, if you go down here, I will not leave you and I am the good shepherd,” and there were so many other references here, I just decided to leave it at two, but there were so many of those. “Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the Lord,” Exodus 15; “They sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb,” Revelation 15:3. And then some other points of interest here. So, “The law was broken in his hands,” Exodus 32; Psalms 40 and verse 8 says, “The law is as the law perfectly kept in his heart.” “The bread that sustain life,” which is a reference back to the manna; “the bread that gives life,” John 6:33.

“Moses, in Numbers 7:13, praying for a leper; in Matthew 8:12, He healed a leper. We have in Hebrews the reference to the first Passover; and in Luke we reference to Christ as the last Passover; the last Passover that was celebrated in Christ being our Passover. Forty days in the mount, Exodus 34; and forty days in the wilderness, Matthew 4:2; that gives you just a small, and as I said, it's abridged because the list is very, very long.

In fact, if you really want to knock, I always have these, “If you want to knock yourself out” moments. If you want to knock yourself out, you should start going through the Scriptures and finding all these parallels. What it does is it, it gives you a clear demonstration of something that God was not saying, “Oh, you know what? All this other stuff didn't work. Now let Me show you the plan that I think will. Here's My only begotten Son,” but rather because you can see the parallels, you can see that God's ways have always been consistent.

And the choosing, I go back to this for a second, the choosing of Moses, the question might be; and here's an interesting one for you, we don't get to choose who brings us into this world. It's a novel thought for rebellious children, isn't it? “Well, I don't have to love,” and they'll fill in the blanks, “I don't have to love my mother or my father,” a rebellious child speaking, right? You don't get a choice, but you can look back and be grateful for those people that gave you life. And if you're being raised up in a Christian home, you can be grateful for the fact that God brought you into this family. And everybody's circumstance is different. Some people are brought into this world in luxury, some are brought in poverty, some are brought into a family that's dedicated to trying to do the best and reach for the best and strive for the best, and others it's just que sera, sera. But if you really look at it, we are like the people in the Bible in this respect, just like Moses.

No, Moses didn't say, “I want to be born a child to servants that are slaves in Egypt.” Do you really think that would have been the thought of a child? But if you could look at this, step back and realize this is, there's an underlying point here, which is we don't get to choose, and sometimes it takes a lifetime of looking at the circumstances to recognize God's hand and control in your life and in mine. I've said many times, you know, speaking of my own personal relationship with both mother and father, not, not the greatest, and for decades, lamented certain things about, I wish certain things would have been different, but the reality is when I look back; this is the mature person speaking, this is the child of God speaking that says they did the best they could. You know, I don't think any parent has the exact roadmap. You could be the person that reads every book on how to feed your child, how to bathe your child, how to change your diaper, how to do dah, dah, dah, dah, dah━nothing's going to be perfect.

It's not all going to be mapped out for you. Get to when the child's a teenager. Oh, those are wonderful years, aren't they? And how to figure out how to deal with that, when it seems like you have sacrificed for your children and your children can't even see your sacrifice. You know how many people I talk to or I receive letters from that tell me that? They have a child that is, the child does not care, has blatant disregard that one or both parents went without to provide for the child. And that's why I said growing up in a, in a household of faith, it doesn't mean that that child is going to maintain the faith all the way through. But if the foundation of that life, the first and formative years infused into that life where the values of God and the concepts of God and the workings of God are spoken, are mentioned, and that is the currency of your household.

It may not be that kid gets to be 18 and says, “I'm out of here,” but just remember one thing, something happens as we mature and you start coming back to things. You don't even know why you're going back there. And this is what that Proverbs 22 means. So when we look at the life of Moses, Moses is an example and I use Jehoshabed as an example. Do you really think, I'll ask the question in the reverse now. Do you really think that Jehoshabed could have known who her child was going to turn out to be? No, of course not. And I can do the reverse. The mother who is the parent of a mass murderer, do you think that that mother could ever have envisioned that that would be the future of her child? This is what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about the flowers and the candy and the bravado. I'm talking about where the rubber meets the road, where the frustration, the anxiety, the anger, the improbability of not being able to completely guide that child's life to have the best success both for education, for spirituality, everything, the difficulties there.

You know, if we were going to really look at this day or any other day, these are the conversations that need to be happening on a regular basis and bringing people back to hard concepts of the Bible that make you really recognize, you know, God has this worked out pretty good. The pattern for a mother, Jehoshabed is one of them, willing to risk everything to protect her child and not; hear me out. I am a law-abiding citizen, but she was not abiding by the laws of Egypt when they said, “Every child,” that child was going to live no matter━in her eyes, her faith, her reasoning.

And so let me give you the parallels also of two mothers that come back to the same place, because you've got Jehoshabed, not knowing this child will turn out to be the deliverer of the people, not knowing what God had planned for this child. You've got the same really parallel universe with Mary; Mary, the mother of Jesus, every mother in Jerusalem thought they would give birth to the Messiah. I've said that before. There's at least two scriptural passages that refer to that. But can you imagine for Mary specifically, embarrassment, shame, kind of a freak show if you think about it, that she's pregnant without ever doing it? That's kind of a weird thing, okay? And I'm sure endured everybody calling her liar and being ostracized in her community and then giving birth to this child━“Oh, by the way, an angel talked to me and an angel told me blah blah,” “Yeah, sure; sure an angel talk to you,” right? So you've got all of these different dynamics and even then the child is born, I'm talking about Christ, and there's no way that Mary could have ever have known.

Sorry, you could say, “Well, but she, an angel spoke to her and an angel told her this,” yes, but she didn't believe. Remember, she was gathered with her other children wanting to take Jesus and put Him away because they thought He was crazy. So you've got to stay with within the confines of the Bible to recognize; imagine the difficulty. You know, we tend to just kind of paint the picture of Christ and Mary as very simplified, but I think there, there's a lot of underlying difficulties there, especially when we read about how it says, you know, well, “What about your mother and your father?” or “Your mother and your brethren”" and they're, they're there. And He says, “Who are My family?” And He's talking to His disciples and speaks specifically about those that do the will of God, not necessarily by blood, would eventually be blood family by His blood, but then speaking. It doesn't mean because biologically that━they would have put Him away.

So take that isolated moment and think of the frustration of Mary looking at this child of hers who's making all kinds of proclamations that seem wild, baffling, outrageous, and what? What does the parent; put aside motherhood for a second, what does the parent do with a child who's making all kinds of, think about it, absurd comments, “I am the way,” “I am the life.” You know, if your kid does that, then you say, “Okay, come on, Johnny, it's time to go,” straightjacket time, right? So, but if you think about it, the frustration and everything that she went through to the ultimate end of watching her child being crucified, and that, to me, that's another one of these because we can so caricature the story.

The torment of knowing her Son didn't do anything wrong and watching Him be crucified and watching the fate that He's going to die. And you have to also keep in mind, as much as some of these had heard His preaching and heard Him say, “I will raise up; the Father will raise Me up; I, I lay down my life, I'll take it again,” but they, none of them heard. So, for this mother, this is the end. And so when you take even the two mothers and you compare them, they're not too different.

And I've said before, and this always gets me in trouble, but I'll say it again, a careful analysis of Scripture will show you that Mary was just human. She did not possess any special powers. She should never be deified; never. People that pray to Mary because they believe praying to Jesus is, is too direct. Well, listen, that's like saying, “I want to get to San Francisco, but I'll go to New York to get to San Francisco; and I live in Southern California.” It's kind of a little bit like that, but in the spiritual realm it makes no sense when Jesus revealed Himself to us for the very purpose of going directly to Him. So, I can tell you, as I said, many more parallels between both Moses and Christ and between the mothers. Probably, as I said, the difficulty with me is I'm into looking at more of what's underneath it all. I'm not; I'm not interested in the flowers and the fluff. So when I dig down deep enough, I realize God chose Moses to be a deliverer of the people and he didn't have the powers.

He wasn't, he wasn't part God. So think about, just think about that and again, it's probably something we don't really think about. Imagine the pressure after a life; I've said Moses' life is divided up into forty-year segments. So say the first forty years are spent in Egypt, the next forty years are spent on the backside of the desert, and the next forty years are spent delivering, and you can finish the rest. I could only think of the mind of Moses that, imagine, “God wants me to do what?” Try and put yourself in Moses' shoes for a minute. God, on the backside of the desert, finds him, directs him, calls him by name and, “And You want me to do what?” That's kind of a big, mighty task and of course, you know, Moses basically doesn't want to be the spokesperson.

So God says, “Okay, your brother Aaron can be that.” But what made God choose Moses? What made God choose Jehoshabed and Amram? What made God choose Mary? And you could say, “Well Mary's easy. She had to be in the generations and the genealogies.” I'm not talking about that. There could have been any other person in that family line. The thing is God, He looks down at all this and He says, “That one,” knowing, apart from Christ, the imperfection of us all, the imperfection of the mother, the imperfection of the child, and yet God says, “And I'm going to use that one right there.” And this is the thing I think our society has forgotten. In a day and age where we're constantly arguing these, what I would call a non-argument, you know, people want to talk about when life begins and, and where it's actually life versus when it's not a life.

How about the miracle of this? Think about it. And again, I just like to stir the pot, but it's relevant to what I'm going to say. You think it's an accident that the whole reproductive system that God designed, and it's not, I'm sorry, it didn't happen by accident. If you'd like to think that this man or woman evolved, you, you, you can have your right to that. But the intricacies and the, the brilliant and intelligent design of all this that makes it that, for, for example, in a woman's cycle and the time that she can actually be ready, and what a man is capable of doing.

And God's design did not include, if you want to look at this rightly, making alterations to the pattern, just like the pattern of the tabernacle, not making alterations to the pattern that He designed in man and in woman. Now, listen, highly, highly debatable subject right now, a hot topic for people about gender and gender assignment and gender this and gender that. But, you know, when you go to a doctor at the end of the day and you have to fill out a form, you know, there's going to be a question that says, “How were you born? What were you born as?” I don't care what you want to identify as. Listen, today I woke up and I felt a little bit like a tiger, okay? And I'm sorry; I didn't wear my tiger outfit to church today, okay? But the question is asked, not what you identify as. What are you biologically? And that, my friends, even if you have yourself altered medically, you were made one or the other.

That's not a religious comment. That's not a racist or bigoted comment. That's a thinking person who can stand and honestly say it's one or the other. And if you want to be somewhere in the middle, that can be your, your design, but that's not God's design. That was never God's design. Now step back from all that and recognize something. The child Moses, we don't read that he possessed great, until later on, of course, but in his infancy we don't read that he possessed great skill or anything. We don't read that Jehoshabed was some woman who had an agenda to be the greatest woman in Israel. We just have regular ordinary people following, first Jehoshabed following her desire for her child to live and would do anything for that, and Moses, who eventually will follow God's orders to become the deliverer. Now we are just like the people in the Bible.

You don't get to choose who brings you into the world. Moses didn't get a choice. And I love the fact that God includes these imperfect people. This is what I wish the rest of the world could hear and understand, because it's so much of this, what's been, people have been conditioned to think, “Well, if you're a Christian,” and then they fill in the blanks. This is what our faith looks like. God takes the most imperfect, weak, homely vessels and uses them for a purpose. And if you're willing to submit yourself to that purpose, you find out exactly who you are and what, what plans God actually has for you are much greater than any plan you could conceive of. So I'd say this, if you call yourself a Christian, a follower of Christ; some define Christian as a follower of Christ, a little Christ, in any way, shape or form you're identifying with Christ, then you're also identifying with something else.

Christ specifically, when He told His disciples, “I will not leave you orphans. I must go away, but I won't leave you orphans. I'll send the Spirit.” We're never alone. So the people who are sitting in front of me, in the sound of my voice, your mother may be departed, deceased, or the memory is too painful to even talk about. I'm not asking you to go there. I am saying, “Do you recognize you're not alone?” God gave us that Spirit. And He also gave us the Spirit to look at this in proper perspective.

As I said, “Honor thy mother and father's not a day, one day.” It should be the task of a child. You could have, sorry, I'm just going to say it, your parents, because we're all, we all have parents somewhere or we're either parenting or, or a child. Your parents could be pretty annoying, you know that? Anybody here that's thinking, well, your mom or your dad, you know, right up until the end, they were naggers. They, they annoyed you. They said crazy stuff, right? That's what brought you here; just remember that, okay? That's what brought you here. And maybe if you can step back from yourself, you might be just as crazy as they were. That's the genius part of this, is when you really look in the mirror, you go, you know, a real reality check says, “Who am I?” That's the real reality check.

You know, I, I spent the first probably thirty-plus years of my life being very angry at certain things regarding my parents. And I've, I've shared this with you before. You, you come to a point where you realize they did the best they could. And some of their insanity, as you get a little older, you see it in yourself and you recognize that's what blood does, right? Welcome, welcome to the family, right? “Oh, I don't want to ever want to be,” I know people that say, “I don't, I don't want to be like my dad or I don't want to be like my mom.” And when you talk to them, if you know them, you're like, “Damn, what are they talking about? That's just like a chip off the old block, right? Come on, be honest with yourself.” But for this day, for people who were not close or don't care or have some issues or resentment or whatever it is, I'd say to you, take this as another way to look at life.

Because there are people who wouldn't miss celebrating Mother's Day or Father's Day for the world and there are other people, they just want this day to be over. They just get; just hop over it. Let me recalibrate this as, as Christians. That's why I said I don't like this one day thing. It's like somebody who says, “I'm going to go to church on Christmas because that will be my one, or Easter because that's my one day.” Coming to church one day in a year doesn't make you a Christian. Celebrating Mother's Day or Father's Day, one day a year; sorry, that doesn't make you good or bad. It just means you're, you want me to say it? You're part of the sheeple people.

That means, you know, everybody does this, “We all do this. Come on, we're all going to do this now, right, because we all do it.” Now, I'm probably a little bit different. I'm like the salmon that's going the wrong way, okay? But I'm always going to point out why. Because I'd prefer to tell you, if you're going to, if you're going to honor somebody, you do it year round, you don't pick a day. If you're going to look at, and today is Mother's Day, I'm going to ask the question. It's not: Do you have a great relationship with your parent? But rather, what is your version of honoring them? Now, we have this all wrong because we've succumbed to commercialism. And I want you to think about this. I cannot tell you because we don't really have it written in detail for us, if Moses ever went back to Jehoshabed and, you know, honored her, we don't know that.

And I can't say; we've got some small indicators of things, but not too much. And in Christ's way, He basically, it was very clear if Mary wasn't following basically the voice of God, He said, “Who is My family? It's only those that do the will of the Father.” So I think there's, there should be a little bit of recalibrating here for all of us. Those of us who want to get caught up in the commercialism, that's your problem. Mine is more to stay grounded in, “Why should I pay attention to this day?” And you should for a reason, but not for the reason that everybody wants you to. Not because there's people lining the streets here selling flowers, not because the restaurants are going to make a killing and overcharge you today and make it, you know, so you say, “I'm never going to a restaurant again.” No.

Think about this, as I said the other way, maybe your parents are deceased. I still look back almost on a daily basis and there's, I'm not going to say every day, but it's almost every day and express gratitude to God that these two people who probably I was very harsh with in my growing up, in my years of being a little bit on the other side of the tracks, that they brought me into this world that they gave me life, that they tried their best, and they could not know through the little baby they held in their hands to the years, the difficult years, where I would end up. No one has that.

No one knows. You don't have the luxury of saying, “I want to be, you know,” I'm in the womb somewhere swimming in a sea of stuff, “and I want to come out and I want my mother to be”━it doesn't work that way, right? So you get what you get and the key thing here is to understand what the key concept of honor is. Now, I do believe this and showing you the comparisons of Christ and Moses, that was my point of the message and now I'm going to go circuitously around, back around to where I started to talk about this in another way, so that there's something to take away from this message, not just to keep it in the series on the tabernacle, but something to keep in line with this message and with today, which is I'm going to, I'll probably end up asking you this on Father's Day: What is your idea of honoring the person who gave you life? Because that answer will also help you understand your relationship to God.

I want you to think about that. That whole mindset is a microcosm relating how you relate in the earthly realm and in our early years, we don't know, we're not educated, we have no clue, but as you get older, ignorance cannot be claimed. You come to a knowledge, so your understanding of that is actually a microcosm of your understanding of how to relate to God and how to honor God. Now, if you think, bear with me for a second, if you think that honoring God one day a year by coming to church on Easter, I'm going to pick that day because that's, that's like, it is, if you think about it, it is analogous to what we're doing when we say we're going to celebrate one day of motherhood or one day of fatherhood versus, you know, you may, you may wake up tomorrow with thoughts about either parent, whether they're alive or not alive and think, “Oh God,” because there are Sundays you may wake up and you go, “I'm too tired, I want to go back to sleep,” or, “Oh church”" right? Come on now.

Some of you are liars going to hell just for that! My point is you get up. You get up and you go. You get up and you, you start the moment, the momentum of honoring God. And honoring God isn't just coming into church for one day or one hour. Honoring God is your behavior throughout the course of the week, throughout the course of the day. So that's what I'm trying to say to you. When, when you read honor thy mother and thy father, I think a lot of people think it's their version of honoring is appeasement. It's, it's, and I'm not trying to abase anybody. Don't get me wrong, think, “Well, you know, I, I did this today.” I'm talking about, well, how do you treat that person the 364 other days? Because that understanding will also help you understand your true relationship with God because the same people that gave you life that brought you here on earth, that allowed you to be, well, they were given that grace and that blessing by the Creator.

