December 10, 2006
I just want to read one more verse of scripture, in I Corinthians 1:18: “For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.”
EG Hymn 308 – I love to hear the story Prayer Leviticus 3:1–17 • This is the peace offering, but it is actually an offering of thanksgiving; in French it is called the sacrifice of prosperity. One word that keeps popping up is fat. All the fat was the Lord’s. Fat is a picture of energy, and what drives us. For the Lord, the drive was to do His Father’s will. This should be our drive too. Another thing mentioned in this offering is “Aaron and his sons.” They are a picture of us in priesthood to God. Now, the offerings come in a special order in Leviticus. The burnt offering comes first because it typifies the Lord’s death, by which we are saved. Then comes the meal offering, a picture of His life. Once we are saved, we can enjoy the aspects of the Lord’s life here on earth. The peace offering is a picture of communion with the Lord. All three of these are sweet savour offerings. This offering was burnt on top of the burnt offering. When the fat, the Lord’s will to do His Father’s will, was burnt on top of the burnt offering, a picture of His death, it brought a sweet savour to God. Parts of this offering belonged to the priest: firstly, the breast of the animal was for the priest to enjoy. The breast speaks of love, and we can enjoy the love of the Lord. Then there is the right shoulder, which speaks of the Lord’s strength, which we can lean on. Now let’s return to something that we see when we look at it as a communion offering. Read I Corinthians 10:16–21. We had the communion of the bread and cup this morning. We have communion in three ways: 1) with God, who sent His Son for us, 2) with the Lord, who came to die for us, and 3) with each other, as fellow priests. All three aspects are typified in this peace offering.
Hebrews 12:13–24 • What we are reading now is a warning against being turned aside or turning another aside. The writer told the Hebrews to look diligently so as not to fall away from the grace of God. They had been under law at one time, and might have a tendency to go back to it. In Galatia, someone was trying to add law to salvation when they had never been under the law. In the epistle to them, when addressing false doctrines, Paul used some of his strongest language. Why was this worse than the worldliness of Corinth? Because they were saying that the work of the Lord was not enough and that they had to add the law to make it complete. Now here, it seems that these Hebrews are going back to the law they came out of—they were falling away from grace. In v. 16, it says, “Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person.” These would mean one who would take that which was holy and treat it as an everyday thing, not giving it due respect. God considers us a holy people, because we have the Holy Spirit in us. We have a Holy Bible. We go into the holiest as we did this morning. We cannot take these things lightly. We usually thing of profanity as being swearing, or taking holy words and cursing with them. For the Israelites, the birthright was holy. We have the example here of Esau, who was willing to trade off his birthright for a mess of stew. And even though he sought it with tears later, he couldn’t get his blessing back; some things we do in life cannot be reversed. Next we have two mountains compared: Sinai and Zion. This is really the law and grace compared. At Mount Sinai, Moses received the law, the whole system to keep God’s people separated. This mount burned and stormed; this is because all of God’s revelations would strike awe into those involved; He is a holy God. And he wanted those Israelites to be holy too. V. 19—it seems that the people could hear and see what was happening at Mt. Sinai. Read Exodus 20:18–21. It frightened all the people, but Moses drew near. He knew that God did this so they would not sin. EG Hymn 147 – And did the Holy and the Just,[pic]