Romans 15:16 - Keeping the Charge of the Tabernacle, Pt. 2 (11/27/2022)

It's a sunshiny day, God's on his throne, and we live in America. I'd like to bring up our pastor right now, Pastor David Mitchell.

Good morning, everybody. Doesn't get much better than that on this earth. Still in the best country in the world. And I've looked at a lot of those countries in my lifetime and even recently, and we're still the best country in the world.

And that's kind of frightening when you think about that, because we're dwindling when it comes to morals in this country, and we're becoming more and more like the rest of the world, which is really sad to see, but we're the salt and the light.

And to the extent that God will preserve America, he'll use little groups of people like us all over this country to live right, the best we can with him, together with him, and to pray together with him.

And so that's what it's all about until he comes back, is holding our ground. I don't know that we're, I don't know that the church is in the mode of taking new hills at this point. We're more holding the ground at this point, seems to me, because the Lord said that the Antichrist will not come until there's a great falling away from the truth.

And I seem to have seen that coming. I think I see it here already, not only just in the church, but certainly it abounds in the church. If you go out to YouTube or any of the places, you can go and look at some of the amazing nonsense that's being taught by preachers.

Certainly the apostasy started there, but it's just in the country, in the world at large too. Just good old common sense is almost gone now. So unbelievable. Can't tell the difference between what's a male and a female anymore in this country.

Now think about that. Do you realize how absurd that would be to my grandfather to think that that would have ever arisen or been said? This court case of the young they that killed people in a gay bar.

We're supposed to call they they. And I think that's pretty appropriate when you consider that in the Bible, there was a man that had a legion of demons. So that would be plural, wouldn't it? That would be appropriate.

Otherwise it's grammatically incorrect unless that's the case. So that's what they want us to call these, these. Then it's hard to learn to talk the new way actually. My great-grandfather said to my grandmother that Jen was her name.

Jen, when it gets to the place where you don't very much like the way the world is, it's about time to go on home. Of course, he was about 67 or eight at that point, which is kind of old back in that day.

Now it's the new 40 because I am 68. But anyway, so let's have a word of prayer to get our mind off the world. That's not where we're supposed to be during this hour. And by the way, that was a fantastic Sunday school lesson this morning.

Might've been the best I've ever heard that particular Psalm taught ever, anywhere ever. It was so good. Let's pray. Lord, thank you so much for your word. We ask you to enlighten our hearts, our minds, our souls, as we study your word, the infinite word of God.

Thank you for giving it to us and that we have it and that it's preserved safely for us to use today. May your Holy Spirit use it in our hearts to accomplish his will. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, we're actually in Romans 15, 16, talking about the offering of the Gentiles is acceptable to the Lord.

And that got us talking about why, asking the question, why is it? And we've already answered that question with many Sundays of information. And then we started talking about the idea of the believer priest, talked about a lot in first and second Peter and in book of Revelation.

And the last stage we're gonna talk about, before we move back into Romans, along with this idea we've been on, is what is the role of the priest in the Old Testament? Because the New Testament tells us in two different places that the things that happened aforetime, in other words, in the Old Testament, were written for those of us as end samples for those of us who live in the last days, which is us.

And so everything in the Old Testament, if we look at it closely enough, we'll see a type or a symbol of some spiritual truth that's true of us now. And certainly as we look at the role of these priests in the old wilderness tabernacle, we see it.

So last Sunday, we started talking about that a little bit and we kind of walked out the model of the wilderness tabernacle. Think of it as a large rectangle. If you want to look at the outer, looks more like a, well, it's kind of like a tent, but just think of the outer walls around as a large rectangle.

If you go inside of it, it has a rectangular area that's called the outer court, if you were talking about Solomon's temple, but it's the outer area in the tabernacle. And that's the place where, if Gentiles were gonna come in and worship, it's the only place they were allowed to go.

And really, when you go into the next area, it's separated by a curtain. You go to the next area, is where you began to see an area where the priests could function and do some of the work they were supposed to do.

So on the right-hand side, you had the table of showbread, which was pictures, actually had some of the manna on it that God had sent down from heaven and fed them in the wilderness. And on the left-hand side, you could see the menorah or the candlestick, which is a picture of Jesus Christ, the light of the world.