So the same thing, the Creator that gave me the ability to recognize Him opened my eyes and give me spiritual life, the same concept. Do you get what I'm saying? So I don't want people leaving here thinking, “Wow, Pastor Scott's a downer. She doesn't like to celebrate anything.” I didn't say that. You know? But maybe think of it this way. Maybe instead of, you may already have plans for today, but maybe you plan tomorrow to do something that's honoring; not, not an activity, not spending.

This is, this is where I said we've gone in the wrong direction, the commercialization of things. But how do you honor someone? You show appreciation; you express appreciation, not simply for a task or one isolated thing. And as I said, if, if you really get the concept, it brings something really incredible in my mind, all of these biblical parallels show us, we can, we can learn from all of it. It just happens, as I said, it's Mother's Day today. I'm looking at Jehoshabed and I'm thinking to myself, the women of this world who identify as Christians, we don't have to be, we don't have to be what the rest of the world wants us to be or what Hollywood's ideology of womanhood should be now is every woman should be seen as the, the AK-slinging, “I can kick your butt just as good as anybody,” you've got to, you know, be, be tough.

And you know, I think if people actually get back to their proper, I hate to say it, their proper roles that God ordained we might actually find ourselves again an impressive group of people who are balanced by God's plan. And that plan, by the way, you know, some people find it offensive and they read Ephesians, what Paul describes as the proper plan. They get offended by that, but the reality is, I'm not going to stand here and argue with me that most men, most men, I'd probably say ninety percent of men, are stronger than me physically. They're, they, God, endued that to most men. I'm not going to stand here and say, I, I could do what other men can do; I can't. And I, I'd be an idiot to argue that. And then you've got men in this day and age who would like to believe that they can have a child or that they can have a monthly cycle. Okay. That's another crazy argument. The, the two things I just said are, are both crazy.

They're both insane. But I can stand here and tell you something very sane, that if we embrace what God gave us, that includes how we came into this world, you don't get a choice. So you embrace that, you honor it, you respect it. That's probably the key thing. If I could isolate one singular word that's missing, a huge swath of society has no respect. Not a joke. I'm not saying this because Rodney said it. No respect whatsoever. They have no respect for God, for God's house. Go out on the road, tell me that the people that, most of the people that you are driving around are respectful drivers. Don't answer that especially in, in California. Don't answer that. My point here is this. You've got to see things properly in proper perspective. So yes, it's Mother's Day. I'm highlighting this parallel of even the mothers, but I don't want to be mistaken or taken out of context.

The bigger picture here is that God has given us the gift of life. And whether you are a father or a mother with children, maybe your children are even, here's one for you I haven't mentioned. Maybe your children are estranged from you; they've completely rejected you. And I know that there are at least several here in this sanctuary who, who represent that. The sting and the hurt of knowing that sacrifice, love was poured in, maybe in the child's mind they didn't get, they didn't receive, whatever it was that went wrong and they've taken off and they wholly reject you. They want nothing to do with you. Well, I'm going to say, I pray for those people to come to an awareness like I did, that at some point you open your eyes and you say, “God brought me here and I didn't just magically show up.” It took two people to produce this thing called Melissa and I must be grateful for the life I've been given and I can't start cherry picking.

I don't get the choice to decide. And along the way, maybe I learn that God's got many lessons to teach me, which I found out by the way, about becoming a better daughter even later in life, even though I can't speak to my parents, but becoming a better daughter later in life has made me a better child of God. So that's the ultimate takeaway. This has nothing to do with commercialization or a special day, but rather coming to a greater awareness. And the more and the quicker we come to that awareness, the better we can stand before God and recognize His plans. You know, we don't get to call the shots just like the child doesn't get to pick the parent; we don't exactly get to pick everything that happens. God has a plan. It's not all wound up.

We have free will. But if we're trusting Him like Jehoshabed, then trust me on this other thing. Jehoshabed's trust in God to protect that child, to carry that child, to bring that child to the right place at the right time, wasn't just luck. That was something that had to be from God put into that woman's heart, and every parent should have that mindset. And every child, if they have the luxury of coming to know who God is, should be able to turn around and say, “Regardless of what,” fill in the blanks, “I'm extremely blessed because of the care.” And you can say, “I should have had more, I should have had less.” I don't care what that is. You get old enough you realize that that's your selfish mouth. That's your ego. That's your ideology. And maybe when you became a parent, you weren't that great. You thought you were, because we all have great ideas of how we are in, in, not in reality, but in our own mind.

So all I'm asking you to do is kind of recalibrate this and maybe instead of making it a day, you begin to make it a lifestyle, not just on Mother's Day or Father's Day, but you start recognizing the behavior of the child towards the parent is a reflection and a better understanding of our relationship with our Heavenly Father. That is probably the most important takeaway of the day. It can make comparisons all day long, I can give you Scripture references, I can make all the salient points, but my most important point here, leaving here is how do we become better children to our Heavenly Father? And that goes back to recognizing the blessings we've received, being grateful for them and honoring Him.

So there's no harm and no crime in honoring our parents. That's what the Bible tells us to do. Make sure that it's done in a way that you're understanding. This is all practice, by the way, all of this; not the commercial stuff, the stuff we talk about here, this is all practice for eternity and you start down here. You start practicing your relationship with your Heavenly Father by the way you treat your parents down here.

And that relationship, as I said, more and more, the older you get, you'll begin to see it. It'll all come into place. And for the younger folks listening to me who are rolling their eyes going, “Oh God, you don't know”" I hate to tell you, but I was once your age, I absolutely do. And it's not going to get better. It's going to get worse for you if you don't change your mind. That's all I have to say about that. See, this wasn't just a one-sided message for the one, one people, but for the, all of the people listening to me. Now, with all seriousness, let me just say this to you. These are always difficult days for me because I, I'm more interested in teaching you lessons that are applicable than celebrating what the world does. But I don't want to negate the fact that if you understand where I'm coming from, honoring your mother and father is a good thing year round, so happy Mother's Day.

That's my message. You have been watching me, Pastor Melissa Scott, live from Glendale, California at Faith Center. If you would like to attend the service with us, Sunday morning at 11am, simply call 1-800-338-3030 to receive your pass. If you'd like more teaching and you would like to go straight to our website, the address is www.PastorMelissaScott.com.

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Exodus 39 – The High Priest’s Breastplate: We Are Written on God’s Heart

Everything that is represented on the breastplate, including those two stones I'm referring to, is almost symbolic of everything that's here and everything that's here. In other words, it's kind of like what the Bible says about what proceeds out of a person's mouth, that's what's in their heart. Well, put that in the reverse. When God called your name, you weren't an accident. You were already on His heart as His child. ♪ ♪ ♪ I'm going to read, briefly before I get started, the thirty-ninth chapter of Exodus to kind of give you an idea. And I'm, I'm really starting with the two onyx stones, which basically starts at the sixth verse in the thirty-ninth chapter of Exodus, “And they wrought onyx stones enclosed in ouches of gold, graven, as signets are graven, with the names of the children of Israel. And he put them on the shoulders of the ephod, that they should be stones for a memorial to the children of Israel; as the LORD commanded Moses.” Now, I think this is just an interesting sidebar, if you want to think about things in a more bird's-eye view.

Here we have the names of all of the, we'll call them the patriarchal names of the tribes of Israel, showing, we'll call it the, the genesis of organizing the people. And in the final chapters of Revelation, you've got the one hundred and forty-four preachers of righteousness essentially organizing the final chapter in, if you want to call it, organizing the people. I think it's interesting; there are all these bookends, these Alpha and Omega concepts throughout Old and New Testament. You cannot look at this and just say independently, “Oh, that's kind of a cool thing,” without recognizing foursquare, the shape, which is attached to the new city and all the names. There's just a lot here to connect, but I'm just saying, I don't know how anyone could read this and be bored and not have their imagination be sparked on what God was actually saying underneath it all. You know, you can be limited and say, “Oh yeah, He was giving the instructions for this beautiful breastplate of judgment,” but maybe what He was saying is that all of these children will be memorialized in the future as well, not just here.

I love how God does this. “He made the breastplate of cunning work, like the breastplate of cunning work, like the work of the ephod, gold, blue, purple, scarlet, fine twined linen. And it was foursquare; they made the breastplate double: the span was the length thereof, and the span the breadth thereof, being doubled. They set four rows of stones: the first row was sardius, topaz, carbuncle: this was the first row. The second row, emerald, a sapphire, and diamond,” remember, these are English words, so please don't, don't go there, okay? They're just giving you an idea. “The third row, a ligure, an agate, an amethyst. A fourth row, beryl, onyx, jasper: they were enclosed in ouches of gold and in their inclosings. And the stones were according to the names of the children of Israel, twelve according to their names, like the engravings of a signet, every one with his name, according to the twelve tribes. And they made upon the breastplate chains at the ends, of wreathen work of pure gold. They made the two ouches of gold, and the two gold rings; and put the two rings in the two ends of the breastplate.

And put the two wreathen chains of gold in the two rings on the ends of the breastplate. And the two ends of the two wreathen chains they fastened into two ouches, put them on the shoulder pieces of the ephod, before it.” So you kind of get an idea of how this was all put together. And if you keep reading, you've got; basically, it spells out the rest of it. But I just wanted to give you an idea so you can kind of envision what this might have looked like. Now, I started last week going through some of the stones. We saw that Zebulun, carbuncle, and I'm not even sure if we have, the way I've translated it, yeah, it is in verse 10, carbuncle, which we looked at light bearer, derived from the Hebrew word, bâreqeth, “to glitter.” And of course Zebulun's name meaning “dwelling.” We kind of went through and connected these, being both the blessing of Jacob/Israel, and Moses.

If you combine them, the things that kind of you can glean out of there, “being a haven for ships by the sea.” And I said it's probably safe to interpret this, they may have been in the shipping business, but there's another meaning to this, which I would like to kind of put on that. These people might have been like the lighthouse for the lost because it also says, “showing them the way to mount Zion.” Topaz, which is Issachar, the Hebrew word “reward” embedded in there, but the Hebrew word pitdâh, pitdâh, and if you want to look up the word in the Greek, also means “seeking.” And we kind of went through putting together, if you want diligently seeking, or the reward for diligently seeking on this stone.

Sardius being Judah's stone, Judah's name meaning “praise,” but I pointed out the Hebrew for this stone, 'ôdem, and if you remember, I've also told you that there were no vowel points originally underneath the Hebrew letters. So when I say 'ôdem, it could have been, again, pronounced, adem, edem, depending on how it was pronounced before the vowel points were put in, and that one singular word, take away the vowel points underneath, can mean “Adam,” it can mean “blood.” There's a whole host of meanings that it; so I find it very interesting as I pointed out last week, specifically because Judah, the tribe out of which Christ came, and He is referred to as the “last Adam.” And much of the, we'll call it benediction/blessing that is given by the mouth of Jacob/Israel, talks about wine or the blood of grapes, and I don't think it's an accident.

We kind of look to and comb the whole Scripture, you find the red blood goes through the book, leads you to Christ. And I pointed out as well that I don't think it's an accident where Jacob is referring to the vine, the vine, the vine, the vine. John 15, Jesus says, “I am the true vine.” There are no accidents when you start connecting the dots. Christ was not; sorry to my friends who can't just get this clear; Jesus Christ was not an afterthought, “Oh, all this didn't work out too good, so now we'll come up with a plan B which includes bringing forth My only begotten Son.” No, Christ was there in the beginning, just not incarnate. So these are all prefiguring, pointing to future references. The diamond, which is attached to the tribe of Gad, and the diamond in this case, something that can “break or bruise,” “cause to increase or to be victorious.” And I made mention that in this case they were attacked by their enemies but overcame.

So there's a dynamic, if you will, of tenacity attached to this stone of toughness. Sapphire, to Simeon in the breastplate as well, and this one, as I said, quite remarkable if you look up all of the references to sapphire, they seem to have a connection to God's throne. As I pointed out, the references in Exodus, I want to say it's in the 24s where it says that they looked, yeah, it's 24:10, they saw God, “They saw the God of Israel: and there was under his feet as, as, it were a paved work of sapphire stone, as it were the body of heaven in his clearness.” And you'll find this concept a lot in Ezekiel.

So this, this stone, this color, this reference somehow is attached to what's under God or what God is sitting on, repeatedly. I think that's interesting. You know, when we don't have clarity on certain things, you have to go with everything that's repeated. And when it's repeated several times, that's cause to say there's, there's doctrine there, there's concepts there that God is, “Can you hear Me now? Can you hear Me now? (Knock knock knock) Can you hear Me now?” So for the hard heads, He repeats Himself, thank God.

Emerald, which is attached to Reuben the firstborn that lost his position; which didn't stop him from being counted among the brethren. These are the important things I want to point out because they're messages within the message. So if you know the history of all of the children of Israel, and specifically I just mentioned Simeon and Reuben, and they're not the only ones to have committed major faux pas, but I love the fact that even before the new dispensation that we have in Christ, even before then, remember, for example, Reuben's sin of defiling his father's bed had already taken place, okay? And yet God doesn't say “Reuben, or the descendants of Reuben, because you messed up, you have no part in this community,” okay? I wish that the church at large would understand that because there are more Reubens in the church than there are anything else.

I know that that's not a friendly word to some people, but let me say it again because it's, it's, it actually bears repeating. There are more Reubens in the church of Jesus Christ, and God says, “You are counted among My own.” That means all of your past garbage, your mess ups, past, present, and future. He didn't say, “I ripped Reuben off of My chest, and he can no longer be a part,” even though Reuben did what he did.

So there's, like I said, lessons within lessons here to kind of take note of. And I think it's interesting that when Moses was praying the benediction or the blessing on Reuben, and he said, “Let Reuben live and not die, let not his men be few,” even to have Moses pray for Reuben in spite of basically sins that may have been visited upon the children, the father's children to the second, third, and umpteenth generation. And yet Moses is praying for God's mercy.

I just want you to think of that, because we tend to think of the Old Testament as no mercy, no grace, but just the fact that even Moses, the intermediary at this point. And then think of yourself and how bad you may think your situation or your circumstances, past, present, or future may be, and recognize that God's grace is sufficient. And they didn't have the knowledge we have, and yet “Let Reuben live and not die, and let not his men be,” in other words, let him be prosperous. Now that's not saying that God puts His seal of approval on sin, it's simply saying that God knows our frame and knows that we all mess up, period. All right, the amethyst related to Benjamin, if you recall, this stone comes to us from a most unlikely source from the Greek: 'a' putting it in reverse, and mêthustôs, “drink,” so “not intoxicated” or “not drunk” for the name of the stone, this purplish, bluish stone, as I, I pointed out last week.

Probably what is interesting to me is I don't read anywhere of this particular group of people being intoxicated with wine or with strong drink necessarily, but I do read the intoxication of anger and of religious zeal, which is most prominently exemplified in the Pharisee of Pharisees, the Benjamite most famous to us, the apostle Paul, who was very zealous for God, intoxicated with the power that he felt God had given him to go out and persecute Christians.

So now that is the, we'll call it the five or ten minute recap on last week. So now we return to look at the rest of the stones and some of them will be inconclusive. I can't provide you with information that I don't have, and I'm honest enough to say it. In the case of one of these stones, kind of interesting, it says “ligure” in your King James, a ligure, verse 12, 39:12, which is the stone attached to Ephraim, and the agate which is attached to Manasseh. Now the reason why I'm going to do these together is because ligure, it's very, very difficult. Some have translated this, “the stone that comes from Liguria,” and that's possible, but it doesn't help us with understanding what type of a stone this is. And if you recall the story of the two brothers, two boys that were produced in Egypt by Joseph who was there, not by his own desire, but actually God kind of worked it out that way.

Now, and then he's given Asenath, the daughter of Poti-pherah, priest of On, has these two boys. We don't know, by the way, there may be other children, but I'm, we're only talking about the boys that are mentioned, Ephraim and Manasseh. Manasseh, who was the first whose name means “forgetfulness, for God hath made me forget all my toil and all my father's house.” And the second son was named Ephraim, meaning “very” or “doubly fruitful.” And interesting, at the birth of these, Joseph says, “For God hath caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction.” Now what I love about this is, if you remember just before Jacob/Israel dies, these two are brought to him to bless them as he's basically blessed, or made, we'll call them predictions, some, in some cases not necessarily blessings over the children of Israel. He's about to bless the two boys and he basically crosses his arms so that the reverse basically, instead of it being the firstborn receiving the firstborn blessings, it's the younger one that receives the blessing of the firstborn, at the protest of Joseph, mind you.

He's saying, you know, “No, no, no, no; not that way.” And Jacob says, I know what I'm doing.” Basically, “Son put a lid on it,” all right? That's the first book of Scott for you. But what's interesting is their names, of course, fruitful. Joseph saw Ephraim's offspring, it says, to the third generation, that's pretty fruitful. And we know that by the time Moses had counted the tribes, the numbers were like this, Ephraim had over 40,000, Manasseh had just a little over 30,000, so you can see that there was definitely fruitfulness on the behalf of Ephraim. Now, as an aside, I'm just going to say this, you know, it's interesting, these, these things we read, “God has caused me to forget,” or “God has caused me to be fruitful,” I wonder if any of us can think about how we even could make an application to ourselves. If you think about it, Paul says in the New Testament, “Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory,” our light afflictions.

