Romans 15:16 - Keeping the Charge of the Tabernacle, Pt. 1 (11/20/2022)

The Believer-Priest and the Salvation That God Alone Accomplishes

The Queen said, I think we just experienced a revival. Thank you, Queen. Because I was up here wiping my eyes and thinking the same thing. Ladies and gentlemen, I know that our roots were Baptistic in the past, and now we are a Biblinarian church.

But that's what you call a spirit-filled group of people. Thank you so much. Wow, that was, man, I cannot sing. And that made even me want to sing. So that's just fantastic. So I think you said you'd be able to stick around.

That's good, because we want to visit with you before you head off. What time do you have to go to the other church? 3 o 'clock. Oh, you're in trouble then, because I'm just getting started here, Herman.

So will someone, you say you got to leave here at 1? OK, so someone let me know when it's 125, all right? That was fantastic. I loved every second of it. Wow. All right, well, we are preaching verse by verse in the Book of Romans, and we've been doing that for about the last 17 years.

We've made our way to Romans chapter 15, verse 16, and we've been on that one for three months, because it talks about God making the offering up of the Gentiles acceptable. So I'm talking about how is that?

What does it even mean that he made the offering of the Gentiles? Because that's what most of us are in this room, acceptable. And as part of going out around through the scripture thinking about that, we have talked about the idea of the believer priest, because when you think about offering sacrifices, that's what the priestly role is.

And God has made us to be believer priests. We've been talking about that. First, we start out showing the verses, scriptures in 1 and 2 Peter and the Book of Revelation, some of the best verses on the fact that he has made us to be believer priests once we're saved.

It's not something we earn, just like our salvation is not something we earn. We don't earn or get good at being a priest, and then he makes us a priest. He makes us to be a priest when he saves us. And then he begins a whole lifetime of equipping us, right?

So we've been talking about a lot of aspects of that already. In fact, last time, we just finished up talking about the whole section on what are some of the offerings that we can offer. And then we talked about how does the Lord make us to be believer priests.

And I'm just going to review just a little bit of how he made us to be believer priests. And we're going to move to the next main thing, which is pretty exciting. We're going to go into the Old Testament, and we're going to look at what the priests did in the Old Testament and how that is a type or a picture of what the Lord does with us now.

So let's pray, Lord. We ask you to bless your word. You always will. We ask your Holy Spirit be our teacher. In Jesus' name, amen. In 1 Peter chapter 1, verse 3, it says, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy has begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

That's how he made us to be believer priests. He saved us. He saved us to an inheritance that's incorruptible, that's undefiled, that cannot fade away, that is reserved with our name on it. And we are those who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time.

That's pretty good, isn't it? That's got all of your salvation and your eternal security wrapped up together in one passage of scripture, one inspired, one God-breathed, God-preserved passage of scripture.

So that's what we talked about last time. Receiving even the end of your faith, the salvation of your souls. In 1 Peter chapter 1, verse 18, kind of finishes it off this way. For as much as you know that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, such as silver and gold from the vain lifestyle and tradition of your fathers, tradition doesn't save us.

It cannot be lifted as high as the authority of the scripture, but so many places it is. Shouldn't never be. But actually, we are redeemed by the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.

I love the phrase of our forefathers when they said, we're saved by the blood of Jesus plus nothing. That last part was the Texas part that I added, the nothing part. Who barely was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you.

If you look and see who the you is, 1 Peter was written only to Christians, only to the elect. Says so, to the elect who were scattered abroad throughout the world, not to the whole world. This 1 Peter is written to save people only.

And to those saved people, he says that he was manifest in the last time for you, for you saved people who by him do believe in God. We could not believe in God without Jesus, the revelator. That's why he's called the word, because the father is outside of time and space.

He is totally separate from sin. We happen to be sinners, or at least we were sinners before we got saved. In the truest sense, we're not sinners now because the new man is not. But we still sin, and God is separate from sin.

And so the truth is, if the word of God, Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us, hadn't come to this earth, into time and space with us, we never would have known God. Yes, we could have known he existed by the universe, but we couldn't have known him personally without the word, and that's Jesus.

