2 Timothy 2:20-21

“God's Great House”

(2 Timothy 2:20-21, July 31, 2011)

20 Now in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver but also of wood and clay, some for honorable use, some for dishonorable. 21 Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from what is dishonorable, he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work.

20 Now in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver but also of wood and clay, some for honorable use, some for dishonorable.

Our present bodies are temporary tents, but the Lord has a building for us in the heavens. See 2 Corinthians 5. “If the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” In 2 Peter 1:13 the apostle says, “I think it right, as long as I am in this body, to stir you up by way of reminder,...” The word that is translated “body” is actually “tent.” But the idea of our heavenly body can also be a group place, not just an individual heavenly dwelling place for your soul and spirit. There is a communal reality in heaven (and on earth) of the body of Christ.

The great house of God on earth is His church, and we want to be useful servants there. In any truly great house, there are a variety of rooms, an assortment of all kinds of furniture, and many different vessels. Not every vessel is made of gold or silver. Some are made of wood or clay as appropriate for their purposes. Some vessels have an honorable and public purpose. Others are more private, but still necessary.

21 Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from what is dishonorable, he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work.

The church on earth is on earth. We can get pretty dirty here. But we don't want to serve the guests with the uncleanness of a dying world. One day the Lord will perfectly purify His house. Men like Hymenaeus and Philetus referred to in the previous verses who were teaching a doctrine that was spreading like gangrene, bringing death to the body and not life, had to be cut off from the body in order to protect the rest of the church. They had taken the anti-supernatural teaching of an unclean world and served it up as food for the Lord's children. A necessary health inspection had protected the Lord's house by relieving those men of their preaching duties, at least for a time. To stay away from them and their teaching was necessary in order to remain clean in the Lord's great house.

We are the Lord's vessels, filled with the Holy Spirit, filled with Jesus Christ, filled with the truth of the Word that heals the sick and strengthens those who would gladly receive it. The true members of the eternal body of Christ are set apart as holy to the Lord. The glorious heavenly building today is already holy, and the coming new heavens and earth will be full of the holiness of God in every way. Why should we wait for the day of Christ to be filled with the fruits of righteousness to the glory and praise of God?

We want to be most useful to Jesus, who died and rose again for us. He is the Master of the house. We want to be sensitive to His call to be clean, and ready for every good work. The Lord is faithful. He will cleanse us from all unrighteousness. He will watch over His body, and build us up in truth and love.

Psalm 53

I don't want to live like a fool.

A fool moves about every day as if there is no God. For the fool there is no uncaused Cause who made all things. No one said, “Let there be light,” and it was so. No one judged each day of creation and called it “good.” There was no eternal Word that spoke all things into existence. There was no Spirit hovering over the face of the waters, poised to bring order and beauty into the cosmos.

For the fool, there is no present God who knows his days before any one of them happens. There is no one who knows the heart of man and who plans his steps. There is no coming judgment, no eternal purpose to unite all things in God's Son, and no salvation through the righteousness and death of a Redeemer. There is no Holy Spirit who is changing anyone by the will of God. The fool knows of no eternal Father who loves anyone.

These denials of the revealed wisdom of God in the Scriptures have consequences. Though the fool might resist the exposure of his own moral corruption, his blindness concerning his own wickedness does not automatically make him pure. The fool still has sin, even if he does not believe that there is such a thing. Since no one is the Supreme Good and Judge in his understanding, the fool moves toward a distorted understanding of self-interest and toward the natural corruptions that come from the ignorance of God.

This is where all mankind would be according to our fallen nature. “There is none who does good.” What seems to refer only to a portion of people who are not the people of God in this psalm, is actually the story of all mankind according to our sinful nature. This is very clear from Romans 3, where the Apostle Paul, using the words in this psalm, shows that all are under sin, and that no man seeks God.

I don't want to live that way. Christ have mercy!

I want to believe that a good life can be lived. This can only happen by grace. God, who prepared good works in advance so that I would walk in them, must first make me alive in Christ, and lead me to know him and to love him. This is the only way for man after the fall. All his believing in God and good living in the way of the Lord, must be from God.

As one person evaluates another we are able to identify those who we judge to be “good.” There is something to this. The serial adulterer, the schemer who steals from the elderly, and the loveless religious hypocrite commit offenses that are truly worse than the kind neighbor who doubts the existence of God. Yet “God looks down from heaven on all the children of man to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God.” In His holy eyes, there is no one who merits the title “good” after sin has entered the world through one man.

All have fallen away. Together they have become corrupt. They do evil in secret and even publicly; individually and collectively. They violate the commandments of God in thought, word, and action; in what they do, and in what they fail to do. “There is none who does good, not even one.”

This is what verse 3 tells us, yet the very next verse makes a distinction between “those who work evil” and “my people.” How can anyone be counted by God as one of His people?

A new man came, not from the dust of the earth, but from heaven. He was truly righteous in himself. His commendation came from God directly; at His birth, at His baptism, at His transfiguration, and especially through His resurrection and ascension into heaven. He is at the right hand of the Father by His own merit. We are in Him by His grace. Because of Him, and because of the grace and love of God, we are able to cry out to God as “our Father,” and He hears us. We are counted as the people of God.

The Lord cares about His children, and He will not allow them to be abused forever by those around them. God hears the cries of His chosen ones. Those who work evil against them treat them like bread to be consumed according to their own will. These enemies of Israel and the church do not call upon God. They seem ignorant of the judgment that is coming against them. God will bring their days to an end. He has rejected them. They remain in their iniquities, and they will be put to shame. The secrets of their hearts will be laid bare, and God will say, “I never knew you.”

There will come a day when salvation will come for Israel. That salvation will come out of Zion; not merely the Zion below, but the Lord's Zion above, the place of His powerful presence in heaven, where Christ, the Son of God and Son of David reigns. All who call upon the name of the God of Israel shall be saved, even those from among the Gentiles that have taken refuge in His righteous Son. The hope of that great day gives us present joys, and we rejoice in Him and in His coming. “Let Jacob rejoice, let Israel be glad.”