And if you remember what Joseph said about God had made him forget in the land of his affliction, it's kind of interesting. I wonder how many of us have said, in spite of our circumstances, “How can I possibly prosper when all of this is going on in my life?” I, I'm going to ask you to take another look at Joseph because he, in spite of everything going on, God still prospered him and there was a reason for that.

He always looked to God first. There wasn't any, Joseph was all about Joseph; Joseph was all about God and God saw that, and God rewarded him for that. So when you are looking around and saying, “How is God supposed to prosper me in all this, my circumstances?” I want you to think of Joseph. Joseph stayed by the stuff. He didn't deviate. He didn't succumb to the flesh and God rewarded him for that. Now we are not, Joseph I know is a type of Christ, we are not perfect, but we can look to that example and we can understand that God can still bless us in our “light affliction.” For some of us it's a little bit lighter than others, but let's not get into that. All right, the stone of Ephraim referred to as ligure, as I said, the Hebrew word is leshem, translated in the Septuagint as ligurion, the stone of Liguria. I'm going to tell you, I looked this up and I found over 27 different interpretations of this stone, so I decided I'm not touching it.

(Laughter.) 'Got to know when to be smart and leave things alone. I'm not touching it. We could have had one singular message on the stone of ligure, yes, because I'm famous for periods and commas, why not a stone? But this won't affect anything if we have a couple of these ambiguous ones, the bigger picture will make sense. With Manasseh there may be a bit more for us to glean the forgetting along with the fruitfulness, if you will. So when we forget the things that are behind and reach forth to the things that are ahead and we press towards the mark, the prize, which is Christ, I think when we think about the name “forgetfulness,” we tend to think like, “Oh, I'm absentminded,” but how about God made Joseph forget all the pain that he went through and all the suffering that he went through, and all the unnecessary things that he endured with receiving the blessing of these sons and receiving the blessing of being reunited with his family.

So again, I'd ask you and I to ask this question of ourselves, it's a rhetorical one: how many of us are living in a trapped past with, without being able to━and I know this is hard. You know, you hear people say, “Forgive and forget.” No, we're not talking about that type of forgive and forget. We're talking about when one is so preoccupied with what God has done in the present and what He's promised in the future, that it makes all of the getting here to this point seem like even though it might have been a bad trip, it almost doesn't feel that way anymore. Does that make sense? (Yes ma'am.) Good, because that's what forgetfulness for me in this context means, not empty-headed mindlessness, but rather that God gave an abundance of other things that caused Joseph to forget all of what he endured and suffered to get to that point. Okay, Manasseh's name was on the agate stone in the breastplate, and agate is supposedly harder than steel, kind of interesting concepts here.

I'm not sure about the proper interpretation of this Hebrew word either, so we're just going to leave it there. If any of you would like to lose your hair, lose sleep; sounds like an ad for medication you see on TV, “May induce nausea, vomiting,” look it up for yourselves. (Laughter.) Yeah? Okay. Jasper is the stone of Naphtali, whose name means “my wrestling.” And if you remember the context in which that name was given, Rachel wrestling, desiring to have a child. And of course the idea of struggling with God in prayer should not be a foreign one to any of us, because that's when, when she talks about wrestling and “my wrestling,” it was because she wanted something, not just desiring to have a child, but recognizing that in that day and age, failure to produce a child at all meant you had no value as a wife or even as a woman. Think about that. How often have you wrestled in prayer over things that you wish God would do or take away or remove from you or add to your life? And this is the concept of this wrestling.

Even our Lord wrestled in prayer in the Garden Gethsemane. So, from the Mosaic blessing, from Moses' blessing to Naphtali, “O Naphtali, satisfied with favour, and full with the blessings of the LORD”" And, I should say, prior to that, Jacob, Israel's blessing, “Naphtali is a hind, let loose: he giveth goodly words.” From this I glean; and I'm using these as kind of pictorial concepts as for this particular stone for Naphtali, “agility,” “freedom,” or “liberty” is attached to the meaning of both the stone and the meaning of the tribe, if you will. And interestingly enough, in the book of Revelation, the one who sat on the throne in the fourth chapter, it says, was “like a jasper and a sardine stone.” The walls of the holy city in the twenty-first chapter were jasper and of the foundation stones likewise. So I'm not sure if when we talk about this stone, there are actually two different words for “jasper” being translated.

They may or may not be the same again if you wish to investigate further, knock yourselves out. The second child born to Zilpah and adopted by Leah is Asher, and Asher will be attached to the onyx stone, I believe. I jumped ahead of myself here. But it says of Asher; by the way, his name “happy” or “blessed,” and “Out of Asher his bread shall be fat, and he shall yield royal dainties,” speaking eventually to the richness of the inherited territory, “his bread shall be fat.” Asher would come to represent a people who feed upon the finest wheat, upon the finest bread, if you will, wholesome food making a strong people. Take the pictorial essence of what I'm saying, those who feed on the word of God, the bread of life. You can make the connection there.

The onyx stone which also appears on the shoulders; and this stone is very mixed up again in translation. So the stones on the epaulettes and the singular stone deserve probably to be investigated more, but I'm going to leave that alone. As I said, there's a lot of confusion in the stones. All right, moving on to the tribe of Dan's stone, which is beryl, to give you an idea of the uncertainty, Flinders Petrie, I wanted to write some of these down to show you some of the most expert people, said this shoham, which is beryl referred to as “green jasper.” And professors Coons and others think this stone is related to malachite based on an Arabic translation.

I told you it's like, who knew? So we've got a whole bunch of concepts here for the stones. And I think probably if I kind of just glaze over these, it's because I'm not going to waste time trying to figure out which one is which, but I can tell you something about Dan. Remember that Dan's name means judge. And when it says, “Dan shall judge the tribes” even though that may have been, for example, a person like Samson, who was a judge and did judge the people, but you have to read that very carefully.

It says “shall judge his people as one of the tribes,” not – it's very weirdly worded, “He shall judge his people as one of the tribes.” And that leads back to speculation about something. Where it talks about Dan is “likened unto a serpent, by the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse heels, so that the rider shall fall backwards”" the images that are given are twofold. One of Israel's idolatry which, Dan was no innocent bystander, so if you start looking at the history of idolatry, there you've got the, at the house of Micah in Judges 18 with the image that they took that was made from man. They took it essentially, made it their own. It says, “And the children of Dan set up the golden image.” And if you keep going, you're going to find that there's a lot of these peppered in. You've got to look for them.

So it's possible when it says, “how an adder in the path, that biteth the horse heels, that shall make his rider fall backwards,” they were like a, a stone in the way to trip people up, because by leading people into idolatry, what do you do? You fall backwards. You don't fall forwards. You don't fall to the side. You fall, you go backwards. So that may be the best way to understand. But again, interesting that this tribe, with all of its issues, is included in the breastplate of judgment; and again, I'm going to repeat this because it bears repeating. If you think coming into the body of Christ, somehow that you're perfect or you take the words and you say, “Well, my sins have been washed away,” there is no but to that.

Do not think that there is anybody in the sound of my voice, from my voice forward, in the sound of my voice that doesn't fit into the category of being a Reuben, a Simeon, a Dan, by many manifold ways. And you could say, “Well, but I've been committed. I've stayed the course.” Well, don't toot your own horn too much. That's all I have to say. A little humility makes one, I've called it, take the spiritual inventory to say, “Maybe I should zip it, because I might actually be guilty of some of these things,” and in such a nonchalant way that it gives way to the things that C.

S. Lewis said in his Screwtape Letters about, no one will know. “Now what's the harm of curling up in front of the fireplace with a good book?” That's the voice of the devil versus if it takes time away from reading the good book, yeah, there's a problem. So all of these things I'm asking you to look at and consider the fact that they were all included; the good, the bad, the u-gly, they're all on the breastplate. No stones were removed. Nobody said, much like the Egyptians, “Oh, that guy messed up. We're going to scratch his name out of everything.” Can you imagine that? So it took some guy doing the carving on these walls.

You know, “I've been working on this thing for twenty years.” “Scratch his name out right now.” “Yes, sir.” It's an interesting procedure right there. But the reason why I'm pointing all this out is, at least for Dan, the beryl stone, which is the stone I'm talking about, very hard, referred to in Ezekiel 10:9 in connection with the mighty and powerful chariots and the wheels seen by the prophet.

The hands of the bridegroom in the Song of Solomon are set with beryl. So it's interesting that this stone has, we'll call it, a diverse amount of references throughout the Scripture, and again it's, it remains somewhat ambiguous. If we're only looking at the English, it's plain as day, but when you look at these names in Hebrew, it's not so clear. So I don't want to get hung up on the lack of clarity because if you string them together, and I'll show you in a minute how this comes together. But before I do that, let me talk about one last thing regarding the breastplate of judgment. It had some type of a pocket or a pouch in it to put what is referred to as the Urim, a repository for the Urim and the Thummim, stones which God would give His judgment or decision in the event of uncertainty or doubt.

Sometimes these stones are rendered “lights” and “perfection.” And what is strange is that, unlike all the other components in the priest's garment, there's not too much we can find about these stones. So God goes to great detail to talk about the gold and the ouches and the shoulders and the ephod and, and here we have very little mentioned. In the Septuagint, the two words being translated Urim and Thummim are delosis and alethea, “manifestation” and “truth.” And that's why I said to you the Septuagint, which is the Greek version of the Hebrew Bible done two, three hundred years before Christ, has some interesting terminology, including using logion to describe the component of these stones as being as “oracle” in nature. So it's kind of interesting. Moses alludes to these as if, when you're reading this, I want you to kind of try and get your mind out of modern day. Moses talks about these stones as if they were common knowledge to everybody. So it should be assumed that rather than making it something so mysterious that we know nothing about, they knew all about it.

And they knew a lot because these were consulted on a regular basis. The Vulgate text, for example, says in Ezra 2:63, “Till there stands up a priest learned and perfect,” that's the Vulgate, the Latin. To show you how the same text reads in the Hebrew, “Till there stood up a priest with the Urim and the Thummim.” So between the two, right, “till there stands up a priest learned and perfec”" versus “a priest with the Urim and the Thummim,” so, then if you start looking historically on how people commented on this, that's a whole different ball of wax. So if you're familiar with the English scholar, Bede, 672-735 A.D., refers to the Urim and the Thummim considered to be on the breast piece “for the diligent inquiry of doctrine and truth.” Calvin called these “ornaments of Christ,” kind of interesting, “symbol and emblems of the ephod.” Now, Josephus, the Jewish historian says that the Urim and the Thummim ceased about two hundred years before he wrote his Antiquities.

That would be about 135 or so B.C. If one consulted the Mishnah and the Babylonian Talmud, the place or the disuse or the cessation, if you will, says it “ceased when the first prophet ceased.” And they're not talking about the Major or the Minor Prophets. They're going right back to calling David and the likes of David prophets and saying it ceased then, because if you look it up, you'll find that one of the last references is from the mouth of David. Now, do what you want with that. I'm only going to read from what's here, and I can only say what's in the book. So, yeah, it seems that it kind of faded out about that time. And if you think about it, at the death of Solomon when the kingdoms split, it also kind of tells you that God kind of said, “I'm going to stand back now.” So in doing so, it makes sense that He wouldn't necessarily give that same revelation.

He sent the prophets to tell the people to repent, “It's not too late to turn back,” but the actual giving of more information, God said, “I'm done right now. The books are closed,” so kind of interesting. But there's a lot of controversy as to when they stop being used, and these thoughts and how they connect to Jesus, this is an interesting one. So what I'd tell you about how this connects to Jesus is somewhat, I think, interesting. The Urim, which would begin with an aleph, and the Thummim, which would end with a, or start with a tav, are the beginning and end of the alphabet in the Hebrew. And I think it's interesting that if you think about it, these would resemble “yea” or “nay” when somebody approached for a decision, for an answer, for a dispute. We know about Christ. Christ says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End.” Here's the Urim and the Thummim, which represent in the Hebrew language the beginning and the end, become that in Christ.

He is; if we want to use the words “lights” and “perfection,” He is the Light. And there's always One guiding who is the Light and who is Perfect. And we don't need those cubes, if you will, or those stones of revelation, now that we have Christ. Okay. If you're interested in Deuteronomy 33:8, Ezra 2:63 and Nehemiah 7:65, the Urim, the Urim and the Thummim are mentioned together. You'll find in some places it is mentioned, the Urim is mentioned by itself, like 1 Samuel 28:6, Saul said, “When he enquireth of Jehovah, Jehovah answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urims, nor by prophets,” so sometimes appearing by itself; sometimes together.

Sometimes the word for Urim, by the way, is also translated “fire” or “fires,” fire, again, the symbol of God's presence. So I don't care how you want to deal with this, but interesting, if, if the Urim and the Thummim represent light and perfection, I want you to try and conceptualize what I just said and import it into the book of Revelation where you find the Son of Man standing in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks. That was, it says, “as a flame,” presence of God, the light and perfection of God, if you will search the ways of the seven churches of Asia Minor.

Interesting that a lot of times what comes out is the foreknowledge, “I know thy works.” In other words, we don't need the revelation of stones because the One who reveals all spoke. Kind of think of it like the woman at the well, “This man told me everything that I ever did,” right? We don't need to consult stones when we have the Rock Himself speaking; and I'm not talking of the actor, I'm talking of Christ. Just to be clear, you never know in this day and age when people can't even read a regular clock anymore, I have to be clear about what I'm saying. “God, help me.” So, wow, that's an interesting sermon today. But what I want you to leave with here is kind of something interesting, that every child of God's name was engraved on the heart, carried on the breastplate. Every child of God's name written in the Lamb's book; put it to you this way, the same concept, written on God's heart.

So when people say, “You know, what does it matter”" or “God doesn't care.” How do you know? Because if this is any indication of the care that the high priest, just a mortal man, and yes, it was by instruction; he didn't take it up on his own and volitionally say, “Let me wear these and go into the Holy of Holies.” But the One who was willing is our High Priest, who willingly said, “Whosoever will, I will in no wise cast out,” and when we come, simply by faith carries our name in His heart, we have been taken into the beloved. I love the way all of this just kind of makes a complete picture for me. Now, there are people that believe that these Urim and Thummim were also used when lots were cast. I cannot speak too much about that, but I can tell you what I've just said.

It is definitely clear that these; everything that is represented on the breastplate, including those two stones I'm referring to, is almost symbolic of everything that's here and everything that's here. In other words, it's kind of like what the Bible says about what proceeds out of a person's mouth, that's what's in their heart. Well, put that in the reverse.

When God called your name, you weren't an accident. You were already on His heart as His child. So, I love the fact that we, we have a High Priest who never takes the breastplate off. He doesn't need the stones; He has all that, He possesses all the wisdom and all the knowledge. And whether you want to kind of now tie up all the stones, if you were to string together all of their meaning from the names of the tribes, of the children, to the value of the stones, so whether, if you string it all together and you might end up with a message that sounds something like, “The light bearer is rewarded to praise for some and breaking apart of others to victory from the eternal, who may use the rolling sea and its instability to harden some to forget, and others to be fruitful, to be strong and able to subdue.” Now, that's everything contained in the information from both the stones and the names, which almost says everything that we could possibly need for us is taken care of in God, in Christ.

I don't know how else to say that, because when I think about that, it, it tells you about those who maybe have a more meritorious place versus those who maybe shouldn't be there, but all are there, all are mentioned. And that's what I love about the God we serve, especially recognizing this beautiful picture. The other thing I want to say is, and we don't tend to think about this, when you think about the tribes and the names of the tribes, we tend to think either of the children themselves; it's really hard to remember the children of the children, of the children's name, yeah? But think of them as families and think, for example, that the family stone, the sardius, for example, the stone of Judah, I want you to think that that stone didn't just represent Judah, but represented a whole family and a family of families of families within that tribe. So whatever the number of people that would have been, I'm going to make up a number and say, if the number was 70,000, just of men alone, and if you add in the women and children, say that number was 100,000.

The priest going in with that one stone of the twelve is not just representing Judah, but everything that encompasses, that is around, that is relevant or attached to Judah going in to the Lord's presence wearing these things. So I want you to think about this. We go into God's presence and we pray. We are bringing with us essentially the same concept, although we can, we can pray for anybody, we can pray for ourselves, we can pray for our friends, our family, but when we come into God's presence, it's almost the same concept as we are essentially, specifically now, I'm going to say this, for your household even, coming in when you're making prayer or petition, much like the high priest representing the whole, that whole that you're responsible for. And I would say this more aligned to the men of the household. Those of you who don't have a man in the house, then you're your own priest anyway, but for the men specifically. And this is a little bit; it's probably information that should have been woven in long ago, because I don't talk too much about this.

But if we would go back to the principles that God set out of the priest of the household; that is not a lording over, that's not somebody who's thumping their fist and, “Get me this and do that,” someone who is calculated in understanding the wisdom of God that can petition for the whole family. That doesn't mean that the rest of the family doesn't pray on their own. But just these small concepts; there are messages within messages in this message that give me insight that sometimes we're not even using our prayer time to its fullest potential.