Seeing you have purified your souls in the obeying of the truth, that's the word of God, through the spirit, that's the spirit of God. And it takes the water, which is the word of God, and the spirit to save you.

You have to have those two ingredients or no one is saved. And it's mentioned throughout scripture that way. Even Jesus himself said that you're saved by the water and the spirit. Unto unfeigned love of the brethren, that's the greatest symptom that you're saved is when you start to love the brothers.

If you don't have that, you ain't saved. That's Texan too. That was not King James. Unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that you love one another with a pure heart, fervently being born again, not of corruptible seed, but incorruptible.

That's the word of God, right? By the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever. For all flesh is grass and all glory of man as flower of grass. The grass withereth, the flower falleth away, but the word of the Lord endureth forever.

And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you. And that ended our section. Oh, well, we didn't quite stop there because I knew like you guys were hungry and I wasn't quite through, but I needed to finish that last time.

So we talked about other passages that talk about the two ingredients required for salvation. And think about this. They are both done by God. They're not any of it done by you. It's like blood of Jesus plus nothing.

God does all the work to save us. That's why it's called the operation of God. But two things, two ingredients have to be there, the word of God and the spirit of God. And so check it out. 1 John 5, 7, John 3, 5, Ephesians 5, 26, Jude 3, John 4, 10, Revelation 22, 17, all say that it takes those two ingredients.

So I rest my case and I'm done with that. Are you good? We good? All right. Let's go to Roman numeral two. Isn't that funny? All of that for the last six months. No, last four Sundays were Roman numeral one.

The Wilderness Tabernacle as a Picture of Christ and the Priesthood

Roman numeral two is this. I just call it keeping charge of the tabernacle. So what we're going to do now is go into the Old Testament. You can be turning to Numbers 18, verse 5. And we're going to go to the Old Testament.

We're going to see exactly what the Old Testament priests did. Because two places in the New Testament, one in the Book of Romans, one in 1 Corinthians, tell us that the things that were written aforetime, that means in the Old Testament, were written for us as end samples for those of us who live in the end of the age.

That's us. And an end sample is a type. It's actually an imprint. If I put a die on a piece of leather and hit it with a heavy hammer, it would put that imprint on the leather, the same thing that's on the end of that die.

And so what we see then is this is like an end sample. Everything that you read in the Old Testament, all the wonderful stories of the lives of these people, are a die putting an imprint on us, showing us different colors and depths of meaning of the New Testament doctrines.

If all you had was the New Testament, it would be wonderful if you had that. But you would miss so much of the inner, deeper meanings of those doctrines if you didn't have the Old Testament. And the way you find them is you look at those stories and you realize they are end samples.

Now, that's an old English word. It's stronger than the word example. It's like a die. It puts an imprint of the exact same thing on something else. And the Old Testament takes the New Testament doctrines and expands them into multiple colors of meaning and so forth.

So that's what you just thought we talked about the believer-priest so far. We've spent weeks and weeks on this. You just thought you spent some time on it. You haven't gotten to the colors of meaning of it yet, but you're about to.

So let's turn to Romans. I'm sorry. Go back to Romans, right? Numbers 18 .5. Ready? And ye shall keep the charge of the sanctuary and the charge of the altar that there be no wrath anymore upon the children of Israel.

Now, let's just stop there a minute, because this has probably been a time since you've studied the wilderness tabernacle. It's probably been some time now. I think Charlotte studied it fairly recently.

Is that on? Is Dr. Freeman's study on that online? OK. So you can go to parkmeadowschurch .com and look in the archives, and you'll find my mentor, Dr. Erwin Freeman, teaching on the tabernacles. He was a Jewish believer, had four earned doctorates.

I don't know if you ever heard of his brother, but he was from Fort Worth, Texas. He was my mentor. Wonderful man, but the whole teaching on the tabernacles is there. And I was trying to review some of it in the car on the way back, and Charlotte said, I wish I had my notes from Dr. Freeman.

And but I want you to walk through it with me just a little bit. Solomon's temple was based on it, right? But this was a wilderness tabernacle that was built in such a way as a tent so you could tear it down and take it with you when God said to move.

