Sunday Night, January 21, 2018 PM

Is that even as in Leviticus it says that salt should accompany all the offerings that Israel was to offer up, Christians, followers of Christ, should see themselves as living sacrifices, and the sacrifices we make in following Christ and going through difficult trials, often being called to give up a great deal to follow Christ, should be seen as sacrifices offered up to God in following after Christ, that these are things that are pleasing to God and are ultimately something that is good for us.

So that's the best I could find in terms of researching, but everything will be salted with fire from the end of Mark 9, and so maybe that should become an expression or an aphorism we can say to ourselves when we're going through a very difficult time, everything will be salted with fire, knowing that ultimately it's for Christ and it has an eternal impact.

So, and that was one that I hadn't, you know, thought very clearly about, but it's encouraging when we think about it the right way. Any other questions or something that we could discuss? Yes. Well, it's a good question.

The Tree of Life in Genesis and Revelation

In Genesis chapter 2, after we receive a description of how beautiful Eden is, and the garden is, how abundant everything is that God provides to Adam and ultimately to Eve as well, God then puts the man in the garden, in verse 15, and he commands the man saying, from any tree of the garden you may eat freely, but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.

And there we only hear, we only hear about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but if we back up a little bit before the description of the beauty of the garden, in verse 9, it says, out of the ground the Lord God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

So, the tree of life was present there in the garden of Eden, as well as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And in the commandment, God says, you may eat of all the trees freely, that means also the tree of life, but you may not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day that you eat it you will surely die.

So, I believe the tree of life that is mentioned here in Genesis 2 is to be understood as the basis, the initial basis for what we find in Revelation, that the idea is that I think that when man sinned, we were exiled from the garden, exiled from the tree of life, exiled from true living fellowship with God, but that when we read about the new creation and how God restores all things through Christ, he brings back his people to the tree of life, and we're no longer exiled from life everlasting.

So, I think the tree of life, the tree of life opens the Bible and closes the Bible in some ways. You see it at the beginning and you see it at the end. So, I think that's probably what it is. Yes, Norm?

The Garden Pattern in the Tabernacle and Temple

Well, we don't have to go very far in Genesis until we find out that a worldwide flood destroyed everything on the surface of the earth, and the waters were higher even in the highest mountains, and everything was catastrophically rearranged.

But the idea of the garden is still there, very prevalent, Norm, and you find it as you read in Exodus of the tabernacle. I'm not going to steal any Dwight's Thunder in your Sunday school class, but at a certain point you're going to read about the tabernacle, and you're going to read about the holy place, and the holy of holies, and as you read through what might otherwise be a rather boring description of all this and that, you're going to find very clear parallels between descriptions of the garden of Eden and descriptions of the tabernacle, even down to items of vegetation, down to orientation.

The entrance was to the east in the garden, so also in the tabernacle and the holy of holies. And so there's a lot of similarities. There's even parity between the instructions to the Levites concerning the tabernacle, instructions to Adam to keep the garden, and so the idea of the garden of Eden, the idea of a place where man and God may fellowship in a life-giving way, is preserved in the instructions of the tabernacle and reiterated again in the temple.

One easy way to see that is in the veil, the veil that cuts off the holy of holies from the rest. In the veil were woven golden cherubim, like the cherubim who wielded the flaming sword at the entrance of the garden.

There's a very intentional parallel, and so you follow that all the way up until the time of Christ, and what happens to the veil? It's written twain from top to bottom, right? And so what we have there is, through Christ, very clearly through Christ, we are brought back into the fellowship with God, and some sort of angelic being.

Yeah, absolutely.

Maybe they didn't, but in the Ark of the Covenant, there was a cherubim and they had wings. How do we make that common?

Well, so when we read in the scriptures about angels or an angelos in the Greek, or I forget the Hebrew word suddenly, what we find them usually as, they appear to be human. They're not sprouting wings.

Angels in the Bible, without fail, are some version of a young man. They're not, you know, they're not women as popularly depicted today. Right, so why would God reveal angels as a man, as bringing a message?

Obviously, God is bridging the gap to reveal to us something of supernatural truth, and he is communicating on our level, and it just helps sometimes, I think. Well, I think in the scriptures, we're not given any description of wings, except for when we're talking about the cherubim and the seraphim, okay, and then we have wings involved, especially when it regards to the guarding of the holiness of God.

Isaiah 6, what is the vision of Isaiah 6? Okay, so in the year the king Uzziah died, what? I beheld the Lord high and lifted up, that he was trained, filled the throne in the temple, and the Lord is sitting on the throne.