So just think about that and again, I know we live in different times where not every household has a man, but each individual is a priest in their own home. And if you are still in a traditional home, husband and wife, then the husband, there's a criteria for this. So don't be mistaken. The criteria is the husband must know this word inside and out like the back of his hand to be able to say, “I'm the priest of this household,” otherwise, it's kind of a general blanket for the household. Sorry to say that that way, but that's the way it works. So even there, when we read in the New Testament, we've become a royal priesthood, we are entering into God's presence when we approach the throne of God boldly, and we may bring with us, let's say, the name of your tribe, whatever your; I'm using that as a colloquial way to say your name, your family, your husband, wife, your loved ones, your friends, but you're still stepping in that role, and God sees the same spirit as the high priest that entered in with the breastplate, because that same spirit is the spirit of the mind of Christ, that we would pray for our household, for our family, for our friends.

So just, that's a little footnote there in case people are interested. Now I'm going to jump to real quickly, I'm going to save the last item, which I won't get to, but I'm going to jump to two things real quickly, which are the mitre and the bonnet, so I've, I've jumped off of the breastplate and I'm now on the head for just a second, and it's really brief. Not too much is said about the mitre or its form, but let's just say that there was most definitely a distinction between the headdress of the high priest and those of the other priests. The high priest wore a mitre, the other priests wore some type of a bonnet or a turban, and I know the King James likes the word bonnet.

I don't. A bonnet reminds me of a 1640 Mayflower, elderly woman with a strap on her neck. No, I just don't see the priest looking like women. Yeah, anyway, let's leave that one alone. So they were wearing a turban, okay, a turban. The headdresses were made out of fine linen, denoting the holiness and righteousness of God. The head, which denotes leadership and authority, is in charge of the body. The word “bonnet” is derived from a word meaning “to elevate” or “lift up.” So only the priests wore those, not the high priest, and Christ as our high priest has elevated us. So think about it, we don't need the bonnets anymore or the turbans. Christ has elevated us. The book of Ephesians says, “Seated in the heavenlies,” we're elevated with Him. We don't need something. So again, I'm going to go back and say something that probably inflames a lot of people, but all of this costuming that people tend to wear in the different denominations of the church, why? You know, why? Well, that's, that's a custom maybe of a country, and I can accept that, but custom of the church of Jesus Christ, no, that was done away with.

And you can put that in your pipe and smoke it too, all right? (Laughter.) Because I'm seeing the look on some of your faces like, “Huh?” You know, there were a couple of people that picked this up last week, the regalia of the priest's garb, which I said has been left behind. But if you notice, there are several factions of the church that have kept the regalia and the garb going. And in fact, certain colors on the garb mean certain things and the more bling; the more bling you have, the higher bling position you have, I guess. Have you ever seen the blingy-type things I'm talking about? Okay.

God said, “I did away with that.” You know, I don't know what else to tell you, but anyway, Christ humbled Himself unto death that we may not only live, but have an exalted position because of Him. So we don't need the bonnets anymore. And then if you want to think about this, this is also interesting. In the old dispensation, a man would cover his head and take off his shoes. Remember, God spoke to Moses and said, “The place where you're standing is holy. Take off your shoes.” In the New Testament, a man uncovers his head and puts shoes on his feet. And you tell me what the change is. Well, for starters, I mean, just kind of as a very simple thing, the whole approach has changed. The head is not covered anymore. If you want to talk about symbolism, the head was covered, or instructions to cover the head, “God's too holy. God should not see me. God should not even see the top of my head because I might die.” Now God has revealed Himself in Christ; off with the hat.

Now there are people that get very offended at this because there are churches that are very strict. The woman has to have her head covered because Paul said something in the New Testament. Let me just enlighten you on this, and I don't mean to be, I don't mean to be mean about this, but if you read Paul carefully, he salvaged the faith from turning into a splinter of Judaism. James would have made it just that, a splinter of Judaism.

But please do not forget that Paul was steeped in Judaism himself. So a lot of the things that he said, and there are several, belong in Judaism, not in Christianity. You may say, “Well, how could you say that?” Well, a careful reading if; again, you can't contradict here. He says in one place in Galatians 3:28, “There is neither man, there is neither male nor female,” separating, “There is no more. The wall of partition has been broken down”" speaking of Jew and Gentile, or across the board the sexes. That's what he says right there, and then you've got people who will take what he said, turn around and say, “Yes, but women are relegated to this, this position of staying silent in the church,” because of one verse of Scripture that is taken out of context perpetually. And in that same passage, it talks about women prophesying. So are you talking about women staying quiet or women prophesying? Are you talking about women praying with their head covered or uncovered? That's why I said to you, be very careful about what you interpret and how you interpret it.

It's not open to private interpretation, but realize that Paul said a lot of things and taken out of context produces error. What changed here is the whole dispensation of God. “Come,” Jesus doesn't say, “But you've got to take off your shoes to approach Me.” Jesus didn't say to the woman at the well, “Go and wash before I even talk to you. Go into the mikveh and go get cleansed before I talk to you.” No. So the whole dispensation has changed, but yet you've got people who are lodged in some Old Testament gear and they can't switch out of it, so “You must wear a hat to church, and you must wear this garb.” I only ask one thing, just come be decent.

Don't come like you're coming to the beach. Show respect for God's house. But apart from that, that's all I ask. A little bit of respect for God's house. No, there are no rules of; and sorry if somebody says to you, “But Paul says it here.” Well, then I can also show you where Paul says something else that contradicts that. And if you have a problem with that, take it up with God, because the last time I checked, my authority on all of this, by the way, goes back to the same thing that people like to argue about if you want to parse the arguments in this book. I once met a man who said, “Well, if a person isn't baptized, they're sure not saved and they're not going to heaven.” And I just looked at him, and I said, “Yeah, right.” Do you know why I said that? Because on the authority of what I read, Jesus, when He was hanging on the cross, was hanging by two thieves and neither one of these men were baptized.

And He says to one, “This day you'll be with me in paradise.” I don't see a baptism there. I'm not against baptism. I'm just telling you, don't be a box checker. Don't be this person that says, “Well, this is what it says there”; be very careful with that. Because I know way too many people that they put themselves in this little quaint box and they can't get out of it.

That's because God will not be put in a box, not by you and not by me. And if God said, “I want your feet with shoes on and the head uncovered,” and that's the last revelation we have, then I'm going to go with the last revelation we have. And I think Paul in other areas made it abundantly clear, we're always ready to march and do battle, “feet shod with the preparation of the gospel,” ready to go at a moment's notice. So I don't know how you could be ready to go if you were barefoot and a hat might help you on a sunny day, but that's about it. So why do I put this all together like this? There's a lot more. I've actually, there's other components to the priest's garb that I want to cover, but this kind of ties up all the loose ambiguities for the day. That makes me feel better when I get that out. But what I hope this study does do, this particular message, what I hope it does do is show you something.

God's got this wonderful ability to paint pictures. And the picture that is painted for me in the breastplate of judgment that the priest wore is to show that these are; these were all God's children. And even though eventually we know the North and the South will split and bifurcate, and the North will be scattered and the very few from the South will come back. God sees all this. We're not, the people at that time are not given that revelation except for the fact that they'll be scattered or they'll be carried away. And my point is to say God with all of His knowledge still showed, “This is My family. This is who I care for.

This is who I have lifted up in high esteem.” And if you look at the people that were put on this breastplate, most of them do not have stellar, we'll call them résumés, all right? Flawed people and yet all part of God's program, even God makes a pledge. We know because we have the whole book. God makes a pledge and says that eventually He will bring back the scattered ones.

And you've heard me refer to the two sticks and bring them back again to unite them that those two sticks which represent the twelve tribes will be whole again. And a day will come; this is why the Bible to me is a wonderful book, the bookends of the Bible to show you they started as a cohesive band for God's program. And the final chapters of the book of Revelation tell you they'll be there as the final roll call is called out to all of humanity on earth, those who can hear and receive and be saved. So for me, there's beauty in the knowledge that God is not looking at our past failures or our sins or our mess ups.

He says, “You're still my child, and I still care for you, even though you messed up. And My grace is sufficient for you.” And in spite of, you want to chronicle Dan's sin, you want to chronicle- look at all of them. All of them failed, by the way. We saw this when we were studying the tribes going into seize. They all failed to do what God told them to do. And yet God still says, “And there'll be a day where they'll all be reunited in one hand together.” That breastplate will be put back together. It may look different, but it will be God putting back what He started. So when, when you look at this message, there's just one concept to think about. God truly is the Alpha and the Omega. In the beginning He may have used the Urim and the Thummim, but in the end, He just needed Himself and the revelation of Himself to us. And that's what we have, which makes us incredibly fortunate.

I hope you'll be here next week because we've got a lot more detailed work to carry out, but for right now, that's my message. You have been watching me, Pastor Melissa Scott, live from Glendale, California at Faith Center. If you would like to attend the service with us, Sunday morning at 11am, simply call 1-800-338-3030 to receive your pass. If you'd like more teaching and you'd like to go straight to our website, the address is www.PastorMelissaScott.com

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Why Did God Institute the Priesthood? – The Tabernacle through the Eyes of Christ #9

There are way too many people in ministry today who are self-appointed. And when I say that, people say, “Well, sure, because you didn't want the position, and you can say that”" No, I can say that because I have seen too many people who want to partake as, we'll call it the lead figure in a ministry, but they're not willing to take everything that comes with it, and it's self-appointed, “I should be,” “I am,” versus, you know, at some point, it's kind of like Jonah. It's, it is the Jonah syndrome, okay? If God wants you to go somewhere, eventually you're going to end up going, and that includes every direction of your life.

So I think, you know, I could have said, applied to me, I could have said, “Well, I,” and I did say that, “Who am I? I'm not qualified.” I can━you fill in the blanks of all the things I said over the years. But if God has called you that's going to be something, we'll call it rather inescapable. You may actually close the door and you may think, “Well, God will leave me alone.” Then, no, God will keep nudging you for a while until it becomes a torment. And then you'll either really pass over the precipice of, “I want nothing to do with God,” or you'll give way and you'll submit.

♪ ♪ Our focus has been the instructions to build the tabernacle, to build the furnishing. But I want you to think about something, the tabernacle would not have made too much sense if God didn't plan to have some attendants, attending, performing, carrying out the work that was designed for this particular tabernacle. Now there's always this big question, why did God institute the priesthood? And there's actually several reasons, not just one singular one, the quick and easy one is, well, these would be educated or they would be schooled in God's ways and they would teach the people. That's the easy one, but there's, there are more, we'll call it subcategories in that “why,” why did God bring on the priesthood, which again typifies something pointing to something else.

The qualifications for the priesthood are listed in Leviticus 21, don't turn there, Aaron and his descendants had to be free from bodily defects. So someone who had some type of deformity, something crippled would be disqualified. And by the way, this same approach would be taken if you look at the offerings and the offerings had to be without blemish. Why? Because they pointed to something else; they pointed to Christ. You know, if you're only, I said if you only are reading the Old Testament, none of this makes any sense.

But when you know the bigger picture, you're like, that would make sense. Christ who basically took on the sins of the world, but knew no sin is in fact, fits that type of “without blemish,” both for the sacrifice, the, we'll call it the high priest, the actual act of sacrificing, the sacrifice itself. So across the board, all of these things, but I just say to you, Leviticus 21, if you read it carefully, pretty much disqualifies most people. That's a nutshell. Now okay, that's my message, let's go home. But the reason why I point this out and I say, please read this in your own time is because there are such specifics there and they all have, there's, there's a reason for everything and I don't think I could get through all of the reasons, but I think some of them are self-explanatory and a nice slow reading along with your concordance might help because there's some strange words in there you might want to look up; just saying. All right, so the duties, obviously to offer and to present the offerings and sacrifices to God.

Sometimes it was the laying on of hands, other times quite frequently it was the slaughter of the sacrifice, the, the sprinkling of the blood, to deal with the remaining portions of the offerings, the carcasses; lots of instructions in the book of Leviticus on what to do with certain types of offerings, that certain portions were kept back for the priests. Other portions were to be completely consumed, so there are all these instructions to minister and to tend to the altar, to take care of the fire (if you remember the fire, specific fire, perpetual fire), the showbread, the trimming of the wicks, the care of the golden candlestick, the incense, and in general to conduct all the practices and worship ordained by God.

The law was entrusted, and this is a, this is where we kind of begin to bifurcate some stuff, the law was entrusted to both the Aaronic line, that is Aaron and his descendants, who were given the task of basically everything that pertains to the innermost part, the inner court and of course the high priest for the inner sanctum responsibilities, and then the Levites who were given the task of instruction, of instructing the nation on God's ways. And we tend sometimes I think to homogenize this because they all had specific functions. And we find that out by something that God instructs. If you read very carefully, for example, Exodus 28.

This is about the, the clothing, but, “And take thou unto thee Aaron thy brother, and his sons with him”" that there's always this reference to Aaron and his sons. So that whole line, which I will be referring to as the “Aaronic priesthood,” and then the, there is the “Levitical priesthood” or the Levites, and then there'll be a subcategory of other folks who would be entrusted to do other, other jobs required. So we'll get to that in a minute. But for most of these people, they were completely devoted to the religious purposes of God. And this is important. Definitions will become important because a lot of times we read about; and people misconstrue this all the time. There are references to the priest being “holy unto the Lord,” and I will talk about this in a few minutes.

That is not the caricature that our modern minds make it. So if you been here any amount of time, think “set apart for God's exclusive use,” holy that way, not holy as in, “I've bleached and bathed and scrubbed and I'm pure and I don't sin,” because whoever says that like somebody actually posted something on my social media feed that said, “We, we're not sinners.” Okay, come back and talk to me when you figured out that, yeah, okay, you're━you knock yourself out there. Anyway, there's also what needs to be talked about these priests, how they were renumerated. And again, this is very important because in our modern understanding, now we're, we do not live in a barter society, not yet; that may be coming, but we don't live in the same concepts of how people operated.

So it's important to understand when God said that these would be renumerated through the firstfruits, the tithe of all the produce of the land, the firstborn of cattle, to be responsible in receiving the presentation of the firstborn males. So, firstfruits and the firstborn were directly presented to the priests, but not the Levites. This is where it gets a little muddy, and people tend to muddy this up a lot. All the tithes that would fall to the Levites, there would be a tithe out of that tithe that would go to the other priests. So it's very, very clear, but again, you've got to read it and separate because we tend to homogenize and put all the priesthood together, and they all had different responsibilities.

When it came time to move the tabernacle; I spent all this time telling you about sockets and boards and things being set up. When it came time to move or to march, guess what? The whole entire camp would have to be taken apart and properly wrapped. God had provisions for everything, coverings, and how to protect and how to carry and how many people would carry, very, very particular. So this increased the number of participants that would be included in the priesthood. We'd get, we'll get to know some of these other names, the Kohathites, the Gershonites, the Merarites, who would have their part in mostly a lot of it being transportation type related service, but they would also have other jobs to do. Of course, as I said, there was a very specific method to moving stuff, but when they arrived at their destination, guess what? They set it all up all over again. How fun, right? Imagine if you're the guy who's got the job of setting the sockets down on the ground.

Never mind. He'd be like, “Wow, again? Can God figure out when we can stop moving?” But every time they arrived at a new destination, the tabernacle, all of its furnishings would get set up again. So for this task now, we have, as I mentioned, the other members of Aaron's family who would be basically drafted into these different positions. The Levites worked more like attendants. So the Aaronites were the priests, of course Aaron being the high priest himself and his sons, and you'll always read, it's very specific, even the header in chapter 29 of Exodus says, “Dedication of Aaron and His Sons.” And I have you notice something very important. Moses is never mixed in with those instructions. He may be given the instructions to, as the mediator, to convey. And remember, this is Moses' family, but Moses is never invoked in any of these instructions, and that's very important. Moses stands apart. Now there is something that happened. There's a passage you've heard me refer to many times over about Korah's rebellion. In fact, I think I mentioned it last week or so, speaking of would God open up the earth and swallow up a couple of━would You be merciful enough to swallow up a couple of people here and there? But that incident, very interesting, because Moses says something when kind of we'll say the battle is on, so to speak, the challenge is on.

And Moses says something very remarkable, which we can glean a lot from, in terms of understanding. Remember, Korah is part of the, the Kohathites, that band from that line. And in the standoff, if you want to call it that, Moses says, “Tomorrow Jehovah will show who is His, who is holy, and will cause him to come near unto Him: and whom He will choose, He will suffer him to come near unto Him.” And that was basically a response or rebuttal to Korah basically saying, “Well, you know, we're just as capable,” a little bit like a Miriam syndrome, “We're just as capable as whoever else is doing this, so why not us?” So very interesting, because in those instructions, in that declaration, if you will, there are a lot of things we can glean about the order of things.