And then when God said to stop, you could set it back up, right? And it was the presence of God with God's people is what it was. And so if you can picture, let's just picture it as a huge fence, rectangular fence, bigger than this building that goes from here on out to the little street out there, maybe about that big, pretty big, maybe even a little bigger than that.

And if you could let this be the back. Of it, and I'm going to walk forward towards the front of it. When you when you come in. The first thing you're going to see is an altar for burnt offerings. All right.

And so sacrifices were made there and the blood was shed there. What do you think that blood was a type or an in sample of? Jesus's blood, right? And the little animals were a picture of whom? Jesus, the lamb of God, Jesus, right?

And so that blood was shed there. The very first thing you had to have before you get to proceed into this area is the blood sacrifice. Has to be there, because unless you have that blood, when you get farther down in there, you're going to get to this place called.

Well, it's now called the mercy seat. But before that, it wasn't called that. It was the judgment seat. And the kind of glory dwelt there, which just a resemblance of God the father. It's not God the father.

You can't you can't define it, let alone hold it into a place. So it just let a little glory of God the father show maybe that thing. And by the way, that was just a model of the real place in heaven that's there now.

That that place is there now, the mercy seat is in heaven and the kind of glory dwells above it, and that represents God the father. But it is not all of God the father. It's just a resemblance because he's outside of time and space.

And believe it or not, the third heaven is in time and space. It's part of God's creation. So the father is outside of that. He lets a little bit of himself show. And I think the real one in heaven, that one pictured, I think that's actually a what would you call it?

Opening between one dimension. A portal. Thank you, my son. I think that mercy seat has a portal on it between our dimension and God's multidimensional existence outside of time and space. And he lets a little of himself show from there.

And then to the right side of that in the third heaven is whom? The lamb, right? The lamb of God. And Jesus sits at the right hand of God the father. And that's it. Well, this wilderness tabernacle is a picture of all that.

It was built to perfect specifications that God gave Moses. First thing you had to walk by was the blood. And that blood had to be not only offered for the priests who were human priests, which we are human priests, and it had to be put on the tools to make them holy.

It even made the altar itself holy. And the next thing you walk to is a labor with water in it. What do you think that pictures? The cleansing of the word of God. It can also picture the Holy Spirit, right?

And so let's say both, because what two ingredients does it take to be saved? Water, the word and the spirit of God. And the picture is that. And also the fact that that cleanses us from all of our sins.

Only then can you walk past that and there's a veil. It's not the veil. It's just the curtain. And outside of that curtain, looking back, if you had any Gentiles come to the service that day, that's where they got to stay.

They didn't get to go past this curtain. Only Jewish people, picturing God's people, could go inside this curtain. When you get in there, there's another small rectangular room. And on the right hand side, you had a table, it's called the table of showbread.

The showbread was the manna that God gave them while they were in the wilderness. On the left hand side was the candlestick, the menorah. And it pictures the light of the world. So think about it. Here you have the bread of life.

Who's that? Here you have the light of the world. Who's that? All right. Oh, yeah. Well, that's right. The Holy Spirit is the spirit of Christ. And then as you walk towards the next curtain, this is the one called the veil.

On the other side of that is the Holy of Holies, the holiest place. No one can go in there except one person once a year. And that's the high priest. And you can only go in with blood from that altar back there.

And he has to have gone through a cleansing period in his life before he dares set foot in there. And tradition tells us, now this, I hope it's not in scripture, it may or may not be true, but the Jewish tradition tells us they tie a starlet rope around his ankle so that if he walked in there and he wasn't cleansed, he cannot take care of his own personal confessions and so forth.

He would be obliterated by God. And they had to drag his foot and part of his ankle out because that's all she deserves. Good biblical picture, huh? So what does that picture though? The holiness of God.

The Shekinah glory is in that place. And he is separate from sin. Isn't that interesting? Now, I missed one thing. You have the showbread, you have the candlestick. What do I have here, Charlotte? The last thing.

I just drew a blank. Somebody tell me. There's one more item. I'll think of it in a minute. Showbread, candlestick, there's one other thing. I'll think of it in a minute. I don't need to know what the third thing is yet because I'm not covering that today.

