What is Holy Water and is it Biblical?

The Bronze Laver in the Tabernacle

The next piece of furniture in the tabernacle is the bronze laver. What is a bronze laver, or what's a laver? Washbowl. Washbowl, right. Today we have sinks, but yeah, it would be a basin of water. And you know, not to be disrespectful, but if you go and look at it, usually the pictures, the depictions of the bronze laver, it kind of looks like a birdbath.

And not to get off point, I mean it's all kind of tied in together. How many of you have gone into a church and you walk through the front door and the first thing you see is this laver, birdbath, basin of water type of a thing?

So I think, yeah, and they put their hand in and do the sign of the cross. So you will see that in typically Roman Catholic churches. And in the washbowl is water, but they call it what? Holy water. And we've talked about this before, right?

Roman Catholic Holy Water and Old Testament Religion

How the religion of Rome seems to be more based on Old Testament religion than it is on New Testament biblical Christianity. They have their special priesthood, the ornate clothing like Aaron had. They claim the Lord's Supper is a real, they have a real sacrifice.

Jesus is being re-sacrificed or represented. It's a real altar. Remember we talked about all this. And they keep the wafer up front in a box that they call the tabernacle. So if you see them go into the church and kneel before they go into the pew, they're bowing to that host, that piece of bread that contains the divinity of Christ.

And it's in the box called the tabernacle. So it really isn't any surprise that they would have a basin of water, which is based on the bronze laver. So holy water in their system is just regular water that's been blessed by a priest.

Why Holy Water Is Not Biblical

And they believe that it can repel evil, among other things. They believe holy water can repel evil and wash away what they call venial sin. So if you committed murder or adultery, I mean, splashing water, that's not going to do any good.

That's a mortal sin. But, you know, the little sins, you know, taking the water, that will wash away venial or little sins. Is that biblical? It's not enough to say, well, we have this laver, and, well, there's a laver in the Old Testament.

It's the same kind of deal. No, that's not legitimate. So my point is there's no real connection, except that they're both basins of water. So the furniture in the tabernacle is symbolic, right? I mean, it really happened.

It was really there, but it's symbolic, and it points ahead to the person and work of Christ. So now that we have the real thing, once we have the faith once for all delivered to the saints, we don't need to go back and observe all these Old Testament rituals.

Christ Is the Fulfillment of the Tabernacle

So we're not supposed to go backwards. The applications and meanings for us of all the things in the tabernacle, these are all spiritual in nature. None of this is God's way of telling us, here's the furniture that you should have in your church in the year 2021.

That is not the point of any of this. It's all pointing to Christ. So there's no need for us to have a laver or a basin of water here at Morris Court of Church because we have Christ. We have the real thing.