2 Timothy 2:19

“God's Firm Foundation”
July 24, 2011

19 But God's firm foundation stands, bearing this seal: “The Lord knows those who are his,” and, “Let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity.”

19 But God's firm foundation stands,
When all around us seems to be in flux or disorder, we need to remember that God is not panicking. He has a changeless decree and has established the coming new heavens and new earth on a very firm foundation. The one who knows both the beginning and the end knows what to do and what to say.

The topic of God's firm foundation comes up here in the context of a very puzzling and troubling occasion. People that have been a part of the church have begun to believe and teach dangerous doctrine about the resurrection. How could it be that two well known people to Timothy and Paul have embraced the false idea that the resurrection has already come? How could the sovereign God allow this to happen?

bearing this seal:
But God's firm foundation stands. It has a seal on it, a solemn pair of sentences.

“The Lord knows those who are his,” and,
The first sentence affirms that God knows His people. We belong to him. He loves us with an everlasting love. Our names were written in his book before the world began. Our days were known to Him before we experienced even one of them. This is part of the Lord's seal on the firm foundation of all His kingdom promises.

Our status as the chosen of God comes to us in Jesus Christ. He is the chosen one.

“Let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity.”
The second sentence is like it, though we might not at first see the connection. This part of the seal is God's call on the lives of His people to turn away from all sin. Repentance, like all of the Lord's blessings, is a gift from God, lest anyone should boast. If we believe in the Lord, this is a gift. If we turn away from sin, this too is a gift. God calls His people to holiness, but He is not stingy in giving us sanctification. This is His will for us.

Our status as the holy people of God is in Jesus Christ. He is the holy one.

In Him this seal holds together. Jesus is the guarantee of the Lord's revealing of the sons of God in the day when He comes with all His holy angels and with all His saints in heaven. Christ is the beloved chosen one of God, and He is the holy one of God. Let us rejoice in Him, receive God's unchanging covenant love, and depart from all iniquity.

Along the way you may see many a Hymenaeus and Philetus in the church who will cause distress for many. Through it all, remember Jesus. The disturbing errors of church leaders and believers, though they lead many astray, cannot change your election or the Lord's gracious call upon your life. He knows you and He is calling you to depart from iniquity.

Psalm 52

Frantic.

It is so easy to have a lifestyle of anxiety and worry. We can wake up in the morning and be filled with thoughts of what is wrong. The night will eventually come again, but there is no immediate resolution to our troubles. We shuffle off to bed and wonder whether real joy will ever return.

The worshiper of the Lord is not guaranteed insulation from every trial in this life. Jesus said, “In this world you will have tribulation.” But then He added, “Be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.”

The troubles we face can seem overwhelming. The psalmist writes, “Why do you boast of evil, O mighty man?” A powerful individual may stand against the Lord's servant. Or is the enemy that seems so strong a disease, a spirit, an idea, or a lost nation or way of life?

Where can the worshiper of God find solid ground? “The steadfast love of God endures all the day.”

When we remember the covenant-keeping love of the Lord, we find hope again, and true power for living. God has written your name before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain. See Revelation 13:8. In the fullness of time Jesus came to do all righteousness for your sake, and then to die for your sins. Your resurrected Lord is over all people and systems of power, and he will transform your lowly body to be like his glorious body. This is the promise-keeping love of the Lord for you.

This does not mean that the problems that you face are imaginary. They are quite real. But they must be considered accurately. They are no match for the steadfast love of the Lord.

A powerful enemy may be speaking against you quite openly, even plotting your destruction. His words come to your ears. They cut like a sharp razor. But God's promises can heal the wound. He is the God of truth, and he will eventually defeat every worker of deceit, every false report, every system built on half truths and lies. Jesus said, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

The worker of deceit that stands against the Lord and His Christ loves evil more than good. He loves lying more than speaking what is right. He loves all words that devour, But his deceitful tongue is no match for the steadfast love of Jesus Christ for you.

Angels and men may make their proud boasts and their murderous threats, but there will be a limit to what they can accomplish. They will reach some wall of time or space. Their voices will not be heard forever. They will not be able to overturn the eternal purpose of God who long ago decreed to unite all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth. The day is swiftly approaching when the glory of the Lord's reunited and victorious kingdom will be known and experienced by every one of His suffering servants.

On that day, the Lord will judge those who have plotted against His people, assaulting them with words and hands. The Lord's enemies will be far away from the fulfillment of the kingdom of heaven.

This victory is already experienced by those in the present heavens, and even by those on earth who wait upon the Lord and see His love in action for them according to His own mysterious will. One day all the righteous in Christ will see with their eyes what they already can believe in their hearts. They will fear the Lord all the more for His glorious judgments, but they will also join the Lord and His Christ in their laughter at proud adversaries who thought that they could overturn the power of the love of the Lord for His people.

They will say, “See the man who would not make God his refuge, but trusted in the abundance of his riches!” During his brief moment of power and glory, he used his wealth to assault the Lord's beloved servants. He felt safety in the shelter of his murderous plots against the innocent. But now his end has come.

Won't you consider today the steadfast love of the Lord for you in the sufferings and death of Jesus Christ? Won't you meditate upon His ascension power, and the glory of His eternal plan? If you will do this, you will find a present powerful help for your vexed soul. Consider how fruitful you are in Jesus who is already reigning in the heavens. He is the vine, and you are one of the branches. His plan for you is very good. You are like a green olive tree in the house of God forever. You can trust in the steadfast love of God forever and ever.

Consider the good plan of Christ to be what it really is; sure and accomplished, and begin right now to thank Him. He has done it! This will help you to wait patiently and joyfully for the voice of God's encouragement and the glory of His Name.

You don't need to be frantic. “The steadfast love of God endures all the day.”

Leviticus 27

What is the worth of a human being? How would you measure a person's value? People are made in the image of God Almighty. We know that God determined to redeem mankind, and that the Son of God became man. We know that even after Jesus came to save us, He did not relinquish His humanity. He is God and man now for the rest of eternity. People must be of great worth.