When Moses says, “Tomorrow Jehovah will show who is, who is His,” just put a, put a point right there, number one, “who are His by election” in this case; not self-appointment. And again, I'm, I'm going to go back and forth a lot. This may sound a little choppy, but if you follow the flow, it'll all make sense. There are way too many people in ministry today who are self-appointed. And when I say that, people say, “Well, sure, because you didn't want the position, and you can say that”" No, I can say that because I have seen too many people who want to partake as, we'll call it the lead figure in a ministry, but they're not willing to take everything that comes with it, and it's self-appointed, “I should be,” “I am,” versus, you know, at some point, it's kind of like Jonah. It's, it is the Jonah syndrome, okay? If God wants you to go somewhere, eventually you're going to end up going, and that includes every direction of your life.

So I think, you know, I could have said, applied to me, I could have said, “Well, I,” and I did say that, “Who am I? I'm not qualified.” I can━you fill in the blanks of all the things I said over the years. But if God has called you that's going to be something, we'll call it rather inescapable. You may actually close the door and you may think, “Well, God will leave me alone.” Then, no, God will keep nudging you for a while until it becomes a torment. And then you'll either really pass over the precipice of, “I want nothing to do with God,” or you'll give way and you'll submit. Boy, I'm using a lot of words that people will just go, “Oh, I can't━did you just say that?” Yeah, I just did, because that's the way it works. So the━God will show who, who belongs to Him as opposed to the self-appointed. So that's one.

The next thing He says is, “Who is holy?” Remember, who is set apart, not who is clean, who is set apart for God's exclusive use? And God has a way of sorting that out too, by the way. There's a lot of people that come and they want to be ministers and they're not willing to be exclusively; again, I'm going to get flack for this, they're not willing to be God's tool. They want to be kind of a little bit of everything. So this is very informative for anybody who says, “Well, how does this work?” I'm just telling you, God has not changed, “Who He will cause to come near unto Him,” in this case now we are a complete and royal priesthood, but back then God had said, “Only the ones that I choose to do these certain tasks.” And then we'll call it, because I've gone down the points here, the last two are related to each other in that drawing near to God in any type of service in the Old Testament, the approach to God, the act of bringing an offering or offering before the Lord at different times.

And that would also include bringing back to the people at times, the remnant that would go back to the people or something, a benediction or blessing that would come from God back to the people. So if you think about it, in these words that Moses used which I believe are in Numbers, you really get a good understanding of why God opened up the earth and swallowed up that band of people. And it's very, very clear. You know, sometimes you can read something, you pass it by, but this one makes it abundantly clear. So the offerings, also God didn't want somebody self-appointed to help themselves. And there are folks chronicled both in this book and in real life who have done just that. So now back to the reason why God put all this together. Yes, there was the necessary need to educate the people and explain to the people, but I'd like to point something out which shows you another, I'm going to debunk another one of these modern stupidities that's always put on me or I hear it and it makes me cringe.

Back in Exodus 20, we have something that makes it abundantly clear of why God implemented something. In Exodus 20, you've got the giving of the Ten Commandments and then after all that happens, in verse 18, “And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet,” I know you're saying, “Where'd they get the trumpet?” I know, “and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off. And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die. Moses said unto the people, Fear not: for God has come to prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not.

And the people stood afar off, Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was.” Now I want you to think about something, and please put this in perspective. This goes back to God's sovereignty and God's prerogative. Why were the people afraid? Well, we know what was said in times of old: if you saw God, you would die. But what separated Moses from the rest of these people? I want you to really think about this. Moses was a murderer. Moses murdered a man in Egypt, and this is the one that; no, let me add to that. He murders a man in Egypt. He spends the first forty years of his life basically living in the pleasures of Egypt. The next forty years of his life on the backside of the desert looking at donkey butts probably, okay? And the last chapter of his life he's now going to be this obedient servant to God, somewhat; we'll say 99 percent.

But I'm asking you to think about something. This is the one that God chose to be the mouthpiece. Was Moses perfect? No. More importantly, I don't read, and I can't tell you because it's not chronicled for me, but I don't read of any of these people standing at the bottom of the mount having killed a man. And yet they were afraid of God and Moses presented himself. And there's a lot right there that I said to consider. But if you want to put it in ways to focus, very clearly, God knew everything about Moses, and yet still chose Moses. This is why I won't tolerate people saying, “Well, a person in the ministry has to be,” and they fill in what they think the person needs to be.

It doesn't work like that with God. This tells you right here, take a good look at how God does things. He never chooses the popular person, because Moses had become hated. If you think about it, when he slew in Egypt, when he killed a man, the people turned on him, even though he thought he was doing a good thing. So don't get all this idea, it's all this modern crap that people want to put on a minister or a ministry and it just doesn't work like that. If you're reading this book, it's very clear and I could catalog all the people who are the least desirable, most unsuspecting, and yet Moses is the one who God speaks to at the burning bush.

Moses is the one that God chooses, and yet I don't read Moses was fearful or Moses said, “I fear God.” I mean, there was a point at first, but then of course he is talking with God, receiving the message, receiving the instructions, yet these people at the bottom of the mount, they see all this and they're fearful and they draw back. And Moses says something very interesting, “Fear not, for God has come to prove you,” and we've gone over that word before, “to prove you,” “that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not.” So just, I'd ask anybody in the sound of my voice to really pay attention to this.

Ministry, which is what I do, any type of arm of the ministry and the people who sit in, involved in the ministry, hearers, listeners, participants, again, Romans 3:23, “All have sinned,” here's a perfect example for you. But it's all in the way, if you think about it, Moses at the first said, “Who am I? I can't speak. I don't know what to say,” and then begins to have a relationship with God, much different than the people who, by the way, never cultivated; they saw everything that God did, but they never came to know who God was.

And that's another important piece of information here. So, I would just say this is kind of one of those catch-all things when people say, “Well, a minister of God,” just take a good look at the people that God chose and used who stand out as the prominent figures, and Moses, by the way, being both a prominent figure in Christianity and Judaism, yet, I seldom, if ever; and I've heard a lot of different rabbis and commentators, I seldom, if ever hear people speak on the very human Moses, the very sinning Moses who could get mad, get, get mad at the people's grumbling; actually got a little bit miffed at God, because we tend to morph these into special people, but they were just like us. And that's the other thing I want you to put note to self. So, if anybody says, “Well, I don't belong,” because somebody posted something somewhere and said they didn't feel welcomed being a part of the social universe that basically tunes in━you don't have to feel welcomed by other people.

Haven't you learned this? Other people, if we were living back in Moses' day, they'd be stoning you. Instead, now they just play cowardice, and they call you a name and they run away and hide behind a little fake handle, right? You don't have to feel welcome. You feel welcome in the Lord. The Lord makes you feel at home. That's how that works; so don't confuse the things. Okay, so the Levites and the priests had a very unique situation, back to that now, as they did not receive territory as all the other people were prescribed land that once they entered into the Promised Land, this territory would belong to this tribe and this territory to this tribe, but 48 cities were assigned to them as dwelling places, distributed among the tribes that they might teach the children of Israel all the statutes which the Lord had spoken unto them by the hand of Moses.

Thirteen of those 48 cities were designated cities of the priests. You can read about those in Numbers 35, Joshua 21, and 1 Chronicles 6. Six of those, of the 48 cities, were cities of refuge and that's another very interesting sub-subject to read about. But that could be for another day. Right now I'm trying to focus on everything that's related to the priests, the priesthood, the Levites and anything that goes along with this work. The consecration of the priests, as I think I just pointed out, you'll find it in Exodus, but the act of consecrating was not carried out until everything about the tabernacle was complete, so we're reading things that are not quite in order. So when God said, “Build Me a place to live; build the ark first, and then all the components,” basically God started from the innermost part and worked His way out. But He still had to make plain the concepts of sacrifice and offering and the function, the work of the ministers.

So these would only be consecrated when everything else was finished. So you probably, you'd be safe to say that the consecration of the priests occurred somewhere very late in the book of Exodus, if we were trying to be chronological about this, or possibly even as early, some part, I will say definitely before the book of Leviticus was written because that is the laws of the offering. By then we would have had dedicated priests, so just a note to self. The consecration had two parts to it, each having three distinct actions. So the first was the washing, clothing, and anointing of the chosen priests or recipients. The second was the need to offer a sin offering, a burnt offering, and a peace offering. And what's kind of interesting is there's a whole procedure for this. Let's see if I think I stuck this on the margins of my Bible in Exodus 29, at about the fourth verse it says, “And Aaron and his sons shalt bring unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, and shalt wash them with water.” So you've got them first being washed with water.

In the fifth verse it is their clothing, “Thou shalt take the garments, put them upon Aaron the coat, the robe of the ephod, the ephod, the breastplate, and gird him with the curious girdle of the ephod,” think of that as more like a belt because it's strange to refer to it as a girdle in our modern verbiage, “thou shalt put the mitre upon his head, and put the holy crown upon the mitre.” And then the last but not least in verse 7 is the oil; so you've got water, clothing, and oil as the distinct parts, and then finally we would move on to read about how they would take the blood of an animal that would be slayed, specifically designed. The blood would be applied to the altar. And then of course the blood would be applied to the right ear, the right thumb, and the right big toe of the priest. And I've covered this before, symbolically you kind of get the idea that the blood on the ear, on the right ear; the right is always considered the side of power.

So the right for listening and obedience, the hand to work, and the foot as the walk, we would say our walk of faith. So you've got that as well as part of the ceremony. As I said, the clothes, the anointing oil, and then the anointing oil, there's a whole detailed recipe for that which would be myrrh, cinnamon, calamus, cassia, along with olive oil, and that would be poured on Aaron's head. Now let me stop right here because I've said to you through all of these teachings, everything points to Christ in some way, shape, or form.

And of course Christ, we know if you go right━read the book of Hebrews in the New Testament, the reference is unmistakable even if we didn't have the book of Hebrews to see that Christ is our high priest, functioning for us just like the high priest did except we don't need these repeated exercises or ceremonies. He did it once and for all. But functioning as our high priest, and then you've got the anointing part to the priest pouring the oil upon his head, which interestingly enough there is not a clear mention of the sons, but specifically to Aaron. So think about that. The high priest is anointed and that oil will take the place of the Holy Spirit which is obviously not poured out at this time, so we'll call it the unction of the Spirit, the ability to function within that realm. And here's another interesting one of these things that I'm going to tell you. See, if you're not reading this and understanding there may be a breakup in events, they're not laid out chronologically.

Remember I've said to you in the book of Exodus you've got events of coming out of Egypt and then you see Moses receiving the tables of stone, and right in the middle of the book of Exodus we have the golden calf event that happened, right? So you've got to put all this in perspective that this would have been kind of behind in Aaron's past as well, him participating in succumbing to the pressure of the people to have something to worship while Moses was up on the mount, so think about that as well when we talk about imperfect servants. Moses was not that and if you look at Aaron's behavior he was not that. A real man of God or a person of God, a servant of God would have said to the people, you know, “We need something to worship.” “Hell no! Just shut that down. It's not happening. We're going to wait for Moses.” But I just want you to think this happened before the dedication and consecration.

So this is in Aaron's past and not a very good look, if you will, if we were looking to, ah, we're going to look at the résumé of the incoming priest: “Oh, I see, he had a golden calf event here.” So, all right, what we have though, the priestly functions that were consecrated, if you will, the introduction; it's Moses. But Moses is not part of that. So I always want you to remember something. Moses stands separate, Aaron and his sons are separate, and then the Levites are separate. And this is important because a lot of times we tend to just kind of blend everything together, but they all had specific tasks and functions. The description of the priest's clothing begins in Exodus 28 beginning at verse 2, “Thou shalt make holy garments for Aaron thy brother, for the glory, for glory and for beauty.

Thou shalt speak unto all them that are wise hearted, whom I have filled with the spirit of wisdom, that they may make Aaron's garments to consecrate him, that he may minister unto me in the priest's office. And these are the garments which they shall make: a breastplate, an ephod, and a robe, and a broidered coat, mitre, a girdle: and they shall make holy garments for Aaron thy brother, his sons, that they may minister unto me in the priest's office. They shall take gold, blue, purple, scarlet,” or red, “and fine linen. They shall make the ephod of gold, of blue, of purple, of scarlet, fine twined linen, with cunning work.” So here begins the description of all the clothing.

And of course I described these two shoulder pieces joined at two edges thereof, the curious girdle; think of that more as a belt, which is upon the ephod, if you will, to kind of keep everything together, and then there again, gold, blue, purple, scarlet, fine, twined linen. “Thou shalt take two onyx stones, and grave upon them the names of the children of Israel: six of their names on one, and six on the other that rest on the other stone, according to their birth,” so in, basically in birth order.

“With the work of an engraver in stone, like the engravings of a signet, thou shalt engrave the two stones,” all the names are going to be put upon it. “And thou shalt take the two stones,” put them on the, “upon the shoulders of the ephod for stones of memorial unto the children of Israel: and Aaron shall bear their names before the LORD upon his two shoulders for a memorial.” I want you to stop and think about this for a minute. So these six and six are basically the names of all the tribes of the children of Israel, so twelve in all. And when the priest is going to be wearing this garment and also the breastplate which will have the twelve stones on it, this will be always becoming or being presented before the Lord.

So I want you to think about something, because it seems a little bit like, wow, that must be very blingy. But what it was, if you think about it, carrying the weight of the people on one shoulder and carrying basically the people in your hearts. That's symbolic meaning, and it takes me immediately to our great Shepherd, and the picture of Him going after the one lamb, placing it upon His shoulders.

But it's the same thing, both heart or chest and shoulders. So it seems a little strange because you've got all these strange, we'll call them approach to making garments. For example, he goes on to say, “and thou shalt make ouches of gold”" or settings of gold, “two chains of pure gold at the ends; of wreathen work shall thou make them, fasten the wreathen chains to the ouches,” or to the settings. “Make the breastplate of judgment.” And that's another thing that is seldom, if ever, people talk about the breastplate, but they don't use the full word, “breastplate of judgment with cunning work, after the work of the ephod thou shalt make it gold, blue, purple,” and we go on with, and I've told you all the colors. You can go back into previous messages and refer to what the colors or the materials are for.

“Foursquare it shall be being doubled; shall span the length thereof, shall span the breadth thereof. And thou shalt set in, in its settings of stone, four rows of stone,” and then it goes on to tell “the first row shall be sardius, topaz, carbuncle, first row,” second row, giving all the stones, which we're going to talk about in a minute. Now if you keep going down, verse 21, “The stones shall be with the names of the children of Israel, twelve, according to their names, like the engravings of a signet, every one with his name shall be according to the twelve tribes.” So this is all the instructions of, all the way down to the hem of the bottom of the garment for the high priest.

It's very detailed. There's a lot of information there. Why I think this is very intriguing, everything has meaning here. So as I said, the shoulder stones, if you will, and it's kind of interesting, because these people came and they were prescribed ways before God in the offerings: sin, trespass, given all the different offerings, but it was still the burden of the high priest to bear their names, so basically bearing them and bringing them in to the place they could not go.

Now we don't have that anymore. Each person stands alone and before God. We don't need someone to stand in between. This is why it's very frustrating when I talk to a lot of people who are still in the mindset that you need a, an intermediary person here on earth to go to God and I'm sorry, it's not there. It was there in this Testament, but Christ became the mediator for us, the only mediator you'll ever need.

It doesn't talk about Mary being the mediator. It doesn't talk about anybody else but Jesus who is, if you want to say the go-between, but He's the direct line. There's nothing in between that for the believer. I don't know why that's so hard for people to understand. Okay, the breastplate in the Septuagint is translated logion, which is very interesting because if you look up that word, it says “oracle,” and I'm not sure if they might have been referring to what went additionally into that breastplate. With the 12 stones there were something very peculiar, which I will not get to today, but we'll talk about the Urim and the Thummim, which those, we'll call them apparatus if you will, I guess would give guidance in some ways.

So I think that the Septuagint basically took the logion, “oracle” to attach on, not to the stones, but onto these interesting, whatever you want to call them, but the Urim and the Thummim. So that's one thing. And then of course, what, where were these stones found? All of these stones, but the two peculiar ones, which is another mystery that we'll have to talk about. And then the names, as I said, that would appear on the stones. So for example, and please do not do the traditional thing where people will read the stones and then think, “Oh, and that's this color,” because it's not as easy as that. If you start investigating from the Hebrew and you try and look these things up, you're going to pull your hair out. So for example, carbuncle, which is the first stone I'm going to talk about, which would be related to Zebulun. And what is said about the carbuncle in Hebrew is derived from a root used for “lightning” or “glittering,” and the Hebrew word is bâreqeth, a stone that glittered or was like light.

The late Dr. Driver did not translate the stone as carbuncle, but said it should be referred to as “rock crystal,” because it would flash with a great color spectrum. No one is actually sure, a lot of these stones, no one is actually sure of the correct━and trust me, if you start getting into the linguistics of it, you're just going to be very frustrated. So I'm warning you if you decide to go down that pathway, you could say, “She said so.” The Septuagint and Josephus seem to prefer the rendering of this carbuncle as snaragdos, which is emerald.