And of course, the showbread is the picture of Jesus, the bread of life, right? And then as you move forward towards the next curtain, there was a little altar of incense. And that incense pictures the prayers of the saints going up, but it also pictures Jesus Christ as our intercessor in heaven, our advocate before the father.

So the furniture in that part of the wilderness tabernacle was all a picture of Jesus Christ. And before you go into that place, though, there is an altar of sacrifice. And the reason that came first is because you had to take the blood of those sacrificial animals, which pictured the blood of Jesus and sprinkled it on everything else to make it holy enough.

Because when you go into that final, past that final curtain, that's called the Holy of Holies. And you had the mercy seat there and the Shekinah glory hovered above it, which was a small resemblance of the glory of the father.

So it pictured the dwelling place of God with God's people is what it pictured. So imagine this, you know, the Bible tells us in the New Testament that our body, once we become born again, the Holy Spirit has to call us to open our eyes and ears to even see Jesus or even hear the word of God, or because we're walking dead men and women in our natural state, we don't have eyes that see, we don't have ears that hear.

So the Holy Spirit has to open our eyes of understanding when he calls us and he shows Jesus Christ to us in a way that we can see him for who he really is. And at that point, he becomes irresistible to us.

And that's why we choose to receive him as our Lord is because the Holy Spirit changed our want to, because five seconds before that, we didn't want him as our Lord. We wanted David Mitchell. David Mitchell, you wanted you as your own Lord and God, and that's who you were.

Five seconds before you were born again, you were God in your own eyes. And you made every choice about what you were gonna do for your life. Don't tell me you weren't God, right? And then the Holy Spirit woke you up and showed you that you're not God and showed you that Jesus Christ is, and that he can run your life better than you can.

And at that moment, you received him as your personal Lord and savior. And that's called your born again experience. And that's what we want you to do. And this time and space and this life. And at that point, the Holy Spirit does about 33 different things to you in a second of time, including placing himself within you and sealing you there until Jesus comes back.

So I don't get people that believe you can lose your salvation. So what would happen? Like you would die and go to hell with the Holy Spirit? Is that what would happen? Because he's sealed within you, he's inside of you.

And so at that point, the Bible says that your body becomes the temple of the living God. So doesn't it make sense that God intended that wilderness tabernacle to be a picture of you? Because the wilderness tabernacle is where God dwelt and you are now where God dwells.

He lives in you and in me. And we are the light of the world. One reason the world's probably in the shape it's in, but it's also right in the will of God that it's in the shape it's in. And God can use us any way he wants to make this world be anything he wants it to be.

So think about that. So don't beat up on yourselves too much. You're a perfect peach. I'll have to tell that story later, you know, that time this morning, in case you hadn't heard it. But at whatever stage you are, you're right where you're supposed to be is what that little story teaches.

You're right where you're supposed to be, but you're supposed to be getting better every day. So don't stay where you are, but right where you are is where you're supposed to be. You say, well, I made a lot of mistakes.

No, they weren't mistakes. Because God is sovereign. So God brought them into your life to teach you something. And you may view it as a mistake for a brief moment to learn from it. But beyond that, God brought it in your life to teach you something you wouldn't have learned if you hadn't made that mistake.

So everything's a learning experience that starts to make you end up being who you're supposed to be the day you meet him face to face. But your body is the temple that God lives in. And we are small Christ, you might put it that way, Christians, little Christ in this world.

And this is the gospel that the world sees is us. And if they're gonna hear the gospel, they're gonna hear it either from us or from something some other human did, such as pen the Bible. God's the author, but humans were penman of it.

Or some preacher on the radio who speaks it, or you who speak it, or a preacher that speaks it, or you're all preachers, by the way. And so they have to hear the gospel. That's God's plan of salvation.

He's ordained that that's the way he will save people, his remnant. He will save them through them hearing the word of God and by the Holy Spirit opening their ears to hear it all at once. It takes both.

It takes the spirit and the Bible, the word, the water of the word. So your body is the temple. So as you look at that wilderness tabernacle, it pictures you. It also pictures Jesus Christ. It's really interesting during David's lesson, I was thinking about that scripture that he quoted out of the Psalm where it says he was made a little lower than the angels.

And really, I know what theologians say about that. I mean, when you're a young preacher, you start reading everything they all say, and then you start figuring out as you get older that a lot of what stuff they said was wrong.