But in the ceremonial law of the Old Testament there was a valuation of persons in connection with voluntary vows made to the Lord where a male was worth more than a woman, and a mature adult was worth more than a little baby. The Lord established this system of redemption prices allowing someone to be bought back to freedom after giving himself to the Lord's service.

Under the worship laws of Israel a vow was a conditional promise made to the Lord. If the Lord would hear the petition of the one crying out to Him in worship, if God would give what was requested, then the worshiper was bound to pay the Lord what he had promised. This system of valuation allowed a person to promise himself or some other good gift, and then to pay a redemption price instead. This practice established something essential to Biblical grace. A payment could be made to free one who was in debt to the Lord.

The Lord did not reveal the reason for different valuations for different categories of people. While it might have seemed like an insult to have a lower value, remember that this made redemption more feasible for those in that group. If someone was too poor to pay the valuation according to the Law, the Lord had a different way: “He shall be made to stand before the priest, and the priest shall value him; the priest shall value him according to what the vower can afford.” The goal was freedom for the Lord's people, and not bondage.

A vow of a clean animal could not be redeemed or substituted. It had to be given. But if someone vowed an unclean animal, the priest would determine the value. If someone wanted to redeem it, he could add a fifth to the value given by the priest. The same procedure was to be followed for a house vowed to the Lord.

A man might make a vow to the Lord of part of his land. The value was to be based on the worth of its seed with an eye to the coming year of jubilee. The priest was to value the gift and it could be redeemed by the worshiper by adding a fifth to its valuation price. The land that was not redeemed would be a holy gift to the Lord.

A firstborn of a clean animal could not be dedicated to the Lord. It already belonged to God by His work of redeeming Israel out of bondage in Egypt. An unclean animal could be bought back, adding the fifth to the value.

A man was not to make a vow to the Lord too lightly. The priest would establish the value of the conditionally promised payment, and the only way to get that item back was to add a fifth to the amount the priest indicated. Some things could not be bought back at all. Anything set aside for destruction in the Lord's eyes could not be redeemed. A person needed to carefully consider what he dedicated to the Lord. The worshiper was not left to his own opinion on these matters. The priest would have the final word. This system of vows made and paid before God was not a light matter.

The tithes that Israel gave to the Lord were also to be paid according to the Lord's blessing. To keep a portion of the goods that should be in the tithe required the addition of a fifth to the fair valuation of this payment. No one should presume to cheat the Lord on vows or tithes. Any substitution designed to defraud God and His priests was an offense against God.

In the New Testament era, we no longer are called to make conditional promises to the Lord involving payments of people, animals, houses, or other gifts. We ourselves have been valued and purchased. The price set upon the people of God was not a small payment. God paid Himself for us in the coin of His own perfect righteousness. The blood of His Son was the only acceptable price according to the system of grace ordained by the Lord.

If anyone had brought a substitute in place of Jesus, it would have been judged as lacking in value. Partial righteousness would have done us no good in securing our own redemption, and we have absolutely none of our own perfect righteousness to give.

But now that we have been bought with the price of the precious Lamb of God, our Lord has been content to freely grant to us the fullness of heavenly freedom. We who were purchased by the blood of Jesus have now been given the greatest liberty. Yet we are pleased to remain as the Lord's servants. We even possess all the privileges of being His sons. Our love for our Redeemer has made us eager to stay near the Lamb who gave His price for our eternal well-being. This is grace upon grace, a costly redemption, and a gift of freedom to us as the beloved children of the Lord.

Leviticus 26

Obedience was always important to our relationship with God. This was not only true under the Law, but even in a religion of grace, which is the only religion of the Bible. The only question has always been this: Who would provide the perfect obedience that would allow God to justly give all His gifts of mercy to His chosen people.

The first answer to that question was that Israel would have to do all the obedience required. If the people of God obeyed, they would be blessed. If they disobeyed they would face curses. This could not be the final answer for the accomplishment of God's eternal purpose. Because of Israel's disobedience, only the curse would have resulted.

The true answer was generously testified to throughout the book of Leviticus. All this instruction about the blood of the sacrifice pointed to another way of satisfying the justice of God which would allow Him to be merciful to His people. That way of sacrifice would require a Law-keeping substitute. That Lamb would have to win the blessings of God for us by His obedience, and then take away the debt that we owed God by His blood. This was what Jesus did.

This costly decree of God to love us through the gift of His Son as a substitute makes all idolatry especially offensive. An idol made by a man could not be man's creator. This fact makes the worship pf images laughable. But an idol made by man could never obey God and then die for us. To worship idols after God has provided such a perfect and costly sacrifice would be very insulting and offensive. The best and first response to the provision of Jesus Christ is to rest in Him who has become our manifest Sabbath when He rose from the dead on the first day of the week.

The Lord won for us the perfect promised land through His obedience and death for us as our Substitute. This victory of heaven has become visible through His resurrection. Heaven, and the eventual heaven on earth kingdom that will come when Christ returns, is a place of fruitfulness flowing from His obedience. We can use Leviticus 26 to imagine what God has in store for His beloved children: rains in season, trees with a bountiful yield, no time of lacking where families need to wait and hope that a new crop will eventually come, no allergies or diseases that display our alienation with God and His creation., no marauding enemies or dangerous beasts; but perfect peace with God, and a perfectly secure future of divine blessing, a close walk with the Lord who lives with us and loves us, with Him as the obvious and present answer to anything that we could ever need; in short, all the perfect and perpetual liberty of the sons of God.

Israel was offered these blessings for her own obedience. But how could that ever have come to the nation when the sin of Israel, and of all mankind, was so deep and obvious?

No, what we deserved as our wage for our disobedience against the Almighty was death and all its accompanying miseries. But while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

What was the cross like for Him? We will never know the fullness of what He faced, but we have glimpses of it as He grants us fellowship in His sufferings. See Philippians 1:29.