The king may have died, but God is still on his throne, and then what do we see around the throne? The seraphs, right, and they have six wings. With two, he covered his face. With two, he covered his feet.

With two, he flew. What's the point? He covers his face. He may not look upon the glory of God. He covers his feet. He may not expose himself to the glory of God, and he flies, so he's not to step on the glorious robe that is filling the whole of the throne room, and all of it is expressing holiness, the glory of God, the holiness of God.

The cherubim who guard the holy of holies, once again, you have this angelic being guarding the holiness of God and the glory of God. When we have angelic beings involved in that responsibility, in that duty, we have wings.

When we have messengers, we have not angels flittering down in Jacob's ladder, but they're climbing the ladder, right? I don't understand exactly why, but we do see a pattern at least that when God is communicating through angels, they appear to be wingless men, and then when we have descriptions of the glorious throne room of God and protecting the holiness of God, there are wings involved.

I would say that the cherubim have wings, and the seraphs have wings, and they are all angels. I think they're an angelic being. I don't know if you're supposed to say angels, but I don't know exactly the need to distinguish one or the other.

It's good to stick with what the scriptures show, and I think it's helpful because in pop culture today, angels are women with wings, and if anybody has some sort of vision of a woman in wings and a robe telling them something, you're completely off base.

There's, again, disagreement with the scriptures. I think the point is to try to say as the scriptures say and to think God's thoughts after him, that when God communicates with us, he does so on our level, and when he gives us glimpses of his glory, these things are beyond us.

There's both. There's the transcendence of God where there are beings that we can't understand, like cherubim and seraphim with wings, and then there's also the intimacy of God coming down to our level, the condescendence of God, and when he comes down to our level, he reveals his message in manners that we can't understand, and I think that ultimately is helpful.

Exactly. Okay, well, let's move on to Genesis chapter 12. At the very last half of Genesis 12, after we have God communicating with Abram and promising him great and wonderful things, we see something of Abram's, should we say, something of Abram's weakness, something of Abram's shortcomings.

We certainly have seen Abram took his wife Sarai and Lot, his nephew, and they come to the land of Canaan. They pass through the land of Canaan, and Abram begins to build altars worshiping the Lord. He begins to essentially begin to plant the flag of the one true God in this pagan land, and he worships the Lord, trusting that his promises will be true.

Now, verse 9 says that Abram journeyed on, continuing toward the Negev, and when you hear about the Negev, we are to think of south. We are to think of cities south of Judah. We're to think of territory south of Israel, a hotter climate, more arid, more dry, wilderness kind of area.

And there's a famine in the land, which is explaining why Abram keeps on moving. He goes through the land that God has promised him, and he sees famine and dryness, and why would I stay here? And he just keeps on trucking, and he keeps on going south until he finds himself in Egypt, and he goes to sojourn there.

He doesn't go there to, you know, take up residence. He doesn't go there to be a subject of that kingdom. He goes to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land. And it came about when he came near to Egypt that he said to Sarai, his wife, see now, I know that you are a beautiful woman, and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, this is his wife, and they will kill me, but they will let you live.

Please say that you are my sister, so that it may go well with me because of you, and that I may live on account of you. So what do we think of Abram's plan? You're a true male, okay? Selfish, dishonest, yes, kid.

So you see what looks like an ethical dilemma. We don't have a particular, Abram did what was right, or Abraham did what was wrong. We do have, I shall not bear false witness, so obviously he did wrong.

He lied, and lying is always lying. And so what we have here is God does end up blessing Abram, but I think the reasons why God blesses Abram is not because Abram lied. It's not post hoc ergo proctor hoc.

It's not just because one thing comes after the other doesn't mean that this one caused that, okay? So we have to be careful by saying, we read along the story, A happened, and then B happened, so A caused B.

No, no, hang on, hang on. So in that sense, you know, Abram was being selfish. He was being dishonest. He could have prayed to the Lord for protection and trusted him in that way. And as far as the ethics involved in warfare and the midwives hiding, I think in this case, in this case, and also in Isaac's case that comes later, I think it's pretty clear that the patriarchs ought to have told the truth, and I think it's also clear when it comes to the midwives protecting the innocent that they did right, even as those who hid the Jews in the Holocaust did right, and even as Rahab in the fear of the Lord worked to preserve the lives of the spies who were there.

So, I mean, that's not a perfect answer, but I think it's a completely different tone in both situations. And I think there are some, definitely more clarity, more revelation, more blessings living on this side of the cross than in the prior.