A lot of it was good though. So it's kind of like eating fish. You eat the meat and spit out the bones. But I mean, it's good to read it, but you have to understand they're humans like we are. They make some mistakes.

So it's not all right. But the thing I did notice is in Psalm, it's talking about human beings being made lower than the angels. And because Jesus was made in the form of a man when he was born in that manger, he became lower than the angels.

And so all of that applies to him. And his favorite reference to himself was the son of man, which is used in that Psalm that David was teaching from. It's all very fascinating. But the wilderness tabernacle, because it pictures man, the way God made man to be, the way we're supposed to be.

And only after we're born again, are we anywhere near the way God made us to be. You were a whole man or woman, boy or girl at that moment when we're born again, we're whole like we should be. And that picture of that wilderness tabernacle pictures that.

But because Jesus became a man, it pictures him too. But what's interesting is you think about it picturing yourself. When you look at the inside of that place, the first place you see is an altar. And that is picturing the sacrifice of Jesus Christ that was made for you and the blood that he shed for you.

And the Old Testament priest used to dip hyssop weed in that blood and sprinkle it everywhere, on the utensils, on the altar itself, on the curtain, on the ground, everywhere they went. Because without that sprinkling of the blood, the father can't be there.

He cannot be in the presence of sin, except by the given blood of Jesus to remove sin. That's why they did that. The next thing you saw was a labor with water in it, which pictures the word of God. The water of the word, the book of Ephesians tells us that.

So when you look at yourself, you've got that sacrificial blood. Now those that you do realize that those Old Testament priests sprinkled that every day, right? Did you know they did it every hour of every day, throughout the day and night for thousands of years?

And you know what that pictures? It pictures that you, if that's your body, you're sprinkled with the blood of Jesus every minute of every day, your whole life. And therefore, when the father looks at you, he sees no sin.

And since he cannot come in the presence of sin, if that weren't there, he would not come to visit you, except in a bad way as a judge. But that blood, when it made its way all the way past that first curtain and all the way past, I guess you can leave this on.

It might work for my preaching today, who knows? All the way past the second curtain and into that holy of holy places, that blood hit that judgment seat and turned it into a mercy seat, where the Shekinah glory is, which pictures the father.

So by the blood being sprinkled there, where it pictures where the father is, the father looking back never sees the sin. All he sees is the blood. Does that make sense? And so if that picture is you, think about it.

That first outer court where the Gentiles go, it pictures your body. It is, it's not very good grammar, but I'll say it. It's the least holy of all of you, right? We're made up of three parts, body, soul, and spirit.

The body is, actually it's neither, well, I won't say that. Our heart is deceitful and desperately wicked. Who can know it? It's desperately wicked above all things. Who can know it? So our body is bad.

I was gonna say it's neutral. It's not neutral. It's bad. It will lead us to do any manner of sin, even as a Christian, if we let it be in control. But when you look at that tabernacle, that was the first place the blood was applied, wasn't it?

Because it's in the outer court. And then from there, it moved in. So the next curtain, when you go into there, where the showbread and the light of Jesus is, and the offering of the incense, him being your intercessor and advocate for the father, that picture's your soul.

And when you go into the next curtain, into the holy of holies, where the kind of glory is, that picture's your spirit, because your spirit's the only part of you that can commune with God. So what is your soul then?

Well, your soul is like an interface. You got a few techies out here, right? An interface between a laptop and a printer. What is that? I don't know, software is the interface, right? I guess, makes it where it can talk to each other.

The computer can talk to the printer and make it print what you want it to. Am I right? Is that kind of close? Yeah, okay. So your soul, he goes, but nobody can see him because he's on the back view, so that's perfect.

But anyway, so just in case I'm wrong, that's perfect. So your soul is, think about this, it's the interface between your body, which is bad, and your spirit, which cannot sin. Your new man, 1 John says, it cannot sin, your new man, the one that got birthed when you were born again, that one.

And so the soul is the interface between the two. It can go either direction. You know, why is it that the ancient church, if you want to call the Hebrews church in the wilderness, an ancient church, when Hezekiah, who was a king, who led probably the greatest revival that ever happened in the history of the world, perhaps, I don't know that that's true, but it was a big revival.