But I can't believe I just drew a blank on it. I'll think of it in a minute. Bring me my phone, Matt. I'm on Google. I've got it right on my phone. I just looked at it. I want us to have the whole picture before we even start on the outer part of it.

I think it is a little later. Ah, it's right there. Sorry. It's always back there. I brought it up here today for whatever reason. Ah, thank you. Don't eat it, Matt. Alderman Simpson. OK, you were trying to tell me Holy Spirit, right?

OK, sorry. So you got the showbread, the manna, which pictures Jesus, the bread of life. You've got the candlestick, the light of the world. And you've got the altar of incense. Thank you so much. Now, most commentators will tell you that that picture is the prayers of the saints going up as incense.

But it doesn't picture that because I want you to think about it. There's only three things in that room. You have the bread of life. You have the light of the world. And that third one's going to picture Jesus, too.

So what do you think it pictures if it's incense? What does picture prayers? What does it mean? No, it's all about Jesus. The Holy Spirit doesn't talk about himself. We don't even reveal Jesus. Very little about himself.

It's all about Jesus. It's the Holy Spirit. So who is Jesus and what is Jesus? He's our intercessor. He's like when the devil accuses us, he stands and says, they're innocent. Our blood's covered. They have no sin.

And Satan has to flee. And so the prayers, the incenses, I think pictures the intercessory prayers of Jesus, not the prayers of the saints. That's just my opinion. That's my scholarly opinion. But you can check that out and see what you think.

I think it's all about Jesus in that room. And then you go into that veil and you see this kind of glory. That's the father. Now, the water that was in the laver pictures the word of God and the Holy Spirit.

So it's not like the Holy Spirit leaves himself out. He can't because no one is saved without him. No one can grow without him. No one can sing like that without him. Oh, you could sing without him, not like that without him.

And so there you have it. So now do you have a pretty good picture of what it looks like? And we could use that to put Google up there and show it to you, a map of it. Yeah. So I can't believe I forgot the incense thing.

Okay. Now, keeping the charge of the sanctuary, the whole tabernacle actually, but there in chapter 18, verse five, it says that if for the priests, they will keep the charge of the sanctuary and the charge of the altar.

Now, remind me where the altar is. It's when you first come in and it's where the Gentiles can worship, right? Not the people of God. And I know Gentiles could become proselyte Jews, but they don't picture the people of God.

They could be saved, but you know what I'm saying? The people of Israel picture the people of God in that time, did they not? So they could be on the other side of the next curtain, but not the Gentiles couldn't go that far.

But so that tells us which part of that whole wilderness tabernacle that this verse is talking about. It's just the first part, the outer part where the Gentiles could be. Now, I want you to, there are other interesting things.

We were talking about the feasts yesterday, weren't we Dave? When we did a trade way thing, all day and it had some preaching in it, right? And so we were talking about the three things. Yes, the three.

Yeah, like it was a promise of God that had conditions and it had three conditions and they had to do with three trips that every male in Israel had to take to Jerusalem once a year. Now there are more than three feasts, but those three, they had to attend in person, at least one male from the family once a year, all right?

And so when you start looking at those feasts, it was interesting because one of them, most of the feasts of Israel, such as Passover, it involves what we call unleavened bread, right? Not bread with leaven in it.

So what is the leaven picture? Sin, right? So they would use mostly unleavened bread, but one of those three feasts, specifically, they use leaven bread in that one. And the reason is because it actually pictured the salvation.

It pictured the church out in the future that has predominantly Gentiles in it, which are then God's people, now God's people also, right? And that leaven pictured the Gentiles. Now that's kind of funny if you think about it, isn't it?

But compared to a Jew who, and you're kind of looking at the outward life, by the way, works, doing good works and keeping a religious group of lists, they're better at it than anybody. Would you agree with that?

All right. So compared to them, if they look at us, what do they see? Sloppiness, like grace, mercy, you don't really have to keep the rule. That's what they think. They don't understand that we keep the rules for a different reason, that it's a whole different mechanism.

It's called being spirit-filled. And when you're spirit-filled, you cannot sin, the book of 1 John says. Your new man cannot sin. Your flesh will sin pretty much always. But when you walk in the new man, and that's a choice you make every moment of every day, you won't sin.

