Romans 15:16 - Repairing the Door of Your Heart, Pt. 2 (12/11/2022)

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Well, thank you for that. That was beautiful. And it does start to get us in the mood for Christmas, doesn't it?

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And good to see all of you, by the way. I'm sorry I was not able to be here last Sunday. But at least we were able to get together on Zoom.

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But we had all of our whole family knocked out except for Dave Huber. And then he got knocked out after that.

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So he's, I'm surprised he came today. He should have stayed home probably, but he's here.

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And he's a tough one. So pray for him that he'll go ahead and clear up in the next couple of days.

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And it seems like it's an old -fashioned cold, at least in our family. So I hope the rest of you have either avoided it or gotten over it and feeling better for the holidays coming up.

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It's not when Jesus was born, but it's a great time, as any, to celebrate his birth and to think about those passages of scripture that deal with his birth.

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And the greatest, like you guys said already, the greatest moment in time is when he came into this world.

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And I guess you would say the cross is the focal point in history.

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And his birth certainly would have to go right there with it, though, wouldn't it? I liked what you said about average.

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I never heard that one. It's the worst of the best and the best of the worst. That is not good.

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Is that how you said it, something like that? That's pretty good. Describes that lukewarmness that Jesus didn't like that much either, did he?

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All right, well, good to have each of you with us. And we will go into the scriptures.

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We've been in here right now in Romans 15, 16, where it talks about the offering up of the

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Gentiles being acceptable to the Lord. And then we went over into the Old Testament in 1

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Chronicles and a couple of other places last time, 2 Chronicles, I should say.

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And we're taking a trip through the Old Testament tabernacle, which pictures us, really.

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It also is a picture of Jesus Christ. But as we look at the role of the priest in that tabernacle, it kind of shows our role as a believer priest right now in this time.

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And it draws a picture of every detail of what we're supposed to be doing as believer priests.

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So that's kind of what we've been looking at. And last time, what we talked about was the very first thing when the

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King Hezekiah brought about this great revival in his land. And one of the first things they did was they found the word of God, dusted it off and got it out and read it all day.

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And the people shouted and began to learn from the word of God again and do the things of God again.

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I mean, the very next thing they did was they began to go into that tabernacle, or at that time, the temple, which the wilderness tabernacle was first, and then they built

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Solomon's temple. And then one other temple was built after that one was destroyed on the same patterns.

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But they went into that temple and began to clean it out. And that picture is a lot of things. So the very first thing they did was they fixed the door.

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The door was broken and wouldn't even open correctly because they hadn't been using it, which is the place they were supposed to meet with God.

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And it's a picture of our body. Our body is the temple of the living God. So that whole tabernacle or the temple, if you want to go to the time when they built the temple, it's a picture of us with God living inside of us in our hearts, beautiful picture.

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So the first thing they had to do was realize the door wasn't working right. So we went into Revelation chapter three, verse is all around verse 20, but the main verse was verse 20, where it says, and it's a picture, it's talking about Jesus because Jesus is talking in the verse and he says this, he says, behold,

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I stand at the door and knock. And he's talking about the door of your heart. But that door on that tabernacle, that temple is a picture of that same door.

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It's a symbol of it. And they had to fix the door. Well, you see, that's talking about believers, really.

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People that are already saved and yet they're not walking with the Lord. They're not living the right life for the

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Lord. They're kind of gotten off in the flesh. And the Sunday school lesson was about when God's people do that as well, from the book of Malachi this morning.

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But when that happens, the first thing we need to fix is the door because he's standing there knocking saying, behold,

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I stand at the door knocking. If any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come into him and we'll sup with him and he with me.

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And that sup means supper. Felt like having a meal together and fellowshipping together and I'll be back in fellowship with you again.

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It doesn't mean you get saved again. It means you get back in fellowship with the one who's already saved you. And so that door that we talked about last time was a picture of that.

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Now, as they go in and they repair the door and they go into the very first big, larger room in that temple, if you remember, that was the place where even

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Gentiles could come into that place and worship. And so that's part of the first place they started to clean up because it was out of order and they had to clean it back up and get it useful to the

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Lord's service. And so that's kind of where we've been, but I want to diverge just a few minutes and let's go into the New Testament in the book of Hebrews chapter two, verse 10.

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And I want to talk about the spiritual side of what those physical pictures that we talked about last

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Sunday, what they picture. And of course, Revelation 320 is the greatest verse of all about him standing at the door of your heart as a believer knocking.

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And it's a picture of the fact that not that he ever leaves you, but the fact that we block him out sometimes.

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We block the Lord out of our lives sometimes. And if we'll hear his voice and open our heart back up, he will be in perfect fellowship with us again, because he's already removed our sins.

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That's not the issue. The issue is whether we choose to walk in the new man or the old man, right?

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And so that's what it's talking about. But let's look at the spiritual side of why it is that this

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Old Testament priest, think about this. We kind of drew a picture of the tabernacle and you got this big outer room and then you go to a curtain and there's a smaller room, which is called the holy place.