We also see that Abram was apt to fail, and this is not the first time we're going, not the last time we're going to see Abram fail. It's definitely a pattern in which God is dealing with people who fail, and yet God, no matter what, succeeds.

No matter how bad the folks perform, God always pulls out the victory because he's God and we're not. So, when we look at this, we have Abram telling Sarai to lie, and he says, so that they won't kill me.

So, you know, brave man. It came about when Abram came into Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. Now, I've just got to say, you know, she's 65 years old, so beauty knows no age limit.

I'm just saying, that's true. Therefore, so Pharaoh's officials saw her and praised her to Pharaoh, and the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house. Therefore, he treated Abram well for her sake and gave him sheep and oxen and donkeys and male and female servants and female donkeys and camels.

Wow, Abram just got rich, got a lot of stuff given to him. But the Lord struck Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram's wife. Then Pharaoh called Abram and said, what is this you have done to me?

Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? And why did you say she's my sister, so that I took her for my wife? Now, then here's your wife, take her and go. Pharaoh commanded his men concerning him and they escorted him away with his wife and all that belonged to him.

So, Abram went up from Egypt to the Negev and he and his wife and all that belonged to him and lot with him. Now, Abraham was very rich and so on and so forth. Wow, yeah, got rich from Pharaoh, went down, did a bad job protecting his wife and ended up rich and leaving.

What kind of a story is this? This is a story that happened that was important for the Holy Spirit to include in our scriptures, important for Moses to tell the children of Israel. Does this story sound familiar at all, going down to Egypt because of a famine?

Plagues and plunder, going back to the promised land. Sound familiar? Right? Isn't that what happened? Jacob and his sons went down to Egypt because there was a famine, ended up sojourning there. God brought plagues against Egypt and the Israelites left after plundering the land and they left very wealthy.

Sound familiar? Interesting. So, this is a story that in some sense is a fore-echoing of what occurred. It is a connecting bit of narrative that's very helpful for the Israelite tribes to hear that this is how God is working.

Not only did he do it for them, he did it for their forefather Abraham and the promises he gave to Abraham there at the beginning of chapter 12 were for them as well. And just as God preserved Abraham and Sarai and ultimately therefore the seed who was to come, even as he preserved that family in Egypt the first time, so he did again and he preserved the seed again.

Remember in the first part, Abraham and Sarai are down there in Egypt. What happens when Abraham's wife is captured by Pharaoh and she's in the temple? What happens now to the seed? Will Abraham and Sarai ever have a descendant, the offspring, the seed of the woman, the one who is to come, the Savior?

What will happen? The seed is in peril. And yet God intervenes through plagues and gives plunder and gets the family out and preserves the seed and sends that family on their way. And the same thing happens again with Israel down in Egypt.

Jacob and his sons sojourn in Egypt because of the famine, but then they are enslaved, aren't they? They're enslaved by the Egyptians. And then Pharaoh says, let's start killing all the male children.

We're going to eradicate this people group. We're going to intermarry with their women and we're going to kill all their men and we're going to eradicate this race from the face of the planet. They're in danger again, but what does God do?

He intervenes with plagues on Pharaoh and all the Egyptians and then with great plunder, he leads them up out of Egypt. Well, what do we see? We see that God is faithful. There's failure in the lives of the people.

They are weak, but he is strong. They are sinful, but he is holy and he is a God who holds true to his purposes. Yes. Yeah. Right. Isn't that amazing that what Joseph's brothers meant for evil, God meant for good.

It's amazing. I was thinking about this for a little bit. And if you will bear with me, we'll read you a little poem. Abraham went down to Egypt, down to Egypt. He fled the famine and the heat. God plagued the Pharaoh of Egypt, God of Egypt.

Abraham's plunder would repeat. Israel went down to Egypt, down to Egypt. He fled famine for grain so sweet. God plagued the people of Egypt, the gods of Egypt. Israel's plunder now complete. God's own son went down to Egypt, down to Egypt.

So no violence would he yet meet. God kept him safe there in Egypt, safe in Egypt, called him out, our true bread to eat. And that's the final part of the story, isn't it? Out of Egypt, I called my son.

Any questions or thoughts? That would be a good statement, Brother Jerry. We can't lie enough to change God's truth. We can't sin enough to change God's will. Yeah, absolutely. And we certainly see that in all the stories of the Old Testament, don't we?

Absolutely. God forbid. No, not never. Well, let's go ahead and close by singing the doxology.