They don't understand that, do they? Because it's not by works. It's not the works that cause it. It's that relationship with the Lord and with the Holy Spirit. So this outside part that this is talking about, the part where the Gentiles could be, can also be, if you look at that entire tabernacle as a person of God, with God, just go there with me for a little bit, a person of God, which is the priest, right?

Who is in that place in order to be with God. Isn't that what the priest was doing? I mean, he is offering the blood out there for the sins of God's people. So like the priestly role is you reach up, you take the hand of God, and you reach down and you take sinful man and you try to bring them together.

Sort of what a priest does, right? And so he's in there, but he's also in there for himself because he himself wants to be near God. He wouldn't wanna be in there if he weren't of that attitude, right?

But he's also offering that blood for the sins of the people. But it's him who could picture God's people. And another thing a priest can do is sort of be in the stead of God's people, right? Because when they take the two goats and they kill one of the goats and they shed the blood, the other goats called the scape goat, they don't kill him.

What they do is the priest will raise his hands above the people. And so I will take your sin if I were an Old Testament priest. I would take your sin symbolizing if I raised my hand above you and I would put my hands on the head of the scape goat placing your sins on the goat.

And I would get a fit young man and have him take that goat out into the wilderness as far as he could take him for days and leave him there and come back without him because that picture's hell. And the goat just took all your sins with him.

Now, what do you think that picture is? When Jesus was on that cross and he said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? What was happening at that very moment? We just had a wonderful talk with a young lady who is starting to ask the right kind of questions.

You can tell the Holy Spirit's pursuing her. She's probably gonna be saved in any minute now, right? And she was asking, what does that mean? Why did Jesus say, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me, right?

And so we got to talk about that. So the father is absent from sin. He does not come into the presence of sin. And so at that moment, God took all of the sins of his people. I need a lemon chiffon Maylocks.

I'm having a Sam thing. He said, sharp pain in my chest. I am going to heaven, so do not worry about me. Could be any minute now. But anyway, where was I? That got my attention. So where was I? Oh, yeah.

So God, the father's separate from sin. And when God took all of the sins of his people, God is not bound by time. If you picture God here and all of his creation here, he's not in it. He's outside of it.

I'm talking about the father. He's now, he's now all the time. So he can easily go forward and take the sins you'll do in your entire lifetime. The ones you haven't even done yet. Take them back 2000 years approximately and place them on Jesus.

And that's called imputation. He imputes your sins to Jesus. And then he dies for your sins, paying the sin debt in full. Then he takes the beautiful righteousness and holiness and goodness and love of Jesus.

And he brings it forward and imputes it to you. And as the father looks at you now from his place outside of time, it's not even in place. It's not a place. He's a spirit being not bound by anything, but we have to call it a place.

And he looks at you and he sees no sin whatsoever. And that's what justified means. You're just as if I've never sinned. I should say, I'm just as if I've never sinned to the father from the father's viewpoint.

So all of that happens. And the priest is giving that blood. That scapegoat pictured the very moment on the cross when Jesus said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Because God literally turned his face from his son.

And they had been together for all eternity before Genesis 1, 1. They were always together. There'd never been a time when they weren't together. And that is what Jesus feared in the garden of Gethsemane, not the physical death.

That was not what he feared. He feared separation from the father. He said, is there any way you can do this without that happening? Nevertheless, I will be done. And there was no way the father would do it without that happening.

And that's when it happened. So that scapegoat pictures that. Jesus is the scapegoat. Now you don't know what it means mathematically for an eternal being like Jesus to take your sins upon him and be separated from God for a few moments on the cross.

But you take the smallest number you can imagine and you multiply infinity. Guess what the answer is? Infinity. So Jesus was in hell for an infinity. Mathematically, whatever that means because of us and for us.

For in Greek is interesting because it can mean two things. It can even mean both of them. It can mean Jesus died for us in the sense that he did it in our place. He paid our sin debt instead of us, but it can also mean because of, it can mean he died because of us because the father was bound to save us.

We were his children before the foundation of the world, the Bible says in Ephesians chapter one. He knew us by name and Jesus said of them, I will lose nothing. So he died because of us too. That should make us think before we sin next time because every sin we do from here forward is an extra weight on him on the cross.