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And it has things in there that picture Jesus. Like you have the showbread on a little table, which is a picture of the face of Jesus Christ, the face of God.

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Jesus is God seen. You look in his face, you see God, all right?

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And then there's the seven fold candlestick, which is a picture of the fact he's the light of the world.

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And that's talking about intellectual light, by the way, an ability to see something intellectually that you could never see before.

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And you can't, a natural man or woman or boy or girl cannot see God at all.

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They don't understand. They might know he's there because you see the stars, you can see everything he made, but you won't know him.

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And so Jesus is the light that gives us the ability intellectually to know

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God. And that's what that candlestick pictures, right? So they're all pictures of Jesus. And then you have the altar of incense, which is the fact that he's our advocate before the father.

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And as our prayers go up, he's standing there at God's right hand saying, there's their prayers, Lord, and they're mine.

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They belong to me. And if Satan comes along and says, how can they be saved? Look what they just did.

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Jesus says, they're innocent. My blood covers them. They're totally innocent, Lord. So here's their prayers.

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And he's always bringing your prayers before the Lord. And the Holy Spirit magnifies the meager words that we can use in our languages, magnifies that in the language of God, which is magnificent.

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And he just amplifies our prayers. And all that is pictured. Well, look at Hebrews chapter two, verse 10, and let's kind of look at, as you pick, you think about those parts of the tabernacle or the temple.

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When you first walk in, you see the altar, which is where they would have the animal sacrifices and shed the blood that they would sprinkle that blood all over there to make the place holy so that God would accept their offerings.

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And that's a picture. That's a picture of Jesus Christ coming into this world and dying in our place so that we don't have to die for our sins.

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And he gave his blood so that we wouldn't have to die in our sins. It's a picture of that. Well, as you move past that altar and you go into that holy place and you see these things that we just discussed, and then there's another curtain.

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That curtain, only one man, one time a year, could go beyond into there. And that's called the

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Holy of Holies. And in that place is a thing that used to be called the judgment seat.

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But when they sprinkled that blood from that previous altar out front onto it, when that priest, one time a year, enters there and sprinkles the blood, it makes it be a mercy seat.

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It changes it from judgment to mercy. And because of the blood, God's judgment can also have mercy.

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Think about that. He doesn't lose his justice, does he? He doesn't give up his justice, but the blood of Jesus makes it just for God to forgive our sins.

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And it turns that into a mercy seat. And we'll talk more about that. We hadn't even gotten to talk about the

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Holy of Holies yet. We'll talk about it more, but I just want you to remind you, only one man could go in there one day per year, and it was the high priest.

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Okay, well, guess who he pictured? Who do you think that high priest was a picture of?

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Jesus Christ. So now if the whole temple is a picture of your body, then that's a picture of Jesus Christ being within you, in your brain,

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I guess. I guess this is where we live and he lives together with us, right? And that is that innermost place where he dwells with us.

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It's a picture of that. It also is a place that had the Shekinah glory. It was a picture of God the

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Father, also his presence anyway. And so because the

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Holy Spirit and Jesus live in us, we have access to the Father. We're connected to the

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Father. We can see his glory too and know him. All of that is pictured. Well, what about the high priest

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Jesus? Let's look at him for a moment. In Hebrews 2 .10, it says, for it became him, it's talking about Jesus, right?

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It became him for whom are all things and by whom are all things.

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Let's stop right there. What does that mean? Talking about Jesus Christ, for whom are all things and by whom are all things.

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Right, right. So everything that you know in the universe, as far out there as you can see, and Dave Huber in some of his teaching been talking about the edge of the universe as far as scientists can see it.

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They can't even see it, by the way. They have to use, I forgot what you call them, but sound, sound telescopes.

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There's a name for that. I forgot what it's called. No, somebody will come up with it in a minute.

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But anyway, Brian will probably tell us back there. But anyway, it listens to sound waves because you can actually see farther that way than you can with sight because we can't, hmm?

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No, it's not radar. It's a particular word for those kinds of telescopes. No, no,

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I don't know. We'll figure it out. I should have looked it up. But I didn't know I was going to talk about it because it's not in my notes. But anyway, so the cool thing about it, you can see out to where scientists think the edge of the universe is.

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And what's interesting, the next morning, one day later, you can see stuff you didn't see the previous day because it takes a certain amount of time for light to travel that far, right?

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Years and years and years, millions of years. And so one light year, one light day later, you can see more stuff.

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Is that weird or what? And that's going on every day. Wouldn't you kind of like to be the guy seeing that stuff?

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What if he didn't see new stuff? That'd freak him out, wouldn't it? Wow, what's out there?

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There's God out there beyond the third heaven or whatever. But anyway, so you can see, you see all of this massive creation of God and there had to be a place to put the stuff in, right?

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So that's, in the Bible, it calls it the heavens. Scientists would call it space, right?

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And when God created space and stuff and put stuff in it, which is the stars, it's all of everything, everything that exists that's physical, everything, they put that in there.

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And then time was created as part of that. So you have space, time, continuum that scientists talk about.