One way to meditate on the love of Christ for us is to consider the punishments that were due to Israel as a nation under the Law. What would happen to the nation if they would not listen to God? What would they deserve for breaking His covenant, disobeying His commandments, and treating His voice as less than one among many?

There would be inner panic, wasting disease, consuming fever, heart ache, ravaging enemies, starvation, captivity, loss of all fellowship with God, drought, fruitlessness, wild beasts that attack, plagues, depopulation, and everything that would make life pitiful.

The Lord spoke to Israel about a progressive experience of deeper and deeper discipline and misery. Even this discipline would not have been enough to give people a listening ear and an obedient heart. Repentance would have to come as a gift. But how could the gift be given. By law? No, not by law, but by grace, by gift, by love; but also by justice, since Christ provided the obedience necessary for God to be both just and merciful.

If we were left to ourselves, we would not win anything but death, devastation, and hell. But this was not the Lord's plan. That's why there was so much blood in the book of Leviticus. God was preparing us for the fact that it would only be through the shedding of the blood of a perfect Lamb that we could have peace and the fullness of heavenly joy.

Imagine what it was like when John the Baptist pointed to the Messiah, Jesus Christ, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God!”

He is the only way for us to avoid the curses of the Law.

Best to rest in Him.

2 Timothy 2:16-18

“Avoid Irreverent Babble”

July 17, 2011

16 But avoid irreverent babble, for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness, 17 and their talk will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, 18 who have swerved from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already happened. They are upsetting the faith of some.

16 But avoid irreverent babble,

Paul has a word for Timothy and Timothy has a word for the church where he serves because Jesus is a Word for the world. If we are determined to preach Christ, the Final Word, and to make right use of the Lord's scalpel, the Scriptures, we must embrace what Paul says in another place, that he “decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” There can be too much religious talk around a church, talk that does not draw us near to Christ or unite us in love for Him and one another. We have to begin to see spiritual distraction for what it is, and avoid irreverent babble. This is not just about what we are willing to speak. It extends to what we are willing to hear.

for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness,

How can we distinguish irreverent babble from an honest consideration of a variety of spiritual topics? Irreverent babble leads people into more and more ungodliness. The Lord and His more experienced servants have an eye for the connection between doctrine and life. Listening to a Christ-focused Spirit-filled word from God should yield the good fruit of love. Other preoccupations lead to sin. By their fruits you will know them.

and their talk will spread like gangrene.

Listening to irreverent babble encourages people to speak it more and more. It spreads like a disease that brings death to those that embrace it.

Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have swerved from the truth,

This is not just a theory. Specific people that Paul and Timothy both knew had swerved from the truth of Christ in significant ways. Through their religious rabbit trails they had walked away from close fellowship with Christ and His good news.

saying that the resurrection has already happened.

Hemenaeus and Philetus did this by teaching that the resurrection had already happened. It is true that the resurrection era has begun in Jesus, the firstfruits from the dead; that the dead in Christ have life in heaven now; that we who were dead in our trespasses and sins have been made alive, born again from above. But it is not true that the resurrection from the dead has already happened in all its fullness. To insist on this false doctrine is to deny the promise of Ezekiel 37, Daniel 12:1-3, and the promise of Jesus and the New Testament that there will be a physical resurrection of both the just and the unjust.

They are upsetting the faith of some.

Resurrection fullness comes when Jesus returns. Christians may say too much about taxes, politics, home values, or any other thing. But don't think of these as the worst kind of gangrene. Much more dangerous is spiritual and theological talk that draws us away from the hope that Christ secured for us through His death and resurrection. This upsets the faith of some. Best not to teach or even listen to that kind of babble.

Leviticus 25

What is heaven like? There is no better way for us to answer this question than to listen carefully to the One who came down from heaven in order to secure our eternal redemption. Yet even in the Old Testament Law God provided a vision for the way of life that should have been in an obedient Israel. We have regulations in that Law that capture our imagination even today and stretch our minds toward the land of our true citizenship. God's plan for Israel included the celebration of what He called the year of jubilee. This great year was to be a generous helping of heavenly food for the hearts of God's people.

The year of jubilee was to be celebrated every fifty years in Israel, but even before that great year arrived, the Lord's nation was to receive a taste of great liberty in the Sabbath year. The Lord gave His people one day of rest every seven days, but every seven years He granted them one year of rest. What a gift! In that year the land was to rest as well as the farmer. To enjoy that law, Israel needed to believe that God would provide for the people and their animals as He promised.

After seven weeks of years, after seven sabbath years of rest, the final sabbath year, the fiftieth year, would come. The coming of the jubilee was associated with the third cluster of annual festivals, Trumpets, Day of Atonement, and Tabernacles, all coming in the seventh month, September and October according to the Hebrew calendar. This was an appropriate time to celebrate the fullness of liberty that will come to the Lord's people when the final trumpet sounds, the dead in Christ are raised, and we will be with the Lord of the Sabbath forever.

In the year of jubilee, liberty would be proclaimed, and land would be restored to the family of the ancient owner. Everyone would return to their clan. Who will be our neighbors in the heavenly habitations that Jesus has gone ahead to prepare for us?

Jubilee was a picture of the end of God's curse. No more would thorns infest the ground or the farmer sow seed by the sweat of his brow. The fruit of the land would come forth as if by the command of God alone, and the people of God would eat the produce of His gracious bounty.

The curse was not actually stopped in Israel, so there might be some who would try to take advantage of the Lord's good plans. Because of this the Lord specified how sales of land should be priced based on the number of years remaining until the jubilee. Just as greedy transactions would mar the beauty of what the Lord was displaying before the eyes of His people, worrying about how people would eat would steal away the joy of this heavenly testimony. God would provide everything necessary that His people might keep the jubilee.

The jubilee was not just an idea or a myth. It was to be a way of life in Israel. Therefore the laws had to consider the practical details of fair dealings. How would the land come back to the right family? What if a man could not buy back the family property? How could close relatives help out? Could the rightful owner ever get his property back? Would he have to wait for the jubilee? What if his property was inside a walled city? Would the rules be different? These kinds of questions needed to be answered in order to show forth the liberty of the sons of God in the Old Testament world while still remaining mindful of the Lord's determination that His people be both just and merciful.