Don't ask me. And Pliny spoke of at least 12 different varieties of this stone, so not sure what you do with that, but that's why I said it's not cut and dry. But there's, there's relevance to all this. And let me tell you what the relevance is. So back in Genesis 30, we read about when Zebulun came into the world, and Leah says, “God hath endued me with a good dowry; because I have born him six sons: she called his name Zebulun.” The name, his name, all the names mean something. His name means “dwelling.” If you keep reading, when Jacob is about to die, Jacob/Israel is about to die and blesses his children, he says that Zebulun would “dwell at the haven of the sea; and that he should be a haven for ships; and his border shall be unto Zidon.” If you keep reading, because Moses will do another blessing on the rest of the tribes as well, Moses says, Zebulun, along with Issachar, “Rejoice Zebulun, in thy going out; and, Issachar, in thy tents.

They shall call the people unto the mountain; there they shall offer sacrifices of righteousness: for they shall suck of the abundance of the seas and of the treasures hid in the sand,” Deuteronomy 33. So evidently Zebulun had some attachment to the sea, to the portion of water, maybe a place of safety for ships. And minimally, if you want to take everything that's said between Jacob and Moses, it might be a combination of two things, but they would be seen possibly as people dwelling, almost like lighthouses, if you will, “safe haven of ships,” calling the people, because if you read the rest of what Moses says, calling the people unto the mount, which will be those being called to worship. So very interesting that if you want to kind of put it into a pictorial thing, Zebulun might be seen as a lighthouse or a light bearer.

So I, in where it lists the stones, I kind of put down these little ideas that might help, that give some idea, because when you look at all the stones and, and/or the names and what they represent, there's a picture being painted, and that picture's pretty interesting. The next stone is topaz. A stone, again, don't think traditional, how you under━if you know stones, and you're into any type of precious stones, gemology, whatever; do not think traditional here. This stone is described as yellowish, greenish, brownish, from the Hebrew word. Try that one on. Pitdâh in the Hebrew, meaning “engraved,” this stone bore the name of Issachar upon it, Issachar's name in Hebrew connotes “recompense” or “reward.” And so, again, another interesting thing, when I started looking into this, I noticed something. Do you remember when God is speaking to Abram, and He says, “Fear not, Abram, I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward,” you'll find a cognate of Issachar's name. Every time you find “reward,” you find his name attached there. It's very interesting.

Or if you go to the Greek interpretation of this stone, it is “to seek.” So you could, maybe if you wanted to combine the two meanings, I'm not sure that that's doable: a reward for seeking diligently. But nevertheless, again, interesting, I put a little note, “reward” or “recompense.” So we have first the light bearer, like lighthouse; light bearer, reward or recompense. The next one is sardius, which is the Hebrew 'ôdem. That stone is Judah's stone, the tribe of Judah, their stone. And fascinating, this one is really actually very interesting because 'ôdem, if you are familiar with Hebrew, Hebrew does not have vowel letters. It has the vowels underneath, so you'd have to know what the vowels are. So this word 'ôdem is very much, could be very much read as “Adam,” “Edom,” so either like the first man, Adam, or the color red, and interesting that it's attached to the tribe of Judah that ultimately takes us to Christ.

So you've got the reference of Christ the last Adam, and many references in the benediction from Jacob/Israel regarding Judah, a lot of it is regarding wine, the color red, the blood of grapes. I find this very fascinating: “Binding his foal unto the vine, and his ass's his colt unto the choice vine; he washed his garments in wine, and his clothes in the blood of grapes: his eyes shall be red with wine,” so there's very interesting connections here. And I probably at some point will go back and deal with that prophecy because it's got so much in it. Do you think there's any accident here that hundreds, and I━how many generations before Christ, the mention of “choice vine, washed his garments in wine,” everything connected to the vine, to the blood of the vine? And then you read in the New Testament where Jesus says, “I am the true vine, and my Father the husbandman.” And all of these interesting connections that happen hundreds of years apart, and yet God is saying, “I don't know why people can't see these connections.

They're right there.” All of the information regarding each and every tribe, which we've covered, and then you put the stones with that, really build an interesting picture. So we know Judah's name is “praise,” right? And it says that “your brothers will bow down and praise you.” It's very interesting as well how anyone could not see this. The world who looks to Christ, what does Paul say? “Every knee should bow and every tongue should confess,” if that's not the concept of praise from the one who heralded out of Judah, I don't know what is. So all of these almost lead you back to concepts, they are basically all New Testament, but they're all there on the stones with the names, giving you all of this information. I just say this one last thing because there's so much if you go back to read both what is said from Jacob/Israel and from Moses, because both times there have benedictions given to each of the tribes or blessings or we'll call them informational pieces that are applicable in prophecy even.

The interesting thing about this is that we have basically the concept in the New Testament, “Behold the Lamb that takes away the sins of the world,” everything that's attached to the blood, the shed blood. So all of the words that are basically in the benediction or the blessing point you to Christ; everything points to Christ. It is what it is, if you don't like that, but that's the best way I can tell you is that's how you see Christ and everything.

The next stone is diamond. That is Gad's stone. The Hebrew word may carry the meaning of “to break” or “to bruise” other stones, the ability to break or to bruise others or to scratch others. This one's kind of interesting because Jacob says the following regarding Gad, he says, “A troop shall attach him, but he shall drive them back at the last.” And Moses goes on to say, “Blessed be he who enlarges Gad, he dwelleth as a lion, and teareth the arm and the crown of the head.” It goes on to say, “He saw that the firstfruits were his, for therein the portion assigned by the lawgiver, he was securely located, and henceforth as leading people to execute the justice of Jehovah and his judgment with Israel.” So kind of interesting, attacked by his enemies, yet overcoming; enlarged or increased, remember the words kind of resonating from Moses' mouth, the fear that perhaps some of these people might get wiped out in battle; and he was right, by the way. I like if you kind of look for the meaning of this diamond in other parts of the Scripture, there's something that God says to Ezekiel.

He says, “As an adamant harder than flint.” If you look in a lexicon, “diamond” and “adamant” will be related; “I have made thy forehead,” so “I've given you a strong head; you're a hardhead,” all right, “fear them not, neither be dismayed at their looks, for they will be a rebellious house,” adamant, as I said the same word in the lexicon as diamond, meaning “impenetrable hardness.” So I'm going to say what we might take away from that is the fortitude we get. If we're putting this all into a New Testament appropriation, the fortitude that we get, that God might ground us the tenacity and the ability to break down or to break apart or to scratch.

And I mean in the sense of fighting the good fight and overcoming, as we are told in Christ, we overcome all these things. So, next stone is even more interesting. The next stone is sapphire related to Simeon. And this one is kind of a little bit mind-boggling for me. I don't care where you get the word either from the Greek or the Hebrew. From the Greek it is “to polish,” “to right,” or “to number,” or “to cut off and divide.” The stone seems to be the same as what's being described as what's under God's feet in Exodus 24:10. Write that down, look it up at another time. But we have the image of the stone itself. I don't necessarily think it's specifically sapphire, because it's blue with some type of gold speckling in it, which reminds me more of something that would, if you know stones, maybe a little bit more like lapis lazuli than sapphire, but whatever.

Here's what's interesting though. In Ezekiel 1:26 and Ezekiel 10, the same word is used. Let me show you, because otherwise it just, it doesn't make sense. Let me show you this. The word appears again, and it seems that there's a correlation now. There's a pattern of, when a word appears, you've got to look at it properly; 1:26 in Ezekiel, “And above the firmament that was over their heads was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of sapphire stone: and upon the likeness of the throne was the likeness as the appearance of a man above upon it.” And if you turn to Ezekiel 10, you're going to read the same thing.

Ezekiel 10 says, “And I looked, and, behold, in the firmament that was above the head of the cherubims there appeared over them as it were a sapphire stone, as the appearance of the likeness of a throne. And he spake unto the man clothed with linen,” so you get the idea. And then in Exodus 24:10, this is what they saw under, basically under God's feet. So somehow this stone, don't ask me to explain this, because I don't know, I don't have the answers to everything, and I'm very forthright in saying it. But somehow this stone, we know blue is the color of eternity, but somehow this stone is attached repeatedly in Scripture to God's throne. That's mind-boggling, because there's no, nowhere else do we have indicators of something, you know, we don't get these details like somebody said, “Well, God looked a certain way,” or “The angel looked a certain way.” We don't get these type of things unless you're taking apart things and then reconstructing them.

And you can see clearly here that there is a pattern. So this stone has something to do with God's throne. I'm thinking, when we get to see that throne, I think it's going to be a beautiful blue-colored, probably unbelievable coloring to it, but anyway, that as I said, the stone there, connected to Simeon. You've got the emerald, which is connected to Reuben. And if you remember, and I've talked about this and I'm sure you've read about this, but Reuben was the firstborn, but because he defiled his father's bed, his birthright was given to the sons of Joseph, and the genealogies not to be reckoned after their natural order. So repeatedly we're told, basically he lost his space. He lost his chance because of what he did. Even Moses, in the time of prayer, in that thirty-third chapter of Deuteronomy, “Let Reuben live, and not die, let his men not be few,” so there's something to this in understanding, whatever happened back in Reuben's day, carried forth to this tribe.

Reuben's name was inscribed upon the emerald, and again, do not think emerald like you might envision it. The best description that I could get was a deep sea-green in color. And that's very rich coming from the one who's described as a man, of whom it is said is “unstable as water,” no accident, the imagery of, we'll call it deep, dangerous water, rolling tumult of the restless sea is directly attached to this person. So if you were putting notes down, you would have already light bearer, rewarder or recompense, praise, and obviously the connection to the blood, the bruising or breaking to increase or to be victorious. With the sapphire, we would call it the throne of God or eternal in purpose; Reuben, unstable. The amethyst, which is the next stone we're going to look at, which is Benjamin's stone. And here's another kind of weird twist in looking at things, amethyst, which is usually a bluish, violet kind of quartz. The Greek of this word is very, very interesting.

We say in English, we say “amethyst.” In Greek, “a,” when you put “a” in front of the tongue, it throws it in reverse. And methustos, so “not drunken,” is actually the word translated into the Greek; “amethyst” in English, amethustos, “not drunken,” from methuen, “to drink,” so not drunk. Cannot say that there's a particular incident here of, of people drinking, but I can say that repeatedly there was an intoxication of behavior as in anger. If you remember, the tribe of Benjamin, over 26,000 men faced 40,000 in battle after wronging a Levite, abusing and killing his wife. And it seems like this repeatedly, they, they had this issue of anger. And there is one commentator who used the, the term, so I'm just going to lift it from them, of “intoxicated anger,” because there's no connection to being drunk, not that I've found.

The same would be true, by the way, of Saul of Tarsus, a Benjamite whom we know, who persecuted Christians and was extremely, I think a good word would be zealous, but if you want to use that intoxicated with his religion to wipe out the Christians. So there's, there's a lot to be said. We have, there's more stones that I'd like to cover, but this isn't a, a study in gems. This is like, I gave you the names, and the names tell a story of Aaron and his sons. The stones also tell a story. And this is what's important, the, the idea that with all of their falterings, with some of their successes, it doesn't matter.

The priest, for the time that this was commissioned, the priest wore this ephod bearing two times, both on the front side with the twelve stones and on the shoulder pads with six and six, bearing the names of the people, obviously for different reasons. I, as I said, I believe what was carried on the shoulders as in bearing the weight of the congregation or the camp, and what was placed on the chest to be more like carrying the burdens of the heart of all of the issues, some of them good and some of them bad.

The greatest thing that I want to tell you though, in all of this, if you were to take all of the materials, every part, the mitre, the crown, which again are going to take us to crowns mentioned in the New Testament, every part of this has some shadow or meaning, but in the big picture, we no longer need the clothing or the regalia. Our high priest, by the way, went into the Holy of Holies once and for all, for all of us; shed His blood, so we're no longer needing the repeated sacrifices. But let's talk about even something as simple as the garments, which were needed to separate out for special use, if you will, that certain outfits were only worn on one singular day of the year.

And then I want you to think about why God would choose out, for example, one singular outfit for one day of the year, which would happen to be the Day of Atonement, the great Day of Atonement, in which our analogy to that, the Day of Covering, is the day that Christ died on the cross. And you begin to make these very deep connections to see even the clothing of the priest would become unnecessary. Why? The clothes that Jesus wore, taking up a tent of human━tabernacling in the flesh became unnecessary, if you will; necessary to be recognized, but unnecessary as He'd done the part, performed every act that was required, and therefore the fleshly body He wore to be identified with would no longer be needed.

It will be needed for a future time, I guarantee you. I said this before, I'll say it again, the people that say, “Well, that wasn't my Messiah. That's the Christian Messiah.” This is why clothing will be an important factor, not because I believe Jesus couldn't come back wearing modern garb, because I'm pretty sure that's, it won't be like the pictures we see of long flowing robes. You really think Jesus can't get with the times? I don't think He's going to be wearing a lot of colors, okay? Let's put that aside for a second. If you didn't get that, don't worry about it, okay? But what I am saying to you is the most important piece of clothing will be seeing, that body will still have to be, even though glorified, will still have to be a form that people can, the people who denied Him can look and see “This exactly was the One we should have been worshiping and looked for all this time,” and the clothing in that respect, the earthly clothing will be necessary for one last time.

But for right now, all I want to tell you is I actually love this study as it's very verbose. There's a lot in here, but what it does is, trust me, you go back and you start rereading these passages, and it's, it's almost energizing. It's not dry, it's not two dimensional, but you begin to see how every single detail God wanted exactness. Why? Because it's all pointing to something else, this is all just a shadow of what the original and type is. So if you're interested in part two, be here next week. That's my message. You have been watching me, Pastor Melissa Scott, live from Glendale, California at Faith Center. If you would like to attend the service with us, Sunday morning at 11am, simply call 1-800-338-3030 to receive your pass. If you'd like more teaching and you would like to go straight to our website, the address is www.PastorMelissaScott.com.

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The Meaning of the Silver in the Tabernacle

Each person, whether you were rich or poor, was required to pay the ransom money of pure silver, every man to pay his half shekel, clearly showing the way of salvation. And this is what's important; we don't pay to be saved; Jesus paid for us. But there's another part of this that shows you clearly each person had to come and bring their own, which means salvation, even for us, is an individual action, not a collective.

Now somebody, “My church, my group,” no, even here showing each person had to come and present themselves presenting their portion. We don't come and present a portion, but we're not saved by a group; we're not saved by a priest. It's individual. You must present yourself. That action of presenting that redemption money keeps that clear and distinct. ♪ ♪ Alright, so we are going to look at something a little bit, we're still within the tabernacle, but it's a little bit different. And this message is almost like a hodgepodge. It falls under one category, but you're going to see there's many subsections.

So don't think, oh wow, she went all over the map. There was thought in this, but it's almost like putting things together, connecting dots, if you will. So I'm starting right now in Exodus 35, if you wish to turn there. “Moses spake unto all the congregation of the children of Israel, saying, This is the thing which the LORD commanded, saying, Take ye from among you an offering unto the LORD,” key words here, “whosoever is of a willing heart, let him bring it, an offering of the LORD: gold, silver, and brass.” Interesting, gold, silver, and brass, those materials, obviously, as I've referenced, gold, the color of divinity or a reference to divinity; silver of redemption; and brass, usually of judgment. And then, of course, the colors, “blue, purple, scarlet, fine linen, goats' hair.” These are all the things that the people would bring, “rams' skin dyed red, badgers' skin, shittim wood,” or acacia wood, “oil for the light, spice, spices for the anointing oil, and for the sweet incense.” And if you keep reading, “And every wise hearted among you shall come, and make all that the LORD hath commanded; the tabernacle, his tent, his covering, his taches, his boards, his bars, his pillars, his sockets, the ark, the staves.” You just keep going and you'll get down to where it talks about even the clothes or the cloths of service; sorry, “and do service in the holy place, holy garments for Aaron the priest, the garments of his son, to minister in the priest's office.

And all the congregation of Israel departed from the presence of Moses. They came, every one whose heart stirred up in him, every one whom his spirit made willing, and they brought the LORD'S offering to the work of the tabernacle of the congregation, for all his service and for the holy garments.” And you could go on if you were going to read this in your own time straight through to the twenty-ninth verse, which it's kind of where I end here, “The children of Israel brought a willing offering unto the LORD, every man and woman, whose heart made them willing to bring for all manner of work, which the LORD commanded to be made by the hand of Moses.” Now there's something interesting in this chapter I just read and it's repeated several times.

You'll find it in the fifth verse where it says, “Whosoever is of a willing heart,” and if you read the Hebrew of these words, lev is “heart,” but the word for “willing,” nâdiyb, Strong's 5081, if you're interested you can look it up. But the definition there in the concordance, “free, liberal, noble, prince or princely willing (hearted).” And this word comes from another word. It sounds like nâdab, like one of Nadab and Abihu, the same word, right, from the same root, “to volunteer (as a soldier), to present spontaneously:━to offer freely, to offer, (to make or offer oneself).” So “princely generosity,” if you will, can be found in these passages over and over again. God starts this way. Remember I've been referencing this Exodus 25, “Speak to the children of Israel, tell them to bring Me,” and He specifically, God calls it His offering. He doesn't say it's the priest's or it's the people.

He says it's His offering, but He says, “Speak to the children of Israel, tell them to,” and fill in the blanks. So I'm going to actually flip this, this narrative for a second and show you something in the New Testament. You don't have to turn there. I'm just going to talk about it to show you that a lot of times when we read the Old Testament we get locked into, “Yes, but it was the law”" Well, the law had not yet been given. Now by, by this point that I just read out of, yes, we have, we'll call it the first law had already been given, but in the attempt when God says, “Speak to the children of Israel,” they did not know what the law was.