If you read about it, it was unbelievable. They found a couple of things. They found a copy of the word of God buried in there, and they got it out and started reading it. And you know, they read that for just a while.

They read it all day, but they didn't preach anything. They just read it. It does say they gave the sense of it in a difficult passage. They say, here's what that means. Then they'd keep reading. And it says, as they proceeded to start reading the scripture that the people shouted, how many of them were there?

Ben, you know, approximately, Dave, Ben, probably know somebody, what? I don't know, 8 million of them, something. I don't know, a bunch of them, a bunch of Jewish people out there in the wilderness. Can you imagine all at one shouting how loud that was?

Because they found the word of God. The church needs to do that today. We need to find it and shout because of it. But the second thing was they had stopped doing the Passover, which was the very picture of all this blood that's sprinkled everywhere.

And they'd stopped doing it. So they started it again. Hezekiah started it again. There was a huge revival. And when they started, they didn't even do it right. They forgot to sprinkle the blood on the utensils and stuff.

And God should have killed them for it. When you read what happens when you do that incorrectly, if you don't do it God's way, you can't do it man's way. You got to do it God's way. And Hezekiah the king, not the priest, not the preacher, the leader of the country prayed, oh God, forgive these people.

It's been so long since they've done it. They forgot that they've got to sprinkle this blood everywhere first and they didn't do it. Don't kill them Lord. And the Bible says, God heard his prayer and answered it.

And didn't kill them. And so then they did it the right way. And then it went forward for many years the correct way. Isn't that something? But all of that picture is what goes on in you, inside of you.

Continually that blood is covering you. There's never a time when it's not. And you only have one priest and that's the high priest, which is Jesus Christ. And he lives in you by the Holy Spirit. So you have the priest there making sure that that blood is always sprinkled on you appropriately in exactly the right way.

And then you have the showbread, which pictures the bread of life, which means your body like David so well-taught this morning is dirt. You know, if you sit around and you think about, I mean, I think it's good to study science.

I think it'd be great if all the kids studied botany and zoology and anatomy and you need to study everything God made. People in the 1600s did all that. Why don't we do it still? Because we won't study what the government tells us to study.

But anyway, so you should understand how the body's made. And then when you think about what God does when he saves this old body and he makes a new man or woman inside of us that cannot sin. And you've got the priestly work going on of Jesus being our advocate before the father all the time, continually, keeping the blood applied to our life all the time, continually.

And then he is the bread of life. You know, this dirt that we're made out of, do you really think it can animate itself? Do you think it can make itself be alive? Well, let me ask you this. If your heart stopped one beat, who's gonna make it beat the next time?

If it stops one beat, then there's no doctors, no nothing, no electrical batteries to shock yourself. And it's just you. What's gonna happen? You can't revive yourself. You cannot animate yourself. You but go back to dirt is what you do.

So the life that's in you is the bread of life, which is Jesus. And it's pictured with bread because you eat the bread and it keeps you alive. It gives you sustenance, keeps you alive. Jesus is what keeps us really living.

Without me, you can do nothing. He said, that is so technically correct to the minutest detail. You can't even take the next breath without him. And so there he is pictured as the showbread. And then over here, the light, he's the light of our understanding.

We could not even know God. The only thing we would know if we didn't have this, the reason this is called the word of God in John chapter one, verse one, Jesus is called the word of God. And so Jesus gave us this book.

In fact, when this was finished in the Bible, Paul called it the perfect. And it's in the neuter in Greek, which means it's not a person. It's not Jesus. It's not the second coming. It's the Bible. And he said, when the perfect comes, a lot of interesting things changed in the church, but that's beyond today's scope too.

But anyway, the perfect, the word of God, it is the bread that feeds our soul and our spirit, isn't it? And our body actually. And so the light, he is the light of understanding. I was about to say that without this, if all you had was the stuff David talked about in Sunday school, which was this incredible universe, it's so interesting to think about the speed of light and with audio telescopes, that's not what you call them, but they don't use light, they use sound.

And because the light will only go so far, but the sound will go, they think, all the way out to the edge of where the big bang started. But guess what? Tomorrow morning when they wake up, new stuff appears that wasn't there today because it took another light day for it to get here and us to see it.

Wouldn't it be cool to be one of the scientists who got to see the new stuff every morning? I would like to see that. It would be especially frightening if they looked and there was no new stuff, because then they might see God, that would scare them.