Care for the poor could not wait fifty years to be expressed. The people of Israel needed to help one another. A brother Israelite was not to be thought of as someone from whom you could gather interest, gaining riches in the day of his misfortune. Was he hungry? You needed to give him something to eat? The people of God had been redeemed from Egypt by God. They needed to care for the needy with that in mind.

If a man had to sell himself to his brother Israelite, it was not to be for the purpose of cruel bondage. It was a temporary arrangement for his survival only until the year of jubilee. The world might consider ruthless transactions with the poor as normal. God would not allow such things to take place in Israel.

There was a distinction between the Israelite and the people of other nations in these Old Covenant times, but this was appropriate for that era before the gospel went forth to every nation. The picture of jubilee was not given to instruct us about the best management of slavery. It was a proclamation of a coming day of resurrection liberty in Christ.

We who were slaves of sin and hell by our own moral condition have now received our liberty through the blood of our Redeemer. Long ago He had determined to be our close relation. He saw us in our desperate condition and gave His blood for our freedom. The necessary price took into account our serious offense against our eternal God.

Jubilee would never have arrived for us if it had to come by our merit. But Christ has paid the eternal price for us. Now we look for the revelation of His promise of a new heavens and a new earth, a place of true liberty, bounty, community, and peace; a land of eternal jubilee.

Leviticus 24

God created man to live in time and space. One day we will live with Him and with each other in a renewed heaven and earth, but we will still live in time and space. He has chosen us for a particular temporal and spatial life together prior to the return of Christ. This is our training ground for eternity.

We do not live in the wilderness of Sinai centuries before the coming of the Messiah. We live in some nation of this world well into the New Testament times, a spiritual era when the Apostle Peter could say, “The end of all things is at hand.” We learn about how we should live together in godliness and sincerity in our era by making profitable use of the whole counsel of God. As the Lord's sheep who are moving toward the real promised land, we hear the voice of our Shepherd even in Leviticus. He knows us, and speaks to us, and we follow Him.

Our understanding of what we can expect as a community of faith over the centuries is made richer by seeing the movement from Passover to Pentecost to Tabernacles in the ancient calendar of the Old Testament given to us in Leviticus 23. We also have an expectation of the greatness of the glorious life ahead of us through meditating on the year of Jubilee. See Leviticus 25. The world around us, and even many within the church, may not share this vision. We live out our brief lives in this strange wilderness with a hope that comes to us from the Scriptures and from a life of communion with the Shepherd who gave His life for His sheep and who reigns in highest heaven at the right hand of the Father. With all the confusion around us, with such irreconcilable versions of future hope in the world and even within the body of Christ, how ought we to live in the brief moments of life in the place where God has chosen to plant us? In between the annual calendar of Leviticus 23 and the generational marker of the year of Jubilee in Leviticus 25, the Lord granted to Israel images of what Israel and the church were to be like as strangers and sojourners, living godly lives of self-control with a sure and sober-minded hope in the promises of God for a coming place and time of perfect glory.

We are to be a shining lamp, even the light of the world. God used gifts that He gave through the people of Israel for the original construction of the tabernacle. He would continue to work through human means to supply the oil needed so that the worship of Israel would be a shining beacon in a dark place. At just the right moment in His eternal plan, His Son, the Light of the world, came to His people Israel. He was, as promised not only their light, but a light to the Gentiles. Now the church which is His body is to reflect His glorious resurrection light, though many around us in every place and time do not have eyes to see that light. By the grace of God, Jesus shines through us. We need the continual oil of the Holy Spirit if we are to live as we should as we look for the return of our Messiah. In Him, we are a lamp of purest gold, shining with the light of heaven.

The priests in Israel were to set holy bread before the Lord every Sabbath with frankincense as a memorial portion for the Lord. The bread was to be eaten by the priests in a holy place. The New Testament church gathers every Sunday in the rest that has been won for us in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We eat of the Bread of Life. We feast on the Word from heaven, and we partake in the communion of the One who gave His body and blood for us. This is a holy ordinance, and an expectation of glory that we share in as the priesthood of all who have faith. We draw near to the God of eternity, believing that He is our present help and our everlasting life. He will reward those who diligently seek Him.

We are to be a people that love the Name of God, and have been baptized in the one Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In Israel, a man was to be put to death for misusing the holy Name of God. This was an ordinance and it was confirmed by the Lord in a specific case recorded for us in the days of traveling through the wilderness. The Lord used the hands of the men of Israel as instruments of justice against the blasphemer.

But when the perfect One came, the Man who was the Word of God, the leaders of Israel determined to see Him as a guilty blasphemer when He revealed Himself as the Son of God. They envied Him and hated Him. They were not able to joyfully receive Him as their Almighty Lord and Redeemer in their midst. By His death He secured an eternal salvation not only for Jews but also for Gentiles who would believe in His Name.

Israel was to be a place of holiness of word and life. Can the church of Christ be less than this? We have taken a holy testimony throughout the world. With all our sad blemishes, we testify of one death that was for our sins. We proclaim that Word and partake of that Bread of sincerity when we worship. But we must live it out. We are not to walk as murderers or thieves, but as sons of the Most High God. We are to love His Name, not only in ceremony, but in the integrity of a pure life.

This is how we ought to live in our appointed place and time as wait for the appearing of our God and Savior.

Leviticus 23

Is it too creative or speculative to suggest that the annual feasts of the Levitical calender of Old Testament Israel provide a road map for the entire New Testament era? Surely these feasts are full of meaning. Is it unreasonable to think that the annual pattern beginning with Passover and ending with Tabernacles and beyond also has an important message for Jews and Gentiles today? The only way to answer such a question is to consider carefully the use of the feasts in the Prophets and especially in the New Testament revelation.