So I think a lot of times when I mention willful giving in the Old Testament, people automatically assume, “Yes, but they were under some form of a prescription.” No, here it's just basically willful heart, but so that we're clear on what willful heart looks like, it's not under coercion, but it can be under an order. God can say, “I want you to do this,” and the people would still have a choice to not do it. The choice of not doing it probably would result in death, just FYI. But in the New Testament, for example, just don't turn there because they're stories we're familiar with, of what I'd call princely or willful giving. The first one, of course, is probably the most famous one, the woman with the alabaster box, and she pours that gift of the most precious ointment upon Jesus, placed upon Him.

And if you think about it, the commentary that goes around this act, “Why this waste?” which is how the world normally perceives giving: “It's wasteful,” or “Somebody else will do it,” or “Don't give that much.” And we tend to, we'll call it minimalize that gift because the, what the contents of that box would have been very costly, probably the most expensive thing that she owned.

And yet it's poured out upon Jesus, and if you think about it, obviously, as it's poured out upon Him, the same person that would, by the mocking hands of a mocking crowd, bear a crown of thorns, she was pouring this out on Him basically in preparation for His death, with a vision I'm not quite sure that she fully or completely understood. Nevertheless, what she did is memorialized, and it's free, willful, I would even put it as princely giving. There was no rhyme or reason to the world looking on, yet.

She pours this ointment upon Him and somebody might say, “Well, if He's going to die anyway, or He's going to go to die, why would you waste it there?” right? You could do something else with it. That's the world. So very much misunderstood, when we talk about willful giving, princely giving, generous giving in the church, it's always grossly mischaracterized or people will put some spin on it, but God sees the heart. God looked upon that act and she's memorialized for that act in the New Testament. The other one is a nameless widow who Jesus was observing the people casting their money into the treasury, if you will, and many rich that gave; it's not as though He memorialized the rich and said, “Look at how much they've given.

Look at such a great gift they've given.” But to her, He memorialized her giving. She gave the two mites she had basically out of the money she needed. And again, somebody might look at that and say, “Well, you know, that's not real smart or that's not real bright,” but somehow a nameless woman is remembered for her sacrificial giving that's willful; she didn't do it under duress or coercion. And if you think about it, God who looks on the heart sees there was no reservation on the part of this woman to cast what she needed. Not; she didn't have excess, she cast what she needed into the pot, if you will. So when we start to look at princely giving, and I use these New Testament examples for a reason there; we're not applying any law, yet I want you to think of something.

These two individuals I just spoke about, there was also a law in place, right? The law that was the law of the people and the religious law was in place. It, you don't read that either one of these events is marked by somebody saying, “You must.” And I point that out because when we look at the children of Israel, it's easy to think, “Well, but all of these events eventually are going to sound mandated.” Even, you'll hear me talk about this later, even the redemption or ransom money that would have to be paid, the shekel or half shekel; I want you to think carefully about this because we tend to think, “Well, God said, 'I want every man of a certain age to bring this money.'” Do you read anywhere that anybody showed up and didn't? Hmm? Right.

So even though, even when God mandated something, we still have free will. There could have been people saying, “Hell no, I ain't bringing no shekel tax,” right? “And hey, let's see what happens,” right? So there's a point there. Even when there may be a prescribed amount, there still may be the willful submission in obedience to bring it. And I'm sure there was consequence━we don't read that there's consequences for not, but I'm sure that there was. So with that being said, the big question is asked, these people were slaves in Egypt. And okay, we know that livestock can reproduce very easily, right? That's not like; it doesn't take a scientist to figure that out unless you have “they” and “them” problems. But animals multiply, right? Okay, good. So we're on the same page there. Never know these days. So the big question is, when it says, “Take silver and gold and brass and all of this stuff,” they were slaves in Egypt. So you have to go, and I'm doing this for the benefit of people who say, “Well, you know, where did they get all this stuff?” It's; the Bible says where they got it.

You read in Exodus 12 and verse 35, on their way out, “And the children of Israel did according to the word of Moses; and they,” the King James says, “borrowed”━“they borrowed of the Egyptians jewels of silver, jewels of gold, and raiment.” There you go, silver and gold, “And the LORD gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they lent unto them such things as they required. And they spoiled the Egyptians.” Now, I, you know, I, I sometimes do criticize the wording of this. I don't think that they exactly “borrowed,” and I don't think they exact, exactly “lent,” but probably the word “spoiled” is, is pretty close to what we'd, we'd want to figure. So if you're asking, “Where did they get this stuff”" Think about this. If they were slaves in Egypt, they did have some possessions. We're not talking people who were possession-less, but the possessions they had wouldn't have been that great. Now they maybe would have had some livestock, and they may, may have had certain things, but not in the volume that we're going to read required to make the tabernacle.

So a couple of things are, there's the first lesson here that I want to point out. And this one is kind of important because we can read this stuff and never make an application to ourselves, and they want this one to be applied. We always say Egypt and the bondage of Egypt represents sin and the world. So the children of Israel got these riches from, essentially, from the world. The riches came out of the world to be used for the things of God. And you know, you can read this and you can say, “Well, how does this apply to me?” I just gave you an application. We live in the world. We make money in the world. And if you think about it, you can make money and you can worship money, or you can apply the principle that there are things we do out in the world to be applied to God's work.

And this is exactly the same thing. They basically took what God ordered them to do, basically “Get it from where you came from. You're going to 'borrow' from these people, and it's going to be used for My work, the tabernacle where I shall dwell, where you shall worship.” So if you can't make an application right there to Giving 101, because too many people, again, day in and day out, will talk about giving in the church and it always comes back to the same thing, “Well, you know, I don't know how this all applies.” I just told you, money taken from the world applied to the work of God.

The second thing we come across is, obviously, willing hearted, but it says, “Men and women: bracelets, earrings.” And I'm not going to say all bracelets and all earrings, but a lot of these were symbols of their former life as slaves. So they took from the world and the slavery of the world to become, essentially, whether you think of it or not, they're under, they will be under the law, but they will become free by God's liberation.

So God says, “I want you to use these things.” Now whether these earrings and bracelets fully all represent, maybe some of them were decorative and some of them were; but I guarantee you a lot of these represented their former life. So just kind of put that in perspective when we start talking about how the work of God is supposed to function. The next thing we read about, in Exodus 38 there is a reference to; let's see, 38, 38:8 regarding, you remember I just mentioned to you “gold, silver, brass.” And this is to make the? laver, “And he made the laver of brass, and the foot of it brass, of the lookingglasses of the women assembling, which is assembled at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation”" So a lot of these materials would have been used for the self. So here's another one of these that I think is very important. If you want to talk about application of spiritual, worldly, and spiritual things, these people had a choice to love self and to look at, or love looking at oneself, or to be looking at the laver of cleansing, which had a much greater significance.

One is flesh and one is spiritual. It still took, still took these women, I don't think too many men had lookingglasses back then. My, how things have changed. But the women gave up their mirrors, and try again to see there is a concept there of not worshiping self, but worshiping God. So these materials, you know, imagine if you didn't have a mirror, even the brass that they would have looked in would not have been that great of a mirror, okay? You can kind of see, kind of not.

But imagine now you're not going to see anything, but you might be actually able, think about this, if you could even approach that laver of cleansing to see yourself in the reflection of the water, which represents more of the things of God, the cleansing of God than it does of the admiration of self. So there are concepts even within the tabernacle, the, we'll call it the elements that are to be brought, to be offered that carry significance, specifically what I'm talking about is giving here. Then of course, as I was referencing the, the gold, and there's a passage back there in 35, Exodus 35:22, I believe. It has a very strange wording in the King James; 35:22 says, “And they came, both men and women, as many as were willing hearted,” it's being repeated over and over again; I don't know how you could miss that, “and brought bracelets, earrings, rings, tablets,” and now, we're not talking about computers, “all jewels of gold: every man that offered,” this is what's worded strangely, “that offered,” in your King James has an italicized “offered an offering of gold unto the LORD”" If you read that in the Hebrew, very interesting because what it says there in the Hebrew is they basically presented their gold as a wave offering.

You don't read that in the English, but it was a wave offering. And that may not really sound that big of a deal except that there were other things offered and done in wave offering fashion. And I can't help but think that this would be along the lines of, think of it, what's the most precious material even back then that a human could hold in their hands? Gold. Waving that before God, showing God the, we'll call it the value or the greatness of it, and in God's eyes looking down, it representing the divine nature.

Now maybe these people weren't informed of that just yet, but the two colliding together, the act of what it says here that “every man that offered offered an offering,” they were offering as a wave offering. The expressly showing it before God, however you want to say that, has a significance which I think if you want to say whether God was looking down to see what was being lifted up to Him. Now if we were talking about the offerings, which I probably will get into eventually, there's greater significance in detail, and I don't want to get burdened down here, but just to say it's important to recognize there are some nuances here we're not reading in the English that make these just a little bit more special in terms of how they were brought, what was brought and how it was offered.

So as I said, gold, divinity; silver, redemption; brass, judgment, and these are instances of the offerings that I've just kind of read to you. Now gold we know, we're going to find a lot of gold in the tabernacle, a lot of things are overlaid with gold, and there are a couple of items that are pure gold as we discovered going through some of the furniture. Silver is a little bit more interesting and I say a little bit more interesting, there's a lot more diverse pieces of information to put together, so two instances in the Bible where silver is exchanged for life. One of them is Joseph, right, the 20 pieces of silver, Joseph. And the other one is Judas with his 30 pieces for Jesus. It's kind of interesting, silver being the color or the metal of redemption, and only two places where we read about exchange for life, and yet it is peppered through the tabernacle.

The silver that was used in the construction of the tabernacle was taken from the atonement money. Now, I know, please don't go, “Where'd they get the money?” right? I don't want to deal with that one just yet. But write these down, I'm not going to read them, write down these Scriptures, Exodus 26:18-25, Exodus 36:23-30, Exodus 38:25-28, and in the first chapter of Numbers fills in the details of some of the ways that this temple tax or shekel was━not temple tax, that's later, that the silver shekel or redemption money was collected. There would be a census of the people. So the number of men that paid the ransom money, ransom for one soul as the Bible describes it, would have been 603,550 each paying a half shekel, so the total would have been 3,000; sorry, 301, 775; 3,001; 301,775, bleh. All right, most of this silver; you might say, “Well, what's the issue with the numbers?” I'll tell you in a minute. Most of this silver would have been used to hold up the boards. And remember I used in one of the messages back there, I used the word “socket”" or “ankles,” okay? So each board on the exterior wall of the tabernacle would be supported by two ankles, if you want to call them that, of silver.

Each ankle would have been the contribution of 6,000 men, making each board supported by 12,000 men's redemption money. Why is that important? Of course, I'm, I like to mess around with numbers here, so I was looking at that and there, there is something remarkable there. If you take the number of 48 boards times 12,000 gives you 400-and; 576,000, but more importantly, if you divide that by 4, it gives you 144,000, which is an important scriptural number. We'll come back to that maybe. A little dangle there and we move on. All right, so there were 100 talents forming 100 sockets and that would be 171,775 shekels. Each socket, as I said, would bear the ransom money of 6,000 men, so 12,000 holding up for each board. And then if you look at the numbers again, this is why I said it's inescapable, the numbers, the material. So we know 6 being the number of man, 12 if you want the number of divine government, or 6 being the number of man multiplied obviously in the tens, so 1,000, and/or times 2 making 12, adequate witness.

However you want to add it up, I don't care. What's important is at the bottom of everything in this structure, the symbol is redemption, the bottom of this complete structure. Remember, God said, “I want you to make Me a house where I'm going to dwell among you.” And that's awesome. That's amazing that God would deign to condescend to dwell among men, but the whole premise of the Tabernacle, the whole perimeter is routed in one simple concept: at the foundation, redemption, the whole thing.

So it's inescapable. In other words, underneath it all, God can say, “I'm going to come dwell among men,” but it was necessary for this whole thing to be presented for a purpose. God could have said, “I'm going to dwell among men,” but we are unholy, we're unclean, we're━keep adding to the list. So this representation is pretty powerful. And yes, I know in the New Testament we read what Peter says, we're not redeemed by things like silver and gold, but by the blood of Christ. And there you go; if you start looking at it, they didn't have that yet. So you've got the concepts of redemption, the vicarious sacrifices that would be offered. And he goes on, by the way, Peter, to say the, the traditions received from your fathers.

In other words, they could never redeem, but they were pointing to something. And I don't know if I can say this enough and it could be understood enough, but what's sad is that even the New Testament writers, there was no Christianity while all this is being written. Yes, they were followers of Christ, but the faith itself had not yet come to be what we know it today. So the writers, the writers are steeped themselves in Jewish tradition. That these writers could turn around and say, “You're not redeemed with these things, but rather,” it's almost like saying, “For the rest of you, can you not hear what was being said?” And I guess not, right? But anyway, that's a story for another day. So the whole tent itself, you've got the concept of sacrifice, you've got the concept of redemption.

We see that God was not going to miss any opportunity to teach how our approach would be. Remember I said to you, you've got to come to the door, and the door for us is Christ. And from the moment you pass through the door or you're looking at the door, you're confronted with the holiness of God and what's rooted in the ground, which is redemption, silver. So these lessons, you, you kind of, like I said, everywhere you turn, you're confronted with them. Each person, whether you were rich or poor, was required to pay the ransom money of pure silver, every man to pay his half shekel, clearly showing the way of salvation. And this is what's important; we don't pay to be saved; Jesus paid for us. But there's another part of this that shows you clearly each person had to come and bring their own, which means salvation, even for us, is an individual action, not a collective.

Now somebody, “My church, my group,” no, even here showing each person had to come and present themselves presenting their portion. We don't come and present a portion, but we're not saved by a group; we're not saved by a priest. It's individual. You must present yourself. That action of presenting that redemption money keeps that clear and distinct. Now, I mentioned that Hebrew word as I said, nâdiyb, or nâdab, both of those words, “to volunteer as a soldier” is another one of these definitions if you look up the word. And I think this is interesting because these people who paid the redemption money to kind of be encamped around God, God being at the center of everything, I want you to think about this, they also ultimately became part of God's fighting force.

They became; their payment before God didn't make them that, but the word carries the connotation of a soldier, someone who signed up for duty. So just by virtue of them participating, if you think about it, how they encamped, they weren't having a camping trip. Eventually they were going to have to go in as soldiers, as we'll call it the army of the Lord to get rid of the people out of the land. They were fighting or, or designed to basically fight as they went into the land. So don't think they were just camped out there. So the Hebrew word carries meaning just way beyond the act of giving the ransom money. And for us, how that would be applied if for them being encamped around and God is at the center dwelling; Christ becomes the center of our life.

And we read and pick up in the New Testament how basically we are supposed to by faith, one of the passages talks about being a good soldier. That is the warfare that we ensue. We're not here to, I think how some people have depicted Christianity as this, it's like a caricature of what they did in the wilderness. They all got together and they had a Bud Light; just joking. No, they didn't do that actually, but just checking to see if you were asleep, by the way. Some of you are sitting there going, but much like when we come to Christ, or Christ finds us and Christ is at the center of our life, like the center of being in the camp, there is a sense if you're really connected to the word that there's a battle, an ongoing warfare. And that kind of puts every Christian in the framework of being a soldier. So that word nâdiyb in the Old Testament is very much applicable both ways, both for the giving, the presenting, the willful heart, and also as someone who basically is now enlisted or part of a company of people that belong to the fighting forces of God.

Now one more thing about the ransom money that we find in Exodus 30; in Exodus 30, beginning at verse 11, which is where if you read it says, “A Tax for the Tent,” kind of interesting the way that's worded. “The LORD spake unto Moses, saying, When thou takest the sum of the children of Israel after their number, then shall they give every man a ransom for his soul unto the LORD, when thou numberest them.” You know what I find remarkable about this? That word where it says “ransom” is a cognate, if you will, or close relative to the word we looked at last week for Kapporeth, “covering” when I talked about the mercy seat.

This is, that word is attached to that. So it's very interesting that everything that really would pertain to redemption had a connection to this Kapporeth, even in the language. We don't read it in the English that way, but the Hebrew is very clear. Those words are connected, the Kapporeth, kappor, they're all connected. So “every man a ransom for his soul unto the LORD, when thou numberest them; that there be no plague among them when thou numberest them. They shall give, every one that passeth among them that are numbered a half shekel after the shekel of the sanctuary: (a shekel is twenty gerahs:)” or gerahs, “and a half shekel shall be the offering of the LORD. Every one that passeth among them that are numbered, from twenty years old above, shall give an offering unto the LORD.

The rich shall not give more, the poor shall not give less than half a shekel, when they give an offering unto the LORD, to make atonement for your souls. And thou shalt take the atonement money of the children of Israel, and shall appoint it for the service of the tabernacle of the congregation”" I cannot repeat that enough. See, again, I really didn't intend for this to be a message on giving. I wanted to talk more about silver, but everywhere you look, you see it clearly. The money collected, there's a purpose for it: “shall appoint it for the service of the tabernacle of the congregation; that it may be a memorial unto the children of Israel before the LORD to make an atonement for your souls.” And that money, as I said, would have been used primarily for things within the construction of the tent, specifically, as I just referenced, those sockets or ankles at the bottom.