But God's not gonna let that happen, I wouldn't imagine. So you think about, you can see all that, and you might see the waterfalls and the blueness of the Caribbean, if you're fortunate enough to go out there.

And you might know God exists, right? By his creation, but you wouldn't know him. You wouldn't know him personally without this and without the living word, which is Jesus. Jesus is called the word because a word is what transmits the thoughts of say, your mind into my mind, where we can understand each other.

And Jesus is the only person who could bring the mind of God to our mind and us understanding it all. That's why he's called the word. But you've got him inside of you because it's pictured by the showbread.

You see that, right? You have the word of God inside of you. And over here, the light, the light of your understanding, it allows us to comprehend some of the greatness of God. Not all of it, we'll never comprehend all of it.

You can go out there age after age into the future and we'll still be learning about him. He's infinite, we'll always be learning about him. But that light pictures our ability to know anything about him.

And by the way, lost people don't know anything about him other than that he exists if they look at the universe and they're smart. If they're a fool, then they're an atheist, the Bible says. But if they're a lost person who's smart, they know he's there.

And when they sin, they sense it, that he's watching, at least if they're lost sheep. I don't know about the goats, all right? So you got that, and then you've got the incense, that is your ability to pray.

Now you think about this, you have a person out there who if you could go to the edge of where the Big Bang started, if you wanna say there was a Big Bang, which you might as well say. I mean, it didn't create everything like they say because God created everything with maturity.

So by the time a scientist sees it, it already has maturity. Okay, but anyway, if you go to the edge of that, if you could go beyond the edge of that into what we call, well, it's not, it's even beyond the third heaven actually, because the third heaven has time in it and stuff, space.

We go beyond that where there's nothing except the presence of the Father. That'll be something, wouldn't it? Okay, isn't it? Do you think it's fascinating that you can sit here today as a human being made out of dirt and even know that that exists?

You know how you know that exists? This is the only way you know that exists. And because God gave you a spirit and the Holy Spirit and Jesus lives in you and he's the light of understanding of intelligence and wisdom and understanding to read this and understand a little bit about the fact that the Father is not bound by time, he's outside of all that.

If you could go past the edge of the known universe and get out there where he is, which no man has done that and lived, no man will ever see God and live, meaning the Father, except for one. And who is that?

Jesus, because he said, I proceeded forth and came out from God. So he's the one who can reveal that person to us because no one else has been there. No one else has ever seen him and ever will. And you think about that and he lives in you.

He's the candlestick, pictured by the candlestick. He lives, the person who dwelt with the Father before anything was made, before there was time, there was just pure spirit and no one in this room can define what that is.

No scientist knows what spirit is. No theologian knows what it is. We gave it a word because it's something, but we don't know what it is. When that's all that existed, Jesus was already there. And he knows the Father intimately.

And the Holy Spirit, the Bible says, knows the mind of God the Father. Now you think about that and Jesus and the Holy Spirit live in you. You can know way more of God than you know now. You can know way more of God than you think you can.

And all you need is that Holy Spirit in this book, which is Jesus's words. And you can know more and more about him because this picture is you and this is what dwells in you. And then you got the incense, the altar of incense means that you can pray to him when you need something.

I had an interesting discussion this week with a gentleman who believes differently than I do about some of what I call the sign gifts that the apostles had in the early life of the church, the apostles and the New Testament prophets before when the church was still, even before the middle of the book of Acts.

Because by the time you get to the middle of the book of Acts, some of the Jewish stuff is starting to cease such as the laying on of hands to impart the Holy Ghost. And there's churches that still do that today because they don't understand Acts as a transitory book.

And as we moved into the church age, that stopped because that's kind of a Jewish thing. And even in the book of Acts, it stopped. And then when they would speak the gospel, people would just be saved without anybody touching them and filled with the Holy Spirit without anybody touching them, which is how it works now.

So they carry those old Jewish things into their worship today. And I'm not mad at them for it. I mean, it's okay. It's just not right because it doesn't work that way. But if they want to believe that, that's fine.

But anyway, we had an interesting discussion because some of the gifts that the early church people had are no longer operative today. The apostle Paul named a couple of them and said, they will cease.