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So when God created all of that and put that into existence, what was there before that?

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You ever thought about that? Was there darkness? Okay, but besides that, yeah.

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Yeah, it couldn't be darkness. So what was there? God. And if God is love, let me ask you a question.

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Can you as a person have love without having an object of the love?

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You have to have something to love or there's no love, right? You can't just love. You have to have an object.

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So that's one way we know God exists as a trinity. He's the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, because even before anything existed, the

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Father could love the Son, Son could love the Father, they could both love the Holy Spirit, He could love both of them.

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So there was already love and there was no need for anything within that person that we call

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God. He's one God who subsists in three distinct, and I hate to use the word persons, because that confuses people, but our fathers before us used it, so I'll use it.

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But it's not like a people like us, we've talked about that before. He's one

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God. So for us, we would say one person, so it's confusing. But He subsists as three distinct persons.

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You could call it manifestations, but it's more than that. It's more than three ways God manifests

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Himself. It's not just that. So we're gonna leave it up to Ben Mitchell to teach on the

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Trinity in the future. I'm gonna leave it there. I'm gonna leave it there for now. Dave will bring it up and fix the points he misses.

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But God has always existed that way, and we have trouble even figuring out what it means. Let me ask you this, if you could totally fix, if someone had written, if some human had written a book and they called it the

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Book of Mormon, for example, because humans have written books. So let's call it the Book of Mormons. And that's all we had.

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And in that book, it described a God that you could completely understand. Would you really think that's talking about God? I wouldn't.

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And so, you can talk about the Trinity. It's not that you don't learn more and more about it.

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You do, but you won't totally ever understand all of it, but you can learn more every day about how God is.

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But anyway, that's all it was, was God, the Father, Son, Holy Spirit existed. And there was love, there was joy, there was complete harmony.

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He didn't need anything or anybody, but he wanted somebody. And guess who he wanted?

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Us. And so, God created everything that is and put us in it.

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And this one planet called Earth is where he put us and it's the focal point of the universe. It's not the biggest place.

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It's not even the big, our son's not the biggest star by any means, but it is the focal point of God's heart because it's where he put people that he wanted to love.

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And he chose to love people. And he put us here. Well, what's interesting about it is you say, okay, the

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Father is a spirit. You can't see him. We don't even know what spirit is.

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We just call it that because it's something that we don't know what it is. We picture it as smoke sometimes, don't we?

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Like smoke or fog. How do you picture spirit, the

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Holy Spirit? How do you picture it? What is spirit? It's, I'm not present.

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It's everywhere at once. It's omnipotent. It's all powerful. There's no power that can stand against it anywhere.

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It's omniscient. Knows everything there is to know. Everything there is to know and everything there is to know, right?

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Times three, times seven. Or how about times eight? But anyway.

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So you think about the fact that God the Father, or God has always existed as a triune being.

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And part of the Trinity is the Son. We call him the everlasting Son. Even before he was born in the manger, which we'll be talking about more as Christmas gets upon us.

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Even before he was born in the manger, Jesus existed, but we didn't call him Jesus yet because that was the human side of Jesus and gave him a name, right?

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His name before that is the eternal Son of God, the eternal Son. And the

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Bible describes it in the book of Proverbs and talks about how he existed with the

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Father forever, for always. There was never a time when he didn't exist and he was before the

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Father and the Father loved him and he loved the Father. And it looked forward in time and said, Jesus loved in particular out of all the universe.

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He loved the earth and he loved the sons of men. And I like to say that when

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God chose to save a remnant of a totally fallen, corrupt race called humans, and he decided to save some of us, it's because the

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Father gave those that he saves as a love gift to the Son because he loved the earth and he loved humans.

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I believe that's what happened. Now, what's interesting about it is wouldn't you have to say that even before he was born in the manger,

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Jesus was more of a physical component of God as opposed to pure spirit, which is you'll never see and which is everywhere at once.

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Jesus was more of a physical component, not physical like we look, not corruptible, but physical.

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And the Bible says that all things were by him which means that part of God created all the physical stuff.

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Everything in the universe that you know is physical except for the spiritual things that we talk about that we would only know about if we had this.

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We didn't have this, we would not know about it. But you might sense it, but you wouldn't know anything about it.

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He created all of that. And not only did he create it, it says it's by him which means he created.

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Book of Colossians talks a lot about that, that Jesus created everything that is. John 1 ,1 says, he, you know, in the beginning was the word, that's

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Jesus. And the word was with God. I mean, and the word was, what does it say first?

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And the word was with God and the word was God. Now try to figure that out. You said you wanted to talk about the

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Trinity, didn't you? Today or a little bit? Not going to get ahead of you Ben, but what does it mean the word

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Jesus was with God? That implies two persons, doesn't it?

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But he was God, which implies one God. There's the Trinity. I totally explained it.

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You don't have to worry about it now, Ben. But that's in John 1 ,1, right? So Jesus created everything that is.

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And not only was it created by him, it was created for him. Now, why would he create it for himself?