That's just how it is. Don't have me explain how time works and all that, but I know that's what's happening. So now we have the first goat can be offered on that altar that we have to walk by first as we go into this huge tabernacle, wilderness tabernacle.

And this particular group of priests, the charge to them was to keep that place in that area where that altar is to keep it so that there'd be no wrath anymore upon the children of Israel. Now, when you think about this, first of all, it implies that there would be wrath on God's people if the charge of the sanctuary and the altar is not kept and it is the role of the priest to keep that.

It's the job of the priest. Now that's not all, verse six goes on and talks about some other stuff, but I want you to just stop and think about verse five for a minute. This picture is this outer part where the Gentiles could be, which can picture sin, it can picture Gentiles being saved, but it can also picture of a human being that part of our Trinity, we are a body, a soul and a spirit living in it, right?

It can picture the body part, the outer part, the outer tabernacle, which is what I'm living in. You know what I'm saying? So picture that outer part, the part where it's not the holiest part, right? I mean, there's two other places.

There's a curtain out there and you got to get past the blood and you got to have the water of the word and the water of the Holy Spirit in the cleansing and then there's the curtain and then a Jew could go into this next part, which picture is a person of God being close to God, right?

But this outward part is the fleshliest, most carnal picture of the whole building, where the Gentiles could be. So it pictures our body, the part of us that pulls against everything God wants to do, that pulls against everything we, the new man wants to do.

And you go into 1 John, it says that the new man sinneth not. And that gives a lot of people, that's what we call a difficult passage. There's only like seven of them. I don't know, seven or eight. Most of the Bible is so plain, a farmer and my grandbabies can read it and understand it, but there's a few difficult passages.

That's one of them where it says that, he who is born again, sinneth not. You say, wait a minute, maybe I'm not saved because I just sinned yesterday, right? That's how you think when you first read that as a baby Christian, not even a baby Christian, as a person that hadn't had time to study that yet.

But what it means if you study it in the whole context of the whole Bible is it's only talking about your new man that got regenerated, the new you. That's the real you anyway. And that you cannot sin and doesn't sin.

But that you loves to be one with the Holy Spirit who lives. I think your new man lives in your brain somewhere. I don't know, somewhere in your body, but the Holy Spirit is sealed in there too. And the two can be in the house together, but not one with each other.

And the two can be in the house together and be one, connected. When they're connected, you won't sin. Isn't that cool to know? And you get to make the choice every moment whether you're gonna be that way or not.

It's not a once in a lifetime, like I'm a spirit-filled Christian. That's the silliest statement I've ever heard people say. Well, yeah, you may be right this minute, but probably since you just said that, you're not, because that sounds like pride to me.

But whatever, you know, like it's a moment by moment decision that we make. But think about keeping the charge of this tabernacle for a little bit. Now, let's see where we are here. Wow, almost time to head to the other church.

Not quite. So let me take this just a little bit farther. Look at verse six. Well, before I do that, what is the picture when it says take charge of that part? It means we need to take care of this body, number one, from a health viewpoint, because it's not ours.

We've been bought with a price. It's not our body, it's God's. Secondly, this is what the world sees of Christ, is your body and mine and how we operate in this world. And boy, they love it when they see us stumble.

So God's not, obviously their God's not very strong with what just happened. Don't they love that? They just love it. Satan loves it, the demons love it. God loves to pick us back up though and let us start again, doesn't he?

First John 1, nine, start again. And, but this whole teaching in verse six, part of the role, the first role of a believer priest is to take care of his flesh. Now, don't you think that's interesting because your flesh in truest sense is not saved yet.

At the rapture, it gets saved, okay? All right, it ain't saved yet, but you're supposed to be in control of it. The new man, you should be a spirit controlled, soul controlled body, not the other way around, not a body which controls the soul, which overrides the spirit, which is what most Christians unfortunately live in that realm.

That's why so many churches want, you know, I'm not against any form of music, really music is neutral, but I don't like to see churches where the musicians are worldly and you can just watch them and you don't feel that they're Holy Spirit filled.