And he said, they will cease when the perfect comes. And it was a couple, not even that long, maybe 150 years after Paul said that, if that much, probably wasn't even that long before the little local churches had copies of the old and the entire New Testament.

At that point, they had the perfect, the only thing on this planet that's perfect, which is the Bible. They had it and those things started to cease off the scene. So one of those things is what I call faith healing.

And people get confused about our church when we say, well, we don't believe some of the gifts are still operative. Then they'll go tell people that we don't believe God heals anymore. Well, is that true, Sharon?

Is it true that we don't believe that God heals anymore? Sharon's been healed three times now of different things. So maybe I am a faith healer. No, the thing is, I didn't lay hands on her. No one in this church did.

We all just prayed for her and God healed her. And God chooses who he's going to heal. I asked my friend, I said, well, how do you deal with it when probably, would you say like, would you say 90 of the people that you ask God to heal don't get healed and they die and 10 live?

What would you say that is? He said, well, you're right. Way more don't get healed than do. I said, so then why do you think that you have the power to heal them? I mean, why doesn't it work every time if you still have that apostolic?

Because I'm telling you, like there was a kid that, Paul was a little bit like me and Dave and Ben, as far as our preaching. He preached long sermons, right? This kid fell asleep, got bored with it, fell out the second story window and died.

Remember the story? Yes, probably about three in the afternoon, right? Right after lunch, he's still preaching, kid dies. Well, that was a problem for Paul. I mean, he's the preacher, right? Oh man, I killed the kid with my preaching.

Now, as far as I know, I have not done that. And I get blamed for long sermons and I don't agree with it. But anyway, so Paul goes down the steps and he goes out on the ground and he lays on top of this little boy.

And he just lays his body on top of the little boy's body. And all of a sudden, a brand of light comes into this little boy. Paul rolls off of him and he gets up, starts running around. That's the gift of healing.

Do you really think any of these people that claim they have that can do that? They can't do any of that. They're faking, it's fake. Now, I don't hate them for it. I don't even dislike them for it. I feel sorry for them, but I almost get a little bit angry at the ones who are the teachers that teach that to people because it's a lie.

So how many times can you lay hands on people and say, oh, I just healed him of cancer and six months later, they die and you keep believing in God. You know, false teachers make people doubt God when they teach stuff that God doesn't.

Look at it this way. If God says, I don't do that anymore. And check this out when you get home, but you gotta have a King James Bible, all right? Because the other ones have problems with them. But get the King James Bible and read Hebrews, that's in the New Testament.

Chapter one, verse one. And it will tell you that God no longer deals with us like he did in the Old Testament times through prophets and visions and dreams and all this stuff. But he has dealt with us through his son Jesus as Jesus gave us this book.

And Paul said, when this book comes, that tongue speaking and prophesying as far as like telling the future that those gifts will pass away, they will cease. And they did because the early church fathers that lived around 250 AD say that those things don't exist in the church anymore.

I'm not even sure what 1 Corinthians is talking about because we don't see that anymore. You check it out, that's just church history. So when you tell, like if God says, I'm not gonna do it that way anymore, but I preach and say, oh, God still does it that way.

And then you watch me do it and then the person dies, does that make you doubt God? Well, yeah, because I told you God still does it and I'm a liar, I'm a false teacher. You see the point? But if I were to read Hebrews 1, 1 to you and many other passages that teach that these things don't work that way anymore, then you don't expect God to do that every time.

So it just doesn't cause your faith to dwindle because God doesn't just heal everybody. But you know, when Jesus was alive, let me ask you this, did he heal everybody? Could he have healed everybody? Yes.

You know why he didn't? Because he said, I don't say anything or do anything that I haven't seen the father do. So healings happen based on the sovereignty of God. On the sovereign will of God. God heals who he wants to.

He's healed that woman right there three times. And did he do it all by himself or did he let us work together with him like he likes to do? Because it's a family business and we're his kids. He had every one of us praying.

And you're not, I pick you out. I mean, it's all over the room. We've had people healed from different things, but I'm talking about like cancer and three times right there. So God still does it when he chooses to do it to whom he chooses to do it for his glory.

And there's times when he doesn't and that's just how it works now. But he told us that's how it would work. But you know what? You know how the Bible says in Isaiah 53 that by his stripes, we are healed.