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Is that selfish? Would be if we did it, but God is not selfish. But think about this.

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Jesus said, I never said anything or did anything that I didn't see the father do.

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So actually the father created all this for his son. But then he said, here it is, because God's not in time.

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God the father is not bound by time. He's not in time, he just is. So he didn't have to think all this stuff up and draw it and design it and then make it and all that stuff.

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He just somehow showed it to his son who was part of him anyway.

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One with him, just all the same essence. Now this will blow your mind. If you could think of God as a whole bunch of particles, which he's not, but if you could think of him as a whole bunch of particles, if you could take any one of those particles, it would be fully

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God. Think about that, it would be all of God. Same with Jesus.

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If you could just take any little bit of Jesus, he is all of God in essence.

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So the father had all of this for his son and then he showed it to him somehow.

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Now this is not Bible, this is me, this is my theory. Because Otis made me think about this years ago.

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He said, brother David, there's one thing that really bothers me. And I didn't wanna hear that because I figured if he hadn't figured it out,

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I'm not gonna figure it out and it's gonna bother me too. So I said, that's all right, I don't need to know about that brother

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Otis. He said, no, I'm gonna tell you what it is. He said, if you go back before Genesis 1 .1,

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which is where everything was created, what did God do before that? With all of the time he had that wasn't even time yet, what did he do?

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I said, yeah, okay, let's change the subject. Cause that hurts your brain a little bit, doesn't it?

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Don't think about it though, don't worry about it. It's not something God chose to tell us, but it doesn't mean we can't have theories.

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So here's my theory. So this is not Bible, it's probably not the truth, it's just my theory. So which means why

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I say it? Well, it's cause it's fun. But I think that,

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I think time began before man was created.

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I think time existed even before the first day of creation, perhaps.

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And the only reason I think so is because, well, maybe not, may have been right after the first day of creation or right after Genesis 1 .1,

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but then there would have to be a time span before the earth stuff happens because Lucifer already existed, right?

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He wasn't even Satan yet. He was Lucifer, which means the son of the morning. He was the top angel.

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He was the archangel who actually protected the holiness of God, who wouldn't let sin anywhere near God and there wasn't even any sin yet.

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So maybe he didn't even know his job, I don't know. But that's why God created him and he was there before all the stuff you read about because as soon as Adam and Eve were created, all of a sudden, there he shows up and he's been roaming around the earth before that, well acquainted with the earth, well acquainted with Adam and Eve and had been watching them for quite some time and perfectly understood them and then deceived them, didn't he?

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All right, so I think there's a place in, I believe in the book of Proverbs, I'm not sure where, no, actually it's in John in the

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New Testament, where it says that Jesus sort of spiraled into time.

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And I don't mean that his name was Jesus yet, but the son of God, the son of God who was born in the manger and they named him

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Jesus, he pre -existed, there was a time when he spiraled into time.

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So where from? Well, from a place that's not a place and where there's no stuff and no time, just God.

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And then God creates time and space and stuff and Jesus, or maybe

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I get this out of order, God, Jesus spirals out of that, we'll have to call it a place, but it's not a place, right?

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He spirals out of that into time and space. And then

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Jesus is the one who created everything we see that's in time and space. So how long did that take?

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Well, we don't know, but I like to think this is my theory is that he actually thought of it, drew it, he was the architect, he designed everything from the smallest petal on a flower to the eyeball of a bee, to how the wings of a bumblebee could carry something much larger.

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No engineer can explain why bumblebees can fly, they're too heavy. And yet Jesus designed that to your eyeball, which is so magnificently complex and it all had to exist at once or it wouldn't work at all, your eyeball.

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And the whole rest of your body also, or the eyeball certainly wouldn't work. And there've been some great theologians who have used that in and of itself to prove

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God exists, just the eyeball. But you think all the way out to the magnificent scope of the entire universe and every star and every galaxy that's out there by the gazillions.

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And then you think about on the cellular level in your body, how many billions of cells, how many multiplied billions of atoms with times how many that you have electrons and all of these little things on that scale.

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And Jesus drew all that, designed it. So how many years would it take if he did it that way?

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If he chose to, he wouldn't have to do it that way. What if he chose to do it that way? And then all of a sudden he's got all of it, all of it in his book, right?

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And he had, where's, oh, too bad. I was gonna say he had to have a computer, of course.

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You can tell your husband I said that. And so he's got all of it in his book or his database, right?

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And all of a sudden Genesis 1, 1 comes along and the whole first part of Genesis first three chapters, and he just speaks it all into existence.

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Cool, huh? Now, maybe he didn't plan it all and design it. Maybe he just spoke it into existence. I like to think he took time designing all this beautiful stuff.

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But who'd he make it for? Well, God's the one who put the design in Jesus's mind, right?

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God, the father, and it was for Jesus, but God even let him make it. Now think about that as a parent.

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Wouldn't that be cool? You're talking about toys at Christmas and you let your child help build it. Then you play with it with a silly example, but it's kind of what the father did with the son.

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So here in all of this design, you have the design for the fact that God gave angels and men a will.