It is undeniable that Jesus died in connection with the Passover, that he rose again from the dead on the feast of Firstfruits, that the Spirit was poured out upon the church on the Day of Pentecost, and that the church is told that when Christ returns again the trumpet will sound. The words associated with the Old Testament feasts are used in the rest of the Bible in a way that confirms an important order of events as we await the culmination of the Lord's eternal purposes. Leviticus 23 is a great chapter for the consideration of the Israelite pattern of time, and the meaning that this calendar might convey to those who are watching and waiting for the reunion of heaven and earth in Christ.

The chapter begins with the only element of the Old Testament calendar that is continued as a part of New Testament ceremonial life: the Sabbath. Even though the one day of rest in seven pattern is the same, the change of that day from the last day of the week to the first day of the week is important. Old Testament believers were looking for the coming of rest. New Testament believers do our work out of the strength of the rest that is ours in a Christ who has already come. We gather on the first day of the week, the day of our Lord's resurrection, as believers have since the earliest years of church life.

The annual pattern of Jewish life should begin with the Passover, according to the Bible. This feast looked back on the deliverance from Egypt, but now the Passover Lamb has come, and those who are united to Jesus Christ have been rescued from sin, death, and hell.

Passover was part of the first cluster of Jewish special days. This first cluster also included the Feast of Unleavened Bread and the Feast of Firstfruits. During the seven days of unleavened bread the Jews could only eat bread without leaven. In the New Testament Jesus warns His disciples about the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, meaning the teaching of these groups that on one hand put the doctrines of man-made religious tradition above the Word of God, and on the other hand denied the power of God and rejected the clear teaching of the Scriptures. Paul told the churches in Corinth and Galatia that a little leaven in the church will soon leaven the whole lump. He wrote in 1 Corinthians 5:6-8 about their boasting in sin. “Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” The death of Christ is associated for us with an unleavened lifestyle of dedicated holiness, sincere love, and commitment to the truth.

The third feast in this first cluster is firstfruits. This is the dedication to God of the very beginning of what will be a much larger harvest. It took place on the day after the Saturday Sabbath; the Sunday after the Passover. Jesus rose from the dead on that day. He was presented to His disciples as the firsfruits of a much larger resurrection from the dead. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:20, “Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” The remainder of the resurrection comes in fullness at the return of Christ. Until that time, the church is receiving the firstfruits of the Spirit, since we have Christ in us, the hope of glory.

The second cluster of festivals has only one feast, and it takes place fifty days to the day after the Sabbath associated with the Passover. On that Day of Pentecost in the year of the death and resurrection of Jesus, a great harvest of souls began with the pouring out of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples in Jerusalem. Pentecost was a harvest festival, with the harvest continuing until the end of a long period of growth. Pentecost is the beginning of a great season of planting, watering, and gathering. In New Testament times, the church lives in the age of Pentecost. There is already a holy convocation above in the heavens as those who have lived their days below go to be with the Lord awaiting the next moment in the plan of God.

The sign of that moment is in the final cluster of festivals, beginning with the Feast of Trumpets, and then the Day of Atonement, where there is a final reckoning concerning sin, and then the grand culmination of the calendar in the joyous celebration of Tabernacles. The day will come when the Son of God who tabernacled with us here below and then put on a better resurrection temple, will dwell with His people forever as we live forever in the glory of resurrection. Until that day comes we should proclaim the message of Christ and remember the poor and the stranger as the church moves throughout the earth.

These were the appointed Old Testament Feasts of the Lord. They have a story to tell for all who are being gathered up in the Lord's Pentecost. One day the trumpet shall sound, and then the Lord will judge, and we shall be together with Jesus forever.

2 Timothy 2:15

“Rightly Handling the Word of Truth”

July 10, 2011

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved,

Those who are called to proclaim the Word of God to His people need to be true to that calling, and especially to the One who called. Paul instructs Timothy to be quick about obeying God on this priority. As the original apostles were sure that they must not allow themselves to be distracted from the duties of prayer and the ministry of the Word, pastors and teachers in every generation should be thinking first about God in attending to their calling. Paul tells the Corinthians that it is a small matter to him whether he has the approval of any human court. He is interested in God's approval of his ministry

The words “do your best” translate one Greek word that has to do with speed. The picture here is of a servant that knows the voice of his Master, and is ready to respond swiftly in coming before Him to do His will. The one who is called to preach and teach the message of Jesus Christ stands in the presence of the Almighty, ready to say what Jesus would have him say and do what Jesus would have him do.

A worker who has no need to be ashamed,

Timothy is God's workman. He must not be led away in directions that are against the calling of God. This will require a true fellowship with the Lord. Do we have a sense that we are doing our work far away from the presence of God? Are we impressed with our choice of words and illustrations? Do we too easily parrot what smart people say? Are we impressing others or ourselves? Fine... but will we be ashamed of what we have said and done when we remember God and come back into His presence?

It was never safe for the Lord's prophet to forget his experience in the heavenly council. For the messenger of Jesus, the hour is too late to be unaware of the voice of the Shepherd. What is the Lord saying to me as His messenger here and now? If I ignore His directive, will He be pleased just because the church was pleased? What other voices are more obvious to me than the voice of Jesus? To whom do I swiftly present myself? Whose face am I most concerned about? Will I be ashamed when I remember God?

Rightly handling the word of truth.

Jesus wants his pastors and teachers to use the sword of the Spirit, the Word of truth, rightly. The Word is a very sharp knife. It can make a “straight cut.” The translation “rightly handling” is a call to be a straight cutter with that heavenly sword. I do not need to hack away with it as if it were a blunt instrument. The Spirit of Jesus is able to do His healing surgery with His own scalpel. He has His hand on My hand.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be pleasing unto You, O Lord my strength and my Redeemer.

Jesus has the right to be the One... the One we stand before, the one smile we long to see, the one voice we are quick to hear. His death for us insists on this priority. He is the King of the Resurrection age.