There are other silver items that I will probably reference in a little bit here, but I just think this is pretty amazing, because even here where God says they are to do this, they are to “give an offering unto the LORD, to make an atonement for your souls,” I'm not reading this the way I might have read this 25 or 30 years ago: This was a mandate. Yes, it definitely is, that's what they're supposed to do. But the reason why I say I can't really look at it as a mandate is if God said, “This is so that you might live,” you'd be pretty dumb to not go, “Okay,” right? It's kind of a no-brainer.

And I think that's why we're not reading that somebody said, “No, I'm not bringing my temple tax. I'm not bringing my money,” okay? And this is part of the problem of how we approach the things of God today. There's too many people; remember what I started with; too many people thinking, “I make money out in the world and that's my money,” and they use all these phrases. And yes, that's the way the flesh speaks. But God gave a pattern that what you do out in the world, there should be a purpose for that. We can't, we're not able to live apart from the world. We are, that's, we're surrounded by it. And most of us go out into the world and make our living in the world, but you are to make that living and then you come back and you're looking at the things of God, how to manage your household in a godly way, all the things that can be applied that way.

The same thing is true of things that can be applied to self and the worship of self and self-deification versus those very same things applied to the house of God and the work of God. And again, here, somebody might say, and this is the argument that I, I tell you, I kid you not, if I could just have a recording where I could press and give the answer because it, it seems like every single week there's somebody who will say, “Well, but, but, but, well, the tithes and offerings, that's, that's Old Testament.” And you're completely missing the point.

God said, “I made you.” You know, I love that people say, “Oh, freely give, freely receive,” and everything's, we're just a bunch of hippies. Tell me what was free in your salvation, because it costs something somewhere. It may not cost you, but it costs something somewhere. That's how God says, “This is My way.” And if you can't understand that, I don't even know why you're even bother. When people say, “Oh, you know, well, God wants to bless you”; He does want to bless you. I believe that there are people that come into the church or they come into some good fortune or whatever it is, but they never come to learn the lesson. God will bless efforts. God will bless your hands. God will bless your heart and your mind to be able to be the best at what you do.

But those blessings also come with, do you turn around and recognize God in those things, or is it just about, “I was in Egypt and I got the stuff of Egypt and I left Egypt and while I was on my travels in the desert, you know, I was really blinged out and I had a lot of nice clothes and everybody's complimented me on the way I looked.” And, or when it came time for the service of God, I recognize that these things were granted to me for that purpose. That's always the missing ingredient with modern day giving, people don't get that; and all the arguments that I've talked to you about over the years. So anyway, there's something very unique about this, this ransom of the soul. And that is something that's taken up in the New Testament which can be confused to something else. But I want to show you even where something can be slightly confusing how to make these connections.

Turn with me, if you will, to Matthew 17. It's a passage that people will not understand clearly. And you read it and there's some stuff in there that bears really looking at closely. So this is right after the experience, if you will, of the Mount of Transfiguration, all right. So, I want you to keep in mind that there's a fresh revelation in Peter's mind about who Christ is or what he saw. It says, “When they were come to Capernaum, they that received tribute money came to Peter and said, Doth not your master pay tribute?” Now some people think that that's taxes like Roman taxes, but hold that thought for just a minute. “He saith, Yes.

And when he was come into the house, Jesus prevented him, saying, What thinkest thou, Simon? of whom did the kings of the earth take custom or tribute? of their own children, or of strangers? And Peter saith unto him, Of strangers. Jesus saith unto him, Then are the children free. Notwithstanding, lest we should offend them, go thou to the sea, cast a hook, take up the fish that first cometh up; and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money: that take and give unto them for me and thee.” So a couple of things to note here, and I'm sorry, there's a lot of sub-things that I have to point out, but it, you missed the message otherwise.

So the first thing is, don't think that this is some Roman regular tax. By virtue of Him saying, “Lest they be offended,” two things, “Of whom do the kings of the earth take custom or tribute? of their own children, or of strangers?” And the answer of Peter, “Peter saith to him, Of strangers.” That tells you kind of cryptically, we're not talking about some state tax. This goes back to some, something if you want to call it of a religious nature, and I'm sure that the tax probably morphed over time and became something, this would be the temple tax, but I want you to pay attention to a couple of things here. The first thing is, look at, in verse 25, look at how Jesus replies to Peter, “What thinkest thou, Simon?” Every time that Jesus goes back to referring to “Simon,” it's usually Simon who slipped back into the flesh. Remember we're talking about his name being Cephas or being known as Peter. So it's interesting that this, in the, in the verse above it says, “They came to Peter.” But when Jesus replies, He says, “What thinkest thou, Simon?” And there's, the questions that are asked almost as if to say, “What were you thinking when you answered them? What was your thought process?” Now, it might not be clear abundantly, but there are two things that, that come to my mind when He says, “Go and get the money and take it and give it unto them for me and for thee.” Now, if it, if we were talking about tax taxes, it would have been “Render unto Caesar,” where He says that somewhere else, but He says, “For me and for thee,” that has to be a religious tax.

That's number one. Number two, as I said, pointing out Jesus addresses him by his old name several times over where he slips back into the, we'll call it the fleshly dumb, “Uh, why are we here, Boss?” mode, okay. He addresses him in that way. And then there's something else that I find kind of interesting, because Jesus replies to him “of strangers?” But listen carefully. Then He says, “Then are the children free.” Well, that kind of makes me think of what Jesus said somewhere else when He says, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.” It means anyone who has seen Him who has seen the Father would make you a child of God and not a stranger anymore. And He says, “You go pay the tax, strangers pay the tax. You go pay the tax for me and for you.” So what makes this kind of crazy, Paul explains this a little bit better, and I know this may be a little bit choppy, but bear with me. Paul says, “If we have known God, or rather we have, or we are known of God, we are no longer aliens or strangers, but children and heirs.” So Jesus was making a point here, “Go on and do what you need to do, lest anybody be offended.” But on top of all that, there's a message within the message, which is when He says to “Go, cast a hook,” basically the first fish that comes out, up out of the deep.

Poetically in the Bible, poetically, you see, you'll find it in places like Micah and other place, the depths of the sea is sometimes represented as teeming with life, but also representing death. So out of the depths of the sea, which in this case is being presented as analogous to death, comes the money, the redemption money, or the atonement money, or the temple tax money to redeem. And that's kind of interesting because think about it, the Lord could have just said, at a wave of a hand, “Here's the money, go take it and go.” But the exercise in and of itself almost has a picture attached to it. Why? Because the few verses before this happens, Jesus is talking about His death and Resurrection. I don't think it's an accident when you step away in a bird's eye view to see that when He says, “Go get that money,” coming out of the depths of the sea, being brought up, that that money will be used, what would be analogous to ransom money for the soul, even though Jesus did not need to be ransomed; He was our ransom, as a type showing something in a picture way.

So we can paint all of these pictures, but when you go back to look at the redemption money, even where its placement to the ground, something that had to be in the ground to come up, always is painting the same picture over and over again. It's inescapable that something must be to the depths in the ground, must die, must come up to be redeemed, even in this short, brief picture that Jesus exchanges with Simon Peter. So it's kind of interesting. I like the, the ideas here, but if you go back to look at the temple; or I'm sorry, the half shekel ransom money, it's important to understand something. They had to bring this money, and the money would be turned into something else. And no one would say, by the way, you wouldn't have anybody saying, you know, at the base here, there's the sacrifice of 12,000 men on one board. So you think anybody would walk by those boards and say, “What part of my action contributed to the picture of redemption?” You wouldn't be able to.

It's all put together. It's all blended together. The same thing, we have no part in that. It's all Christ. We come. He lets us come, but we have no part in the action. Now, I know people say, “Well, it breaks down. They had to bring the money.” That's true. God had to start somewhere teaching the lesson. And He does it very well in the tabernacle. Now, if we go back, I need to talk about one more item of silver. And this one doesn't have anything to do with giving. It doesn't have anything to do with a willful heart, but it does have to do with the concept of, we'll call it soldier or presenting oneself.

But it ties into the silver, because I wanted to spend enough time talking about this. So if you want to turn with me, we're going to look at the silver trumpets, because that's a thing that's left out a lot. Let's see if we'll go first to Numbers 10. You remember, I said to you that in Exodus, we have the collection of the shekel, or the half shekel, which undoubtedly would be used for the construction of the tabernacle. Well, we have another census that's taken up. If you want to read that in your own time, which occurs in the book of Numbers, don't turn there. I'm just telling you where it is in case you want to look it up later, Numbers 3. The firstborn males of Israel were counted and numbered. The number of those was 22,273, but something very weird happens. God says, “I'm going to substitute out, minus the 273, instead of it being the total camp, I'm going to put this number towards the Levites,” which is very strange, a very strange substitution, if you will.

And God goes on to say that each of these will be redeemed at five shekels each, after the shekel of the sanctuary, which is shekel is twenty gerahs or gerahs; five shekels each. Kind of interesting, I don't know why there's this drop or this difference, but I suspect, because it is within the book of Numbers, that this collection was used to make the trumpets. We don't read of it, we don't read of them before. So I, I really believe that this is the connection to these trumpets.

Now, this is kind of very interesting. We're looking at people having to bring things, so again, silver is brought and trumpets will be made. Numbers 10, “The LORD spoke unto Moses saying, Make thee two trumpets of silver; of a whole piece thou shall make them: that thou mayest use them for the calling of the assembly, and for the journeying of the camps.” And you stop right there, because He starts out with basically giving the general reason. There are actually two right there, the calling of the assembly and when it's time to get up and march; to assemble at the door and to march.

And then there's going to be four categories additional to that broken down. But why is this important? And I have to do this here so it, it, you make the connection with me. First of all, please do not make the mistake that a lot of people have made when I peruse things, books and articles, people homogenize the shophar, the ram's horn with the silver trumpets. They are two different instruments used for two different purposes, so do not conflate them. For example, we read about the shophar, I think the first time we read about it is in Genesis. This is not a ram's horn. I just read to you, it is two trumpets of silver, and they actually have two distinct Hebrew names.

In fact, if you really want to be technical, there are three different blowing instruments in the Hebrew Bible that are the most prevalent, and they each serve a particular purpose. So this one is spelt out and the question then is asked, are these trumpets, are these the trumpets when we read about in the New Testament, the trumpets for example in the book of Revelation? And the answer to that is, yes, and most likely, but they tie together in a greater picture. So you're going to find, for example, the apostle Paul writes things like, “When the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable,” or 1 Thessalonians 4:16, which basically says, “Once the trump is blown, and then first the dead in Christ shall rise.” So let me talk about our application to the trumpets, not to be confused with shophar. Our application here is anytime the silver trumpets are being referenced, one has to think they are representational here in Numbers.

They're representational for us in a New Testament appropriation to the proclamation of the gospel, a sounding of the horns is a declaration of the word of God. Now I, I'll explain to you why in a minute, but let me break down the four categories because as you break down the four categories, it becomes clear as to why I would say that. Verses 3 and 4 of that same chapter that we looked at, chapter 10 of Numbers, “And when they shall blow with them, all the assembly shall assemble themselves to thee at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. And if they blow but with one trumpet, then the princes, which are heads of the thousands of Israel, shall gather themselves unto thee.” So stop right there and recognize one thing. We have here people gathering, that the trumpet, if you will, being the heralder for people to gather at the door before God's representative. We, someone who's preaching Christ, is putting out the clarion call of God for people to gather and assemble.

It doesn't mean that it can only be done through that method, but this application takes you there. So in other words, then God's representative appears and will speak and that's the heralding. Now we can say at a future time, the trumpets being sounded and the people who have not yet heard, they will appear at the door. That means they will appear before Christ. There's all of these applications to be made, make no mistake. Otherwise it sounds like a little bit of a nutty exercise of Doot-doot-da-doo! all right. Even the writer of Hebrews makes clear, “The congregation shall be assembled to this glorious temple not made with hands.” So it's kind of important to kind of tie all these together.

We read then in verses 5-8 that the, the sounding of the trumpets would also be a call to worship and a call to march. Let's see what it says: “When you blow an alarm, then the camps that lie on the east part shall go forward. When you blow an alarm the second time, the camps that lie on the south side shall take their journey: they shall blow an alarm for their journeys. But when the congregation is to be gathered together, ye shall blow, but ye shall not sound an alarm. And the sons of Aaron, the priests, shall blow the trumpets; and they shall blow; they shall be to you for an ordinance for ever throughout your generations.” So here we have two things, a call to worship and a call to march. And I can say again, think about this in this initial depiction, the trumpets in the New Testament realm right now, the sounding of people basically to walk according to the word of God and the same thing is true in worship.

Why do we gather if we're not opening up the word of God? So there's this constant connectivity, if you will. If you want to go down to the point of where it's going to talk about going to war, which is in verse 9, “And if ye go to war in your land against the enemy that oppresseth you, you shall blow an alarm with the trumpets; and ye shall be remembered before the LORD your God, and ye shall be saved from your enemies.” I want you to think about this for a second. We don't operate in the same fashion, but if you think about it, we do. Ephesians 6 says, “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers,” the things that are immediately around us, but not necessarily visible, those fighting and opposing forces that, if you want to put it this way, are even able to beguile some of us.

We are not fighting the war like these people were. And in fact, very interesting, there are two recorded episodes only, where the trumpet was sounded at the hand of Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the priest, as a thousand from each tribe went forth to avenge themselves against the Midianites, that's the one. The other one was Abijah and Jeroboam, where the trumpet is blown for war. Abijah was still trying to stay true to the worship of God, and Jeroboam was busy with his idolatry. And the trumpet is sounded, the priest cried out, and the Lord smote Jeroboam. And my, I just wish that God was doing a lot of stuff today like that and I told you, you know, if God would just do one thing for me in my lifetime, He's done so much, I'll never asked for another thing because I've received so much.

But if He'd just open up the earth just for like a millisecond, because there's some people I'd recommend, “You know, you've got to go look at this. That's a nice vacation spot down there. Go check it out.” Whoosh! Okay, so, you know, what's interesting is yes, there will be a day, as Paul describes, where the sounding of a trumpet will summon those, and the dead in Christ shall rise first, and there will be a period. You read it in the book of Revelation, I believe starting at the seventh chapter, where you've got seven trumpets that will be sounded and they all bring about some other dimension of, we'll call it tragedy upon the earth, or punishment, or judgment, sounding, warning.

You know, the word of God is twofold. It's, it is a clarion call to those who will hear, come, receive, and it's also judgment and warning. You don't receive it, you don't hear it, you don't want to know about it. The same word brings life to them and death to others, and that's just what the Scripture says. But what I believe in looking at this passage as we've looked at it, okay, so the silver will be the call of the redeemed. Those trumpets will call, and the people who have heard, and the people who have yet to hear will be gathered. All of these applications, by the way, you could say, well, you know, some of this is a little bit confusing, because, now today specifically, I kind of mixed a lot of things together, but there's one thread that goes through this whole message that is inescapable. As I said, if we're Christians and we are following Christ, or we're described as little Christs, or Christ followers, and the pattern is set, then I'm looking at all the ways that God has described actions, mindset, activity, from summoning the people to take from the world, to bring it into the church, or to the tabernacle, from people saying, “Quit,” God saying to the people, “You can either look at yourself, or you can have yourself cleansed” and be a part of God's program.

Right down to the last of the greatest Sacrifice of all times, which is Christ laying down His life that someone like me might live and have eternal life. So what I'm going to tell you is this picture of the tabernacle with all of its silver, gold, brass, all the colors, all the values, keep me coming back to the same essential message: Christ is at the center of it all. He was always at the center of it all. And to the, to brothers and sisters that I know who are, they can't connect the dots, as I said, I'm praying for you to see the light. But for those who do, go back and read and parse even verse by verse to see how this applies. Last but not least, if you read that in the tenth chapter, it says, “Also in the day of your gladness, and in your solemn days, in the beginning of your months, ye shall blow with the trumpets over your burnt offerings,” those, what's called a Holocaust offering, fully offered to God, “and over the sacrifices of your peace offerings; that they may be to you a memorial before your God: I am the LORD your God.” Even on the occasion of offering, the trumpet was blown, as if to say, these two things have never been anything but tied together, the declaration of the good news of the gospel and people's memorial, sacrificial, day in and day out, weekly or monthly, whatever you do, giving.

It's right there. So for all those people that like to say, “I don't see it,” I can't help you. But for those who do who can see all the dots connected, and we've got a lot more to dig into, but at least today you've got another dimension of the tabernacle, specifically focusing on silver, and the concepts attached to it. And I hope that somewhere somebody says, “Yeah, I'm beginning to see the dots being connected,” but I'm going to keep still working on those who can't just yet quite see it, because I believe once you do, you can't un-see it.

That's my message. You have been watching me, Pastor Melissa Scott, live from Glendale, California at Faith Center. If you would like to attend the service with us, Sunday morning at 11am, simply call 1-800-338-3030 to receive your pass. If you'd like more teaching and you would like to go straight to our website, the address is www.PastorMelissaScott.com.

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