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Now, what is a will? It's the ability to think up something you want and then do it.

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I will to stand up here and preach, right? You will to sit there and relax and listen, right?

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We do what we want to do. So when you say someone wills to do something, it's like, it's what they want to do.

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God gave men and women a will, didn't he? And he gave angels a will.

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And Lucifer used his will to become Satan. He decided to rebel against God because he wanted to, and he fell, right?

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A third of the angels fell with him. Eve used her will because Satan deceived her into thinking it was

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God's will for her to eat that fruit. He said, well, God wouldn't want you not to know good and evil.

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Right now, you only know good, but me and God know good and evil. He'd want you to know everything we know, wouldn't he? And I guess she said, well, that makes sense.

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And she took a bite. And then the Bible says, Adam took a bite, knowing it was sinful, not being deceived.

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And you have to theorize why he did that. My theory is it because he loved his wife, but maybe that's just because I love my wife and I wouldn't want to see her die and go to hell forever.

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So I eat the fruit and think, well, maybe God will save both of us. He ain't gonna kill us both. Maybe, that may be what

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Adam was thinking. We don't know what he was thinking, but he sinned. Did he not? And so sin comes into the world and God's grand plan for saving some humans, which none of them deserve anymore because every human has sinned that's ever lived.

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And he had a plan to save some of them. And it's all pictured by this tabernacle, this temple that we've been studying.

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The picture of the wilderness tabernacle pictures that whole plan. And there's only one plan.

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And in that plan, there is a high priest who goes in that room once a year with the blood and make sure that thing remains a mercy seat, lest we all perish as humans.

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But it happened every year, year after year until the crucifixion of Jesus. And the day that they nailed him to that cross and he gave his blood, which is what all that Old Testament stuff pictured, the day they nailed him to that cross, the

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Old Testament sacrificial system ceased. And just a few decades later, how many years was it when

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Titus came through? 70 AD.

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Well, it was 70 AD. So what would that be? About 40 years after Jesus was there talking about that temple. So 70

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AD, about 40 years later, that temple was destroyed and no sacrifices were never done again.

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Never had been done for 2000 years because it all pictured Jesus and he was the ultimate sacrifice. So let's talk about who the high priest pictured when he went into that place, which is the picture of your heart, right in the center of your soul and the highest part of you, your spirit as a human being.

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And Jesus walks in that place. For it became him for whom all things are all things and by whom are all things.

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In bringing many, I want you to circle that word. It's very important word to me. It didn't used to be, but it is.

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It's not the word all, but it's the word many. And he brings many sons unto glory.

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That means many of the sons of men, many humans, not all humans, but many humans he brings to glory to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.

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Now, who's the captain of our salvation? That's Jesus, isn't it?

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So part of this plan included suffering, which is why when you walk in that tabernacle, you see the altar and they are killing innocent animals, little sheep, little goats, sometimes a calf, sometimes a little bird, a dove, they're killing them and shedding their blood.

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And you say, well, that's barbaric. Well, it was God's plan. And what does it do? It pictures that his son would suffer death in our place and free us totally from the debt of sin so that we can live forever.

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That's what it pictures. And that's the only way God chose to picture it. And this was horrible, all the stuff that happened in that place, at that altar with these animals.

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But what happened to Jesus was infinitely more horrible. And he did that for us, did he not?

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So not only is he our high priest, he is our sacrifice. He chose to give his life for those whom he loved.

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And I learned from Ben this morning, never saw it in my whole life till this morning in Habakkuk chapter one, verse one, two and three.

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What I saw in that scripture was, and you go check it out for yourself when you get home if you didn't see this in Sunday school.

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Well, I'm not even gonna say it because Ben may teach about it next week. So be back here for Sunday school next

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Sunday and you'll see. But it's an amazing thing about God's love.

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Well, so here he is. And so all things were made by him. All things were made for him.

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And it became him in bringing many sons to glory to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.

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Jesus was allowed to suffer for us. Now the word perfect doesn't mean sinless because Jesus didn't have any sins.

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It doesn't have to mean that. It just means his complete mature life could not be complete and mature in its scope until he died for us on the cross.

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And that made it complete and mature. Now you go into Hebrews chapter eight in verse one.

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Just go a couple of chapters forward, a few chapters forward. It says, now of the things which we have spoken, this is the sum.

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So he's gonna kind of summarize the things in the first seven chapters of Hebrews. We have such a high priest.

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Now this is talking about Jesus, the high priest. We have such a high priest who is set on the right hand of the throne of the majesty in heavens, in the heavens.

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So Jesus, after he died, was buried and rose from the grave. God set him at his own right hand in heaven.

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And in that tabernacle, in the holy of holies, you had the Shekinah glory over that mercy seat.

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We'll get to the picture of that later, but how that looked. But it was a picture of God, the father, the glory of God anyway, in heaven.

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And Jesus is, and there is a real mercy seat in heaven now that that was a model of.

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And so now Jesus was seated at the right hand of that. So that picture is at the right hand of God, the father.