Psalm 51

We need more than a ceremonial God. We need a God of credible mercy for our worst moments. We need a powerful Lord who has steadfast love for us, a God who will blot out our transgressions. The cleansing that we require must be more than outward. It must be thorough.

But do we even know our sins? God is able to show us what we have done. He is even able to reveal to us that our sin was against Him, and not just against those who were most obviously offended by our attacks. The Lord is the God of all that He has made. If we harm another person, we first offend Him. God can make us see this. Otherwise we would never own up to the seriousness of what we have done.

The Lord can keep our sin before us until we are brought to a deep recognition not only of our fault, but of Him. He can use the occasion of our offense for the purpose of a deeper work of grace. We see the truth of what we have done, of our sin against Him personally, and of His readiness to heal and to forgive. Amazingly, our experience of His greatness and His commitment to us can be greatly enhanced by an honest look at our worst failures.

Though the Lord is sovereign over all, He is blameless concerning sin. He is the one working good for us in all things. All responsibility for guilt rightly belongs to the man who has committed the offense. When God makes His judgments, He is righteous and blameless. To blame God for our sins will never result in a closer walk with the One who is our only hope for life.

There is no point in trying to evade the fact of our guilt. We began our lives with the stain of sin. The transgressions of those who went before us have had their imprint upon us. Sin came into the world with our first ancestor's disobedience, and much murder and covetousness has been added to that first deadly offense. A little baby in the womb of his mother would do best to one day own this truth: “In sin did my mother conceive me.” To weigh the innocence of a newborn child only in comparison to the guilt of a man who has learned the way to steal and to lie would be to miss a deeper truth of human guilt. To minimize the sickness is to miss out on the best cure.

The best way to measure transgression is to consider the One against whom we have transgressed. God is the offended party and He is perfect in holiness. He delights in truth, and He is well aware of our deceptions. He can teach us wisdom, but for the fullest work of His grace, our sin against Him must be exposed.

Do we worry that we will be crushed by condemnation? He does not commune with us to leave His beloved children in guilt and shame. His Son has come for us as our Redeemer. We have a credible answer for the deepest transgressions. We will not run out of the healing power that flows from the wounds of Jesus. He shed His blood for us.

God exposes sin to our conscience in order to purge the poison from us and then to heal our wounds. We will be pronounced clean, and we will be clean. Our stains will be gone. We will be whiter than snow.

But the one who will not hear of sin, the one who is offended by the topic, or paralyzed by the specifics of his transgression, will resist a good gift of God. Far better to hear God's word regarding iniquity and to admit the truth. Far better to see again what Christ has taken from us in His death, and to consider again the power of the resurrection. This is the best way to receive joy and gladness. We know the healing of God best when we admit our pain. Has God broken bones? His purpose was a better healing. Those broken bones will rejoice.

The Lord will not stare at our sin forever. His intention is to help us to be honest about guilt and about grace. He will create in us clean hearts. He will renew in us an honest and stable spirit. Has He claimed us by giving us His Holy Spirit? He will not abandon us now. Has Christ suffered the pains of hell for us on the cross? God will not cast us away from His presence. The Lord saved us for the honesty of eternal fellowship with Him.

To confront sin may be painful for a moment, but the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is more than enough to restore us. God will bring back the joy of our salvation. He will uphold us with the gift of a willing spirit. He is willing to keep us forever, and He can make us willing to honestly confess sin and to serve Him again with a glad heart.

The one who has experienced transgression can better teach transgressors the Lord's ways. He can comfort others with the comfort with which he has been comforted. He can have the joy of seeing other sinners return to the Lord. He can point out to them the road back home as one who knows what it is to wander and to be rescued.

Is your sin too deep to be forgiven? Nonsense. God can deliver a man from the guilt of murder. He can lead that man to praise Him. A restored child of God loves much because he has been forgiven much. His tongue sings aloud of the righteousness of God.

The Lord is pleased in the sacrifice of His Son. The way to remember His grace today is to let your heart be broken and contrite about your sin, but then to be healed by the righteousness and death of Jesus.

The Lord will bless His people. He will built up the walls of Jerusalem. He will receive our worship through His Son. He will forgive our sins forever.

Leviticus 22

Little by little over many centuries and in various ways including the ceremonial law, God prepared Israel for the coming of a holy Priest who would make a holy Offering. There were many ways for a priest to become unholy and to bring death upon himself and upon Israel by profaning the Lord's tabernacle. One way to do this was to assume upon himself the right to take what was not His from the offerings that were dedicated to the Lord, acting as if the Lord's portion or the portion that belonged to the worshiper was first his to consume when and where he chose. God spoke to Aaron through Moses about the restraint that the true priest needed to possess: “Speak to Aaron and his sons so that they abstain from the holy things of the people of Israel, which they dedicate to me, so that they do not profane my holy name: I am the Lord.”

The priest needed to be holy and the offering needed to be holy. An unholy priest could destroy an otherwise acceptable offering, and an unacceptable offering brought condemnation upon a priest and the whole nation, The priest and the offering were connected, but they also could be distinguished, so that the people could eventually see not only Jesus as the perfect Priest, but also the offering that He brought to God of His life and His willing death as the perfectly acceptable Offering.

If the Levitical priest had an uncleanness, he would destroy the goodness of an offering. “That person shall be cut off from my presence: I am the Lord.” Jesus needed to enter the presence of the Almighty for us with an acceptable blood sacrifice of Himself. If He had been cut off from the presence of the Almighty as an unacceptable offering, we would have no way to draw near to God with a full assurance of faith.

We are priests to the Lord, but what uncleanness would mar our service to the Lord? What swarming thing, what emission, what death, discharge, or leprosy of sin has threatened us with lost fellowship with God and His people? Yet we have been made acceptable through the perfect Priest who made the perfect Offering. He remains faithful, for we are united to Him, and He cannot deny Himself. If we will just confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive our sin, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. May we not grieve the Holy Spirit with pride and a stubborn rejection of the way of love, for He is ours, and we are His. He is the Lord who sanctifies us.