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And Jesus was set there because he was obedient during his lifetime.

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He was completely obedient and did everything God showed him to do.

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And therefore God set him there. Otis used to make a big deal out of that at coffee.

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In the English, it's the word set, S -E -T, rather than sat, which would imply he sat down himself.

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Set implies God put him there. Now in Greek, it's kind of the same word.

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So you only see that in English, but it is an interesting thought. It is interesting that translators put the word, the

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English word set, because they thought the Holy Spirit wanted to put that word rather than sat. But anyway, here we see that this is the son.

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We have such a high priest who is set on the right hand of the throne of the majesty in the heavens, a minister of the sanctuary.

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Now here it brings in the picture of this physical tabernacle in the Old Testament times. But now it's talking about the real thing in heaven that that picture.

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Are you with me? All of that stuff in that temple and in that tabernacle pictured something that was real.

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It was a model or a type or a picture. The real thing is being spoken of here in verse two.

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Jesus is a minister of that sanctuary in heaven where he is seated at the right hand of the father and all of existences run from there.

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There's where the sovereign of the universe runs the universe for now.

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There's gonna come a day when Jesus steps down from there and takes on and sits in a throne in Jerusalem and he rules for a thousand years on this earth.

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And at that point, the entire center of sovereignty over the entire universe will be on this earth, on this planet.

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And you will get to see him with your eyes and feel him and be with him in the physical sense.

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And this picture's before that, this picture's prior to that when he was still in heaven or right now, he is still in heaven now.

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That's where he is seated now. But he is the minister of that sanctuary. He is the one who takes care of it all.

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He is the one that made sure that that sacrifice actually took place, that that blood was given for his people and that it would be applied to that mercy seat in heaven.

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And did you know that every Old Testament person that got saved in the Old Testament times, none of them went to heaven yet.

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They were in a place in the center of this earth called Shoal or sometimes called

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Abraham's bosom next to the heart of Abraham or sometimes called paradise.

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That's where they were. And it was like heaven. It was perfect. And they were already in glorified bodies and they had no sickness, no illness, no death and all that, but they weren't in heaven.

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And the reason why is Jesus had not taken his blood that he just gave on the cross and applied it to this mercy seat that the one we talked about pictures, he had to literally sprinkle it on that before anything from earth could go into that place because there can be no sin there.

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So in fact, when the women came to him after his resurrection and saw him, he said, don't touch me,

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I've not yet gone to the father. He had to take the blood and put it there at the throne of God and sprinkle it and turn it into mercy seat before anything else could happen and then he went down into Shoal and he preached to those saints who were in Abraham's bosom and he took them to heaven.

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So they're in heaven now, but not before the cross they were, isn't that interesting? All that's in the

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Bible. So he is the minister of this sanctuary where all the salvation takes place, where all the things that have to happen in the physical realm, in time and space, all of that stuff that's also part of God's sovereign plan for how he saves everyone,

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Jesus reigns over that. He is the one who makes all of that happen correctly.

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He is the minister, the minister of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle, that means the one that the other stuff modeled, which the

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Lord pitched and not man, which means Moses was shown how for men to build this stuff, but the one in heaven, no man made it,

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God did. And there it is now today with Jesus sitting there at the right hand of glory, at the right hand of that mercy seat where the

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Shekinah glory dwells above it. That's not all of the father because he can't come into time and space, he's outside of it lest he destroy it all because he's so holy, but he shows a little bit of his person and presence there and Jesus is seated there right now.

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I picture him with his toes right over the threshold of the door of coming back here.

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That's how I picture Jesus right now. I don't know that he has stood up yet, but when he stands up off that seat, he's getting ready to come back here at the second coming.

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We gotta always be ready. If we then go to Hebrews chapter 10, verse 12, aren't you glad I'm not giving you all the context and reading all of this?

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I'm skipping some of it for the sake of time. Hebrews 10, 12, but this man,

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Jesus, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God.

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Now they chose to put the word sat there. In the Greek, it's the same word. So Jesus made one offering for all time for sins and then he sat down at the right hand of God.

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Now, when you look back at that tabernacle in the temple, did you know that the

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Jews, it was Aaron and his children and their progeny all the way down to the time

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Jesus died on the cross that day. Aaron and his children and their kids and the

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Levites, which was part of the like cousins and stuff of Aaron and their family and their kids all took care of that temple and the tabernacle before it was a temple.

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And every minute of every day, they were shedding blood in the premises of that place.

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Now, if they're human and they can't be eternal and they can't really do things once and for all because it's a meager human picture of all that, then how could they picture an offering that would be done once and last forever?

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Well, they pictured it by doing it all the time, never stopping to kill these little animals so that blood is always flowing.

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There's never a time when it's not. And that's the only way they could picture an eternal sacrifice that Jesus actually from their viewpoint in the future would come and do, which our viewpoint, we look back at it and see it.

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And that's how they pictured it. But Jesus was the antitype of the type.

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He was the real, the actual one and only sacrifice. And it says that this man,

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Jesus, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God.

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Do you know why it's blasphemous to teach that you can lose your salvation? Because if you go back and you read

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Hebrews chapter six, first six or so verses, it will show you that if a person did lose their salvation, if they could lose it, which it's like, it's a rhetorical question.

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It's not saying they can, it's saying if, if they could, that they could never get their salvation back again, because to do so would be to re -crucify

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Jesus again and put him to open shame, the scripture says. That putting Jesus to open shame is blasphemy, ladies and gentlemen.

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And the only way that these churches, our friends around us, teach it every day, right here on Sunday, that you can lose your salvation.

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But you know what they also incorrectly teach? And it is not consistent logically, nor is it scriptural, is they teach, well, but you can get it back again by just coming back to church, tithing again and getting right with God.

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But the Bible doesn't teach that. In Hebrews chapter six, it teaches the opposite. It says, if you could lose it, you can never get it back.

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And to think that you could would mean that you think his first crucifixion, listen to me now, his first crucifixion was not sufficient to save you, so you got to kill him again.

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And it's blasphemy. Now, how is it all of our friends all around us, do you know that they'll use that exact passage in Hebrews six to try to prove you can lose your salvation?

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Well, it's just because they don't understand grammar, right, they should come to our school. Even the old coots in those churches should come back, sit in here and learn grammar.

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And then they will understand it doesn't teach that, it teaches the opposite of what they think. It's just my, I don't know, it grieves me.

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It grieves me that people just don't see the scriptures and I think, well, gosh, are they even saved?

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And I'm not condemning them or judging, I'm just saying, I think, gosh, are they even saved? Why didn't they not see this?

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They have the same Holy Spirit, they have the same Bible, how did they not see this? But who am I to judge? I mean, I don't know.

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I know one thing, I know what Paul said about it. He said, well, if you do something religious like circumcision was to the

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Old Testament people, for example, if you do something religious and think that's part of your salvation, then

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Christ availeth you nothing. So how's a person gonna get to heaven if Christ doesn't do anything for them?

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Scary thought, isn't it? So listen, we need to be sharing the truth with our friends.

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I mean, you can't just sit there and say, well, you believe what you wanna believe, I believe what I wanna believe and be good with that because you could be the only gospel they ever hear, only real gospel.

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There are preachers sitting up there telling them garbage every Sunday. And I say garbage with authority.

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When they're, if they're teaching, you can lose your salvation. Pentecostals teach it, Methodists teach it, Church of Christ teaches it, the

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Catholics teach it worse than anybody. Garbage, it's worse than garbage, it's blasphemy.

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So you're not gonna change those preachers, by the way, you don't even go there. I mean, I don't even go there and I'm a preacher where maybe

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I have the tools to debate with them, but I don't go there. But there are people that are my friends, yeah,

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I will look for an opportunity. Now you can't talk to them like I'm talking to you because up here I got authority, I can get a little feisty, right?

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Besides that, I'm preaching to the choir, so it's easy for me to get feisty, no one's gonna hurt me. No one's probably not even gonna say that ain't right because all of you know what

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I just said's right. So I can do that here, but if I'm talking to somebody one -on -one, I don't act like this.

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Charlotte can tell you, I get really neat and nice. And I don't argue,

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I just instruct them. Now it's never wrong to read them a verse, that's called instructing them, right?

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So do it with a quiet voice, which is hard, I'm still working on that. A quiet, calm voice.

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Come on, Jeannie, you can do it. You can learn to do it, just as long as I can learn to do it.

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Because she and I are like brothers and sisters on that aspect of this thing. Like, here's how I would like to do it.

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Now you won't say anything because I just punched you in the mouth with scripture. You're not that bad. I'm kind of like that.

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Well, we both, we've seen each other working at that. I've seen you work at it, a lot of your stuff is online and you work at that.

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Sharon, you kind of work at that too, on like some of your Facebook stuff. Like when a certain person we know says something ridiculous, you have to go take three deep breaths and then answer it.

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All right, but we need to be answering is my point. We don't need to just sit there quietly.

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We need to share something with them to show them, well, how are you so sure you can lose that salvation? Well, because my preacher said so my whole life and my grandparents believe it, my mother.

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Okay, well, what if Jesus said the opposite and I could show that to you, would you choose to believe him or them?

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And say that with a smile and just see what they say. And if they say, nope, well, I'll never believe it. Then just drop it and talk about football or something.

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But if they get interested, show it to them. So he's the minister of the real sanctuary and he offered himself once.

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And the theologians like to use the word sufficient. I think that's a weak word. How many of you agree with me?

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Like his blood is sufficient to save everyone is supposed to be saved, sufficient. I mean, it's like, it's all powerful to save.

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It's like, it's omnipotent to save everyone. It can't, I like it in Texan.

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It can't not save them, right? Or even better in Texan. It can't not save them, can't not save them.

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That's what the Bible teaches. In verse 13 says from henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool.

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Now that happens out in the future. A lot of that is going to happen at Armageddon, by the way.

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And then more will happen a thousand years later when he speaks and annihilates with fire all the enemies that are still left on the earth.