In the Old Covenant, the holiness of the priesthood and the offerings would be marred by an outsider eating food that was only for the priests and their households. But now the way into a more permanent priesthood has appeared for nations of outsiders through Jesus the Messiah. Yet anyone who would presume to draw near to God today through some other road than Jesus will find Himself outside the true temple of the Lord. There is no wisdom in a stubborn rejection of the Lord's good provision for Jews and Gentiles.

Our High Priest is holy and His offering of Himself is without blemish. The acceptable offering in the days of preparation had to be “of the bulls or the sheep or the goats.” But only the offering of a perfect Man could pay our real debt. An animal would not have been acceptable to God for us.

The sin that destroyed mankind came through a man. It was necessary that the righteousness that redeemed a people for the Lord would also come from a man.

What was the perfection that was necessary? In the time before the Messiah's death and resurrection, perfection could be outward and ceremonial. Not the blind, the disabled, or the mutilated; no discharge, no itch, no scabs; no limb too long when one of perfect proportions had been promised; nothing bruised or crushed or torn or cut could be offered to the Lord. But when the perfect Man presented His own body for our guilt, He was bruised and crushed and torn and cut. He possessed a perfection that an animal could never have accomplished: the full inner righteousness of a sinless man with a true body and a real soul. On the outside, where man is able to see, He was an offering from which men hid their faces. On the inside, where God knows the heart, He was a lamp of purest gold, a sinless substitute, a perfect and willing gift of love.

He did not come to us through the generosity of Jews or Gentiles, as if men made Him to be who He was. He gave His Father the gift of Himself as the perfect Man from heaven.

He was not offered up for death as a child, a natural innocent as in some pagan rituals. He spent His youth in quiet and holy submission to his mother and “father,” but as one who already knew that God was His real Father, and that the temple as the house of God was truly His Father's house. But when He was about thirty years old, He presented Himself publicly with signs and words from another world. He took His place as our holy Priest. Then He offered up Himself on the cross as our holy Offering. His death has become our death. His resurrection is our eternal life. He has delivered us from the most cruel bondage of sin, death, and even from the yoke of the ceremonial law that neither we nor the generations before us could bear. He has saved us, and He is the Lord who sanctifies us.

Leviticus 21

Those who represented Israel before the Lord and the Lord before Israel were to be pictures of the holiness of Jesus Christ. We who are represented before God now by this One who is the fulfillment of all that a High Priest could be are called to be priests to God and to pray for one another. See Revelation 1:6 and James 5:16.

The regulations that called the Old Testament priests to be holy, have also called us to see Christ as perfectly holy and to be holy “priests” in the presence of the Lord and among all the faithful. Whatever requirements a right New Testament view of these regulations has placed upon us, we cannot be distracted from this truth: Christ Jesus is our holiness.

Holiness required that the Old Testament priests make choices. It was a good thing to go to the house of mourning and to be with those who grieved there, but the priests could not do this except for their very closest relatives. They had to let others bury the dead, lest they became ceremonially unclean. Their obligations to the Lord were more significant than their duties of sympathy, even though there was a way to be ritually cleansed after physical contact with the dead.

The priests could not leave others with the impression that they were casual about their duties to the Lord. They needed to attend to even their outward appearance in a way that would be appropriate for those who had been set apart as the Lord's priests. How much more did their hearts need to be in right relationship with the Almighty!

Their marital relationships were also the Lord's concern. They could not marry a prostitute or a divorced woman. This was part of their required holiness to God. The Lord would know if a priest's relationship with his wife was out of order, even if men did not know. A man's family also needed to be in order. His daughter could not be a prostitute or an immoral woman.

The priest had received the Lord's holy anointing oil. He could not present himself before God and man in ways that were obviously out of accord with God's standards of holy joy. How was his hair worn? Were his clothes torn in anguish? Had he been near a dead body? None of these were permissible for him. He was to be dedicated to the Lord and to His sanctuary.

He needed to choose a wife who had never before been with a man intimately. Thus his children would be holy, for his sons would be future priests to the Lord. Why were such rules required? The God of Israel added these words: “for I am the Lord who sanctifies him.” The Lord is holy. He is the one who makes His priests holy. This attribute of holiness was not only for God's Old Testament priests. The New Testament Church is made up of “saints.” That word means “the holy ones.” But the power of Christ's sanctification in the church is so great, that we are told in 1 Corinthians 7 that the child of even one believing parent is “holy.”

Just as everything offered to the Lord had to be without spot or blemish, God required His Old Covenant priests to be a holy offering to Him. The rest of the congregation needed to set them apart as holy, for they were holy to the Lord. They could not have certain outward deformities that ruined the picture of a perfect personal offering of our bodies to God. The Lord gave a long list to Moses and Aaron of prohibited people who could not serve as priests in the tabernacle. No one who had a blemish, no blind or lame, no one with a mutilated face or a limb too long, no one with an injured foot or hand, no one with a deformed back or a skin disease could “come near to offer the Lord's food offerings.” He was permitted to “eat the bread of his God, both of the most holy and of the holy things,” and thus live, but he could not “go through the veil or approach the altar.” A blemished person would have profaned the Lord's sanctuary in that day simply by his presence before the Lord. He was unacceptable as God's priest.

But now Christ has not only taken our outward deformities upon Himself. He has accomplished something far greater than this. He has removed far away from us every inner deformity of heart, mind, and will. He is the Lord who sanctifies us. Now we do not have to look the perfect part in order to be priests of the Lord. All of those who have believed and even their young children can be marked as holy to the Lord. They are all to be a part of the priesthood of the faithful.

This is exciting news for broken people. No longer do they have to stay far away from God for their own safety and for the well-being of the Lord's congregation. The sanctuary of God in heaven has been purified by the perfectly holy blood of Jesus. He is a perfect Mediator for all who are weak and lowly. They can come to God with simple trust in His Name and bring all their deformities; a broken heritage, a ruined body, even a messed up soul before Him who washes the unacceptable and sends forth the oil of gladness to the weak. Now the joy of the Lord has become our strength forever.