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But anyway, he will make his enemies footstool. For by one offering has he perfected forever them that are sanctified.

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So like you get saved and now you're proclaimed by God to be perfected forever because his blood's been applied to you.

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How long is forever? Oh, here's a better question. When does forever stop? Tell me.

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Never, so how can you lose your salvation if it never stops? You can't, it's a nonsensical concept.

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And so he gave one offering, he died one time and it perfected forever everybody for whom he died.

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Forever it perfected. Now let's go back and say, okay, forever, we got that now, so we can't lose it. But how perfect is perfect?

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If he made you perfect, will God accept you? He can't be in the presence of imperfection.

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But if Jesus made you perfect by putting his blood on you and God the Father now sees you as righteous as he is, how can you be more perfect than that?

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I learned in elementary school at Forest Glade, we had a good school down there, a little country school.

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The teacher illustrated this one day and I was a little bitty kid, but I said, wow, that's cool.

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And they said, there's some words that you don't say more, like you don't say, okay, I'm more perfect than you.

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Because she put a glass of water up there and she filled it all the way to the top.

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And she said, now that glass is full. And then she poured a little bit out and she said, now it's less full than it was.

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Is that true? And we all said, yes. And she said, no, it's not true because it can't be anything but full.

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It's either full or it's not full, right? It's either full or it's not full.

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It's not more full or less full. It's just full or it's not full, right? That's how perfection is.

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You're either perfect or you're not. And that's why all of these earthly religions, all of them, other than true biblical

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Christianity, they all teach salvation by you getting better, better at keeping our rules, whichever rules we set here in our church, right?

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Better by keeping the rules, better and better and better, more nearly perfect. Now see, that's the right grammatical way to say it, but that can't apply to this word because you can't be more nearly perfect either.

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You're either perfect, like if you're gonna stand in the presence of God, the Father, holy

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God, in what pictured by the holy of holies, where only one man can go in there one day and not without blood, but now all of us can go there at any moment you want to into the presence of God, the

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Father, at any moment you want to. How do you think that's possible? Because you got more perfect today than you were last time.

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Like you heard this sermon, now you're ready. Now you go home and spend time with God because you got it now.

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And then next week, you're even more perfect. Well, that's how every religion is. Like you just keep coming to this

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Catholic church and we're gonna give you the Eucharist every Sunday and you're gonna drink Jesus's literal blood and eat his literal body.

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And even the little kids that ever had a science course know that ain't happening. And they said, well, it's a miracle. Well, it's not a miracle discussed in the

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Bible. It's an invented miracle. And yet that makes you more perfect every week. And you're gonna get more and more perfect.

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See, none of it's talked about in the Bible. You're either perfect or you're dead. You're either perfect or you're annihilated in hell forever.

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And it's Jesus' blood that he put on you that made you perfect.

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By this offering, he has perfected forever them that are sanctified. Now, what does that mean?

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Sanctified? Does that mean that you've got to like be a better person? Like I'm gonna sanctify myself and be better than everybody else.

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And then all this happens to me? Or does it say in the grammar that you're already sanctified?

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And the word doesn't mean better. You know what it means? Set apart. You're set apart from the ones that are going to hell.

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You are part of the remnant that God saved. You're a part of the elect that were chosen from a fallen race that's all bound for hell.

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And you were removed from it by Jesus because he loved you even before you were born.

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And so you're set apart, you're sanctified. You're set apart from the rest of the lost dying world.

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And you have been perfected forever by the blood of the one true high priest who was not only the priest, but he was also the sacrifice.

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Hebrews 12 too says looking unto Jesus, the author and completer, finisher of our faith.

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He is the one who gave us the faith to believe in him in the first place. He is the one who keeps us believing all along the way and finishes that at the moment we meet him face to face.

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The author and the finisher of our faith who because of the joy that was set before him endured the cross.

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Despising the shame of our sins being put upon him and is now set down at the right hand of the throne of God.

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For consider him that endured such contradictions of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your mind.

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So like when we get ready to give up and just like things have just gotten so bad, I'm just gonna give up. Remember what

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Jesus suffered in order to save us and don't give up. Even if you get cancer and you think you can't be healed, don't give up till the very last breath.

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My mom, she didn't have cancer, bless her heart, but she did not give up.

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I'd have to say that. She didn't give up. That's how we're supposed to be.

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Let's stand and pray. Lord, thank you for your word.

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We thank you for how you've given us this beautiful picture through human priests and human servants of God who offered those sacrifices all day, every day for thousands of years to picture the time

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Jesus would come and give one offering for all time that would be working in the lives of all of your people for all of eternity and would never stop working and would always perfect us and keep us continually perfect before your sight so that we might be in your presence even now and even in the day to come when we see

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Jesus face to face. Thank you for your revelation of this truth to us. Help us to share it with our friends who don't see some of that picture perhaps and give us boldness and give us meekness and give us a loving heart to share this with our friends.

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And Lord, go with us into our time of fellowship now and we ask you to bless the meal in Jesus' name, amen.